Spent today in Cardiff, where I had a meeting with members of the Welsh Assembly’s Conservative group.
The weather was glorious as the train crossed the border; it seemed that spring had come early, and I felt quite chirpy as I walked up the steps of the Assembly building. Rather sinisterly, a BBC cameraman was filming outside the building, and panned to follow me as I entered. He obviously thought I was up to something.
Inside the Conservative office, a TV was showing the press conference from No. 10. Brown looked bad, but Darling was absolutely awful. He was muted and halting; George Osborne’s later description of him as a “dead man walking” was bang on.
I was on the train back to London when my BlackBerry told me that my presence was requested in the Chamber, to hear Darling’s statement on the Northern Rock’s nationalisation. I was more than a little unhappy I couldn’t be there.
The nationalisation of the Rock, with all its echoes of Labour’s disastrous government of the 1970s, is a huge blow for Gordon Brown. It gives the lie to the boasts of economic competence that he has repeated like a mantra, ad nauseam, for the last ten years. The country now has a liability of £100 billion and will be saddled with it for years to come. Some of it – quite possibly a lot of it - may be lost.
And all because Gordon Brown didn’t want the embarrassment of queues of depositors trying to get their money out appearing nightly on our TV screens when he was desperate to call a general election.
What a hopeless, incompetent, washed-up government this is.
The weather was glorious as the train crossed the border; it seemed that spring had come early, and I felt quite chirpy as I walked up the steps of the Assembly building. Rather sinisterly, a BBC cameraman was filming outside the building, and panned to follow me as I entered. He obviously thought I was up to something.
Inside the Conservative office, a TV was showing the press conference from No. 10. Brown looked bad, but Darling was absolutely awful. He was muted and halting; George Osborne’s later description of him as a “dead man walking” was bang on.
I was on the train back to London when my BlackBerry told me that my presence was requested in the Chamber, to hear Darling’s statement on the Northern Rock’s nationalisation. I was more than a little unhappy I couldn’t be there.
The nationalisation of the Rock, with all its echoes of Labour’s disastrous government of the 1970s, is a huge blow for Gordon Brown. It gives the lie to the boasts of economic competence that he has repeated like a mantra, ad nauseam, for the last ten years. The country now has a liability of £100 billion and will be saddled with it for years to come. Some of it – quite possibly a lot of it - may be lost.
And all because Gordon Brown didn’t want the embarrassment of queues of depositors trying to get their money out appearing nightly on our TV screens when he was desperate to call a general election.
What a hopeless, incompetent, washed-up government this is.
1 comments:
What an awful day you must have had, having to endure precious time in that awful shrine of waste, both in time and OUR money!
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