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HOW GORDON FAILED TO SAVE FOR A RAINY DAY
After fifteen years of global growth, our public finances should be in a healthy state - most other countries' finances are.
Economic Incompetence
However, after ten years of Gordon Brown budgets, both the OECD and the European
Commission estimate that we have the largest structural budget deficit in
Europe - a deficit that is more than twice the size of the EU average. This
is because Gordon Brown borrowed in a boom, when he should have saved.
Yesterday’s public sector finance figures show that public sector net borrowing is at its highest ever level for December, at £7.8 billion. Net borrowing in the year to December is running at £43.6 billion, more than £11 billion higher than at the same time last year. Over the last five years, Gordon Brown has borrowed over £100 billion more than he originally planned. That’s more than was spent on the entire NHS last year.
Economists' verdict
As a result of Gordon Brown’s failure to take advantage of fifteen years of
global growth, economists and analysts agree that Britain is now poorly prepared
for any possible economic downturn.
Alan Greenspan, who now advises Gordon Brown, says the UK economy is “more exposed” than the United States to financial instability. Goldman Sachs, the Treasury’s advisers, say “the UK is slowing more than the rest of Europe”. The OECD states that the difficulties are “going to be larger in the UK than elsewhere”.
One of the country’s leading economic commentators, Anatole Kaletsky, writes today in the Times: “It seems fair to say that Mr Brown's career as a serious politician ended yesterday.”