Samuel Johnson once wrote that it was a "universal error" to suppose that every effect has a proportionate cause. "In the inanimate action of matter upon matter," mused the old boy, "the motion produced can be but equal to the force of the moving power; but the operations of life, whether private or publick, admit no such laws. The caprices of voluntary agents laugh at calculation. It is not always that there is a strong reason for a great event".
Gordon Brown has tended to put a very similar reading abroad of the current economic recession. The credit crunch, he would have us believe, was just something that landed on Britain's doorstep one morning, something the Americans cooked up, like cheeseburgers or the idea of intelligent design, and decided to share with the rest of the world. And what he says is partly true: the pricking of a confidence bubble in financial instruments in the United States had profound shockwaves globally. Brown, having been one of those credulous enough to believe the normal dynamics of market economics were vanquishable, was taken by surprise by such a pricking, but he was no doubt also quickly jolted by the reminder that such market corrections are, if not without cause, as naturally occurring as the dissipation of support for unelected Prime Ministers.
The sale of bits of "our" banks this week is a tacit acknowledgement that though the free market may stutter it is still better than any rival system. Brown's scorched earth policy - another "fiscal stimulus" is to be announced in the pre-budget report later this month - in the face of likely electoral repudiation is entirely in-keeping, however, with the wholly irresponsible way in which he has administered the nation's finances for the past 12 years.
Britain now has the worst public finances of any comparable western economy. Interest payments on the national debt are higher than the education budget and stand to increase further if we lose our Triple A credit rating, which seems more and more likely. Nebulous outside forces cannot be held responsible. Public spending, fuelled by borrowing, doubled during the boom years under Labour, debt spiralling against no great collateral. Blair's attempts to reform public services were resisted then ditched; now the public sector is bloated, entrenched in inefficiency and encumbering on those who fund it. The government signally failed to control the supply of money and encouraged an unsustainable house price boom. Brown, in his Mansion House speeches, urged bankers to take ever greater risks, and his tripartite system of financial regulation left neither the Treasury, the Financial Services Authority or the Bank inclined to bother with sniffing out malfeasance in the City.
It will take years before we return to fiscal normality - plenty of time for New Labour to admit its actions postponed the eventual date.
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