In reply to BnB:
> Well done for not only missing that my point was about leadership
No I did not miss it, on the contrary, it seems to me Brown showed extraordinary leadership during the financial crisis. He took decisive and bold action which prevented a cataclysmic outcome, both in the UK and abroad, as essentially other countries followed his approach.
You could say that indeed he ended up quite unpopular, but leadership and popularity are not the same thing. Although popularity can be a component of leadership it is by no mean the only one or the most important.
> but also for glossing over the fact that it was Brown who both oversaw the massive increase in public spending for which we must thank 10 years of austerity and who, as Chancellor, ushered in the financial crisis with his light touch on regulation (not that the Tories would have done better, but the point is he was in charge, not them).
Anybody that has looked at the numbers properly will find that the rapid increase in spending he oversaw in the two years prior the financial crisis would have made virtually no difference whatsoever, and were a perfectly rational thing to do in the light of what was known at the time.
And ho wait the Tories voted them in as well.
To argue that he ushered in the financial crisis with his light touch on regulation is also a complete lie. Regulations that *could* have prevented the financial crisis simply did not exist until 2010, and anyway, Britain does not have the power to set international banking standards alone.
> In fact, as Brown is/was of no small intellect and better able to comprehend the scale and implications of the financial crisis than most politicians, it is a greater condemnation of his leadership that he failed to act to see off the threat, choosing instead to wait and then at last react.
Did I touch a sensitive nerve ?
To argue that Brown should have seen the subprime crisis coming, when nobody saw it coming apart from a handful of hedge fund managers everybody thought were crazy, is frankly disingenuous.
You're usually a reasonable poster but once in a while when something contradicts deeply held beliefs, you come up with ludicrous stuff.
Post edited at 15:06