The free market is a system of cooperation for mutual benefit.

Via ConservativeHome:

The Sun destroys Gordon Brown’s speech and record:

TWELVE years ago, Britain was crying out for change from a divided, exhausted Government. Today we are there again.

In 1997, “New” Labour, shorn of its destructive hard-Left doctrines and with an energetic and charismatic leader, seemed the answer. Tony Blair said things could only get better, and few doubted him. But did they get better? Well, you could point to investment in schools and shorter hospital waiting lists and say yes, some things did – a little.

But the real story of the Labour years is one of under-achievement, rank failure and a vast expansion of wasteful government interference in everyone’s lives.

Nobody can doubt the dedication of Gordon Brown – or the love and loyalty of his wife Sarah, who delivered a moving plea on his behalf yesterday.

But nor can they disguise the failures of Labour in Government over the last 12 years, many of them embarrassingly laid bare by the PM’s own words yesterday.

Britain feels broken . . . and the Government is out of excuses.

Speaking to the Treasury Committee of MPs, Mr King dealt a serious blow to Mr Brown’s political strategy of casting the next election as a choice between “Tory cuts” and “Labour investment.”

In the Budget in April, Alistair Darling set out plans to borrow an extra £700 billion over five years, taking the national debt to £1.3 trillion.

Simply paying the interest on that borrowing will soon cost more money than the Government spends on schools or defence.

via Mervyn King warns that spending cuts and tax rises are needed – Telegraph.

Even The Guardian has had enough of Gordon Brown:

Political reform can no longer be put aside as an abstract idea, of appeal to dreamers but not to voters who face the harder realities of life. The public is calling furiously for a better system. People want an honest parliament. They want leaders who are prepared to act. They loathe the old system, and many of the people who are part of it.

…

All must agree that the die is cast and a hard judgment made. Otherwise progressive politics will be dragged down at a general election in May 2010 that could lead to a much bigger defeat than Labour suffered in 1979. That might bring a chance for other parties to take it forward, as the Liberal Democrats are trying to do in this election. But they are not placed to enter government. Labour has a year left before an election; its current leader would waste it. It is time to cut him loose.

via Gordon Brown: Labour’s dilemma | Editorial | Comment is free | The Guardian .

Gordon Brown will be remembered as a brief and unsuccessful Prime Minister and as a less brief but more unsuccessful chancellor. That is sad for him but sadder for the United Kingdom. Of much greater long term importance is a proper understanding of the system of government we have, the system which is now failing. The Guardian calls for a revolution in the way of doing government without apparently realizing that no revolution is possible within their mindset. Do the left propose to abandon the idea that a few should choose appropriate outcomes for the many?

True progress will come when people achieve responsible independence yet have more to do with one another, freely. The appropriate system of government is not one of direction and control, of rules set and amended by unaccountable authority, of coerced action to achieve other people’s ends. The right system of society is one of freely-chosen interdependence and mutual cooperation, a system within which people are free to choose and strive for their own ends by their own means wherever neither impinges on the ends and means of another. A system within which people choose to recognize the needs of others less fortunate and help them.

The right system of society is the uncoerced free market and the welfare society. Labour will never deliver that: they will never deliver human progress worthy of the name. We need a general election. Now.

Gordon Brown’s government has suffered a shock defeat in the Commons on its policy of restricting the right of former Gurkhas to settle in the UK.

MPs voted by 267 to 246 in favour of a Lib Dem motion that all Gurkhas be offered an equal right of residence.

Tory leader David Cameron backed the Lib Dem motion to scrap rules which leader Nick Clegg called “shameful”.

Mr Brown’s first significant defeat as PM came despite last minute concessions being offered to rebel Labour MPs.

via BBC NEWS | Politics | Brown defeated over Gurkha rules.

Ron Paul’s manifesto, The Revolution, is a remarkable read, not least for his account of Alan Greenspan:

Few Americans during his tenure knew that Greenspan had once been an outspoken advocate of the gold standard as the only monetary system that a free society should consider. Not long after my return to Congress in the election of 1996, I spoke with Greenspan at a special event that took place just before he was to speak in front of the House Banking Committee. At this event congressmen had a chance to meet and have their pictures taken with the Fed chairman. I decided to bring along my original copy of his 1966 article from the Objectivist Newsletter called “Gold and Economic Freedom”, an outstanding piece in which he laid out the economic and moral case for a commodity-based monetary system as against a fiat paper system. He graciously agreed to sign it for me. As he was doing so, I asked if he wanted to write a disclaimer on the article. He replied good-naturedly that he had recently reread the piece and that he would not change a word of it. I found that fascinating: could it be that, in his heart of hearts, Greenspan still believed in the bulletproof logic of that classic article?

Congressman Paul goes on to write that Greenspan expressed a different view before a later committee but that his views are ultimately unimportant: it is the system that matters. It appears Greenspan agreed:

A fully free banking system and fully consistent gold standard have not as yet been achieved. But prior to World War I, the banking system in the United States (and in most of the world) was based on gold and even though governments intervened occasionally, banking was more free than controlled. Periodically, as a result of overly rapid credit expansion, banks became loaned up to the limit of their gold reserves, interest rates rose sharply, new credit was cut off, and the economy went into a sharp, but short-lived recession. (Compared with the depressions of 1920 and 1932, the pre-World War I business declines were mild indeed.) It was limited gold reserves that stopped the unbalanced expansions of business activity, before they could develop into the post-World War I type of disaster. The readjustment periods were short and the economies quickly reestablished a sound basis to resume expansion.

Greenspan goes on to blame the Great Depression on the Fed’s creation of excess credit: a bitter irony.

Greenspan’s article may be found here. Quite what we are to make today of his advocacy of gold is a matter for further study, particularly as Gordon Brown sold half our reserves, without Bank of England advice, at the bottom of the market.

Isn’t it ironic? As the Prime Minister tours the world lecturing other countries on how to run their economies, the Governor of the Bank of England has suggested that Gordon Brown doesn’t know how to run our own.

via We were right to make debt a priority – Telegraph.

Taxpayers could have to spend billions bailing out the banks again after massive and unexpected losses were disclosed by Britain’s new superbank.

Shares in Lloyds Banking Group fell 32 per cent to 61.4p yesterday after it reported losses of £10 billion in HBOS, making it worth far less than thought when it was taken over in November.

The news, a huge embarrassment for Gordon Brown, who helped to broker the deal, triggered speculation that the bank will have to come back to the Government for more capital.

via Lloyds Banking Group rocked by shock losses in HBOS – Times Online .

Gordon Brown has failed spectacularly to manage our finances and he should be held accountable for it at the next general election.

In the meantime, I’ll let this fade into the archive:

At the FT:

Germany’s finance minister has launched a stinging attack on the “crass Keynesianism” pursued by Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, fuelling tensions on the eve of European economic crisis talks in Brussels.

Peer Steinbrück accuses Mr Brown in a magazine interview of “tossing around billions” and saddling a whole generation with a bill for paying off British debt.

At the Telegraph, “Brown’s economic rescue plan ineffective says German minister”:

Peer Steinbrück launched an outspoken attack on Mr Brown’s fiscal stimulus package, saying a cut in VAT would have little impact and predicting that the huge debts the Treasury is taking on will be a burden on the UK economy for a generation.

The remarks are an embarrassment for the Prime Minister, who has repeatedly claimed his plans have set the template that other countries are following.

They came the same day Mr Brown was ridiculed in the Commons for declaring that his policies had “saved the world.”

read more at The FT | read more at The Telegraph | digg story