Gordon Brown: I made a big mistake on banks

Rochdale_Pioneers

I think that Brown has been consistent with his message. "I got regulation wrong" he rightly points out. He also says "as did virtually every other government, regulator and city expert". If he made a mistake, and he absolutely did, he was in very esteemed company.

I wonder if Chancellor Osborne, elected in the Autumn 2007 election after Brown called the election and narrowly lost, would have been as open. Remember that Tory policy was to deregulate the city further, grow the bubble further, and let the likes of Northern Rock do what they liked. For all the abuse thrown at Brown for making the same mistake as the rest of the world, lets not forget that the Tories advised him to not only make those mistakes but abused him for not going even further and making even worse mistakes.

No government is perfect, but the clarity of the revisionist history spouted by the current encumbents of the Treasury is Goebels like perfection.

kabayiri

My biggest problem with Gordon's time as chancellor and PM ?

A period of relative inaction. The smokescreen provided by the uber-whizzy financial sector generating amazing profits from nowhere allowed the administration to rest easy on their laurels.

Despite a 13 year term, they :-
- did nothing to improve the rail transport network, which remains shambolic, private or otherwise
- failed to long term plan for the demise of gas and oil as power sources. France realised a long time ago they would need nuclear. We are responding a decade too late
- failed to retune our burgeoning graduate numbers to focus on engineering and science skills. I doubt China will be quaking at having to compete with thousands of "creative dance graduates"
- failed to address the pensions issue. Don't like the Frank Fields report? Why....just sweep him under the carpet and pretend it never happened.

However, the quality of our modern politician is so shockingly low that I doubt the current incumbents will do that much better. We deserve much better.

ILW

[quote=[Deleted User];42740664]His mistake re the banks was to trust them to behave responsibly if regulation was reduced.

The mistake of both our current and former government was not to punish the people in the banks that caused the problems in the first case.[/QUOTE]

How would you suggest punishing them?

IronWolf

It's all too easy to condemn the man, but a lot of the politicians scoring points off him now never once called for bank regulation, or cuts to spending.

Everyones an expert with hindsight but only a handful of politicians actually saw it coming.

It amazes me how much money we really waste in this country. When you look at Scotland and Wales, Scotland has no tuition fees, and both have no prescription charge. Yet we have increasing charges, and make graduates pay £9k a year. Where is all this money going, if Scotland can afford it, then we can, these are core areas we need to be spending in, health and education.

ILW

IronWolf wrote: »

It's all too easy to condemn the man, but a lot of the politicians scoring points off him now never once called for bank regulation, or cuts to spending.

Everyones an expert with hindsight but only a handful of politicians actually saw it coming.

It amazes me how much money we really waste in this country. When you look at Scotland and Wales, Scotland has no tuition fees, and both have no prescription charge. Yet we have increasing charges, and make graduates pay £9k a year. Where is all this money going, if Scotland can afford it, then we can, these are core areas we need to be spending in, health and education.

Scotland can afford it because they get given free money by England.

Graham_Devon

WISHIWASRICH wrote: »

Big congats to the present bunch who have eroded the purchasing power of the pound at record rates. :T:T:T

The Coalition Rocks!

Errr. That happened under labour.

Since the coalition have been in power, it hasn't been anywhere near the low that it was under labour.

Not that it has much to do with the party that's in power anyway.

ninky_2

gordon brown said this ages ago....in fact he said it at the time.

ninky_2

IronWolf wrote: »

Where is all this money going, if Scotland can afford it, then we can, these are core areas we need to be spending in, health and education.

scotland doesn't have to pay for defence. it also has its spending budget assigned rather than have to account for it all through taxation of its own population.

Radiantsoul

Whilst I suspect it is true that with the benefit of hindsight banks ought to have been regulated more I doubt any government would have done so. The finance sector was generating a lot of wealth and claimed to be diversifying risk.The narrative seemed to be that much risk was being channelled from high street banks to pension funds and other longer term investments. Few seemed to really understand that the risk was merely being recycled back into the banking system.

grimsalve

Gordon Brown has been quiet for a while, and now this admission? Has he got a book coming out or something?

I'm not defending him but the thing is, if Gordon Brown hadn't made those regulation changes then everyone would have been blaming him for the UK missing out on the "boom" a few years back. If anyone else had been chancellor at the time then they probably would have done exactly the same thing.

If the UK had been fully in control of the regulations then the banks would have just gone elsewhere... and we'd still have ended up bailing out other countries, still have been lumbered with the recession, etc.

I still think Blair, Brown, Darling, etc. have a lot to answer for though.