Telepathic blogging

Post in haste and repent at leisure – I dashed off my last blog post in a hurry and although I had a (not particularly insightful) point in mind about the link between civil unrest and Gordon Brown’s claim to have “put an end to the damaging cycle of boom and bust”, the point remained in my head without being spelled out in words, which puts you at a disadvantage, unless you happen to be a mind-reader. .

The civil unrest wasn’t seen much in the UK (unless you count the outbreaks of morris dancing). The UK news outlets and blogs are full of is news and speculation about the terrible mess Gordon Brown’s government is in (“worst week ever” and so on). My point was in two parts:

1) It’s not just Gordon Brown’s recession – many governments around the world that were unfortunate enough to have the global financial crisis happen on their watch are becoming just as unpopular.

2) Where Gordon Brown is particularly at fault is in having claimed credit for the “good” (unsustainable bubble) years. – “we set about establishing a new economic framework to secure long-term economic stability and put an end to the damaging cycle of boom and bust”. I think he’s far more at fault for having complacently made that inflated claim then he was for just being in the wrong place at the wrong time, (which is where any serving government finds itself when the global economy goes so spectacularly wrong). I’m sure he wasn’t the only leader to take credit for the good times, or who failed to question the sustainability of what was going on in the world of high finance – but claiming the credit in such a sound-bite sized nugget turned out to be a spectacular fail.