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Starmer announces resignation as prime minister and leader of the Labour party
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2026
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UK Politics
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Blimey! Didn't you notice that I wrote that Brown is cited by economists? That I didn't say anything about agreeing with that. If anything I agree with pretty much all you say. (Worth checking what someone actually writes before getting a bit accusative.)
Please point out a renowned international Economist who actually said that Gordon Brown saved the World's Economy.
I keenly remember that claim back then because it was part of Gordon Brown's campaign strategy against the Tories to keep Labour in power (which, by the way, failed) and there was literally no Economist or even Financier outside Britain claiming that Gordon Brown saved the World's Economy.
As I said, I was in Finance at the time and the rest of the World wasn't looking at Britain for guidance on how to react to the Crash, they were looking at the ECB and the Americans, which are far larger Economies - the only way Britain stood out back then was that it was the worst hit Economy of all after the US, and later it stood out because as the web was untangled on the whole thing, it turned out that many cases of market manipulation and other shenanigans leading to the Crash actually happened in London (most of which, by the way, having happened during the time Gordon Brown was Chancellor, and please don't get me started how both Tories and New Labour seriously defunded the Serious Fraud Office and turned the FSA into a joke)
That old claim you repeated in your post is a perfect example of British Exceptionalism.
Did you notice that they said no reputable international economists actually say that?
But you're right to call out the accusatory tone of @Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com's comment, that did kind of spoil an otherwise very informative post.
I thought I had left all the bullshit of that time behind after all these years, after I left Finance and after I left the UK, and here I am seeing once again one of the biggest pieces of bollocks spewed after one of the biggest systemic regulatory fuck-ups I've ever seen in any Industry up-close (from the front row, even, having been in none other that Lehman Brothers the day it went bankrupt).
Seeing this ridiculous claim again about a guy who I professionally believe that, as Chancellor during a period of de facto near non-existent regulation of Finance in the UK, has a seriously large share of the blame for the outsized amount of damage that Crash did to the UK (a gift which still keeps giving, since it's part of the chain of events that led to Brexit), might have pissed me off a bit.
Gordon Brown's time as PM was just a desperate rush to plug holes (same as in the rest of the World, though Brown did chose to have the rescued banks keep on self-regulating, a choice which I believe led to the subsequent Austerity), but his time as Chancellor was a shit show of incompetence and regulatory capture in Finance.
Again, I agree with you. But this "ridiculous claim" WAS made by economists like Krugman and others.
The more alarming aspect is that UK politicians - eapecially in Labour - are now calling for a return to pre-2008 levels of deregulation now because it's now "safe" to do so. Nothing is learned from history and it seems we are destined to repeat it.