“And the next time a Labour politician bangs on about Thatcher having destroyed Britain’s manufacturing base, remember this: under new Labour, manufacturing output has contracted by 1.2 per cent every year, down to around 12 per cent of GDP. Britain’s finances were in deep structural deficit before the crisis hit — one reason why, even with aggressive fiscal pump-priming, it has taken Britain longer than any other major economy to start emerging from recession.”

Rosemary Righter

“Class attack is an inherently discourteous and unpleasant way of conducting yourself. Voters and the news media already have an image fixed of the viciousness and spite that [Gordon Brown] and those around him show to enemies both within and outside their party.”

Matthew Parris

 “What has become evident in the run-up to [the climate change conference in] Copenhagen is that every time someone comes up with some ludicrous, self-flagellating proposal, yet another chunk of the population becomes disenchanted with the whole issue. There can hardly be a farmer left in Britain who has any truck with fighting climate change after being told last week that 30 per cent of the livestock in this country needed to go.

The failure of the “experts” to understand the situation was staggering. They clearly did not know that 60 per cent of our farm land is grassland, suitable only for rearing animals. The environmental damage that would ensue should this be ploughed up for cereals and legumes would be catastrophic.”

Charlie Brooks

“When Thatcherism destroyed organised labour and unleashed free market fundamentalism 25 years ago, the middle-class professions cheered, wearied of power cuts and grateful for tax cuts. But the bell tolled for them too. ‘Professionals’ replaced miners as the ‘enemy within’; they too had to be neutered as one of the remaining bulwarks against the power of the state and untrammelled markets. And so the assault began, through privatisation, commoditisation, the sweeping away of restrictive practices, and an obsession with costs and targets at the expense of amorphous ‘value’.

That the status of professionals should have diminished in consequence was only to be expected.”

Editorial – Law Society Gazette

“The brazenness with which Mr Brown reduced the election ahead to a battle between the rich and the rest has one advantage at least: it exposed the fraudulence of his claim to govern for all the people, or whatever the phrase was that he used when he first took over in 2007. He governs for himself and his party, first and always.

And, like the Russians retreating before Napoleon, Mr Brown pursues a scorched earth strategy. Its purpose is two-fold: to put the Tories on the spot as an Opposition by driving them towards difficult policy choices that can then be demolished, while doing everything to ensure that if they do get in, they will find the wells have been filled and the fields ploughed with salt.”

Benedict Brogan