Fraser Nelson is a Times columnist and a former editor of The Spectator.
From our UK edition
I am hearing that Brown is to make up his own debt measurement, after losing a battle to have Northern Rock struck from the official national debt. It will be used in the pre budget report, exclude Northern Rock, and would show the figure Harman gave in PMQs today, national debt falling from 43 percent
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Ben Brogan spots this gem from an interview with the Prime Minister of Luxembourg, Jean-Claude Juncker: Gordon Brown “begged” to turn up at the Eurozone meeting last week. Brown desperately wanted to turn up so that could present to a domestic audience this carefully crafted image of Brown the Saviour, the man called in to
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How bad can unemployment get during the Brown Bust? Predictions of two or three million unemployed miss an important point. The concept of the “dole” has changed: unlike in the 1980s it has become a way of life, as well as a safety net. There were 5.2 million on out-of-work benefits last February of which
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The Brown Bust: house prices This is the first in a short series on the illustrated Brown Bust, we’ll show you graphs looking at the various aspects of the bursting of the Brown Bubble. After failing to control monetary policy – giving the Bank of England an inflation-only remit – the out-of-control money supply led
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Harman v. Hague with Fraser Nelson from noon: 12:00 I’m still cross with William Hague for pitching up at that Lake Como villa at the Barclays Wealth shindig that was in the papers before he left. Utter idiocy. Sure, he arrived on its last day to accompany his wife who works there. But his political
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As Gordon Brown says, Britain is indeed “leading the world” – but into recession, a property market collapse and soaring unemployment. This—not the stock market indices which mesmerise a bewildered House of Commons—is what matters. Take today’s inflation data – it shows a 30 percent rise in electricity prices, 40 percent for fuel prices and
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Another breathtaking Brownie at the Prime Minister’s press conference today: “I have to say we face this situation with relatively low national debt because of the steps we have taken since 1997, where we wiped off perhaps more than around £100 billion of debt by reducing the proportion of debt in our national income.” Huh?
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So what would have happened to the Royal Bank of Scotland and HBOS had Scotland been independent? The Scotsman quotes an anonymous Edinburgh banker saying “HBOS would have gone bust and RBS would have followed five days later. The Scottish state simply wouldn’t have enough money to rescue two banks of that size as Iceland
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The Euro summit is underway now, and I’ve spoken to a few of my better-informed contacts about it. Here are some thoughts:- 1) The bailout model they’re meant to agree to in Paris does, indeed, seem to be that of Sweden ‘92. It’s being called that in France and Germany, but you can bet
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Not content with saving us poor souls in Britain, our Dear Leader now wants to save the world – and says so in tomorrow’s Times. He is demanding that other dithering countries copy his bold plan. It’s become the major theme of Saving Private Gordon – that the rest of the world will be inspired
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Ben Brogan in today’s Daily Mail goes on precisely the right theme: translating these squillions into the real money – £16,000 per punter. The “that’s our money” anger picked up in the vox-pops around the country from members of the public has no echo in Parliament. This worries me – there’s something like £400 billion
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Sweden really does rule. What Mervyn King and Gordon Brown have agreed today is, essentially, the Swedish 1992 bank bailout plan, (NYT write-up here). It was authored by the same conservative government which introduced the voucher school model that the Tories are proposing to replicate. While the UK bailout is comparable to the Paulson plan
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Three thoughts on the bailout… 1) Should the Lloyds-HBOS deal still go ahead? Originally, Brown agreed to waive the competition concerns because HBOS might collapse on its own – but after today’s deal, there’s no danger of that. The bailout gets HBOS out of the very particular pickle it was in. As Robert Peston notes,
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Had six central banks not agreed to cut interest rates by the same amount today –50bp – I suspect the Bank of England would have gone lower. We’re at 4.5% now but we’re probably on a downward track to 3.5% or even 3.25%. Great news if you’re on a variable mortgage anchored to the base rate,
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It’s unfair to say Brown “won” PMQs because Cameron decided not to play. There was a distinct air of national crisis to PMQs which, of course, helps Gordon Brown. Few amongst us would be so bold as to think the taxpayer will see this £50 billion again, but David Cameron was not going to point
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The Taverna Agni is one of the more expensive restaurants in Corfu, but one would scarcely expect Peter Mandelson and George Osborne to slum it. As is normal for members of London’s political elite, they found themselves in the same exotic location one August weekend. So they went to chew the kleftiko together and laugh
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Much of the talk about bank bailouts blithely presupposes there will be good times just around the corner – and the state will sell the dodgy assets at a profit to the taxpayer as happened in New Zealand, Hong Kong etc. It’s the “buy on the dips” mentality – the idea that what goes down
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I’ve just done the Westminster Hour with John Rentoul of the Independent on Sunday and we agreed afterwards that there is one question we could not have answered. Why on earth did Andrew Adonis accept his new job in the Department of Transport? The City Academies programme was his life. Anyone who knows him knew
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One of the few history lessons I remember from primary school was how in medieval Scotland, condemned men could choose their executioner. I remember looking around and wondering which of my classmates would best finish me off quickly and painlessly. In my News of the World column today, I argue that Gordon Brown has revived
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The News of the World has conducted one of its marginal seat polls, in 192 Labour-held constituencies – details here. Taken Wednesday through Friday, it indicates Cameron is on course for a 78-seat majority with a 15-point lead. As is normal when a party is ahead by such a margin, the Tories are credited with
