Cripps.

The failures of the left run long and deep. The greatest of political sins has been committed by labour politicians throughout the ages - I refer of course to terminal naivety.

Take Gordon Brown. [No - please do!] In his case a poor economist lauded as a towering, fiscal genius by his acolytes - virtually guaranteed to be the case with anyone from the left - is given charge of a thriving economy for which tories Lamont and Clarke had to take a great deal of the credit.

[You have NO idea how difficult I find it to be fair to Ken Clarke!]

Brown faces no world recessions and makes countless mistakes - easily located in lists on this Blog - and so gets away with it all relatively unscathed; taxing, bureaucratising and following expensive leftwing projects of dubious social value.
Clearly, the man had no overview whatsoever and built in no protective measures for when the hard times came - and come they did - but by this time he was Prime Minister, of course.
All of this can only be explained by a combination of dogma with a detachment from reality.
It was ever thus. Socialists will only ever see what they want to see. Consider Brown's long time predecessor, Sir Stafford Cripps in a rather different context.

Sir Stafford Cripps, British Ambassador in Moscow and later Labour Chancellor, announced in a filmed interview that the Soviet leader had no plans to communise the world: 'I have had it from the lips of Stalin himself.'

Ah me!