IF THE ECONOMY WAS HIS STRENGTH, HEAVEN KNOWS WHAT HIS WEAKNESS WAS

Once again, I didn’t watch last night’s debate. I just couldn’t be bothered.

Clearly they were going to lie through their teeth. It was out of the question that they would tell us the between 70 and 80% of cuts that they would have to make, as estimated by the Institute for Fiscal Studies. They wouldn’t even say they would hurt the unemployed, usually a popular target to abuse, but there are a lot of them... and even unemployed people have votes....

The Governor of the Bank of England, who might be assumed to know a bit about the economy, says that the party that wins this election will have to do things so horrific that they will be out of power for a generation.

Anyway, I’ve read and heard about it all day and it seems like everyone was expecting that Brown would win this because it was on the economy (not to mention he was with the BBC, Labour’s friend) and the economy is Brown’s strongest suite. Well, if the economy in Brown’s strongest suite, I’d not like to see his weak ones.

This is the man who:

* sold the gold at the bottom of the market;

* wrecked the UK’s world beating company pension schemes;

* didn’t regulate the banks, so that they had to be bailed out;

* didn’t limit credit, so that he could preside over his never ending boom and tell us how clever he was;

* allowed everyone to borrow and borrow no matter how uncreditworthy, so that individually Brits are up to their eyes in credit.

* allowed banks to operate as both high street facilities (which we are all now obliged to use) and merchant banks;

* allowed banks to be so big that they couldn’t fail without bankrupting a large section of the population and the business community;

* encouraged the housing price boom, making everyone feel rich. (People earned more a year from the increase in value of their houses than they did from working.) People re mortgaged, based on the collateral that they had in their grossly inflated properties. Instead of paying their debts off, they borrowed more money and spent it... in the main on products manufactured outside the country.

* mortgaged the future with his unimaginably stupid PFI to build hospitals and schools, so that the government would look good at the same time as taxes were held reasonably low;

* allowed, encouraged or even forced students to build up £30,000+ debt before they even started their working lives;

* did nothing about the public sector pension debt, now so enormous that it can’t be contemplated;

* failed, during 10 years of unstoppable “growth” to overturn Thatcher’s linking of pensions to inflation rather than wages, which along with his wrecking of the private pension scheme, left the poorer OAPs living a third world life in their later years;

* doubled the bottom rate of tax.

He seems to have the idea that when you borrow money you never have to pay it back. A weird idea for the much vaunted son of the Presbyterian Manse.

Really what a failure Brown has been, as chancellor and as prime minister. Britain would be a far better place today if he'd taken up work as a cobbler.