Reasons for getting rid of Labour: Economic mismanagement

I never believed that Gordon Brown was a wonderful chancellor.  I have written before about what I saw as the seven key planks of Gordon Brown's economic policies:

1. Operational independence of the Bank of England
2. A modification of the previous inflation target to include a specific value as well as a band
3. The use of various "fiscal rules" to guide fiscal policy
4. The concentration of all financial regulation into one super-regulator, the Financial Services Authority (FSA)
5. A Tripartite framework for promoting financial stability including the Bank of England, the FSA, and the Treasury
6. A "taper relief" system for capital gains tax whereby investments kept in a business for a longer period were subject to less tax that those extracted quickly, as soon as capital gains were made
7. The abolition of the previous "surplus Advance Corporation Tax" regime, a reform intended to encourage longer-term investment and discourage over-payment of dividends

None of this has, in the end, worked well.

I have explained why I thought even Bank of England operational independence flawed - at best a concept that I didn't hate.  The only one of these of which I approved was the modification of the inflation target to a symmetrical target, though government failure to employ the target properly, either enforcing its level or changing it to establish a recitification path for inflation, led to its collapse.  Even in that case Brown's commitment to joining the euro meant that he was unable to keep up with developments in monetary theory, did not introduce Price Level Targeting in the late 1990s or early 2000s when he should have done (with disastrous consequences, for inflation targeting if kept in place too long leads inexorably to asset price bubbles) and changed the target (about which he was criticised at the time) to one that reduced even the limited ability inflation targeting had to comment upon asset prices (specifically house prices).

To add fuel to the fire, the tripartite regulatory regime undermined the ability of the Bank of England to manage a financial crisis if it arose.

To make matters worse, using the misleading fig-leaf of his "fiscal rules", Brown built up debt from 2002 onwards when he should have been paying it off.  As Osborne rightly (and effectively) said, Brown failed to mend the roof whilst the sun was shining.  This will mean that it is more problematic than it should have been for the UK to cut taxes in response to a recession that has exposed the weaknesses in Brown's system and caused what may only have needed to be a downturn to become a full-blown crisis of epic proportions.

Over the longer term, Brown's completely excessive rises in public expenditure, his misguided "bailout" of the UK banks, and the inevitable heavy expansion in financial regulation will undermine the long-term sustainable growth rate of the UK economy and condemn us to two decades of low-growth, high regulation socialism.  Given what an excellent economy he began with, I believe that he deserves to go down as amongst the worst managers of the UK economy in history.  We should all want him gone, before he can do too much more damage.