New Labour encouraged every aspect of this avarice by Mark Steel

Mark Steel

The people who couldn't see what was obvious are allowed to carry on.


The real point about a minister saying this is the worst economic crisis for 100 years, is it shows they haven't got a clue. That figure was plucked out of nowhere, unless there was a really dreadful crisis in 1909 that no one ever noticed before. Maybe the minister's just seen Mary Poppins, and the scene where the bank goes bust, he thinks is footage of a real financial crash.


So his next statement to Parliament will be "In order to steady the financial markets we are proposing tuppence tuppence tuppence a bag, feed the birds, tuppence a bag. THAT is the sound economic sense that can rescue our banks, rather than the ill-thought-out soundbites from the party opposite."


Why not say it's the worst for 2,000 years, when the great crash of 9AD was caused by the gross overvaluation of aqueducts? Or the worst for 65 million years, when the Jurassic currency disaster led to bankers throwing themselves from the top of brontosaureses, followed by the eventual disappearance of all dinosaurs, despite the Prime Minister having boasted: "We have finally put an end to the cycle of evolution and extinction."


Next week a minister will announce that the Bank of England has revised its forecasts, and instead of the crisis getting as bad as diarrhoea, as it first thought, it now expects it could be as bad as gastroenteritis, and the IMF believe it could even reach the point where it's like one of those days when it's coming out of both ends at once. But with careful fiscal handling this should be easing by the last quarter of 2010.


You have to admire the front of these ministers for saying anything at all about what's happening, given they insisted for years there would never ever again ever be a cycle of boom and bust.


Similarly an army of experts assured us on a daily basis that this boom couldn't possibly crash like previous booms because this boom was still going on whereas all previous ones had ended, and previous booms were founded on a manic belief that wealth could go up and up without any basis in reality, whereas this one was built on the sound footing that everything really is somehow suddenly worth twice as much so TAKE AS MUCH AS YOU CAN RIGHT NOW IT CAN'T EVER STOP!!!


For example, one of the bankers questioned yesterday said it was "not possible to envisage" the banking crash. But in every office, every pub, every launderette, there were people who managed to envisage exactly that. If Gordon Brown had got them to write his chancellor's speech, so that it went: "The bubble's got to burst sometime. I mean, you can't base an economy on pretending everything's doubled in value, and who's going to pay for these bankers' bonuses – WE are, that's who. I commend this budget to the House," he might not be in his present trouble.


Instead the people who couldn't possibly envisage what was obvious are allowed to carry on. To be fair, ministers have expressed their annoyance at the bankers' bonus system, so presumably there will now be a series of adverts in which a furtive banker buys a boat, while the camera zooms in to his sweaty face and a voice says: "Banking cheats – we're closing in."


One answer may be a review of how this bonus system came about. As if the Government's making out it's only just heard about it and they're as outraged as everyone else. Maybe Brown will make a statement to the nation in which he says: "HOW much do they pay themselves? Well no WONDER we're in a pickle, you just wait 'til I get my hands on them."


But New Labour urged and encouraged every aspect of this corporate avarice. It was defined from the beginning by characters like Mandelson making speeches such as: "In the modern Labour Party we are relaxed about those who express an insatiable and pathological desire for self-enrichment at the expense of our fellow man that borders on the truly evil."


They grovelled to every banker, and now they want to set up a review to see how that happened. If only Karen Matthews had thought about it, she could have said: "Instead of going to jail, why don't I set up a review to see how I kidnapped my own daughter," and got herself six months' work.

First published in The Independent on 11th February 2009