It's politics, stupid!

Does Gordon Brown really believe that placing £3, £4 or £5 trillion of taxpayer liabilities onto the national balance sheet is the best way to overcome the financial crisis?

The fact is, Gordon Brown knows he's a guilty man.

Guilty of abandoning controls over the money supply.
Guilty of removing BofE authority and imposing a financial regulator financed by the banks.
Guilty of forcing public companies into excessive debt by taxing pension funds.
Guilty of borrowing and inefficiently spending vast sums on public services.
Guilty of amassing vast hidden public debts through PPP and PFI projects.
Guilty of encouraging consumer debt to the unsustainable levels of 2007.
Guilty of informing the nation we could safely live on the credit boom forever.

Could such a man, with such a guilty past, turn to the nation and say 'now its your problem: taxes will double and public services will be halved to pay for my mistakes'?

No, of course he can't. The nation would descend on parliament, pull Brown from his seat and attach him to the nearest lamppost.

Ever since Labour reinvented itself it was clear New Labour had lost not just its socialist principles but also its political ethics. There was no principle behind the new party other than determination to offer bread and circuses to satisfy the nation's basest instincts for as long as possible, delivered by any available means.

Now Gordon Brown faces the problem of trying to keep the nation happy (or rather prevent it from uprising) but without any of the means he has been able to rely on in the past.

The banks no longer dish out mortgages and loans like lollipops, they've gone bust. The financial service industry no longer contributes a third of the nation's tax revenues, it no longer exists. Foreign investors no longer pour in money to support the pound, it's fallen like a stone.

But New Labour knows only one political principle: feed the people money, it keeps them happy. So where does Gordon turn for the funds he needs to execute the only winning political principle he knows? Why, he turns to the people themselves, of course.

You know it makes sense, he says. You like bread and circuses, he says. You don't want the government to abandon you, he says. It's only for a little while, he says. Just give me a few billion, no a trillion, well perhaps two or three trillion. OK, let's make it four, no five trillion pounds. That should cover it, for the moment.

The public's reaction to this has been mesmeric. And why not? None of us have ever heard of such stupendous sums. Gordon Brown implies this borrowing will be just a taxpayer loan. He doesn't say it will be one of those new kind of loans. The kind that doesn't perform. Not only will we not see most of it again, we'll be paying out to the government for years and years and years.

But that is hardly Gordon Brown's concern. His priorities are to minimise present blame of his government, show he is doing something and give the impression that in the midst of the deepest depression for a hundred years nothing much will appear to change. That is to say, the government reassuringly will continue to seem flush with loadsa money.

That's right, trillions of pounds of your, your children's and your grandchildren's money. Because you know it makes sense.

But to repeat the initial question: Does Gordon Brown really believe plunging the nation's taxpayers into decades of debt actually makes economic sense? No, of course he doesn't, because it's not about economics. It's all about politics, stupid!

He knows he'll lose the next election. But he also knows he will have achieved something very special. Something Clement Attlee couldn't even have conceived. He will have nationalised the British people!

Yes, while we all sit gawping as Brown's claims on us grow into ever more fantastic figures, he is actually executing British history's most blatant and outrageously in-your-face political coup.

When, in about a year's time, we wake up from Gordon (Mesmer) Brown's wickedly- inflicted, hallucinogenic dream, we will discover we have returned to the Middle Ages. We will all have become become peasants and slaves, indebted to the State for as long as our debt or our brutish life runs.

Not even the election of the Conservative party will be able to change these facts. And Gordon will at last have something interesting to reveal as he retires to compile his memoirs...

As it has always been said, very deep down at heart, Gordon is simply an old-fashioned Communist.