Murdoch's Tory Machine

You know that Murdoch's Tory Machine were getting desperate about the impending elections close call. After all, when Murdoch first decided to back Cameron and co they were much further ahead in the polls; Murdoch's call marked the beginning of a fall in support for his chosen runner.

An obviously impartial decision was made to broadcast what should have been an off-air remark by Gordon Brown, thus transforming a private off-the cuff remark into a nationally broadcast insult. So now the truth was out, Brown is merely human, unlike their airbrushed Etonian hero; ha-ha the gleeful Murdoch giggled, we've got him now.

I'll let you in to a little secret, I have no time for the Tories, and Cameron is no different to the socially divisive Thatcher. Regardless of the state of the economy, their policy has always been to protect privilege and, I have no doubt that will continue to be their policy. The bankers and the stock-market gamblers, responsible for the economic collapse, will continue to cast their votes for the Tories as they impose increasing hardship upon the real working people.

Gordon the Unlucky

So, it takes an American journalist (albeit a Nobel Prize winning economist and one of my favourite columnists to boot) to understand Brown's predicament and Cameron's lack of an alternative. It's a pity that Britain lacks columnists of this calibre.

"For much of the past 30 years, politics and policy here and in America have moved in tandem. We had Reagan; they had Thatcher. We had the Garn-St. Germain Act of 1982, which dismantled New Deal-era banking regulation; they had the Big Bang of 1986, which deregulated London’s financial industry. Both nations had an explosion of household debt and saw their financial systems become increasingly unsound."

"But here’s the thing. While Mr. Brown and his party may deserve to be punished, their political opponents don’t deserve to be rewarded.

After all, would a Conservative government have been any less in the thrall of free-market fundamentalism, any more willing to rein in runaway finance, over the past decade? Of course not.

And Mr. Brown’s response to the crisis — a burst of activism to make up for his past passivity — makes sense, whereas that of his opponents does not."


Paul Krugman - "Gordon the Unlucky", New York Times (8 June 2009)