Just one quick thing

I'm still not back properly yet, but I do have to say one thing.  The Tories are right to focus on Labour's (and Brown's) apparent enjoyment of the current financial crisis.  This isn't a triumph, it's still a knife-edge of disaster or complete fucking disaster.  There is no good outcome here - only a less bad one.  That's why this current fashion for comparisons with the Falklands War is so fatuous. Michael White is responsible for one today.

Yes, the Tory Government was in trouble before deus ex machina a crisis happened.  Yes it's fair to say that, just as with BRown and the financial crisis, the Tory Government bore a measure of culpability for the invasion (though only in the sense that a woman in a short skirt is asking to be raped - an analogy very few of the 'Thatcher was to blame' pundits would acknowledge).  The similarities, however, end there.

With the Falklands there was a cartoon bad guy: General Galtieri and his junta of uniformed thugs; there was a clear course of action: send in the task force; there was a concrete and definite victory: mass Argentine surrender and the recovery of the Falklands; and then there was a victory parade.  With this crisis there is no specific villain; there is no clear course of action and there can be no concrete and definite victory.  There will certainly not be a victory parade. If eberything goes according to plan there will be a recession rather than a depression. Don't buy shares in bunting manufacturers.

Whereas the question of who was to blame for the Argentine invasion (leftist academics and politicians said Thatcher, everyone else said, um, the Argentines themselves) was rather irrelevant, the question of who was to blame for the financial crisis will not be.  Relaxation of monetary policy, a focus on a skewed inflation target, a hose price bubble, uncertain financial regulation - Brown is directly or indirectly responsible for all of them.  Interest rates will have to be cut (unless we want a depression) but that will lead to higher inflation. Brown ought to wipe that smirk off his face  - we're a long way from Port Stanley.