Tuesday 17 February 2009

Gordon Brown - different planet


In June 2007, just as he became Prime Minister, Brown said in his Mansion House speech that we were witnessing "the beginning of a new golden age for the City of London."

You may think that the collapse of many high street and investment banks would have shaken Brown's faith in free markets, but at the Lord Mayor's Banquet in November last year he said, "I want this to become the moment when together we rise to the new challenges by purposeful visionary and international leadership . . . not as the victims of history but as shapers of an open, free trade, flexible globalisation."

I quoted this head-in-the-sand 'neoliberalism or bust' attitude (it's gone bust, Gordon!) when I addressed a meeting organised by The Commune last night.

This morning, there's an excellent article by Graham Turner in The Guardian cataloguing the effect of neoliberalism throughout the globe. Graham makes the sound point that "A new world economic order requires protectionism - for workers".

Meanwhile, Richard Murphy reports on his blog that word has reached him from the G7 that Brown has blocked reforms to to create transparency, enhance regulation, and crack open the tax havens.

What must life be like in the Gordon Brown bunker?

1 comment:

  1. The problem with Brown he has no vision he has no idea's of his own, he steal anything anyone thinks or says or he hears, the fact is New Labour has run it's road it has come to the end, and the end might well be longer then the last time Labour was out. I mean after New Labour Thatcher looks like a bloody visionary.

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