The Damage New Labour is Inflicting is Increased By its Refusal to Go to the Country

Curiously the only thing that is saving the country from immediate financial and economic collapse is the belief of foreign creditors that there will be a replacement of the New Labour government at the very latest in something over a year. Or more probably much sooner than that. Sooner, because in any democratic state with a less informal constitution, a government would have fallen when Blair was overthrown and replaced with a faction promising a total break with past policies that the electorate had voted for. Even countries with fixed- term parliaments would have had to go to the polls when a replacement coalition displayed these levels of incompetent change, and the coalition broke apart; not least because most legislatures are not in such a broken-down and cowed state as ours.

Should fears that New Labour will attempt to hold on to power, by the use of notional national governments, or the misapplication of the Civil Contingencies Act, gain any ground then the exit from the United Kingdom of all foreign capital, which is already under way, will reach warp speed.

Brown and New Labour's improper insistence on remaining in office, though without the least capacity to undo the damage they have done, is already attracting discussion in the foreign press. The precise length of time that must elapse before some semblance of competent government can be put in place by the electorate of the United Kingdom is playing its part now in the sliding confidence of the rest of the world.