Darren Murphy's View of the World

IMF predicts UK recession will last longest of G7

The importance of a successful outcome to the G20 meeting to Britain is highlighted today with the International Monetary Fund predicting that the recession in the UK will be longer and deeper than amongst our competitors. The IMF predicts that Britain will be the only member of the G7 to experience a continuing economic contraction in 2010. These predictions come on top of bleak assessments on jobs. As unemployment passes two million today most commentators expect it to reach three million in 2010.

There was a time when Ministers’ claimed Britain was in the best place of any nation to weather and then recover from the global downturn. That sounded a little boastful at the time. Today it seems like an unfortunate joke. There are two million people sitting at home today who won’t see the funny side.

Inevitably, today’s gloomy predictions and terrible statistics will lead to more cat-calls for Gordon Brown to apologise. I’m not so sure it matters whether he does or he doesn’t use those words. The public know that this is a global downturn. They know too that whilst individual governments in one country or another might have done this thing or that differently, a bit sooner or a bit later, that in reality this hurricane was going to hit and to hurt.

The real point now for Labour is not to try to brief, boast or bluster our way through. No more leading the world or saving the planet. No more last in, first out idle rhetoric. Britain, for a range of reasons, not least our reliance on the City of London and financial services sector, and our over reliance on easily obtained debt to fuel consumer confidence, is going to experience a downturn beyond the memory and experience of most of our politicians and most of our people. When Alastair Darling told us that in an interview over Christmas he was made by his political masters to recant as surely and as fully as anyone faced with the inquisitors of the Spanish Inquisition. But Alastair was right and the briefers were wrong. The only way to convince the public that Labour knows how to deal with this crisis is to lower the rhetoric and level with them. It is not apologies we need now but humility.

So, when the G20 ‘global deal’ happens it should not be greeted with fanfares and fireworks because even if it amounts to anything much it won’t impact directly the million more Britons expected to lose their jobs this year. Everyone hopes and prays that a deal can be reached but let us not talk up expectations about its impact in a way which only adds to the disillusionment with politics so many of our friends and neighbours face as they stare out from their homes at an uncertain future.