The Spectator’s Notes | 20 September 2008

We are in a financial crisis which has been going on for more than a year. It is remarkable that, in all that time, no political leader has had anything much to say about it. In the United States, neither John McCain nor Barack Obama appears to have any understanding of what is going on. Over here, Gordon Brown’s supposed gift for economic analysis seems to have deserted him. One hears phrases like ‘the fundamentals are sound’, and trembles. David Cameron, pursuing the favourite strategy of keeping his party away from bad news, acknowledges the gravity of the situation without proposing remedies. It may be the right tactic, when in a hurricane, to lie as low as possible and wait for it to pass, but big political rewards do come to those who, people believe, have successfully diagnosed and treated economic malaise. That is why people have heard of FDR and Margaret Thatcher, and tend not to remember Warren Harding or John Major.