Gordon Brown’s apology is not actually an apology
Dear Gordon Brown,
After David Cameron apologised for not spotting the severity of the financial crisis at an earlier stage, you have obviously been advised to follow suit and talk about your role in the crisis. Sadly, your personality yet again proves to be the main stumbling block as the word “sorry” remains illusive as you search for credibility and humility.
“I take full responsibility for all my actions, but I think we’re dealing with a bigger problem that is global in nature, as well as national. Perhaps 10 years ago after the Asian crisis when other countries thought these problems would go away, we should have been tougher”, you said. Well, bravo. The immediate question that springs to mind is who else could possibly have been responsible for your actions? Your wife, perhaps? It’s fairly obvious that the current problems are being felt around the world, but you seem to think that your only mistake was to not call for more international regulation – is that it? You simply cannot let go of your own warped view of the past. You said: “We created a system in 1997 which was unified regulation. Before 1997 it was virtually self-regulation. We created a statutory system, but around the world we were finding that we had a global set of financial flows and you needed global supervision.” Of course it wasn’t self-regulation before 1997, what utter rubbish. The Bank of England used to be well positioned to judge the actions of UK banks and to warn of dangerous risk levels. Yes, money moves across international borders, but when one knowledgable institution is able to watch over the banks, they can clamp down on problems before they get out of hand. The FSA was a dismal failure at monitoring the behaviour of individual institutions, yet I don’t see anything in the way of an apology for that. We didn’t need global supervision; we needed the FSA not to exist.
As I moved through your interview, the hilarity continued at quite a pace. You said that there will be no return to “big government” or any let up in public service reform. What public service reform would this be, exactly? I haven’t seen anything even remotely significant being done to our schools or hospitals since you walked in Number 10, and I think it’s a bit late to worry about returning to ‘big government’. The interview unearthed a few other interesting nuggets. You are refusing to rule out a further British economic stimulus in the April budget (which will end in disaster), you are promising extra help for hard-pressed savers (despite having been demanding interest rate cuts from the Bank of England for months on end) and you intend to use the G20 summit to control the structure and absolute amounts of executive pay (talk about overstepping the mark). When taken as a whole, your interview with the Guardian is little more than a flailing attempt to make it appear as though you are apologising when in reality you are doing no such nothing. Clever, but deeply cynical.
To this day, I’m still outraged when I hear people say that you apologised over the 10p tax debacle in your conference speech last year. Actually, what you said was “…where I’ve made mistakes I’ll put my hand up and try to put them right. So what happened with 10p stung me because it really hurt that suddenly people felt I wasn’t on the side of people on middle and modest incomes”. You never once said sorry. Reading your interview with the Guardian gave me an incredible sense of deja vu. You pretend to apologise, you make it sound like you’re sorry, you give readers the impression that you are expressing some form of regret – but you never ever ever ever say you’re sorry. Despite the Guardian’s best attempt at spin, you still come across as an arrogant, incompetent fool.
Yours sincerely,
A.Tory
Witanagemot Blogs
My sentiments as well – but expressed far better that I could have.
The android has been fed data from the latest focus group and been told to mention:
1) regrets (I’ve had a few, but then again too few to mention)
2) “hard-pressed savers”
amongst all the usual claptrap about global this, global that and international banking regulation.
Pathetic.
I bet you someone at a focus group would have told him to apologise, but the Downing Street press team seems to have completely given up hope of achieving such a grand aim.
It’s a pity the Tories don’t have a real pitbull, Browns constant lies and spin open him up badly.
To have someone on the national news to call him an outright liar and ticking off all the lies and spin, finishing with an offer to see him in court if he felt defamed, and done so in a measured, yet angry, manner, it would really chime with the electorate.
There are times for chummy and rational discourse, and there are times to give a vicious verbal kicking. Currently the latter is called for – there’s a real anger forming in the nation, and whilst I’m not a fan of either main party, I would prefer to see the Tories harness it.
And really, given the amount of times Brown has claimed he wants more international regulation, why the hell haven’t the Tories responded with questions as to why the UK, under Labours watch, turned down plans from the UN and EU for precisely that?
Why haven’t they – Private Eye certainly has – dug up all those quotes of Brown praising light regulation and the bonus culture? There is a rich vein of material for the Tories to tap here – imagine posters of Goodwin plastered around the nation with a positive quote on bonuses by Brown?
Brown constantly shows his throat, why are the Tories so feared of sinking their teeth into it?
Iain Dale has been digging up similar quotes with some regularity, but the Conservatives haven’t exactly been shouting from the rooftops about it. Perhaps they feel that they are also vulnerable to the same criticism, or they’re worried that Brown might start trawling up Black Wednesday again?
Brown’s toast. Brown bread, as it were.
He can’t apologise because to apologise would be to admit errors going right back to 1997. Serious errors (the FSA, anyone?). And *if* he holds a general election at the end of his term, he’ll be punished for it, no question.
I fear, though, that the Tories are saying nothing about the bullsh*t talked about the economy because, while Cameron neatly ‘apologised’ for his role in that consensus, they *know* they’ll have to talk all kinds of cr*p while they grope around, trying god know’s what to get us out of this hole!
@LFAT
I’m not sure they are, especially after Cameron’s semi-apology – a quote of “we made mistakes in the past, and at least we’ve learned from them and apologized for them” would make a neat riposte.
And of Labour really want to bring up Black Wednesday, they risk having statistical comparisons between Brown and Major being brought up – and given Major has been the most successful, from an economic standpoint, post-war PM, and Brown is likely to be the worst, they really, really don’t want to go there.
Plus I’m sure the ever-reliable Peston would point out that Black Wednesday was the starting point for 5 years of Tory growth that was bequeathed to Labour.
And really, the people won’t care about Labour trying to score points from what happened in the 90’s, not when they’re getting P45’s instead of promotions and pay raises. They care about what’s happening now.
Yup. People don’t care about the what happened 2 recessions ago (we had the DotCom crash since too) when they are still in the present one!
Perhaps.
My fear is that the economy will start to bounce back and Brown will claim to have saved the country before the next election, and to make matters worse I think a lot of voters are stupid enough to fall for it. If that happens, the electoral maths goes out the window.
Now is the time for the Tories to start challenging these lies. The voters won’t believe it if Cameron and Osborne raise them nearer to the GE; it will all be forgotten, so there should be a continuous argument, especially as Black Wednesday wasn’t a fraction as damaging as the situation we’re in now.
In 1997 Labour was helped by the BBC and its continuous theme of “sleaze” on every news bulletin – again nowhere near as bad as the scandals we’ve seen from the Government and the Labour Party as a whole – but as there’s almost silence now from the “impartial” BBC the Tories must do it for themselves.
I’m no specialist on these matters, but as regards regulation don’t I remember from pre-1997 lots of acronyms like LAUTRO, IMRO and SFA (truly) which were over-arched by the Securities and Investments Board? Does Brown have selective memory loss about these?
@LFAT
I can’t see the economy bouncing back ’til maybe 2011, possibly 2012. We’ll see the start of a recovery early 2010, but that’ll be squashed flat by inflation, and interest rates heading towards the 15% region.
I’m estimating two quarters small growth in 2010, followed by a second recession – this one being one of those high unemployment/high interest ‘tory’ ones Brown likes to mouth off about, with us hitting over 4 million unemployed in time for the Olympics.
Still, at least we won’t have to worry about the electricity bill as Labour have thoughtfully ensured we’ll be having planned powercuts around the nation by then. Now that is foresight, not bothering to replace to energy sources as you know no-one will be able to afford it.
I don’t want him to apologise – I just want him to do the decent thing, and resign!
We do badly need a hero,someone to stand up and say unpleasant truths,someone to rally behind.Cameron can’t or won’t,Im beginning to despise him,and the shadow cabinet,as much as brown and his.I hope browns children grow up to despise and disown him too,as I do for what he has done to my country.
Obsidian.
Ggrowth will come sooner. Not soon enough for Brown but enough growth to talk about green shoots and end of the crisis, weathered the storm to port.
4 million unemployed looks too high too.. maybe just over 3.25 on the next data release and then falling. We are due good weather. Summer jobs and the harvest. Eastern Europeans have gone back so jobs for the home-grown there.Hover around 2.8 – 3.3 million for 2010.
Also some of these promised plans by the government will finally begin to have something to show for them other than headlines. So some construction, some transport, some training jobs etc.
The fear with inflation is that it will go to 1% or even 0.25% quite soon as falling commodities, even being bought on the $ have to feed through at some point.
But it is quite likely to bounce straight back up and very very quickly. 3+ quarters in a row of 1.5 – 2% up each time.
That could precipitate the second recession you allude to as interest brakes have to come on.
Still, there’s a long way to go to the election. Only last October/November many people were confidently predicting an election round about…now.
Do you think GB has pushed interest rates as low as he has to aid government borrowing or business borrowing?
With all due respect Bill, I think economic forecasting has pretty much been thrown out of the window by the events of the last 12 months. I was pretty skeptical before this economic crisis, but now I don’t have any faith in anyone’s prediction and I see no reason why my guess isn’t as good as Mervyn Kings.
No-one has a clue what’s going to happen, but like I said if the economic stabilises at the end of 2009 in terms of unemployment and deflation is avoided, things might look a lot better than they really are as we hit election fever in 2010.
Economics has long been regarded the dismal science, not least because it’s based on two demonstrably false premise – that people can have perfect knowledge and that they always act in line with perfect self-interest. It’s as much a science as Marxism; just because it uses numbers and mathematical modelling doesn’t mean it’s ’science’.
Why the hell should he apologise? Why should Cameron? No-one saw this coming.
This obsession with apologies really pisses me off!
Rick – its not even about seeing it coming.
We could argue the toss back and forth about the foreseeability of events, however, in retrospect, one can see what policies worked and what didn’t, such as the tripartate regulatory settlement. And gobbing off about ‘light touch’ regulation to encourage that culture and so on… The fact is that time has shown that certain policies, certain actions, were just wrong.
Apologies, in that context, are important because we need to know that the PM is plugged in to reality and not some messianic view whereby, like the Pope, he’s infallible. So Gordon, on the off chance you’re listening, fess up, bro! Get it off your chest and show us you’re not a *total* reality denier!
*edit: That is to say, I, personally, need to see people acknowledge their mistakes and, ideally, explain what they were (to show they now understand them). After all, everyone makes mistakes and books are written on groupthink and the behaviour of crowds but the trick is in *learning* from your mistakes. That Gordon doesn’t even seem to acknowledge that he made a mistake, let alone apologise for it, is pretty damning.
That’s the genius of the ‘apologise’ meme: It unpacks into what are you apologising for? Can you acknowledge that you made a whoopsy?
Class.
UK recession ‘worst of all’: It will be the only major economy still in a slump next year, predicts IMF
By James Chapman And Alex Brummer
Last updated at 11:07 PM on 17th March 2009
DAILY MAIL
Gordon Brown’s economic credibility suffered another blow last night following a warning that Britain’s recession will be the worst in the world.
The International Monetary Fund said the downturn in the UK would be deeper than anyone previously feared – and it would last through 2010.
The IMF also said that Britain’s economy would shrink by a catastrophic 3.8 per cent this year and 0.2 per cent in 2010 – making it the only major economy still in recession next year.
Personally I remain ambivalent by the incessant and incandescent demand for Brown to apologise. Not to say that I don’t think he has cause for apology, but more that this ‘apology meme’ will start to look like a replacement for policy alternatives if we are not careful. It still has some life in it, then fine lets see what we can squeeze out of him, but who is going to value an apology extracted, seemingly, under duress?
I remember reading with some amusement Martin Bright a couple of weeks back hinting that Brown was “practising a humble self-deprecating manner in front of the mirror based on what he has seen on his training DVD”. Even for a politician Brown seems to have a heightened aversion to any admission of error, and unlike Blair, who could give the appearance of contrition, Brown picks the wrong words ["I take responsibility for all my actions" - WTF?!] and has the clunkiest presentation.
You are right to point out the parallels with the 10p tax debacle. The speech where he supposedly apologised for that was actually insulting to the people impacted.
Just as a final question, do we have a ‘political apology’ from that last couple of decades that could serve as a template for Blair? I can think of apologies for personal conduc, Paddy Ashdown for example, but an apology for policy? Do we have any good examples from senior politicians of either party?
Of course, they used to be a time when people resigned I understand, or so my Dad tells me….
@bill
I’m not sure growth will come sooner – we’ll see some in the South East, since that is the UK’s dynamo, but the rest of the nation will be far behind.
I suspect unemployment will continue to climb even when some growth does return, e.g. for every 1 job generated in the South East, 1.25 will be lost elsewhere, merely slowing the increase.
As for summer jobs, the market for contract based work is wheezing along whilst the permie market is undergoing a post-mortem by CSI:New Labour, as such I reckon many of the summer jobs will be temporary ones taken by students – you can get cheaper rates for them! The more vocational ones will be taken by the remaining immigrants. I hope I’m wrong about that.
I agree with you about the inflation, although I reckon it’ll rise a few percent for more than three quarters – and I think it’ll provide quite the suckerpunch to companies just starting on the upswing.
As for Browns logic with interest rates or anything, I’ve come to regard that as one of Nietzsche’s abysses and so avert my eyes…
@Rick
No one saw this coming? There have been a few, albeit regarded as on the fringe, who did see this coming.
Hell, I’m a novice in the world of economics and finance and saw a chunk of this on the horizon, albeit nowhere near as bad as its getting.
The problem has been, that – when people have mentioned the consequences of a debt-fuelled period of growth – the response has been “the Government won’t let it happen.” That kind of conditioned response, and a comically naive belief in the omnipotence of government, is the sort of thing that guarantees we haven’t seen the last of these crunches.
Shaun, thats a pointless debate that is better restricted to undergraduate bars