Cheeky bastard

David Cameron is threatening to block Gordon Brown's appointment to the IMF because

 it was important that the role went to someone who "gets" the dangers of excessive debt and deficit. 

Er… that's true. Gordon Brown's utterly guilty of encouraging the banks and other speculators to go mad. The idea was that taxes from the City would fill in the gap where proper industries that employed lots of people used to be. More generous benefits and better schools, hospitals and so on would go some way to ameliorating the fact that we had an economy but fewer and fewer jobs other than hairdressers and Starbucks waiters.

In a swipe at Brown, Cameron raised doubts about his suitability for the post, saying he was someone "who didn't think we had a debt problem in the UK when we self evidently do".

But I'm not taking this from Cameron. (It's not true, for a start: lots of countries have far worse deficits and higher debts and get along fine: he's just using the recession as an excuse to cut public services for ideological reasons).

Cameron's the multimillionaire son of a stockbroker who spent his entire time in opposition calling for less regulation of the banks. He actually thought that the minimal rules in place under Labour should be weakened even further because he has this idea that 'creative chaos' will produce an innovative society. Bashing Brown is a deeply cynical attempt to rewrite history, and I'm shocked he's been this blatant. The pair of them thought that a global economy could and should be run on massive multiples of debt - but Cameron was by far the worst of the two.

What we need at the IMF is someone who isn't white and western, who isn't a man, and who isn't a capitalist. The IMF shouldn't be the first-aid kit for a system that's failed: it should be a toolbox for a more sensible and redistributive economy. It was pointed out recently that the entire crash was the result of too much money sloshing around, not too little: the IMF is guilty of punishing those countries who resisted these overbalancing attacks (particularly the South Americans, who've ridden the storm very well) and rewarding those who've got into the worse messes through their own greed.

Boo to Brown and Cameron can just feck off.