Call Them Out Early, Call Them Out Often

I wouldn't normally blog merely to post a link from a newspaper, and particularly not a link that I got from Matt Drudge, but everyone should take a look at this piece from the LA Times because it's the point where Gordon Brown's remaining economic credibility gets flushed firmly down the toilet. In the government's spin of the global financial crisis, the most consistent line from Numbers 10 and 11 has been that we are better placed than other similar economies to weather the storm.

That is, of course, utter bollocks.

Surely none of us needed the LA Times to point out to us that the global financial crisis is exactly that; financial. And in such circumstances, the only criteria for how well you can weather the storm is how big your financial sector is and and how exposed it is to everyone else's. You don't need to be an economist to know that by those criteria, the UK is fairly firmly screwed.

Now perhaps there is something to be said for not fanning the flames, for politicians to be calm and considered at this stage. But when the government's only response to economic catastrophe is to insult everyone's intelligence, they absolutely need to be called out on it, because it absolutely calls into question their own intelligence.