Let's all join in the chorus.....

There has apparently been some choir practice among Bottler's gang.

Whenever they are asked about almost anything they trot out the phrase,"We all feel the pain of inflation due to external causes". Sometimes the alternative version is used, - "Inflation is tough, but everyone in the world is facing the same."

They are trying to give the impression that Bottler is still the supreme chancellor, possibly the greatest ever, and while he may have made some minor misjudgments inflation is nothing to do with him.

They are right to say that world demand for fuel oil and for basic foodstuffs has pushed prices up.

BUT
1) Ask any pensioner, or anybody on (relatively) fixed incomes, and they will tell you that they have had pain for a few years, and well before the recent surge in oil prices. We are all becoming aware that Bottler's chosen measure, CPI, which omits housing costs and council taxes in particular, seriously underestimates the real level of inflation. Two or three years ago estimates of the rate of inflation facing pensioners suggested 8% or 9%, when their pensions were increasing by somewhere between 2% and 3%. I am sorry Gordon, but some of the inflation can be put at your door. You lumped extra responsibilities on local councils without increasing grants sufficiently.

2) Our oil price and food price inflation is overlaid by a weak sterling exchange rate, making imports more expensive. He boasts about the lack of inflation under his stewardship, but this was mostly because of cheap imports from China and elsewhere. Interest rates could be low because inflation was low, but this financed an import-led boom and to the debt mountain which many people now face. (It also led to a rapid rise in house prices.) Low interest rates contributed to the weakening balance of payments situation.

3) Low interest rates and the growing debt mountain of Government and people have led to the rapid growth in the money supply which observers have noted. You do not need to be a Monetarist to realise that increased credit and spending power are likely to put pressure on spending, and on prices.

Nobody would deny that external factors are now causing inflationary pressure, and are likely to drive many prices higher over the next year or so.

But the benign things which bolstered Bottler's reputation until recently, which he gloried in and which he did nothing to control, have finally caught up with him. Without much data and complicated analysis, it would be difficult to know how much inflation can be laid at Bottler's door, but to pretend that all of is due to international causes is plainly dishonest.

I am sorry, Gordon, but you who kept sneering at the Tories for "boom and bust", have created your own boom and bust. It's not the 10p tax rate, the bungling of Northern Rock, it's the lack of prudence and the engineered boom which will destroy your reputation.