New Labour Must Now Ask Us What We Want To Do In the Face of Brown's Failures

No-one wants to touch 'Brown's Britain' with a barge pole.

'Outstanding loans to UK banks by overseas institutions fell some 20 per cent in the four months to November alone, according to data from the Bank of England. Market loans and holdings of certificates of deposit have roughly halved in that time, as have deposits at UK building societies, while European bank holdings of UK bank commercial paper are off by a third. (Financial Times). It is very disturbing that 'the data show that the drop in lending has been particularly sharp from banks based in other EU member states.'

The pretence that it is within the New Labour government’s competence to increase the flow of funds to companies is shown up. The chancellor has admitted that the denial of foreign lending greatly restricts the possibility of the extension of credit to British businesses by United Kingdom banks. Worse, this confirmation of the Brown-led New Labour government's pariah status not just internationally but within the European Union, with whom we are supposed to have the closest of ties and common interest, raises the question of to whom we will be forced to turn, and the severity of the measures we will be forced to implement, eventually.

The unconscionable impropriety of refusing to go to the country and seek a mandate from the electorate, so that foreign lenders might be reassured that the UK government has the enthusiastic support of the people of this country, destroys the last claim that there is any similarity whatever between the policies of the United States and those of Brown's desperate regime. There is no resemblance to either American political conditions, or to American financial and economic circumstances; the claim that Brown's policies are leading the world, including the United States, are even more ill-founded than the widespread ridicule for them measures.