Calamity Brown and the G8, that is the Guilty 8

Six months later and the recession that Labour almost swore was never going to happen has indeed occured and keeps biting harder and harder. Brown et al. want us all to believe it has nothing to do with them and his sympathisers join him in pointing it is a global crisis that started elsewhere and he had no control over.

What is interesting however is that, if you are boring like me and you observe politics in as many countries as you can, you will find the leader of just about every country in the developed world(with economies exposed to the international market thus in economic decline) is repeating this very same mantra, even Bush was at it right to the end. This does begin to beg the question, who actually in charge of this world?

The trouble with apportioning blame in situations like this is that it is difficult to pin point who is responsible for what?! So lets be clear with matters, Gordon Brown did not cause the recession! However that doesn't mean to say he is clean in all this. It is true that unscrupulous bankers have cut holes in all our pockets and left us in a mess. However just like it is the Prime Minister's job to clean up the streets(reduce crime), so is it his job to steer us away from the mess we are in, and evidently Brown has failed and is continuing to do so by failing to carry us out of it.

In this world, there are 7 men and one woman who sat by and addressed their nations branding themselves are the untouchables of modern economics! Not to insult our allies, but the Presidents and Prime Ministers of France, USA, Germany, Russia, Japan, China, Italy along with Britain under Gordon Brown. These nations and they alone collectively had to power to stop this or sway it from its current severity at the very least. They didn't.

Yes, hindsight is a great thing and it would have been hard to foresee all this, but then again being Prime Minister, well apparently that IS hard! So where does our Prime Minister and his short comings come in to contribute to this? For years he came to dispatch box ever so arroganting stating he had written the laws if economics and abolished boom and bust. How his words are choking him now. At the 2005 general election, Michael Howard in his manisfesto stated this unprecedented public spending built on borrowing should be put to an end as it could have perilous consequences and Vince Cable couldn't have screamed louder to warn our PM, then Chancellor of the Exchequer. Did he listen?

Instead, Labour took on vitually every Tory reform, rebranded them as though they were they were their own, for instance, foundation schools are essentially grant maintain schools brought in by Thatcher, Private Finance Initiative are just a continuation of Major's Public Private Finance initiative, Sure Start, Lyndon B. Johnson Head Start(1965) etc the list goes on, from marketisation that has led to a more efficient NHS and education system to ways of tackling with crime that have seen crime levels reduce. Yet Labour has all this listed on their 50 greatest achievements! If all this was painting a picture to go on facebook I think the appropriate caption would be "WTF". All he has done is taken a collection of brilliant and taken it a step too far by borrowing too to fund it all at once. So much for prudence!

Mr Brown wants us all to feel it is rather unfair to pin all this on him, is it? Was it the Americans who gave the Bank of England independence, albeit a good idea, but stripped it of its powers and responsilities which where devolved to the FSA, an organisation that doesnt have statutory powers thus all they can do is say, "naughty naughty you bankers"? Was is the Americans that drafted budget after budget giving Britian the fourth largest budget deficit in the world?(the others being Egypt, Hungary and Pakistan) Was it the Americans that derregulated the British banking sector leaving bankers with windows of opportunity for greed and resulted to the collapse of banks, such as Northern Rock?

Today the time he once described as the golden age, he now describes it as the age of irresponsibility. Yet calamity Brown seems not to have become anymore competent. Just a few weeks ago, he said Britain was best placed to ride out this recession. Lies! According to the IMF we aren't. Being indepedent and neutral, they have no political gain from saying so, its simply the truth. He claimed his £12.5b tax bombshell would stimulate the economy out of recession. Lies! Today French President Nicholas Sarkozy joins the club to politicians around the world rubbishes all that. Founding members include German Finance Secretary along with many from within world of finance, many of whom by the way according to BBC business correspondent think Brown is an idiot and doesn't know what he is doing.

Brown also attempts to give the impression Tories are at odds with everyone else in finding solutions to this problem. Even more lies! It's not so much stimulate the economy that Conservatives dispute, the Tory government in 1992 did the same thing(DC worked at the treasury at this time I may add), it is more where the money is allocated and how it is raised. Indeed many countries are borrowing to spend their ways out of the recession. However none of them had the such a large deficits and therefore are in a better position to opt this. Just because someone else is able to borrow X amount doesnt mean you are as well. If you maxed out your credit card, would you get another one to cover it? Or would you go home and see what you don't really need, cut it out in order to raise the money to pay your way out? And what causes further dismay especially for me as an 18 year old is that I'll be coffing the for the bill, to repair the mistakes that have nothing to do with me! So much for fairness. He then says Tories are the do nothing party, does this look like nothing to you Mr. Brown;

• We will freeze council tax for two years by reducing wasteful spending on advertising and consultancy in central government
• 
  We will abolish Stamp Duty for nine out of ten first-time buyers and raise the Inheritance
• Tax threshold to £1 million. Both of these changes will be funded by a flat-rate charge on non-domiciles.
  
• We will provide tax cuts for new jobs with a £2.6bn package of tax breaks to get people into work, funded by money that would otherwise go on unemployment benefit
  
• We will cut the main rate of corporation tax to 25p and the small companies' rate to 20p, paid for by scrapping complex reliefs and allowances
  
• We will introduce a £50bn National Loan Guarantee Scheme to underwritebank lending to businesses and get credit flowing again
  
• We will give small and medium-sized businesses a six-month VAT holiday, funded by a 7.5% interest rate on delayed payments
  
• We will cut National Insurance by 1% for six months for firms with fewer than five employees, paid for from the above changes to the company tax regime
  
• We will encourage a new culture of saving by abolishing income tax on savings for everyone on the basic rate of tax and raising the tax allowance for pensioners by £2,000 to £11,490

These really are tough times and great uncertainties, but whatever the future may hold, one thing is clear, Labour isn't part of it.

By Augustine Chipungu