Any day now, Gordon Brown may (for political reasons) nationalise the world's largest and third largest corporations in balance sheet terms - RBS and Barclays.
Together, they are worth many multiples of the UK's entire economy. How many? Oh, I forget (waves hand airily). I have read so many eye-watering figures in the past week that I can't even blink, now, rather like the Chancellor on speak-your-weight mode in the Commons the other day when Hon. Members slept through his droned announcement of... something or other that was utterly unthinkable and had a lot of noughts in it.
But not to worry, eh? According to the FT, Britain's debt has been just as high before, without Britain defaulting into actual bankruptcy. Last time we did that was, apparently, in the Dark Ages.
So it's time travel, folks, backwards. Fasten your seat belts because we shall be travelling very fast.
Our first stop will be the 1970s, with nationalised means of exchange (and soon, of production... who actually needs a Clause Four?), shortages, public sector strikes, breakdown of essential services, power cuts, a currency collapse, arrival of the IMF and all the joys of modern Labour government.
We skip past the 1940s and rationing, going directly to the 1930s, with mass unemployment and homelessness, a dysfunctional banking system and the all-round heartbreak one associates with a Great Downturn Depression. Buddy Can You Spare a Dime will top the charts.
After that, the 1920s, with no functioning public services to speak of, a decent education for a lucky few, medicine for those who can afford it, high child mortality rates from lots of interesting diseases, the doctors owning all the cars because no-one else can afford them, and finally a General Strike and hunger marches when the electorate decides it won't take it any more. Oh - and inter-racial violence.
We may pause for a while around 1914, as the odd revolution and a few wars break out in Europe. We'll see when we get there. Let's hope that not too many millions die.
Our last-but-one stop will be the 1800s - the last time Britain's national debt reached Brownian levels. This is the heyday of the stews of London and raging pox, wars with France, bloody revolutions - oh, and slavery. Lovely.
And our last stop, ladies and gentlemen, will be the Britain of the Dark Ages, the last time this poor bloody (sic) country of ours - a very different place now which, I'm afraid, you will not like at all - defaulted on its debt.
So thank you, Labour, and good night.
But before we go, let us have the invaluable Wat Tyler spell it out for us once again, lest we forget.
Labour governments always always ALWAYS end in economic disaster.
- Ramsay McDonald - economic disaster
- Clement Attlee - economic disaster
- Harold Bloody Wislon - economic disaster
- Jim Callaghan - economic disaster
- Bliar/Brown - economic disaster
See? See the pattern?
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