Hero to Zero?

Is this a fair description of Gordon Brown, or Crash Gordon as one blogger calls him?

He is certainly near zero now, to judge by open criticisms in all directions, even from his own party. Hardly a week passes without a new disaster arriving, and even when he makes a good impression, such as the G20, observers quickly see through his conjuring tricks. Even spin, which used to give the government such an advantage, is finding its wheels coming off.

More and more people are buying the Cameron judgement of government mismanagement, especially as almost daily frightening new figures are revealed and exposed.

We know what caused his demotion, and apart from a world recession and the sub-prime poison, he was largely responsible for his own fall:

1) He acquired a taste for spending (public) money quickly, and couldn't stop, even when it was obvious that government debt was piling up. He persuaded himself he could ignore it if he could leave it off the balance sheet, but others were asking questions. There would little in reserve if the unthinkable "bust" did in fact arrive.

2) He made a quick decision to change banking supervision, without consulting people who could have warned him. The new system was not up to it. It didn't spot, or didn't tell him, that there were dangerous and risky practices in the banking system, and that consumer debt was very high. (He would not listen to monetarists that the money supply was large.)

3) He inherited a growing economy where growth had been steady for 6 or so years, and trading conditions where imports from China and elsewhere were very low and kept domestic inflation down, and oil prices which had not risen in line with expanded trade. He gained from an influx of workers from EU accession countries who were prepared to work in unpleasant situations for low pay. (His claim to have achieved high economic growth rates was because of this "sudden" expansion in the labour force. National output did rise dramatically, but the UK record on output per worker was by no means anything special, but somehow he chose not to mention this.)

So we had a chancellor who enjoyed very beneficial circumstances, and led himself to conclude that he was a genius. Was he a hero? Perhaps while prudence was around he was, but he had already set in train the very things that would bring him down, so at the very least the hero had significant blindnesses.