A vote for the incumbents in this debacle is like thanking the bloke who stole your furniture and torched your house. The current rhetoric that "Brown and Darling handled it well" ignores their culpability in dropping us in the mire in the first place. Sure it was a global problem but Germany, a country still carrying the massive cost of reunification, is in a position to help out Greece. Even the French economy is more resilient. Brown is uniquely placed to accept responsibility for this lot - he was next door in number 11 and soaking up the adoration when the economy was going well. And while there he sold off the family silver including
flogging lumps of the gold reserve in 1999. John Naughton
posted about the deficit yesterday and
Martin Weller's post focusses on the impact on HE.
Mervyn King is reported to have said that the measures required to manage the deficit would make the party who wins the next election unelectable for a whole generation. This is a legacy of the Blair/Brown years. As a double-header it's possible that Labour will be third in the popular vote for the first time in 90 years. Many will vote Labour because they always have - despite Brown's gaffe with Mrs Duffy - but many more appear to be moving away from tribal loyalty and thinking about voting in a way which doesn't reward incompetence.
