As Shadow Chancellor George Osborne pointed out last night, the detail of Gordon Brown’s announcement on help with mortgage payments for people who lose their jobs is much more relevant than the headlines he managed to generate.
The Prime Minister claimed in the House of Commons that the eight major mortgage lenders had signed up for the plan.
However, it later became apparent that two of them - Lloyds TSB and HBOS - had not yet agreed to the details of the scheme and that all eight had been less than fully consulted.
If the scheme genuinely helps people to keep their homes, then it must be welcomed.
But there are two major questions relating to the timing of the announcement, the answers to which reveal a lot about the state of the Labour Government at the present time and the vanity and the sheer calculating nature of Gordon Brown.
Firstly, why was the announcement not included in last week’s Pre-Budget Report when this would have been the obvious place for it? The answer, according to Treasury sources, is that they hadn’t thought of it by then.
And, secondly, once the decision had been made to proceed with the proposal, why wasn’t it then included in the Queen’s Speech?
The answer to this is easier to give: Gordon Brown decided not to risk being upstaged by Her Majesty and, instead, held the detail back so he could announce it to Parliament himself, grab the headlines and seek to wrong foot David Cameron.
At a time of grave economic difficulty, people should be able to feel that the Government knows what it is doing on their behalf, is not making decisions on the hoof and, when it does decide to make a call, the policy announcement is not then choreographed simply to make the Prime Minister look good.
We have long come to expect incompetence from this Labour Government but, when it comes to the antics of the Prime Minister, I never thought I’d say it – the present incumbent makes even Tony Blair look sincere.
The Prime Minister claimed in the House of Commons that the eight major mortgage lenders had signed up for the plan.
However, it later became apparent that two of them - Lloyds TSB and HBOS - had not yet agreed to the details of the scheme and that all eight had been less than fully consulted.
If the scheme genuinely helps people to keep their homes, then it must be welcomed.
But there are two major questions relating to the timing of the announcement, the answers to which reveal a lot about the state of the Labour Government at the present time and the vanity and the sheer calculating nature of Gordon Brown.
Firstly, why was the announcement not included in last week’s Pre-Budget Report when this would have been the obvious place for it? The answer, according to Treasury sources, is that they hadn’t thought of it by then.
And, secondly, once the decision had been made to proceed with the proposal, why wasn’t it then included in the Queen’s Speech?
The answer to this is easier to give: Gordon Brown decided not to risk being upstaged by Her Majesty and, instead, held the detail back so he could announce it to Parliament himself, grab the headlines and seek to wrong foot David Cameron.
At a time of grave economic difficulty, people should be able to feel that the Government knows what it is doing on their behalf, is not making decisions on the hoof and, when it does decide to make a call, the policy announcement is not then choreographed simply to make the Prime Minister look good.
We have long come to expect incompetence from this Labour Government but, when it comes to the antics of the Prime Minister, I never thought I’d say it – the present incumbent makes even Tony Blair look sincere.
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