There's good news and bad news for Gordon Brown on the economic front today. On the minus side, a YouGov poll in the Daily Telegraph suggests voters are now more likely to trust the Tories to get Britain out of the economic crisis than Labour (whereas in October it was the other way round). But, on the plus side, the Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman has told the Independent that Tory plans would make the economy worse.
This is not entirely surprising because Krugman has form as a Brown supporter. In a New York Times column last year, he suggested that Brown had saved the international banking system. Later, after meeting the prime minister, he described him as "awesome". But, as far as I'm aware, I don't think he's ever trashed David Cameron's policies as brutally as he did in an interview with Johann Hari today.
Many of Cameron's statements are "just wrong", Krugman says. For example, Cameron says Britain can't afford a fiscal stimulus because we are going into the recession with the highest debt of any developed country. "But that's not true. Britain is at the lower end of the middle of developed countries [when it comes to national debt]. Less than the US, much less than Japan or Germany or Italy." He is worried by the incorrect lessons Cameron has drawn from the 1930s. "Renouncing a fiscal stimulus when private spending is contracting is strange. Governments have very few tools at their disposal, and Cameron wants to not use them." So are you saying our recession will be much worse if we follow Cameron's advice? "Yes. For sure."
Brown has obviously been reading Hari's column. At Davos, when he was grilled about UK debt levels at a news conference this morning, he mentioned the Krugman comments in his defence twice.
