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Already and we are still some 15 months out from a General Election, the Media is turning its attention to who will replace Gordon Brown as Leader of the Labour Party following their defeat at the next election, the list of potential “Runners and Riders” is to say the least totally uninspiring.

Does it matter who comes next, a Harmon, a Moribund…? In all honesty I suspect not because all the very best the next incumbent can hope to be is a “John the Baptist” to their successors “Christ” because Labour will have far more problems to deal with than who the next Leader is, they will have to explain what “Labour is For” and right now, they haven’t a clue.

Past their Sell by Date

Someone wryly remarked that you know when things are really bad when Cabinet Members refuse to appear on TV programmes like the BBC’s “Question Time” and although I don’t watch a lot of TV and QT is frankly boring because the “representative audience” rarely seems to be that, there seems some truth in that.

The problem is that the Labour Government is just “very tired” and looks like it is on its way to the Knackers Yard, which assuredly it is. Someone wrote that Government Ministers are finding it hard to get things moving in their Departments because the Civil Servants are just more focused on the inevitable change in Government.

Is it the Economic Situation ?

Oddly enough and despite the scale of the economic downturn, of itself and because it is Global in nature, I don’t think the actual “facts” of the situation have really harmed Labour and if Gordon Brown had been a more honest man who “fessed up” to the public in the first place, he might have suffered very little political damage.

In the event, his very nature and lack of humility “did for him” and opened up a floodgate that has totally destroyed his reputation and bought back memories of his previous bombast and bravado as in having:

“Ended Boom and Bust in the British Economy”, one of the silliest hostages to fortune ever given by a serving British politician in decades and likely, living memory.

Britain’s Current Economic Situation

Although it is certainly true that Gordon Brown specifically and the Labour Party generally, have made our current circumstances worse through their profligacy with the public purse in the “good years” coupled with downright lies as in the PFI designed to keep capital spending off the Government’s balance sheet and of course, the totally phony “inflation figures” used as a target, they are not responsible for the overall problem.

There are many strands to the current situation and no doubt historians will argue over which the most important factor was:

Bill Clinton getting legislation passed that created the breeding ground for “sub-prime” by forcing American Lenders to give mortgages to people who clearly couldn’t afford them and an environment where a defaulting borrower can just walk away from the debt including arrears. The Subsequent bundling of these dodgy loans into unfathomable “bonds” sold internationally.

China expanding rapidly but keeping their currency deliberately undervalued through a fixed ‘peg’ to the Dollar.

Like all Generals fighting the next war as if it was the last, Governments concentrated on “Inflation” as Public Enemy No.1 and totally ignored “asset values” which rose unchecked and inevitably blew a bubble that had to burst.

Floods of cheap money that arose from an expansion in World Trade which needed short term homes that led to Bankers breaking basic rules by “borrowing short and lending long”.

Even “Prudent Germany” finds itself in severe distress despite doing ‘all the right things’ because its economy is export led and people just aren’t buying.

Gordon Brown

He is not responsible for the Global Crisis but neither can he resolve it alone, it does need collective action as he says, however, him trying to “strut and pose” has inadvertently (for him), caused him great personal harm. He was wrong to put all the blame on “American Sub Prime” and all it has done is show him up as incompetent at the very thing he claimed for over a decade to be “Good At”.

I think that the public will tolerate any Party in Government for about 10 years providing it is not blatantly incompetent, after that, “change and a new beginning” has ever greater appeal than continuing with the incumbents. But that said there is a deciding factor that may extend a Party beyond the 10 years or, end it quicker – TRUST.

John Major lost because he lost the TRUST of the nation over Black Wednesday and the ERM, it destroyed the assumed competence of the Tory Party with the economy. The same thing has happened to Brown who will be forever associated with the epithet “Didn’t See it Coming Brown”, the Iron Chancellor has turned out to be “The Wizard of Oz” – a fraud.

The Next Labour Leader

New Labour abandoned old style “Socialism” and converted to “Champagne Socialism” with a big campaign to woo the City which they did prior to being elected.

Now having presided over the biggest and most profligate Government spending programs for over a decade that have not delivered, Old Style Socialism where money is thrown at Public Services is shown to be useless. Whilst at the same time, a Labour Chancellor and Government has not for the first time, bought the UK to the brink of Bankruptcy so fiscal competence too has gone out of the window.

So what idiot wants to inherit this broken party ? The idea that the Tories will make a total hash of their first term in Office that Labour could have a “quick bounce” and get back in, is twaddle. Just as the Tories had to have their wilderness years and had to wait for a new Leader in Cameron to rebuild not just image but the substance of what the Tories are about, so will a Labour equivalent.