Election 2010

David Cameron's attempt to blame Gordon Brown for the record deficit is fundamentally dishonest. Why? Remember back in the autumn of 2007 when Brown backed off from calling a snap election? Suppose he had called that election, and lost, David Cameron becoming Prime Minister. Would David Cameron being Prime Minister in the UK have made any difference to the financial meltdown that occurred a year later? Yes ...... I beg your pardon! How? Don't forget at the time he and his friends in the financial industry were arguing for less regulation of the banks, not more, and it was his party, under Margaret Thatcher, who deregulated the financial industry, allowing all the mergers and international takeovers in the name of "free markets". No ...... OK, so when the crisis came, do you think David Cameron would have been able to respond with the speed, overarching understanding and international clout that Gordon Brown was able to muster? Yes .... You're obviously a Tory tribalist! I challenge you to find a single serious commentator or political/economic historian who agrees with you. No .... Nobody can be sure what might have happened if the international response which Brown led had taken longer or been less decisive. There can be little doubt we in the UK would have been in a far weaker economic state than we are now. Would David Cameron have bailed out the banks? No .... Well he didn't object at the time. In the heat of the crisis both the opposition parties were supporting the action the government was taking, agreeing that it was necessary to prevent an even worse scenario. Yes .... So how would he have funded the bail-out, if not through increased borrowing? Perhaps all his millionaire friends would have dug deep into their pockets? When the extent of the banks' bad debts became clear and the City establishment started to get jittery about the scale of refinancing required, would David Cameron have kept his nerve and insisted on the appropriate level of recapitalisation? No .... then he would almost certainly have done too little too late, the crisis would have deepened and the recovery which now at last seems to be happening would still be a long way off. Yes .... OK; I don't believe he would, but if he did, then he would have to borrow to find the cash, and the deficit created by that borrowing would be exactly as it is now. Conclusion: the record deficit is a "lesser of two evils" and was the right choice of strategy. It is a necessary cost of securing recovery and we should be thankful we had a serving Prime Minister with the acumen and courage to implement it. Brown deserves praise, not blame. In his heart of hearts, I'm sure Cameron recognises this, but in his desperation to seize power he ignores it, instead trying to exploit the sheer size of the deficit in a gross simplification of the economic context. I think this is fundamentally dishonest. I rest my case.