Economic competence wiped out after just six months.

After nearly eleven years in power, Alistair Darling destroyed any confidence the public had left in Labour's running of the economy with five months of dithering, and making decisions based on socialist principles instead of busines ones. The nationalisation of Northern rock cannot possible be seen as anything other than a disaster, even bigger than that of the tories "black Wednesday" all those years ago. In fact, Labour has constantly used the Black Wednesday rhetoric since that day, as their justification for being allowed to run the economy.

But let us not forget the financial facts in this case BLack Wednesday was when the then Chancellorm Norman Lamont, lost his battle to keep the pound in the very tight Exchange Rate Mechanism. A mechnaism that left very little room for manoeuvre by any european economy at that point. The failure of that battle to keep the pound in the ERM cost the British tax payer a mere £10billion! A mere drop in the ocean to the £110billion (possibly more) that the nationalisation of Northern Rock will now cost the taxpayer.

So how did we get into this mess? Well it's partly thanks to Gordon Brown playing party politics, and the rest to Darling's dithering.

The first alarm bells starting ringing as Gordon Brown took over as Prime Minister with Rock issuing profit warnings around the same time. However the Government didn't look into the developing problem as they were too busy hyping up a possible election. But, when the balloon went up, so to speak, and Northern Rock hit the buffers (how many more clichés ! - Ed) Darling didn't act with the net result being the first run on a bank in living memory. So why the inaction?

Well, it could be a number of possible reason, but those not revolving around his competence all seem to point towards the non-election. At the time, a lot of commentators were saying that an election could be used by the government to hide a big problem around the corner. Basically, if they lost it would be the tories fault, but if they won they would have a full term to try and fix it, or at least spin the line that they did. However, what actually happened was that they didn't take any notice until it was too late as Gordon at al. were all too busy trying to destroy the tories than run a country.

The thing is the government did have one last opportunity to save this situation. If they had simply allowed Northern Rock to go into adminstration, then the only cost would have been a possible 6,000 people losing there jobs, with the costs of their payoffs, benefits, retraining, and finding new jobs coming to a mere few million pounds. After all, the mortgage book would have been safe, and the government had claimed that all savings were guarenteed. Instead, because of the socialist left wanting to protect every single last job, and wanting a clause four moment, a return to old Labour was confirmed, and the taxpayer now has a £100billion bill to stump up.

If Darling had made a business decision at the beginning, or at that matter ANY decision, then this country's economy would not be in the bad state that it is now. The bigger problem for Gordon Brown is that he doesn't have the luxury of that full term, that he would have had if he had won that snap election, or by blaming the tories, as they would have been in power had he lost, instead he now just has two years left and we all remember how unforgiving the electorate were over the ERM.

Update: I've just watched Darling's statement to the House, and debate that followed, and saw the Labour spin machine in full effect. The government front bench just sat there with smug smiles on their faces, and just tried to divert attention away from themselves by blaming the tories for everything. Even the Lib Dems joined their spin machine, by having more pops at the opposition than the failing government. A perfect example of why they will never be a serious opposition party. As for Darling he failed to answer a single one of George Osborne's questions. Probably because he has no answers. The Chancellor is dragging this country's economy reputation through the gutter, and worryingly the government views that as "business as usual".