Was UK held hostage by whim of deluded Brown?

Former Chancellor Alistair Darling has slammed Gordon Brown, his ex-boss, for having no logical economic plan to aid the country out of its grizzly economic situation it faced post 2007.

Brown, who was Chancellor, and then PM in 2007, after Tony Blair had stepped down in 2006/7, was also slammed by Darling in his memoirs, serialised in the Sunday newspapers for claiming that the UK’s economic woes would only last six months.

Darling apparently did not resign from Brown’s cabinet as Chancellor, because of blind loyalty to his ex-boss. Although Gordon did not sack the Chancellor, he had surrounded himself when he became PM,  by hiring loyal lieutenants such as Ed Balls, now Shadow Chancellor.

According to Darling, Gordon and co had no plan A for the recovery, let alone a plan B, and was in denial about the severity of the UK’s economic situation.

Tories have been having a field day on this latest, unsurprising, yet set of seriously questioning set of revelations, exposed by the former Chancellor of the Exchequer. It’s safe to say, there was no love loss between Darling and Brown, but his revelations, that come only 16 months after Labour were in power, do raise some serious constitutional and political issues in the top of power and cabinet.

Although Darling never resigned, (some could say it was down to a whole host of reasons, namely, money, and blind loyalty,) you have to ask the question: how can one man, surrounded by sceptics of his own policy, be able to defy so many positions from inside and outside government, and lead us down a road of pain and turmoil economically, when all the evidence was/is pointing in a different direction.

Cabinet Collective Responsibility is where members of the government swear their oath to the policy of the day, usually dreamt up by the PM and his inner circle, however, this collective decision making is seriously flawed in this instance, because, it appears from Darling’s testimony that the PM had no plan. According to the reports, some budgets were concocted on the hoof, with much rigorous editing from no 10 – to satisfy Brown’s delusions of grandeur.

So again, how can a system, namely, our unwritten constitutional laws let one man dictate economic policy?

This is the real story behind the Darling memoirs. How our political and constitutional system is weak and can become hostage to one man’s stubborn and flawed views on how the economy will fair six months down the line.

If private corporations followed the Brown philosophical “crystal ball gazing” of their economic situations, the roofs of businesses everywhere would indeed be shattering from above. Yet, it seems, as the old-fashioned Tory phrase used by George Osborne, now Chancellor is coming to pass. Brown never did fix the roof when the Sun was shinning. He just let the roof collapse and the sun burn down on it, so that inside would become hotter and hotter, leading to meltdown. Was the UK literally held hostage by the whim of a deluded gambler?

But, having said that he is only a man, and he can get it wrong, according to this guy, he can't carry the world on his shoulders, even if he thinks he can...