Fraser Nelson

Sky News's coverage of the recession has today taken on a powerful new dimension: a " debt counter", starting today, counting in real time how much extra debt Gordon Brown is saddling the public with during the financial year 2009/10. It started at zero at 7am and it's rising at £4,800 a second as per today's report from the IFS. This will drive home - in stark, simple terms - a major facet of this recession: the deferred cost to the British public when government refuses to cut spending. I suspect that Brown will be hurling his slippers at the TV screen because he is rather depending on national debt being an abstract concept, something ending in -illion that people don't quite understand.

Ed Balls isn’t quite sure how to attack the Tory 'Swedish schools' policy. But a story in today's Observer about a Tory councillor sounding off about it gives him a chance to try. The words issued are from Jim Knight, but I put them below and by thoughts interspersed. "Once they know the truth about David Cameron’s risky and divisive plan to import the Swedish schools..." Risky? The Tories would allow charities, church groups etc to set up schools if they have enough support from parents. But Balls* is right to see community-driven initiatives as a risk - a risk to the bureaucracies serving British pupils and taxpayers so badly. And "divisive"? Ahh, this is socialist-talk for "choice". Remember, Brown also said that a leadership election would be "divisive".

Eric Pickles says his Question Time disaster last week was a "car crash" which has changed his views on MPs expenses. He opens his heart to Andrew Neil in Straight Talk, being shown on BBC News Channel this weekend. "You're just trying to steer away and the more I tried to steer away the worse it was. You could see the conclusion coming and I made the mistake of making actually quite a trivial point ... but it has changed my views."   And how? He says a "completely different system" is needed for expenses "on the basis where it's a lot less." "I cannot justify members of parliament claiming flat-screen televisions, buying beds, buying three-piece suites, buying cookers, buying microwaves.

Britain has as its Prime Minister a master of political illusion. He may not be much of an orator, but there is no one better at dressing up old money as new. If the G20 nations wanted to fake progress, to spin a $1.1 trillion figure while committing no new money at all, then Gordon Brown is their man. “This is the day that the world came together to fight the global recession, not with words but with a plan,” said our Dear Leader. Well, let’s have a closer look at this supposed plan… 1) “Making available an extra $1 trillion”. Ahh, those Brown verbal tricks. What does “make available” mean? Is it guarantees, promises, statement of intent? Real spending? Not a penny of cold hard cash has been pledged by anyone.

How Brown must have loved reading out his day’s business at PMQs: meeting with President Obama, then his counterparts from Russia, China and Japan. For months, he will have been dreaming about today like a four-year-old dreams about Christmas. All the world leaders, all here in London – and Brown playing the statesman. Then Edward Garnier has to lower the tone of national rejoicing by raising the Lord Myners and asking Brown if he realises his ministers are “held in ridicule and contempt” by the public. “I see he has risen to the occasion of today,” noted Brown in a more-in-sorrow-than-anger way. Here is he, saving the world – and these Tories talking about grubby little things like lying ministers. So what would Cameron go on?

Given that Jacqui Smith is almost certainly toast, who will replace her? I'm dismayed to hear James Purnell's name mentioned - dismayed because we need him doing welfare reform, and because the Home Office is the graveyard of political ambition. I'd quite like Purnell around long enough to be Opposition leader, keeping Cameron on his toes. But Brown's strategy is to identify and destroy his most likely successor - and for this reason, Brown may send Purnell to the Home Office. Ladbrokes is now taking bets on who the Home Secretary will be by Christmas.

Might the collapse of Dunfermline Building Society turn into a political scandal? Tonight, Channel Four news has an interview with Jim Faulds, its chairman, who appears to be saying the Treasury have been lying about him. He didn't want a bail out, he says, just a £20m loan (the spin had been that he wanted three to five times that). He also flatly denies Darling's claim that the building society had any sub-prime exposure. Now, knowing the chaos surrounding every bank collapse it would be shocking but not surprising if Darling had misunderstood all this. Conspiracy theorists will note that, if he has slipped, it will be a good time for No 10 to send the dogs after him - punishing him for his collusion with Mervyn King over trying to stop Brown launching a second stimulus.

To comprehend the scale of the sickening task awaiting George Osborne if he becomes chancellor, consider the following. If he were to raise VAT to 25 per cent, double corporation tax, close the Foreign Office, cancel all international aid, disband the army and the police, release all prisoners, close every school and abolish unemployment benefit he would still be unable to close the gulf between what the UK government spends and what it raises in taxes. Hopes of a relatively rapid economic recovery that could conceivably fill this gap are receding every month. And there is a limit to how long the government can make up the difference with borrowed money and refer to its profligacy as a ‘stimulus’.

For a while it looked like Brown was about to go to a country without some comic mishap. But he didn't let us down. Michelle Bachelet, the Chilean President, noted at her joint press conference with Brown how her government had been able to introduce a significant fiscal stimulus because of their "decision during ... the good times in copper prices, we decided to save some of the money for the bad times and I would say that policy today is producing good results." – a prudent approach that Brown, sadly, didn't take in Britain. It's worth noting that Bachelet is authentically Keynesian: the whole principle behind stimulus is that the state reduces debt in the boom and counter-cyclically gears up in a bust.

I had a text a while ago saying "you doing Gordon Brown's work for him then?" and that was from someone who had not the seen graphic which the News of the World designed to go with my column today. I know many CoffeeHousers will take it as prima facie case of treason, but I'm afraid my sole loyalty is to The Spectator (1828) Party and these things have to be said. Cameron's original poster claimed a baby born in Britain is saddled with £17,000 of Brown's debt. Under the plans the Tories are pursuing - ie, raise spending regardless of the tax base - this figure would be £27,000 by the end of a Tory government.

It has taken five months but George Osborne has finally fallen into the trap Gordon Brown set for him when he proposed a new 45p tax on the richest. Without prompting on The Today programme this morning, Osborne said: “If you look at the proposal to increase the top rate of tax for people earning £180,000, a new 45% rate, I've said that's going to be difficult to avoid and I think that is just a statement of the truth.” Difficult to avoid if you have no imagination. It’s not a statement of truth, but a depressing snapshot into the Tory thought process. “If we do x, Gordon Brown will say y, so we should do z instead.