controlled demolition

Niall Ferguson, not surprisingly, argues in the Speccie, also not surprisingly, that the Tories should deliberately crash the economy for ideological reasons - 1979-80 style - and then call in the IMF.

This idea has apparently already “been doing the rounds in Tory circles.” But I guess that’s not surprising either. 

It kind of fits in with Cameron’s plan to storm the gates if he doesn’t get a majority. The general feel of the Tory campaign over the last few days has been of people nerving themselves up to do something drastic. 

On a local note, there’s a car cruising the streets of Crumpsall right now – quite a snazzy late model VW Passat - telling the broad masses to “Vote Respect – for cleaner streets and brighter parks”. We seem to have come a long way since Gorgeous George went to America to beard the Senators in their lair.

Comments

[Matthew]

It's properly bollocks. The IMF exists to provide dollars, not sterling, and we don't have a dollar problem.

[jamie]

Also, I like the idea of George Osborne phoning up the IMF and saying: "I say, we intend to trash the economy. Would you mind awfully lending us some money afterwards? Write your own terms, naturally. The tougher the better."

[ejh]

And they would say: "that's our job, and we do it in the opposite order".

[Richard J]

What exactly is in it for the IMF anyway? 'Let's really fuck off the population of one of the G8. That's really good for our long term political powerbase.'

[Chris Williams]

Ferguson's career trajectory, since about 8 years before it ought to have been, has been largely an attempt to out AJP Taylor AJP Taylor. This is a pity because there's a reasonably good historian in there somewhere, but most of his opinion/journalism of recent years can be shortered into "Look at me, look at me".

[ejh]

Did you see Robert Service's piece in the Guardian about the Orlando Figes affair? That was "look at me!" with a vengeance.

[Phil]

I forget, did he have sea bass with a caper sauce that night or sea bream with an anchovy jus?

[Richard J]

This is a pity because there's a reasonably good historian in there somewhere,

ISTR reading The Pity of War and The Cash Nexus back before the full Tory plumage emerged and thinking that they were superb undergraduate essays that had somehow got extended to book length.

[Richard J]

Hmm, the tiresome Tories on the Guardian boards are starting to pump out this IMF talking point. Whether consciously or not, there does seem to be some kind of astroturfing going on.

[Cian]

The questions I want answered are:
1) Do the Tories believe this bollocks about the currency/default
2) What do they think will happen to their long term electoral chances if they trash the economy?

[Richard J]

1) No, but it gets the headbanging libertarian element a chance to push through the small government lark that they do, genuinely, believe in.

2) Who cares? They're the natural party of government, after all. The public will come crawling back to them eventually like the good plebs they are.

[dsquared]

they seem to have only a rather faint idea of what the IMF actually do, except that it in some way involves holding a cap in your hand. They might be presuming it's relevantly similar to the Bullingdon Club.

[Tom]

Ah, so it's another Tory exercise in putting the mental into 'herd mentality', then?