centreleft // a new voice from the British left

George Osborne has broken the cautious consensus of the last week writing today in the Standard and fingering Brown as the instigator of the current financial crisis.  The shadow-Chancellor is, CentreLeft spies inform, angry at having been frozen out of Treasury briefings,  who were in turn angry at Osborne for leaking information last week.

This public tit-for-tat is far from the sober and serious Conservative response that has characterised the last fortnight.  It is, however, a sign of growing anxiety amongst the Conservative leadership, at the political capital that Brown is apparently mining from the current financial turmoil.

The economic crisis is an uncomfortable political climate for centre-right parties wedded to a belief in free enterprise and deregulation.  If the Conservatives succeed in identifying Brown and the Labour Government as in some way responsible for the current mess then they may succeed in avoiding this problem.  Should they fail and Brown can claim to have saved – not crippled – the financial system then the Conservatives will find themselves in a particularly uncomfortable political space.