Gordon Brown's real madness

TO WIPE the smile off a Conservative MP's face, just tell him you've heard that Gordon Brown is about to throw it all in.

Rumours are swirling around Westminster. Our PM is cracking under the strain, it is said, and may quit on health grounds.

But David Cameron can relax. I can assure him that Gordo, the Tories' No1 weapon, is alive, well and hatching a new cunning plan.

First, the rumours are true. Brown is shouting, screaming, hurling objects around the room, behaving like a maniac. In other words, business as usual. This is how he operates - and has done since he cocooned himself in the Treasury 12 years ago.

It may seem bonkers to promise free healthcare to the Nepalese when so many British kids can't read and write. But he'll do so this month.

It seems crazy apologising for the way gay computer pioneer Alan Turing was treated in 1954 - when Gordo was three years old.

Our PM was 49 when he sold the nation's gold reserves for $275 an ounce. It passed $1,000 last week. Where's our apology for that?

But madness is often what passes for politics (ie poll tax). The trick is to have policies so utterly barking that you actually get away with it. Gordo has a new trick, about to be unleashed when he addresses the Trades Union Congress next week.

Voting Tory, he will say, will "risk the recovery". Britain is crawling out of recession, but it might not do if the Tories make lots of cuts.

Brown will say that his "stimulus" (ie borrowing binge) will save us. And that if the Tories get in, then the rollercoaster lurches down again.

Economists have a word for this theory - junk. Completely made up.

There is not a shred of economic analysis behind it. Set aside the fact that there is (alas) no sign that Cameron's Tories would cut spending any faster than Labour would do.

An independent analysis shows that Brown's "stimulus" will DESTROY more jobs than it saves. It's hurting, not helping.

But the Tories still struggle to point this out. On the economy, they have no clear message - just woolly or technical speeches. Dig inside those speeches and you CAN find radical policies.

But most voters don't have a clue what the Tory plans are. So Brown's message - even though it's false - may sound clearer.

It's amazing that he dares to speak about the economy at all. Because for him to keep on spending like this IS a form of madness.

Brown's splurge may only last two or three years. But it is no exaggeration to say that we'll be paying for it for the rest of our lives.

The national debt was £340 billion when Labour came to power. Next year, £970 billion. In four years' time, £1,370 billion.

We will NEVER be able to reduce this burden on our families to pre-Brown levels. A trillion-pound debt may be with us forever.

The impact of this debt on ordinary households - higher tax bills, worse schools, worse healthcare - will just be incalculable.

It's an act of vandalism - on the prospects for future generations. All because a PM could not bring himself to cut spending now. This is the real insanity. Throwing mobile phones around the room is the least of it.

I suspect that, deep down, Gordo knows the damage that he's done. He knows his party will be slaughtered at the election. He knows he carries more blame than anyone. For the recession. For the banking collapse. For Labour's unpopularity.

So I'd say there is a one in five chance that he will quit. His resignation would deal a massive blow to the Tories, who are relying on his unpopularity to take them to power.

But it will do nothing to change his place in history . . . as a man whose economic madness brought a country to its knees.

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