Yesterday Alistair Campbell was in the FT trying to tear to shreds out of George Osborne’s already tattered reputation for understanding anything at all about economics.
That was decent enough fun, and it’s been even more fun to see the panicky reactions by righwing bloggers to the FT’s consistently ant-Tory economic policy line (as reported here by Hopi).
Now, I kind of expect that kind of thing from Alistair Campbell. But I wasn’t expecting Germany to join in the fun with such gusto.
Here’s the report, also in yesterday’s FT, about the new German coalition’s plans for ‘by far the largest fiscal package in the eurozone’ in 2010 (as a % of GDP).
Now what was Georgie Boy saying in September when he criticised the government for encouraging other G20 countries to stick with economic stimulus? Oh yes:
‘While the rest of the world is facing up to the need to deal with their budget deficits, the British Government is still in complete denial despite having the largest deficit’.
Oh, and that’ll also be the same statement in which he acknowledged that the UK would come out of recession this year, wouldn’t it?
Not to be too much of a grumpy prick, but this is the same German government (oh alright, the previous Finance minister was SDP – which really makes what follows worse) who utterly trashed Gordon Brown’s stimulus package. Not exactly the most principled basis on which to base a critique of any economic policies.