If that. Someone called Andrew Griffith, who is apparently the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, has trotted out the old chestnut about Gordon Brown and the sale of the gold reserves.
Yet a sovereign state with its own free-floating fiat currency has no need of such reserves, no one objected to that sale at the time, nothing about the increased value of gold today could have been predicted then, Labour won the next two General Elections, Brown became Prime Minister in that third term, and he might have remained so if he had been properly supported by those on his own side who instead refused to accept the legitimacy of any Leadership or Premiership except that of Tony Blair, but who would settle provisionally for David Cameron.
If Labour made those points, then it really would have changed. But it will not, because it has not.
You're right, nobody complained about the gold sale at the time and it did Brown no political harm, when did the Tories start talking about it? The attack line against Brown as Chancellor was something about pensions, wasn't it?
ReplyDeleteThe gold sale became an issue at the 2010 General Election, 11 years and two Labour victories after the event, and by which time Gordon Brown had already been Prime Minister for nearly three years. The Tories failed to win an overall majority against him.
DeleteAnd oh yes, they banged on about the pensions "raid" for a decade, throughout which Brown was Chancellor of the Exchequer, and at the end of which he became Prime Minister. Nearly 20 years later again, and the pensioners, of Brown's own generation, do not appear to be doing too shabbily after all.