My one-time CCHQ colleague Rupert Darwall has an article with this title in today's Wall Street Journal, and bury him he certainly does:
Mr. Brown's refusal to acknowledge what is now plain has propelled him to develop an alternative explanation which absolves him of responsibility. What is to blame, he says, is the absence of an international system of early warning signals (although he had a domestic warning system which he ignored) and a global banking regulator. This is the message he took to Washington last week, and it will form a centerpiece of next month's G-20 meeting in London.
Yet a moment's reflection shows that these proposals would have made the problems even worse. International synchronicity is deepening the global downturn. What need strengthening are the circuit breakers and fire walls provided by national regulation. But anyway, that is to miss the point of the exercise -- which is to use the presence of international leaders in London as stage props in Mr. Brown's narrative of self-exculpation.
