“No we can't!”

Bob the Builder’s gleeful cry “Yes we can!” isn’t matched by Brown the Banker, unfortunately for the UK-taxpayer.

Bob the Builder’s gleeful cry “Yes we can!” isn’t matched by Brown the Banker, unfortunately for the UK-taxpayer: when he says, “Yes we can!” it’s tin-hat time for the rest of us. Let’s just examine his record on his state bail-outs, which he knew all along would land him in the EU Competition Commissioner’s kangaroo court.

First up is Northern Wreck, where Lloyds-TSB offered to take on the whole mess on Day One in exchange for a £30.0 billion 3-year HM Treasury guarantee, a simple, neat and workable solution. Brown refused immediately, nationalized the bank, injected billions and is now looking at a loss for the taxpayer of up to £20.0 billion, as what’s left of the bank is to be split into good/bad banks under EU supervision, with him having to put in another £27.0 billion. Let’s give him what he deserves, 0/10, for that one.

Then he wades in and saves the two totally busted Scottish banks, RBS and HBOS. The taxpayer owns 80% of RBS and 43% of HBUST via Lloyds Banking Group. Via Lloyds? Yes, Brown managed to sponsor Lloyds-TSB’s utterly mad bid for HBOS by promising to wave the EU competition rules, but now the EU Competition Commissioner has ordered Brown to put up another £43.0 billion into the Scottish banking disaster. It’s 0/10 again for Brown on both these two counts as well.

Let’s put this additional “rescue money” into perspective for a minute. When Brown became Chancellor in 1997, the PSBR was just £19.0 billion, whereas today it is over £800.0 billion this year; in 1997/8, general government expenditure was £308.5 billion, but today is well over twice that figure, as the State now accounts for over half of total GDP.

The really pathetic item was last fortnight’s spat with Mervyn King’s Bank of England: King spoke in Edinburgh about the need to break up the ‘Too-Big-To-Fail’ banks; No. 10 was furious and said that was not government policy; but the next week the EU Competiton Commissioner steps in and did just that, ordering these banking groups to be broken up.

And Brown was ordered to pony up another £43.0 billion for these two banks alone – I bet he never thought that would happen when he signed that Lisbon Treaty after dark, the one his government promised us a referendum on. Brown gets 0/10 again, for not even knowing what’s going on in, or not in, his own government.

Brown’s banking and budgetary disasters make him by far the worst Chancellor in Britain’s history, and his time as PM means he is the bookies favourite for worst PM of all time as well. Brown has simply lost control of everything he touches, whether it’s the nation’s finances, the war in Afghanistan where he can’t even mobilize helicopters that we have had for years, immigration, social order, the social security budget, the hopeless sale of half our gold reserves, the endless bureaucracy flowing from the EU, you name it and he’s lost it. Anyone voting for this buffoon at the next election needs their head examined.