Deborah Mattinson, formerly the Brown bunker’s favourite pollster*, was wailing last night to a Mirror hack and the evil Fabian’s Sunda Katawala that “I’m still worried ‘Labour wrecked economy’ is now accepted wisdom… Labour cannot afford to wait until new leader is in place to get strong economic defence up. It must start now… Labour lacks a simple message to defend its record. Without it Labour takes the blame and loses the argument… Labour is losing the argument on the economy”. Deborah, there is a simple reason that this is the accepted wisdom. It is the truth.

All Labour governments end in economic disaster, with higher unemployment at the end than the beginning, as Margaret Thatcher pointed out,“The problem with socialism is that, sooner or later, you run out of other people’s money.”

The competition is to win a copy of  The Big Red Book of New Labour Sleaze for the most amusing 140 character Tweetable account of Labour’s economic record. Post your entries in the comments section. Guido’s decision, as always, is final.

*How is her firm doing winning government contracts nowadays? She claims in her new book “Talking To A Brick Wall“ they were won on merit. She was incredibly successful in winning millions of pounds of government business when Gordon was in power. Completely unrelated her firm did personal polling for Gordon for free. Fancy that. Wonder how much business she is winning “on merit” from the government now?