Stephen Foley: Ditching Brown looks crazy from here
American business leaders see a prime minister completely on top of his subject
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Independent Minds
How odd it looks, from this side of the Atlantic, that the British might be about to plunge a fatal knife into their prime minister.
Just a few weeks ago, Gordon Brown was corralling the rest of the world's leaders in the desperately complicated but desperately needed effort to re-shape global finance. Even today, the conversation here is about how Brown masterfully steered the UK away from catastrophe during last autumn's financial panic, in contrast to the confusion and interminable policy switches of two US administrations.
While the world is just tiptoeing out of this crisis, it looks simply perverse to ditch a leader who took his country unburned through that fire, and who is most engaged in the effort to prevent such a fire from igniting again.
Brown's alleged sluggish response to an expenses scandal that has not touched him personally and is only a few weeks old, his apparent inability to "connect" to the British people on a personal level – these things seem trivial compared to the great issues or failings that should bring down world leaders. It looks from here as if Britain is in the grip of a political anarchy.
It sounds from the headlines of the past few days that Brown would struggle to run the management committee of a church fete, let alone a cabinet and a major world government. But that was not what business and political leaders here saw when he was in New York and Washington in March, laying the groundwork for the G20 economic summit meeting.
Then we saw a man totally on top of his subject, capable of steering not just the UK economy but also the global financial system through the treacherous waters that must be crossed in the next few years. A breakfast audience of Wall Street bigwigs and political grandees expressed surprise not just at the depth of his analysis of what has gone so wrong with global capitalism, but with the number and sophistication of his ideas for reforming the international financial architecture.
There was no sign of the hesitations and sluggishness of which Brown stands accused back in the UK, where every last move of his now seems to be interpreted through that unfair prism.
The prime minister's second engagement that day – a discussion on "a new multilateralism for the 21st century" at New York University – was his own idea, marking him as a rare politician without "an allergy to complexity", according to his gushing host, John Sexton, the university's Chancellor. This is stuff that is easy to deride. If Brown is so much happier in the wonkosphere, why doesn't he go run Edinburgh University's economics department? More seriously, perhaps his talents would be better suited to the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank, where he can try to put his ideas into action.
But this is to miss the point. The critical economic and financial challenges facing Britain will be tackled precisely in this arena of international co-operation and in the global markets. At a moment when the country seems poised to ditch him, his expertise seems more invaluable than ever.
The G20 meeting was more than the usual talkfest. Economists here were impressed that it produced real money to stimulate global trade at what was then the darkest hour of the recession. It was not the "new Bretton Woods" that Brown dreamed about, but it kept up the pressure for the international cooperation needed if we are ever to end the imbalances in the global economy that underlie the financial meltdown and which haven't gone away. Similarly, if bankers are hemmed in by one country's rules, they will go elsewhere to make their mischief. This is stuff that cannot be done alone, and which must be done if the financial crisis is not to repeat and repeat in the coming years. With the immediate catastrophe averted, the pressure for this vital action will dissipate without leaders such as Brown.
It wasn't just Downing Street's spin machine that manufactured the notion that Brown was leading the world through the financial crisis last autumn. When the Bush administration was careening about trying to find a free-market solution to the implosion of free markets, Brown poured money into the worst-hit banks. Economists marvelled at the quick and clear-headedness of the British response, and the US followed within weeks. In the flavour-of-the-month phrase in US political debate, lawmakers insist that they "get it" and that their opponents "don't get it". On economic and financial matters, Brown simply "gets it".
Removing him is not just perverse. It looks a little dangerous, frankly. For a frenzied few minutes yesterday lunchtime, currency traders were seized by the notion that Brown was about to pre-empt his ouster by announcing his resignation, and the rumour sent the pound plunging. When Downing Street's response – "nonsense" – was flashed up on screens, things returned to normal. It's not that currency traders love Brown, per se. Partly, they just love exciting rumours. But mainly they hate uncertainty.
Financial markets matter – not a one-day wow in the currency market, of course, but over the long term. For all Western governments, which have had to empty the public purse to prop up the banking system and stimulate economic activity, financial markets matter a great deal. Britain, which could have the biggest budget deficit compared to the size of its economy next year and a government debt rising to its highest levels since the Second World War, retaining the confidence of financial markets is key to surviving the next decade without a disaster. If foreign investors won't buy British government debt, we won't be talking about cuts around the edges for public spending. There will have to be a wholesale re-think about what the government can provide in public services. It will be a very nasty decade.
There are very few politicians in the UK who are better placed than Gordon Brown to keep the confidence of financial markets. Certainly none of the candidates for prime minister in any party can match him.
The US has just ditched a dumb leader for a smart one. The UK looks from here as if it might be about to do the opposite.
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Comments
Brown has only ever operated as if he were an academic. To him, it was sufficient to deliver speeches, but also whilst allowing no discussion and brooking no argument to his views. Unfortunately, for him and everyone else, there has never been any detail to his so-called policies.
His entire PMship has been a weekly trail of plans, proposals, initiatives, policies, etc - most never saw the light of day in practical form. He would never be able to effect any deliverables, as he has literally no capacity to manage anything to the required conclusion. His Chancellorship was a litany of failures too long to describe.
His statements to the G20, to the entire world, contained details of stimulus figures which were literally invented - UK financial analysts were stunned at the dishonesty of it.
PMQ times are a travesty, with a refusal to answer any straightforward questions - simply responding with the same total falsehoods about his successes and unsustainable claims about the opposition parties' intentions.
The man has no integrity and no useful capabilities. As his own party members and ministers reveal this to anyone who wants to hear, the game is up for him.
Americans are comfortable with descriptions like "fake" and "phony" being applied to public figures, and those politicians soon disappear (e.g. Sarah Palin). For the UK, Brown has hung around like a bad smell requiring the services of a good air freshener.
http://geocities.com/cronyblatcher/the_
This Government has imploded and with all moral authority and credibility gone, Brown must ask HM for a dissolution of Parliament and call a General Election. This country has suffered from reckless policies that have saddled our children and grand children unfairly with 40 years of debt. The country wants rid of this dysfunctional PM, they want a say in who governs our country. The electorate want a General Election and Foley's comments cannot deny the will of the people.
"a leader who took his country unburned through that fire" Tell that to the people who are losing their jobs, homes, income. Add to that the high street companies that have gone bankrupt. Not to forget the savers and pensioners who have been left high and dry.
"Brown's alleged sluggish response to an expenses scandal that has not touched him personally" Yeah I pay my brother thousand sof pounds to clean my house and I live in a grace and favour mansion in Downing Street while claiming money for my other homes.
But the fundamental point which Brown himself is not capable of grasping is that after ten years as Chancellor of the Exchequer, the current disaster of borrow, tax, spend is squarely his responsibility. It cannot be laid at the feet of anyone else, no matter how desperately he blames America.
Brown was the one who stealth-taxed the pensions of "working families". Brown is the one who stitched up the catastrophic merger of HBOS and Lloyds. Brown is the one who destroyed the regulatory system of the Bank of England. Brown is the one who borrowed billions and left our children in debt.
To use a phrase known in the USA, wake up and smell the coffee.
Even if I granted Brown had done poorly, which I don't, what would the Tories have done differently? Indeed, what will they do if they come to power?
I was in the U.S. in 2000 and the way people spoke of Al Gore was a lot like how they speak of Brown now. For their sins, the Americans got George W. Bush. Spend some time thinking about your alternatives before you axe what you have.
Or, perhaps I should state it this way: better the devil you know.
Whatever mistakes are in the past - and being duped twice by organised economic crime syndicates is one of them - there is expression of intent to push through necessary reforms that according to the body language is genuine (as distinct fromslickly acted).
A convincing start is made by a brutal counter attack on most of the fetid remains of blatcherism in government that imprudently believed they had the muscle and balls for a coup - and Blair's brainless token wimmin are brushed aside. We'll see.... warily, without forgetting how the professional opportunist predecessor broke the heart and crapped on the trust of Britain's working class.
What I said was that Brown was absolutely responsible for the catastrophic state of the British economy. I quoted the examples of HBOS/Bank of Scotland, the destruction of effective bank regulation in the UK, stealth ta raids on pensions, encouragement of a credit binge and unsustainable house inflation.
Maybe I should have added that Bush/Blair/Brown fought against any restraint on the out-of-control banking system. In this they actively fought against the proposals of German Chancellor Angela Merkel so maybe they are responsible for gloabl banking meltdown after all.
To those business and political leaders on your side of the pond who think that ditching Brown looks crazy, here is a simple message, Stephen Foley. Who cares what you think? You aren't suffering as a result of his hare-brained domestic policies. Mind your own damn business.
It's the logic of all these on-record statements from all in the Westminster bubble and its Usual Village Idiot remoras that astound. We are to take seriously, and agree to be led by people who 'hear' things that clearly are just in their own fevered brains, than anything they could possibly be hearing from the lips of normal human beings.
And if I get one more automaton trotting out the 'what people want' mantra as if they can convince anyone bar themselves, I'll scream.
This country needs leadership. Now.
ps: Actual leadership that is. Not 'the country wants me to get on with the job I have been doing so well for over a decade' variety.
The question of Brown's Leadership has less to do with him than it has to do with the Labour Party itself which no longer has a clue as to "what it is about". All political parties need to have a core theme that describes what they are all about and from that they will chose a Leader that embodies those qualities. This has been the major problem of the Libdems for decades and why they have never been able to break through. In that context what does Gordon Brown represent ?
Mr secret grumpy that quite a lot of his own Parliamentary Party detest. A man who represents as Chancellor, someone who had the power and the revenues to implement every socialist fantasy imaginable and made a total Horlicks of it all so when the economic tide turned, the Country is virtually bankrupt. It is not just him, it is all the other meddling busybodies we have had to put up with like Harriet Harmon, Blears, Balls, Cooper, Campbell, Straw, Millipedes, Smith, gangsters moll Jowit, Big Ears and Noddy - Clarke and Blunkett and all the other would be Lords of Misrule.
It is not just Brown the Country wants shot of, it is the whole Labour Government because either they resign, we have a General Election, they then go into the Priory for R and R or else we will all need mind altering drugs on the NHS to get through this next year of paralysis and stasis with that lot eating us out of house and home having already sold us into EU bondage. If all political careers end in failure then so too it appears do political parties, at least for a couple of decades, for now Labour's time has come and gone so, BE GONE BROWN AND YOUR CREW !
So decisive and effective has been the hatchet wielding that Britain may no longer need either a Cromwell or the BNP. We'll see...
As if American 'values' haven't caused enough damage to this country already!
Why can't America keep it's bloody nose out of other countries business.
No offence meant to individual Americans, I'm sure a lot of them are perfectly fine people but American interference, in one form or another, has caused more grief than a little.
The last thing that the people in Britain need is a buch of bloated American 'Fat-Cats' telling us how marvellous 'Brown the Clown, ersatz PM' is.
AMERICA, IF YOU THINK GORDON IS SO BLOODY WONDERFUL WE'LL SELL HIM TO YOU!
After all, you've bought loads of other old rubbish off us.
As to the rest of the article? His saving the world is an overblown piece of spin and fooled no one. Some of us remember his time as chancellor. We remember how he and his arch adviser Balls concocted the tripartite regulatory body that was completely ineffective. We remember the sale of our gold at a quarter of its current price and the creation of monsters like the tax credits system. We also keep in mind the stealth taxes and the mad spending spree on the unregulated public sector. Also what about the million extra public sector workers he employed to administer his over complicated policies? Oh and please don't forget the borrowing. Mr Foley surely you heard of the ten pence tax fiasco did you not? Brown was the last to admit that there would be losers. How's that for an economic genius?
Sorry but we have been fooled for twelve years about our PM and his talent. Unfortunately the reality is that he is a detail man, someone who can never devise simple but effective policies, a man driven to dot every i and cross every t. A ditherer. Also he has an overblown ego and tends to be a dangerous megalomaniac.
Mr Foley, we want him out and soon.
As for the financial markets having confidence in Brown, and hence in your view a reason he should stay. All i can assume is that you are either very kind or very stupid - and I suppose the downgrading of government debt supports your view?
Brown is an incompetent of the first order - look at the banking crisis, he was walked over by the banks when he had the upper hand ie before he gave away the money. He has no commercial nouse and is not fit for purpose.
Any decision GB makes turns to dust - in fact he is spectacularly useless. This article based on sophistry and brown nosing is rubbish and is the sort of crap that should not be published outside of a fairy tale book
As for the financial markets having confidence in Brown, and hence in your view a reason he should stay. All i can assume is that you are either very kind or very stupid - and I suppose the downgrading of government debt supports your view?
Brown is an incompetent of the first order - look at the banking crisis, he was walked over by the banks when he had the upper hand ie before he gave away the money. He has no commercial nouse and is not fit for purpose.
Any decision GB makes turns to dust - in fact he is spectacularly useless. This article based on sophistry and brown nosing is rubbish and is the sort of crap that should not be published outside of a fairy tale book
There's little point in anyone explaining the truth to you. You are obviously convinced by Brown's very convincing (in the past) air of "competence". He is or was a master of spin, he taught Blair how to do it. For a long while he convinced many people here. But then he left the poor befuddled Treasury to the mess he'd created and to another MP and we found out just how incompetent Brown is now he's our unelected and unwanted PM. He has nearly bankrupted htis country with his profligacy. Parliament has little to do as he has no ideas. What you forget is Brown is not still Chancellor, he is PM - unelected, unwanted, unpopular, no good at the job which entails a lot more than financial tricks. He has no idea how to be a PM and he has no people skills and Parliament has little to do whilst he messes about.
You clearly think he deserves to be praised to the skies so offer him a job so wonderful he can't possibly refuse it so he will leave the UK for ever. You can't imagine how delighted we will all be to be rid of him. And if you have more such jobs going, offer them to all his cronies. We'll be well rid of them too. There you are, Britain's salvation is in your hands!
1. People here feel overall that Brown's party is shrill, prescriptive and arrogant at the same time as it's tired, jaded and shifty - not the best combination. Brits aren't all that enamoured of politicians of any hue right now, but Brown's in power so he naturally gets most of the stick.
2. Ordinary voters don't understand the intricacies of global finance, and can't really judge from a US financier's perspective whether or not Brown has "invaluable expertise" or is "a man totally on top of his subject". But they doubt the latter, at any rate, because what they do know is:
(a) that there was supposed to be "no more boom and bust", because Brown told us so again and again; but that in the end what we got was precisely a peculiarly huge boom followed by an equally enormous bust;
(b) that, no less incessantly, Brown preached "light touch regulation" as the key to national prosperity through our new "staple industry" of city financial services; but that the regulation was so light that banks and bankers were able to speculate reckless and fecklessly for short term personal and corporate profit without, apparently, any significant brake whatsover;
(c) that, in consequence, vast amounts of taxpayers' dosh, or promises of dosh, was used to shore up the banks to preserve them, and the rest of us, from the consequences of their greed and folly, and that the government seemed entirely unable to prevent bankers from walking away from their failure with eye-wateringly large pay-offs far beyond the wildest dreams of ordinary folk, who were simultaneously losing jobs and businesses, and the value of their homes and savings;
(d) that this was done under the watch, in government, of the "party of the working man", and of a prime minister who has continually postioned himself as the champion of ordinary, "hard-working" men and women.
3. And some, at least, think that slavish adherence to American ways of thinking and of doing things has been part of the problem.
Hardly a wonder, then, that confidence here in Brown and his party is less than sky high. The opinion of US currency traders and their British acolytes, I suspect, is not something upon which a lot of British voters in present circumstances would place a high value. Bankers and financiers may argue that this is to ignore the realities of the free market economics. But voter perception is no less a part of the real world than "high finance".
But what's all this about celebrity? I for one am not remotely interested in a government led by a celebrity puppet, and I don't get the impression that most people are - just honesty, integrity, vision, respect for the citizen and the eradication of arrogance, condescension, above all, manipulative spin ...
As for WHO WOULD REPLACE HIM? Not many in Labour that I can think of, but I'd be happy with Dr Tony Wright, or David Winnick, though he might not want to take it on at his time of life! Pity Gwynneth Dunwoodie died, she'd have been superb!
In the best of all possible worlds, I'd go for Dr Vince Cable, were it possible.
Then have him shot.
Did that war monger Blair also look good from that side of the Atlantic?
Cameron may well be worse, but Brown must definitely go.
Are you trying to tell me that after the public talk of the weak position he has, you want to see form the triange?
QUOTATION OF THE DAY -
"I don't know who this bailout is helping. We've given these banks all this money and they're not doing what they say they're doing. Something's not working right."
- EILEEN ULERY, a homeowner in Mesa, Ariz.
On their own, the departures need not have irreparably damaged Mr Brown's reputation for keeping women in senior government positions. He has to. He is ???? Given that focus groups consistently tell Mr Brown he has a problem with female voters ? that he fails to connect with them ? Allah have mercy on his soul but if he said sorry, he will get the saints in hell. I prey, pray, Amen But I do not promise the connection as the ISPs are going for the blue tooth and blue rays and blue DVDs the ones found in the ministers home. There is the connecting. . Say sorry again in TV BBC. British Broadcasting Service
All the main parties will suffer if a General Election reflects the results in the local elections, Sky News predicts.
I thank you
Firozali A. Mulla
You might not be so keen on Brown if you had to work with him. But if you respect this man so much and rate his abilities so highly, of course you will want to get him to the USA to help your country. Please give him a job so wonderful he can't refuse so that he will resign as PM immediately and leave these shores for ever and stay with you in the US as your treasured possession so you can appreciate his astonishing abilities to the full. Please do this very soon. You will do this country a massive service for which we will be eternally grateful. Do not delay. Get a Gordon Brown today.
Mr Stealth Tax must go. He has slowly but with much determination and many success stories been squeezing the economic lifeblood from the UK.
Balls is the biggest coward and liar in true Tony Blair style that the present government possess. Brown is only holding on to power to paint the illusion that he will choose his successor i.e. Balls
It was also entirely wrong-headed. What was needed was a plan to let the shareholders of banks pay the cost of the banks' idiocy, while protecting the depositors.
Socialist Mr Brown has nationalised the banks, and he's proud of it. But he has lumbered future generations of Brits with immense debt -- unless, of course, he wrecks the Pound to pay off the debt, which he will surely do, making everyone in Britain that much poorer anyway.
Brown is an economic dolt. Foley, you are nuts. The sooner Britain dumps Brown, the sooner we can really get to grips with the political and enconomic failings of our country.