Having devoted last Monday’s Penny Sleuth to the all too easy task of taunting Alistair Darling, I thought that I should give the man a second chance. After all, not only did his speech to the TUC Congress contain the germ of an interesting idea, but it reduced the comrades to such a stupor that that they were nodding off or reading the Sun while he spoke.

So I have got hold of Darling’s speech, and I have read it in an open-minded and sympathetic spirit. And I have concluded that it is a load of patronising, ill-constructed, inaccurate, platitudinous drivel.

Reading the speech is not improved by the fact that on the Treasury web-site, where you can find it, it is laid out as one hundred and thirty-nine seperate sentences or phrases. This gives it a staccato quality, presenting each lie or statement of the bleedin’ obvious as if it were something profound and meaningful. I’ll give you an extract:

114. Let’s not take for granted how we have changed the country.
115. Of course we need to do more. But don’t let’s overshadow what we have achieved.
116. A country changed for the better.
117. Not at the expense of stability, but because of it.

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No wonder members of the audience were nodding off…

Is it any wonder that members of the audience preferred to take forty winks? But what did they miss? Well for a start they missed repeated use of the words ‘tough’, ‘stability’ and ‘fairness’. Time after time Darling told the Congress that times are tough, not that this, of course, was any fault of his government. No reference was made to the ballooning budget deficit that has rendered the government impotent just at the time when it needs to give the economy a real booster. Indeed Darling had the front to say that ‘governments everywhere have to live within their means – so I will set out at the pre-budget report how I will continue to deliver sound public finances.’ That should be interesting!

No reference was made to the way that the Government presided over a massive and unsustainable debt-fuelled rise in the housing market and did nothing about it until it was far too late. No reference was there to the incompetent and muddled supervision of the financial sector that allowed Northern Rock to grow into such a monster. Instead Darling tried to take some credit for this fiasco. ‘Last year we intervened to save Northern Rock to stop problems spreading to other banks. It was controversial. But it was necessary and right.’ It was necessary only because the Government allowed the problem to develop in the first place.

Instead of accepting that the Government may have been in any way responsible for the demise of the economy, Darling once again tried to pin it all on circumstances beyond our control, namely the collapse of the US sub-prime market and rising commodity prices. Faced with these external forces Darling told the Congress time and time again that what matters now is ‘stability’ because ‘A stable economy is not an optional extra. It’s a means to an end – fairness.’

Well, I am sorry, but I fail to see the connection here. Many of us, Harriet Harman excepted, would say that we already live in a fair society in which nobody is legally barred from doing anything that could help them improve their lot in life. But whether or not you agree with this I fail to see how it has anything to do with the economy. It would be perfectly possible to have a ‘stable’ economy and an ‘unfair society’ – as in Victorian times, I suppose – or a fair society but an unstable economy.

The idea that ‘economic stability’ and ‘fairness’ depend upon one another makes no sense and is just a piece of political spin from a party that wants to present itself as ‘fair’ in contrast to the Conservatives who are assumed to stand for privilege.

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Just where are these signs of stability?

But anyway with house prices falling at record speeds and businesses across the land nearing the brink I don’t think many ‘families and businesses’ would look around them and recognise stability. The opposite is true. The economy is very unstable, and much of that is down to the fact that the Government forgot to keep any real money aside for a rainy day and cannot give the economy the support that it really needs at this stage. Instead of offering meaningful financial support, Darling can only offer a series of meaningless platitudes, and football-manager style pep talks. ‘With strong fundamentals and with the right support from the government, we’ll get through this….we have achieved a great deal together – but we have more to do….times are tough right now. But together we will get through it.’

There is no serious analysis here of our economic problems. There are no insights. There is no thoughtful identification of policies that could make a real difference. As with his Guardian interview, Darling appears to have no interest in the matter beyond trying to keep the political flak down to a minimum. His commentaries are childish. ‘It’s hard to believe that ten years ago a barrel of oil cost $10. This year it’s jumped $10 in a single day.’ And by claiming that things were much worse in the early 1980’s, he contradicts his Guardian statement that we are today experiencing the worst economic times for sixty years. And then when he does threaten to say something interesting, it comes to nothing.

What could have been the real eye-opener in this speech was this. ‘You’re rightly concerned about excessive bonuses – especially when people seem to get money for failing not succeeding… a bonus should be for hard work, not big mistakes… excessive bonuses, which encourage traders to take excessive risks, at a time of easy global credit are one of the major reasons for the global credit crunch…. That’s got to change.’

Now you are talking. Here is some meat to throw to the trade union wolves! Here is a rallying point for old left-wingers! Better still, here is something with which most people in the country happily agree and might even vote for. Does Darling expand upon this? Do we get the impression that he has really thought this one through and is defining some considered policy proposals? No. Just like everything else in this speech it comes across as something that Darling has just thought of and has put in his speech because it sounds quite good.

The man is not up to the job

My conclusion is this. Having studied what Darling has actually said recently and having reflected upon his time as Chancellor, I just don’t think he is up to the job. I don’t deny that he was dealt a poor hand of cards, but I don’t feel that he is really interested. I don’t get the impression that he thinks deeply about the economy, or really tries to understand the forces of the global economy. I don’t think that he really cares about the job. I think he is just trying to muddle through with a series of sound-bites and cheap give-aways, and is simply reacting to events as they happen.

‘Provided we do the right thing – provided that we don’t make the mistakes of the past’, he told the TUC conference, ‘I am confident that we will get through this.’ With Darling at the helm, I do not share this confidence.

Tom Bulford
For The Penny Sleuth

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