Quote:
|
Politics aside, I'd say we'd be a lot better off just having people who aren't utterly inept in charge of our economy.
|
That's George Osborne out, for a start. Ken Clarke, of course, would probably do a good job, but he's unacceptable to the ascendent Tory Right (William Hague and Liam Fox) owing to his views on Europe
Brown's trouble stems exactly from the fact that his economic ideology and inflexibility prevented him taking sufficent care over the banking sector (who had his ear, and spent ten years telling him that regulation would kill UK financial services). The Tories, also having the bankers whispering into their ear, spent the time castigating him for *not* deregulating enough (be more like Ireland, was Osborne's advice). It's my view that both of them are wrong, for the same reason, and you can't divorce it from the crisis nor from the growing income inequality (to be fair, Labour's failure here was in not reversing the rise in inequality under Thatcher, rather than contributing to it).