Disastrous Error

One of this site's sources of endless amusement is at it again. His latest book is now so marked down on Amazon that I may even buy it. Second hand, of course. I would never give him a penny.

He has penned a piece in which he informs us that, "All of us journalists knew of [Gordon Brown's] rages and inability to work constructively beyond a caucus of supporters." This sage did not become a journalist by any possible definition of the word until 2008.

If he has ever done so, since he also treats us to this:

Mr Brown’s record in government is recalled more favourably by pundits than it ought to be because he got its biggest issue right. The collapse of the banking system required radical remedial measures: a huge expansion of liquidity, a bailout package that included public stakes in the banks, and a willingness to let the budget deficit expand dramatically in order to support aggregate demand.

All of these things were done by the Brown government. But, as chancellor, Mr Brown also did things that contributed to the problems later on. As well as rightly taking monetary policy out of the hands of politicians, he took banking supervision out of the hands of the Bank of England. It was a disastrous error, contributing to a lax standard of regulation and the ensuing disaster of Northern Rock.

The author's hero was First Lord of the Treasury on every day that Brown was Chancellor of the Exchequer, including the day that democratic political control of monetary policy was surrendered along with the supervision of banking, both of which were wrong. But what this passage in fact says is that Brown was a much better Prime Minister than Tony Blair was.