Gordon Brown - banker

Wat Tyler at Burning Our Money is coruscating today. He muses on (among other things) why Brown has snuggled up to the bankers over the years.

Here's what I wrote on BoM.

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Why did Brown snuggle up to the bankers? Well, your reasons of course, but also to wipe out the memory of the Foot/Kinnock years and because it was a sure-fire POLITICAL way to persuade conservative-ish voters, warily familiar with that roll-call of disastrous Labour governments, that the next one would be different:

This time, they said, you will see that we have truly learned the value to society of capitalist markets and institutions. We happily break bread with bankers. Often. We are even going to scrub Clause Four to show you that we will not even be a socialist party in any meaningful sense. Trust us.

They would set up black propaganda about Blair being a closet Tory, to reinforce the subliminal message. Anything you want. Snake oil in all flavours - New Labour’s speciality. It was a great fat political lie concocted for one reason: to gain power. Nothing more. The biggest political lie of the 20th century after Arbeit Macht Frei. And once in power, the lie was repeated, to retain that power.

The reality of the markets remains a mystery to Dr Brown, socialist historian and economics amateur. His deep incomprehension of how capitalism works, intimately connected as it is with his tribal hatred of capitalists, has been his undoing.

When the markets are rebuilt as they will be, it being the way of things, Brown will be no more than a chastening and rather unpleasant chapter in a history book which future Labour power-seekers will forget to read.