Hammond Trumps Byrne

Just been watching BBC Parliament (now there's a displacement activity if ever you've heard one).

The debate on the PBR has been no contest, with Philip Hammond, Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, delivering a devastating lesson in economics to the entire house, not just the idiots in government who, for instance, don't seem to be able to comprehend the difference between monetary and fiscal policy, (a pretty fundamental problem if you're trying to prove to unconvinced bond markets that you're in control of things).

He's damn good. His forensic unpicking of the Brownite, delusional, dangerous PBR is highly damaging to the last traces of Labour's credibility - or would be if anyone was watching it, of course. Even the usually thuggish Liam Byrne looked quietly impressed.

I hope Hammond is given the praise he deserves for this superb parliamentary performance.

I'll put up a link to it later, if I can find one.

==Update==
Well, perhaps predictably, you can watch the PBR debate on iplayer, but only as far as the end of Byrne's woeful and woefully partisan speech. The BBC clearly didn't feel that Hammond's excellent response, during which he not only provided a forensic demolition of Labour's fantasy economics, but also clearly set out some of a future Conservative government's plans for bringing Britain back from the brink of a credit downgrade (and why that is so desperately important), merited the little bit of extra space on their ample servers (that we own).

Bias at the BBC? Never!

==Update 2==
Jonn Ward has kindly provided a link to the transcript of Philip Hammond's PBR speech. You can find it on parliament's website, here.

Nelson Blows Brown's Boasts Out Of The Water

In another brilliant, stinging post, Speccy editor Fraser Nelson has once again rapidly demolished Brown's outrageous, deluded and dishonest claims in a (predictably, pathetically fawning) Porter and Riddell interview in today's Telegraph that his economic (mis)management somehow saved Britain from depression. Far from doing anything of the sort, says Nelson, Brown single-handedly created the situation we are in, partly by borrowing far too much during the property bubble-boom and partly by making a complete pig's breakfast of banking regulatory reform.

But there's worse. After the bust and subsequent recession, Nelson proves, Brown has created a climate whereby the banks can rip and are ripping millions of mortgage holders off with impunity by failing to pass on the B of E's interest rate cuts. Add to this the debt crisis and you have what Nelson calls "Brown's double hit". And all this before we deal with Brown's utterly ridiculous claim that the economy will rebound into "upgrowth", to use his incomprehensible jargon (and as opposed to what, exactly, "downgrowth"?), in 2010/11. Just recalling the fact, quietly announced last week and buried away on the BBC's UK News section on its largely ignored teletext service, that the manufacturing sector shrank by a further 2.5% (bringing the total collapse so far to 11.1% - depression territory) and you can see that Brown is lying and lying big.

I've copied some extracts below, plus the devastating graphs that reveal in stark, chilling clarity the price of Gordon Brown's staggering and ongoing incompetence. Read it here.

By now, you should have been able to remortgage and pay half the intrerest that you did. You are being denied this, because someone Scottish thought he would personally rewite the bank regulation system and proceeded to make an almighty mess of it. And the credit crisis may be global, but Britain is worse hit than anyone else. Look at the staggering graph below - JP Morgan data, based on IMF estimates, of the cost of the banking crisis not in billions, but as a percentage of GDP.
So yes, Britain is hurt more than twice as badly as America. So we pay for Brown’s bank incompetence in two ways. One is the national debt, which is increasing at a sickening rate, and the other way is by paying through the nose for mortgages. And because the banks are still screwed, they can act as a cartel and rip us all off. This is why Gordon Brown can probably be judged the most expensive leader of any Western democracy since the war. The costs of his arrogance, misjudgments and rank incompetence will be with us for years, perhaps decades, to come.

Regardless of these appalling figures, the Brownite/Labourist narrative refuses to lie down, even though it is now quite dead. People will simply have to trust that excellent journalists such as Fraser Nelson will keep on hammering away, revealing the truth behind Brown's epic lying and holding that terrible man to account on their behalf. He'll have to, because, bafflingly, the mainstream media (Jeff Randall excepted) seems positively hell-bent on preserving the Brownite lies and spin. Personally, I believe it's because of a combination of media capture (the "village" thing) and the fact that the MSM is populated by a bunch of lefties. Anyone got a better reason?

PS: The blogs have been on fire this afternoon over speculation that Brown is on the way out for "health reasons", citing his eyesight problems. I have only one thing to say about this:

Please, please be true!