Tim Montgomerie is first to throw Gordon’s words back in his face.  He won’t be the last…

The pound is getting whacked after Mervyn King implicitly admitted that despite printing £175 billion of he might still need to cut rates or even effectively charge banks for putting cash on deposit with the central bank.

We are entering into a monetary policy twilight zone where the governor of the Bank of England, in the words of the FT, has to “entertain more outlandish concepts like negative rates”.  The QE disaster unfolds…

Douglas McWilliams writes…

“Once the Treasury became overoptimistic about tax receipts, the money burnt a hole in the pockets of the politicians who blew it on spending binges. But why would an allegedly competent Treasury make such major mistakes in the first place? Here I am afraid is the key to the story – the politicisation of a once great institution. One can argue that the practice started with Mrs Thatcher, but she at least had the excuse that she was trying to introduce a more up-to-date way of thinking. There is no equivalent excuse for Gordon Brown’s appointment of his former political hack Ed Balls as Chief Economic Adviser or for promoting his former private secretary Nicholas MacPherson over the heads of more experienced officials to be permanent secretary. These moves made it clear that Brown wanted to stifle debate.”

CCHQ will be all a quiver at the news that Harriet is back on maneuvers, which she will no doubt deny later today if past performance is any guide.  Her team of volunteers are polling Constituency Labour Party branches for their views on the party leader.  Guido recognises push-polling when he sees it: party activists are being asked to rank Gordon and herself as to who is the “best person to sell the Labour Party” on a scale of 0 to 5. 

It would be very, very interesting if the results “accidently” leaked…

Do you think that it might encourage the penny to drop in few places that she is better than their unelected party leader?  Guido has decided to back her hopes and has come up with a campaign slogan for Harriet. If she was being honest she would campaign to: “lose the loser”.