Gordon Brown has terrible form when it comes to keeping his promises

By Jeff Randall 535PM GMT eleven Mar 2010

Comments 282 |

Gordon Brown has a conspicuous might for requesting the Tipp-Ex

The great strife looms. After months of exhilarated build-up, we will shortly know the result of a competition in in between dual starkly resisting styles.

On one side is a big bruiser, the survivor of a small intolerable setbacks, whose continuation one can usually admire. On the alternative is a sleeker, some-more discriminating contender, respected, but not nonetheless desired by the nation.

Europe"s banks prop for UK debt predicament This is no time for Tory jokes - were galloping in to a mega-crisis Its OK for banks to fool around roulette ? but not with the assets Gordon Brown contingency go, says HBOS whistleblower Paul Moore MPs losses how the British Revolution unfolded Gordon Brown is a destitute wash out ? and hes receiving us down with him

Yes, we are usually 7 days afar from the Cheltenham Festival"s main event, when Denman and Kauto Star will risk all to establish who is National Hunt"s biggest staying chaser.

If the domestic masters were half as compelling, ubiquitous choosing turn-outs would not be in decline. Gordon Brown contra David Cameron offers conjunction the flawlessness nor the firmness of a Gold Cup.

From Tuesday to Friday subsequent week, the courtesy of majority in commercial operation and governing body will switch from the grub of supervision by dishonesty to the philharmonic that is burst racing at the finest, where law in conflict cannot be concealed.

Prestbury Park in mid-March elevates the spirits, a pretentious daze from the grave awaiting of Alistair Darling"s debt shuffling, the oddity of televised leaders" debates and all that dull posturing prior to polling day.

With brag that can be invoked usually by someone whose romantic comprehension is buried in a safe of self-delusion, the Prime Minister voiced this week that the Budget will be on Mar 24.

His concomitant comments about "character" appeared to have been scripted by a stand up comic in need of a small uninformed material.

"For improved or worse, with me what you see is what you get," pronounced Mr Brown. It is a line so at contingency with reality, so manifestly untrue, so definitely silly that one hardly knows where to begin severe it.

Was this the same Mr Brown whose shameless justification to the Chilcot Inquiry was discharged by Army chiefs as "disingenuous"? The same Mr Brown who unleashed the "forces of hell" on his own chancellor? The same Mr Brown who cannot travel past a inhabitant statistic but rebasing the dimensions for slight domestic value (crime, inflation, growth)?

When events challenge the Prime Minister"s elite perspective of the world, he has a conspicuous might for requesting the Tipp-Ex. History doesn"t show up him given he possibly ignores or rewrites it. No British personality in my lifetime has embraced the technique of sincerity semblance with larger enthusiasm.

Mr Brown"s majority gross abuse of the credulity, "no some-more bang and bust", has been expunged from the script. In the place is a explain that his might saved us from the ravages of an American-inspired crash. Rather than atone his sins of profligacy, he seeks to feat them. Financial disaster is repackaged as a tactical delight his triumph.

"I won"t let you down," Mr Brown promises. Too late, old son, you already have.

With so most at seductiveness votes to be bought, illusions to be combined there seems small possibility that the Prime Minister will concede Mr Darling to erect a Budget in Britain"s wider interest. Crude giveaways will cover-up as investment.

It wasn"t meant to be similar to this. For those of proposal years or short memories, let me take you at the behind of twelve years. Mr Brown, afterwards chancellor, was scheming his initial full Budget and I went to talk him at the Treasury.

Labour had been in energy not even twelve months, nonetheless the portents looked surprisingly attractive. Inflation was underneath control, stagnation was falling, argent was strong, as was the batch market.

On entering his office, I beheld a book on the window table, Rewarding Work by the economist Edmund Phelps. I longed for the irony.

The chancellor"s thesis was mercantile responsibility. If usually I had well known afterwards what we all know now. To my regret, I authorised as well majority of his assertions of cunning to go unchallenged.

He told me "Interest payments on the inhabitant debt are �25 billion a year. We"re spending some-more on inhabitant debt amends than on schools or law and order, and that is a incident I don"t wish as a hallmark of a Labour governmente... The open borrowing sequence was �23 billion last year. We plan to get it down really substantially."

Then, branch on the Tories, Mr Brown barked "In 1992, they [the Conservative government] likely the necessity would be eliminated, and by 1996 it had turn �50 billion. I will not concede the nation to get in to that state again... We"re not going at the behind of to that sort of incident where incautious decisions, formed on a misreading of the cycle, lead us to have spending apportionments that we cannot afford."

Sorry to say, that is precisely what he finished up doing. With the stream necessity using at �180 billion, and annual seductiveness payments set to reach �40 billion (more than we cost on defence), the disaster he claimed had been left at the behind of by his prototype seems some-more and some-more similar to a golden legacy. Hard to believe, but we usually didn"t conclude how great we were carrying it.

In his early years, increased by a �23 billion asset from the sale of 3G licences, Mr Brown kept a obliged hold on the open purse. But by 2002, following Labour"s second choosing victory, he began to let rip.

In each of his five budgets in in between 2003 and 2007, Mr Brown overspent on normal by some-more than �30 billion, clocking up about �160 billion of debt.

What"s more, the oath he done to me in 1998 to lay "the foundations for long-term industrial and mercantile success" came to less than nothing.

Under Labour, Britain has strew production jobs at an shocking rate about 1.7 million have left given 1997. In that year, production accounted for 20.9 per cent of the United Kingdom"s GDP. By the time of the last election, it was down to 13.6 per cent. Today, it is revoke still.

Since my assembly with Mr Brown in 1998, alternative key indicators have changed in the conflicting citation stagnation is up, taxes are up, inhabitant word is up, sum borrowings (state and personal) are up, as are grant pot deficits.

Even with sterling"s twenty-five per cent devaluation (against a basket of tellurian currencies) in the past 3 years, the UK"s traffic opening for Jan reached �8 billion. Whither Mr Brown"s pull for competitiveness?

Between 2000 and 2010, the Government"s annual cost scarcely doubled to �700 billion. In sequence to put Britain"s state finance management on a trail at the behind of to sanity, commercial operation run groups, the CBI and the Institute of Directors, as well as association leaders, such as Marks & Spencer"s authority Sir Stuart Rose, are perfectionist early movement to revoke open spending.

Will we get it? Not if Labour wins a fourth term.

In this year"s Gold Cup margin there"s a 20-1 shot called Tricky Trickster. Do you ever get the feeling that he"s using the country?