Last updated 11:22, Thursday, 27 November 2008

Nothing sticks in the craw quite as much as the image of Gordon Brown playing the role of saviour of the world’s economy.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown

Clearly the current state of the world’s finances, and its impact here in Britain, is not the sole responsibility of the Prime Minister.

But let’s not allow Brown to escape all responsibility for his profligacy during the years of plenty.

And right now it would be infinitely more convincing than a modest cut in VAT if we could believe that the Government was about to slash its own bloated public sector wastefulness.

No doubt jobs in the private sector will continue to be created while unemployment in the private sector goes on rising. This is a government which simply can’t get enough of bureacracy.

We are living in a society which penalises the hard working and the producers and encourages the non-contributors and wasters.

And what we have witnessed this week is a return to old style socialism, turning on the entrepreneurs and employers who will be needed if we are to get the country’s business life moving again.

Don’t be fooled by Brown’s Fairy Godmother image. He will endeavour to spin and spend his way out of the recession and rest assured you and me will eventually have a heavy price to pay for it.

The great con is that he and Alistair Darling are simply lending us our own money and trying to convince us that a trivial VAT gift will get us all spending money and running up credit bills for the festive season.

Forgive my confusion, but I thought the excessive availability of credit, money we could never pay back, was one of the problems in the first place. So why is the Chancellor urging us to spend, spend, spend now?

We desperately need the Tories to come up with some credible alternatives, but despite his efforts this week, I don’t see Shadow Chancellor George Osborne as the man to do it.

Osborne did a reasonable job in the House of Commons this week, but he simply doesn’t carry the authority of a big beast like one of his predecessors, Kenneth Clarke, or Lib Dem financial expert Vince Cable.

David Cameron will be loathe to move aside Osborne, who has been his loyal sidekick.But the Tory leader must bite the bullet and bring back someone like Clarke, if only as a short term measure to challenge those on the opposite side of the dispatch box.

This week has effectively marked the end of New Labour and seen the end of the “no more boom and bust” pretence.

Something had to be done to address the financial crisis, but what we have had this week verges on foolhardly gambling by a man who once laid such stress on prudence.

The Tories must not allow misplaced loyalty to their Shadow Chancellor to prevent them from installing someone of real stature to challenge what the Government is currently risking with our money and our futures.