Douglas Carswell's Blog

Brown failed. Continuity Brownism will fail, too

So there it is. Moody's has put Britain on “negative outlook”. The pundits might at last now start to catch up with the mathematical facts.

For eighteen months, we were told how the Coalition was rescuing us from the consequences of Gordon Brown’s reckless stewardship of the economy. Public debt, we were told, was being cut.  The government living within its means.

Far from a new start, under the Coalition macroeconomic policy has remained fundamentally unchanged from what was going on under Gordon Brown.

As I said in an interview with the Evening Standard yesterday, it is Continuity Brown at the Treasury;

Same spend and borrow: Far from cutting public borrowing, over the five year term of this Parliament, the Coalition will borrow more than Gordon Brown managed in 13 years.

Same reliance on monetary stimulus: It was low rates and cheap credit that got our economy into this mess. Yet like the previous administration, this one seems to believe that monetary stimulus can engineer growth. The facts show it cannot.

Same print-more-money-and-pray experiment: Without any real discussion of the consequences, the administration, like the last, has allowed central bankers to take a massive risk with our currency through so-called quantitative easing.

Same high taxes: Like Gordon Brown, tax cuts are hinted at. But never seem to actually happen.   

Same bailout-and-borrow: Brown sank billions into propping up zombie banks and a busted Euro. Far from calling a halt to the madness, the Coalition has carried on pledging vast amounts of money to keeping alive the undead. 

Same lack of supply-side reform: Twenty years ago, Britain was relatively more competitive.  Asia’s economic take off ought to have prompted us to make ourselves ever more competitive. Instead we have gone backwards and no one in Whitehall seems to be addressing it.

Same lack of growth: If you run an economy like Gordon Brown, you have an economy like Gordon Brown’s.

Britain will recover. Our economy will prosper once again. But it will only happen once we have changed direction at the Treasury.

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