Gordon Brown’s response to the dreadful electoral results of last week provides a good opportunity to look back and see where all this has left British politics.

While the 10p tax rate may have left many natural Labour voters at home sullen and resentful, the next General Election will be won or lost on the anxieties and fears of a much larger swathe of the British public.

If things carry on as they are doing, they will go out and vote in a General Election alright – but for the ‘wrong side’.

Headline Issues

The final results of the London and local government elections showed us what Labour grassroots insiders have been privately predicting since late last year, a collapse in the Labour vote, although even they did not expect that it would fall to its lowest level in forty years.

A Tory victory in the next General Election is now regarded as probable rather than possible. Here are some of the headline issues that the results suggest that we should consider:

• One of the first announcements, as Boris Johnson (Tory) was confirmed as the new Mayor, was that Mayor Bloomberg of New York would be meeting him on May 9th. Both are Atlanticist conservatives. The implication of this is that London may shift back from ‘world city’ orientated towards the East (which has been Livingstone’s position, supported by the Government) towards the old Wall Street-City axis, at least insofar as politicians are able to effect this. Livingstone may, of course, have been more in tune with the trend of history than Johnson.
• While Boris Johnson's win should not affect the City’s ambition to become a centre of Islamic Finance, there is an anti-Islamist and strong pro-Zionist tinge to Johnson’s circle. This will proportionately strengthen this tendency within the Tory Party and will create some factional tension between the Tory Right (to which Johnson belongs) and the Tory Left. The coincidental election of a pro-Zionist anti-Islamist Neo-Fascist Mayor of Rome may not seem immediately relevant but it attests to the potential for conservative populism to emerge amongst the European middle classes, as fear and anxiety about the economy start to grow.
• Boris Johnson's win was not a landslide by any means. It might be judged as merely representing the ability of Tories to get suburban votes out on the day while disillusioned Labour voters abstained in the inner city. It was probably decisive that Liberal Democrat voters wanted to punish Livingstone on a second preference vote. In short, the Tories do not own London by any means.
• Gordon Brown is now looking like a ‘loser’. Already, respected grassroots Left figures are openly stating that New Labour is ‘dead’ (meaning not the Labour Party or Movement but the coup plotters in the mid-1990s): Labour may now go through an internal power struggle to recalibrate the Party away from the authoritarian neo-liberal Right.
• There will be no leadership challenge to Brown (see below) in the next few months, but he is likely to be seen as a caretaker rather than as long term Leader even if he is too deluded to see this himself. New Labour strategists (the ones with brains, that is) will now be planning for the probability (though not certainty) of defeat in 2009/2010.
• Contemporaneously, David Pitt-Watson resigned as Secretary-General-designate of the Party (an intention that was probably delayed because of the need not to have the story affect voting intentions): informed rumour suggests that he was dismayed at the financial state of the Party (£20m of debts serviced by a declining membership with no major donations in the pipeline except from a more militant trades union movement), at his personal liabilities if he led its administration and at the prospect of vicious infighting that would have stopped him doing his job. He has made no formal statement on any of these issues.

Labour’s Crisis Period

Add all this together (and see our previous analysis) and you see that the tensions within the Labour coalition are probably reaching a point of no return.

It is on the very edge of one of three outcomes: internal civil war, financial and administrative collapse or an eventual electoral challenge from the libertarian and democratic socialist left.

The process may result in a renewal under new leadership (certainly Labour stalwarts hope so) but it could remove New Labour from power for a generation.

Equally, it could cause a split that creates a serious competitor for a Party that has too long lodged on ground shared with the Tories.

There are historical precedents for renewal, for marginalisation and for splits - and, in the rise of the Labour Party itself, for displacement.

But could the situation be turned around?

It is possible but it would require a) qualities of leadership in the higher political reaches of the New Labour Party that have not been evidenced to date and b) a political strategy from the trades unions that was about much more than capturing the state by the back door.

Neither transformation is likely on the timescale of the next General Election. Part of Labour’s problem is that Cameronism is merely an extension of Blairism. Brown has failed to hold on to Blair’s territory credibly and he has lacked the imagination to seize higher ground elsewhere.

Middle England liked Blairite policies despite their being at the root of the current economic crisis.The suburban middle classes, in particular, find it very difficult to see the connection between current problems and past actions.

For many voters, Blair became very unpopular as a perceived monomaniac but the broadly authoritarian neo-liberal right position that he represented still had its base in the country - at that very point at which New Labour had become trapped through its triangulation strategy.

Brown’s attempts to fill Blair's space have not only not looked credible but his attempts to do so have left him in the valley between two sets of high ground - traditional values and Blairism. Cameron has cleverly and quickly leapt up the hill and captured part of Blair's old fortress.

Brown has proved himself a poor tactician and a worse strategist, ending up in a weak and indefensible position and fighting, in effect, on two fronts.

Meanwhile, the attempt to hold the old Blairite ground rather than cross the valley and build a new fortress on the centre left have finally alienated those who are on the more libertarian and left sides of the political equation.

Years of sullen compliance with a strategy that had brought power but was fundamentally politically a-moral had dammed up massive resentments. There is no incentive to suppress this anger if the leadership cannot even deliver the surety of power.

Problems Mount

Problems continue to mount for Gordon Brown. There is continued Parliamentary pressure on clarification of his proposals to mitigate the effects of the 10p tax rate.

The illiberal 42 days proposals are rapidly becoming a symbol of resistance to the Party’s ‘triangulation’ towards the authoritarian neo-liberal Right - and an issue on which the Tories have managed to out-flank the clumsy Mr. Brown to his Left! 

Boris Johnson in London has come in slugging with a traditional Tory position on crime and expenditure that has created what can only be described as inarticulate and impotent rage amongst Leftists in the City … whatever Ken says, they blame Brown for their loss.

But Brown’s response this past weekend still misses much of the point of the defeat.

It is still cast in terms of an egoism of the centre – he will be resilient (a pale shadow of Thatcher’s style) and his sympathy for the public is still a psychological centering of politics on him and not an empathy with the fear and anxiety (and anger) ‘out there’.

The public doesn’t really give a damn now for his determination and sympathy – they want results.

Our sources in the financial community are adamant that, despite the media’s recent trend towards moderating its earlier gloom on the economy, the credit problems in the ‘real’ economy will be hitting us hard in the Autumn - that is, if Government, banks and regulators cannot avert what looks like the inevitable.

A more optimistic Press is merely encouraging a lot of small businesses and investors to go 'into denial' (as one commercial banker put it to us).

Some even continue to try to borrow to expand when market conditions say determinedly that now is the time to re-order one’s affairs for a small storm at best and a hurricane at worst.

Meanwhile, the next test is a by-election on 22 May in Crewe and Nantwich which had been held by the late Gwyneth Dunwoody, an MP of the old Labour Right whose integrity and independence of mind was much respected.

If Dunwoody’s daughter is defeated (though a personal brand can mean some significant votes in some traditional Northern seats), it will mean that a Labour heartland will not stop at one ‘punishment vote’ for the Government but really is prepared to push ‘its own’ Party from power.

The Leadership Challengers

You can ignore the prospect of a leadership challenge for a while yet. This is not how Labour does things. 

A challenger would need 71 members openly to challenge Brown in September. Certainly John McDonnell could never deliver this number of the PLP despite his Leftist support in the country.

The prospects for a successful challenge that does not continue Blair's policy of triangulation to the Right look fairly bleak. Yet many Leftists are living in cloud-cuckoo land in believing that they can overturn the system from within.

John McDonnell operates in the Livingstone territory of mass action urban Leftism and Livingstone himself has been strengthened rather than weakened within the Party by his creditable performance in London, despite his defeat.

But McDonnell not only has insufficient support amongst the PLP and the unions, electorally he is unlikely to appeal to many outside the inner cities – he is a gadfly rather than a credible future Leader.

Ken Livingstone himself is unable to contend and can only endorse or withdraw his endorsement of other candidates.

He might get significant grassroots and even union support but the PLP would be highly resistant to him and he would face serious image problems in Middle England.

There is the Left-insider Jon Cruddas but, while he may win over many (though not all) trades unions, he has insufficient base in the PLP.

It would also require a massive effort to introduce him to the public as someone distinct from the current New Labour elite. Most importantly, his place in Parliament would probably disappear if we saw the levels of anti-Labour vote that we saw on Thursday at a General Election.

Compass (the leftish group) places its trust in Cruddas (with some reason in view of his undoubted talent), but he needs a far more secure base in the Party and as a politician. Their strategy (the ‘long game’) may soon be overtaken by events.

Cruddas is intellectually and even politically credible under certain conditions but those conditions might be those of such meltdown, even he was still in Parliament to take advantage of the crisis, that he would be in no better position than the leadership of the shattered Party that emerged out of the fiasco of Ramsey Macdonald's National Government.

The Left, whether radical or ‘sensible’, has no credible candidate who is not deeply ‘tainted’ by engagement with Blairism and with the policies of the last decade, let alone the last year, or who, to win, requires a devastating meltdown of the Party in the polls - and a whole lot of luck.

The Right Wing Candidates

All the remaining candidates, with Alan Johnson and David Miliband at the head of the queue are, by any analysis, continuations of the previous regime.

They are only able to sell more confidence and more competence in pursuing the same general strategy at a time when decisive radical reverses may be required in the face of a determined Tory challenge with a cogent 'social capital' theory underpinning it.

Some Leftists (ironically those further to the Left) believe that a full centre-left programme could capture a candidate from the New Labour centre-right. They are deluded.

The rhetoric might change but the programme of centralised executive authority, international liberalism, market economics and market solutions to social problems would remain core to New Labour.

The only addition might be the odd populist crumb thrown to the seething masses to keep them placid until the good times returned.

Such a strategy might well, of course, be sufficient to restore the Labour's fortunes but the fact is that New Labour and the Tories are now fighting over the same terrain on level terms for the first time in over a decade.

Of course, Johnson would bring the trades union bloc as moderate partner in a truly ‘Labour Party’, while Miliband would bring the progressive model that is attractive to the internationalist Left. But neither is innovative or radical.

The Weakness of Gordon Brown

The bottom line is that New Labour is going through a major crisis that is not only electoral but ideological.

It is a crisis that will probably develop to become a major internal struggle immediately after rather than before the next Election, unless the Prime Minister has the wisdom to allow it to be fought out quickly and decisively in advance.

But Brown failed to have the courage to put himself up to a challenge from McDonnell in the summer of 2007 (which he would easily have won).

He then failed to endorse his position in a snap election which he might well have won, especially in the early stages of the credit crisis when electors would have sought security in the devil they knew.

The accusations of dithering since those failures of nerve seem to confirm a picture of a politician without the risk-taking and decisive characteristics necessary in party politics.

He waited a decade to get the top job and now it looks as if he is hanging on to it regardless of the interests of either Party or nation.

The Brown Government will probably muddle through to defeat, to a minority Government or to a Government in which a small left-wing rump has disproportionate and electorally disruptive influence.

What New Labour (under Brown) cannot realistically expect is the same level of authority that it has had in the recent past unless international conditions and skilled political management remove current fears and uncertainties.

Conclusion

The neo-liberal authoritarian right remains the political core of Britain much as it does in most of those Western countries with irrational aspirations to international status and a middle class hungry for property and profit - but there are two caveats.

The first is that concentration of power on the centre-right is accentuated by the electoral system so that electoral reform must return to centre-stage in Left analyses.

In fact, even now, New Labour and Liberal Democrat votes still exceed Tory votes nationally. It is only the vagaries of the First Past The Post System [FPTP] that stop the creation of a permanent and dominant real centre-left coalition emerging.

FPTP has played a central role in driving New Labour towards the Right and then trapping it there as, in all but name, a European conservative party rather than democratic socialist party, one often operating against the majority libertarian instincts of the public.

The second is a corollary of this - the British are more socially liberal than other European nation and certainly more so than the US (which is a factor picked up on by Cameron and may yet propel him to power).

The paradox of a basically liberal country with its politics permanently lodged in a battle for ground more appropriate to the authoritarian right suggests a serious tension that is in-built into British constitutional arrangements.

As we have noted before, New Labour as it was and the Tory Party as it claims to be are operating broadly within the same policy parameters, adopting a libertarian social and economic policy but avoiding democratic reform and using authoritarian rhetoric when required.

If the Tories get to power, all that will change will be a bias towards the South rather than the North and towards middle class prejudices rather than working class needs.

Otherwise, it will be a further moderation of a settlement made during the Thatcher Revolution. The social democracy that emerged between 1940 and its collapse in the 1970s will look more and more like a historical 'blip'.

This past will be inspiring to some perhaps but only in the sense that the political revolution of 1640 to 1660 is inspiring - so that a legacy of a welfare state built on market solutions will be our social equivalent to the democracy of propertied interests that emerged after 1688.

Better but not really good enough. In short, the Labour Left may be in the position of Puritan Republicans in the Age of Queen Anne - on the verge of extinction, living in the past but not yet realising that their time had passed.

The massive correction under way in the global market will now face the current and next Government with some very serious problems that may disproportionately affect the middle classes of the South.

This alone suggests a lurch to market populism and against ‘prudence’ if a Government is to survive – Northern Rock may only be the beginning.

That same correction may also demonstrate a national inability to sustain Great Power status overseas. This will shame an incumbent more than a incomer who can claim that failures overseas are due to previous policies and not to the intrinsic weaknesses of the State.

None of the political class has yet fully come to terms with these changes or, perhaps more accurately, found a way to give the bad news to electors.

Sectoral demands, populist policies and failures overseas will create their own crises (albeit not terminal) for the current political system in the first half of the next decade.

The longer that New Labour remains in power, then the higher the chance that it may become unelectable in future because, like Herbert Hoover's administration in 1929, it lacks the ability to move outside its recent history. It is, in summary, played out.

On the other hand, the longer that the British Left loses itself in the New Labour project without developing a transformative alternative, then the more likely that it will not exist in the century ahead as anything that would have been recognisable to a twentieth century Leftist, perhaps as anything at all.

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We now have two thirds of the results of the British local government elections and we are waiting for the outcome of the London Mayoral contest.

Expectations of New Labour success were so low that anything better than 100 council seat losses was going to be regarded as a good result for Labour - of course, the survival of Mayor Livingstone might still allow some face-saving.

In fact, New Labour did much worse in the country at large. The small parties did not do well and the Tories made inroads into the North from which they had been effectively excluded since the landslide to New Labour in 1997.

With only two thirds of results declared, New Labour was already down by 163 local council seats and the voting was (at this stage) 44% Tory, 25% Liberal Democrat and an appalling 24% for New Labour on a 35% turnout (much the same as last year).

The battle for London is essentially a struggle between Tory suburbs (Johnson) and New Labour inner city (Livingstone). Elsewhere the polling is taken as referendum on Gordon Brown and David Cameron as Party Leaders.

As we write, Livingstone and Johnson are neck and neck but a win for Livingstone, an old political enemy of Brown’s, may suggest that a strong traditional labour and left wing position in the cities might do better electorally than New Labour’s neo-conservatism.

Many Labour voters and activists have still not fully understood the degree to which New Labour represents traditional, even radical, conservative space on the political compass.

They have remained naively seduced by a common tribal history into believing that when they vote Labour, they are voting for a party of the centre-left.

But forget the ‘spin’ from either side, what is really happening here is that normal politics is resuming. The Tories are learning to recapture the soft centre ground and economics has become an issue as anxieties drive people back to more traditional left and right positions.

The Left, in this context, is split between authoritarian (New Labour) and libertarian (Liberal Democrat) parties of now equal strength, whereas a Tory nationalist and a Tory libertarian can still feel tolerably happy within Cameron's Party.

Cameron has thus not really moved to the Left at all (despite some attempts to portray him as doing so), he has merely embraced the strong libertarian element in society which shares its space with an important part of the Left.

The story now is that New Labour has lost working class votes on economic matters [the 10p tax rate is only one part of this general distrust] while left-libertarian voters have abstained or are effectively on strike.

This has pushed New Labour into third or near-third place, depending on the final result.

Meanwhile, anecdotal evidence suggests that union militancy is growing - especially under the new Unite banner. Many left-libertarian activists are migrating into the Green Party (especially in London) or into a vague sort of limbo where the talk is of new movements and parties.

Although there are a few old soldiers involved in this world of street protest and grassroots discussion, the truth is that the Generation of 68 is now thoroughly past it and seen, quite rightly, as history. 

This new liveliness on the Left is coming almost entirely from students and under-30s.  There are similar movements in Europe.

New Labour is now squeezed on two fronts – it no longer convinces on the Right and patience has run out on the Left. It would seem that triangulation can last for a period but when it breaks down, it really does break down completely.

On the one side, the centre ground will find further reasons to move to the Tories or to the Liberal Democrats if New Labour appears to concede too much to the workerist Left.

On the other, while workers will come home to New Labour if they get economic concessions, the libertarian Left is strongly tempted to other solutions rather than remain with a failed New Labour project.

In some ways, the trades unions have the greatest problem of all - no different from that in other countries where balancing the need to deal with the establishment and with street ideological movements are perennial choices.

The squaring of street rebellion, worker demands and the good governance of the State is far more serious in Cairo than in London - but that does not make it trivial in London.

This will eventually lead to a Tory Government because all three of the players, 'street', trades unions and political establishment, not merely distrust each other but are now all making excessive demands on each other.

Can Gordon Brown recover ground? He can patch things up here and there. Perhaps the economic down turn will not be so bad and will hit only people who will vote Tory in any case. Perhaps the Tory and Liberal Democrat leaderships will implode.

Anything is possible in politics. But the fundamentals do not look good and it is not entirely his fault. He was left a poisoned chalice by his predecessor (though the Blairites will never admit to this) and he has fallen between stools. 

He could have maintained an authoritarian stance and treated the Left like dirt (as Blair did) or he could have used the opportunity to organize a 'new' New Labour coalition.

A re-triangulation of the Party could have taken libertarian ground from Cameron and from the Liberal Democrats and re-engaged the working population in the Labour Project before the trades unions did.

The economic crisis, Iraq and Afghanistan could have been opportunities for dramatic acts to establish a new ‘ten year vision’. Sadly, Gordon Brown raised expectations and then fell back into the Blair model, only more so. 

Without Blair's authority or charisma, he permitted internal factionalism to emerge and took the Party for granted (although Blair’s neglect had already brought it to the edge of organizational and financial implosion).

The only thing that can save him now is if all the people treated like dirt by Blair decide to forgive and forget and if all workers decide to make economic sacrifices. It is just not going to happen like that.

So, in less than a year, Brown has squandered Blair’s legacy, always the legacy of a master illusionist in any case. Like the banking system, Blairism required a willing suspension of belief.

The Tories are now back in pole position, they are moving North again, the ‘progressives’ are split into authoritarian and libertarian camps and are about to go to war with one another and the economy is decidedly dodgy. The Prime Minister should probably resign.

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For the gloom merchants widespread rumours of capital-raising initiatives by the allegedly weaker elements in the British banking system and the job losses announced by Citigroup are proof that we are on the slide.

However, these are all special cases and it is not yet proven that things will turn out as badly  as some of our more depressive Marxists might like to think – although each bit of news is certainly a blow to confidence in the economy.

Job Losses in the Financial Sector

If any major financial group was going to slash jobs, it was always going to be Citigroup. It is only surprising that a cost-cutting survival plan with over 1,000 or more jobs going in London (probably 10,000, perhaps very much more, worldwide) has taken nearly four months to put together after the arrival of Chief Executive Vikram Pandit.

A mini-fire sale by the bank also includes the sell-off of non-core businesses like Diners Club. Meanwhile, Merrill Lynch is slashing 4,000 jobs worldwide and most of Bear Stearns 14,000 jobs are likely to go under its new owners JP Morgan Chase.

The City is undoubtedly nervous. A JP Morgan survey suggests that there might be up to 40,000 job losses in the capital, affecting the suburban areas and surrounding small commuter towns, with 28,000 of these in the financial sector – a higher estimate than any to date.

Rumours about the need to raise capital in the UK have also tended to float around some very specific institutions with some very specific recent histories.

Royal Bank of Scotland has been stretched by its (with hindsight) probably ill-advised bid for ABN-Amro, while Bradford & Bingley, which has vigorously denied rumours in the Sunday papers, was on the list because it probably excessively (again, with hindsight) involved itself in the buy-to-let market.

The buy-to-let market will one day be a a case study in a type of Government social engineering through the market and on the cheap that now looks thoroughly inappropriate. Government just does not get it - housing provision requires direct government investment.

Undoubtedly, there are serious capital issues in the sector. These must eventually lead to restructuring and significant job losses, but there is no reason for panic at this stage by any means – unless, of course, you are employed in the sector and you have mortgaged yourself up to the hilt on cheap credit.

Serious For Some - Especially Politicians

Decades of ‘fat cat’ comfort for some of the top slice of the City are going to end soon. Many former bankers will be living off past bonuses to survive and a plethora of ‘boutiques’ will emerge as unemployed bankers try to reinvent themselves as ‘consultants’ and work their contact base.

But most of the job losses in the sector are ordinary Joes and Janets struggling to survive as does all the English middle class. They will already be stretched to the limit, with the prospect of pulling kids out of private school and hoping that a two-income family does not become a none income one if they are ‘overweight’ in the sector.

So the matter is serious, very serious, but not yet terminal. Gordon Brown has insisted that the economy remains his ‘sole focus’ – albeit just before he is off to the United States to discuss foreign policy!

Confidence has not been enhanced by the news that Minister of Trade Digby Jones – not a Party member and former head of the CBI – has indicated that he will step down before the next election.

Whatever the actual motives, it does appear (probably unfairly) like a rodent planning on his leap to safety as a floating vessel starts to take on water.

Brown has also jumped on the Western band wagon by blaming the oil producers for inflation and so (by implication) the inability of the Bank of England to cut interest rates and ease the lending crisis. Producer inflation has now hit a 17-year high.

Is It A Sectoral Correction - Or The Quiet Before The Perfect Storm?

It should be said that there is no sign of problems in employment, although the economy was probably overheating as the credit crisis struck, sucking in migrants who may now return home without affecting the employment figures.

In a services economy, so long as the recession is shallow and no increases in wages are demanded, there may be a phenomenon called ‘talent hoarding’ in which companies squeeze elsewhere to keep good people. If so, the bulk of the English may just get by.

Yet, there are all sorts of odd effects of the global crisis that create doubts about even this sanguine model. 

High rice prices are already forcing the closure of small restaurants in the immigrant East End and those unemployed are unlikely to leave the country, given its welfare system.

Regardless of the optimists' view that recent high levels of growth has created some fat to live off, other indicators (retail sales and the housing market, as well as possible credit effects on small business and on the marketing sector) can be taken together to give a very different picture. 

What The Banks Want

The banks are lobbying Government at the very highest levels to take more vigorous action to unblock the money markets. Gordon Brown met with leading bankers on 15 April and it was reported that he was persuaded of the seriousness of the situation.

The smaller building societies have been saying that they were close to abandoning the provision of new mortgages.

This would mean (so say the banks) that the 47% of the market provided by the specialized lenders and the societies would be eaten into by the banks (and this would be a very bad thing say the banks). Beware of bankers bringing gifts!

We suspect that, if market principles apply, all that would happen would be that the building society sector would rationalize for scale and that overseas banks would enter the market to fill any gaps that might appear (and perhaps this is the banking sector’s real bugaboo).

The bankers want the Bank of England to follow other Central Banks in accepting mortgage-backed securities as collateral in exchange for government backed bonds. There have been signs that the Bank of England agreed with the banks and now just needs Government backing.

Housing Sector Fears

Indeed, some of the ‘nightmare’ coverage on the housing situation might (just might) be down to cynical scare PR from those who want action – there is 'spin' that the housing outlook is slumping towards 1970s levels. In fact, it is not yet as bad as the early 1990s.

The problem in Britain is essentially two-fold (placing the separate concern about commodity-fuelled inflation to one side): lack of demand for mortgage-backed securities; and very high inter-bank lending rates.

Apart from general nervousness about the future in the country, the political problem is that the system seems broke and the public do not want to see good taxpayer money go after bad while the banks are unable or unwilling to pass on mortgage rate cuts, designed to deal with the interbank problem, to consumers.

The Government is also taking the blame for the crisis amongst the public, giving the banks far more leeway than they deserve. Brown’s first response has been to follow the standard New Labour path of trying to twist a government concession into a bit of social engineering. 

He says that the Government might well intervene in the market but that banks would have to respond by giving preference to first time buyers and those having difficulty getting mortgages. This is so typically New Labour.

The intention is redistributive or rather preferential to the poorer (though not the poor as such), but it is in danger of compounding the original problem by diverting credit into the hands of the less creditworthy (by ‘capitalist’ standards) and then underwriting the risk with middle class taxpayers’ funds.

Political Position-Taking

This legerdemain might get past the public if the crisis subsides but it will need some arguing through and might be thrown back in the face of the Government if it fails to turn the tide.

The Tories appear to want the Government to intervene and appear to be falling into the trap of supporting this redistribution (lest they look like the bankers’ friend).

The Liberal Democrats, on the other hand, are in danger of appearing as if they do not understand how the system works and will deprive the ‘respectable’ working classes of a ‘break’ simply because they want to go for the jugular of the bankers as root cause of the crisis.

Once again, Gordon Brown is showing that, as much as he is strategically flawed, he still remains tactically clever.

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