Shame on you John Humphreys

For 13 years Gordon Brown spent more money on the welfare state than he raised in revenue.

End of story.

At the end of the period, we had a meltdown in the financial markets. When you add the cost of that bailout to the growing deficit Gordon was building we had a disaster.
Simple as that. A DISASTER.

I am a big fun of the Today Programme - all readers know that. I am a big fan of John Humphreys too. All readers know that. I am also a big fan of holding politicians accountable. There can be no doubt that readers know that! Iam not even a big fan of Nick Clegg! (Although i did of course vote Lib Dem this time...)

BUT John was out of order today in his Clegg interview. The flimsy guise of holding the coalition accountable for the details of the plan soon fell away and the idea of driving a wedge between Clegg and his party became the raison d'etre of the whole interview.

John didn't want to discuss the massive structural deficit. he wanted to play Westminster insider.

Yes John - actually most voters want the rich to pay more. But we live in a real world and Gordon brown certainly never had the rich paying more. It wasn't long ago that he was opening Lehman Bros new london office and telling the cowboys how much of a debt this nation owed them!

The Old Labour Party experimented with 85% and 92% income tax on high earners. And large numbers of them fled the country and paid what tax they did pay to California instead.

I for one would like every penny the tax payer handed to Jonathon Ross and Russel Howard (via the BBC paymaster) handed back to help cut the deficit.

But that isn't going to happen either.

What you did John was the equivalent of sitting down with Winston after his "fight them on the beaches" speech and saying:
"Well you have got the war you always wanted Winston, but really shouldn't we just surrender? After all the brunt of the fighting will be felt by the poorest people in the country. Wouldn't it be better to just let Hitler have a go? Less pain all round."

You might not think the structural deficit is that big a crisis, but it is. And it isn't going to be sorted out without a lot of sacrifice. And it cannot be sorted out without huge doses of political courage by our elected leaders.

It is time to start valuing leadership and not sniping at it.

Yes I would like the rich to pay more. But I don't think any real plan to raise higher rates of tax for high earners actually generates real revenue for the treasury overall... it never has in the past.

Gordon Brown spent the money and didn't make the rich pay did he? Because he knew it was an election loser. He believed in the investment bank fairy tale that future revenues would pay for what gordon spent today.

Well more fool him. And more fool the idiots who voted for him.

Sure life isn't fair, but it wasn't Nick Clegg and David cameron who created the structural deficit, it was the Labour Party.

And the BBC trying to score cheap points off the government while ignoring the REAL issue, which is the impending bankruptcy of the nation is scandalous.

Comments

[Robin Preston]

Unusual as it may be, I have to agree with what has been said by Bozo today. I felt that all Humphreys did today was reinforce my view that it is time he retired and left the Toady programme in the capable hands of the younger, new guard. Humphreys showed that he not capable of dealing with the reality of the "new politics" and like so many of his generation is lost at sea when it comes to making a valuable contribution to the debate. He was incapable of finding anything constructive to say, and was only interested in petty point scoring for no particular purpose. I thought that Nick Clegg did very well to maintain his cool in the face of such obvious past-it-journalism, and was a credit to those that believe that co-operative politics is the new age!