The IMF's damning verdict

Via the Coffee House we have this story about just what the IMF thinks about the state of our economy. So Gordon's story of us being best placed to comeout of this recession is revealed as just more bunkum from this truly awful Prime Minister. From the devastaing story I have this:

The IMF also suggests (p xiii) that a further $250bn of capital will be needed for UK banks. Don't expect to see any of this in the Budget - this is the truth that dare not speak its name. It is airbrushed out, there will be small print in tomorrow's Budget saying "excluding financial interventions". As the IMF makes crystal clear, this is anything but a footnote. The £190 bn figure is for what is described by the IMF report (p45) as "net costs of direct support to banks, expected eventual costs of guarantees; and costs, net of recoveries, of central bank liquidity provision." When all is done and dusted, flogged and floated, the UK banking crisis will go down in history as the biggest fiscal disaster in peacetime history. And the Brown-Balls tripartite bank regulation system will go down as perhaps the biggest single calamity in modern UK economic history

Meanwhile across at the centre of Gordon's nest of trickery what are they doing, no, not working out a way fix all these problem, oh no, they are trying to blow a smokescreen over all the bad news by concentrating on MP's expenses.

Now whilst this is a worthy endeavour, it is really nothing for Gordon Brown to get involved in. This is something that Parliament must sort out itself, and not something that Gordon should be deciding on.

However what we do get out out of this is one of the strangest ever performances by a Politician I have ever seen. The video shown below is just downright strange. As the erstwhile Dr Crippen says:

I have in the past been chided for speculating about the Prime Minister's mental capacity but this odd concatenation of "la belle indifference" bordering on anosodiaphoria with inappropriate smiles, and the odd dyskinetic gesticulations does make one wonder if he is playing from a full deck of cards. Maybe the video was released without his permission.

When I first watched this, I start to laugh, but then I realised this is the person who is supposedly running our country. I didn't laugh for long. Nick "Toenails" Robinson of the BBC has this to say on his blog about Gordon's decision to do this.

At first, Gordon Brown insisted that the question of how to reform MPs' expenses was a matter for Parliament not for him or the government.

Indeed, when proposals very similar to those he's outlined today were defeated in the Commons, he missed the vote and many of his colleagues backed the status quo.

Later, he called for an enquiry to report after the election.

Then, under pressure, he brought forward the timetable but rejected calls for him and other party leaders to lead the way to reform.

The anger generated by the home secretary's claim for the cost of an adult movie watched by her husband seems finally to have convinced Mr Brown that - fairly or not - he was getting the blame for a system that the public regards with anger and contempt.

Proposing reform and getting it agreed is, of course, a very different matter and will require many, many MPs - and not just the prime minister himself - to perform a U-turn.

The IMF's damning verdict | Coffee House