Electioneering

"I will stop, I will stop at nothing
Say the right things, when electioneering
I trust I can rely on your vote
When I go forwards you go backwards and somewhere we will meet
Riot shields, voodoo economics
It's just business, cattle prods and the IMF
I trust I can rely on your vote
When I go forwards you go backwards and somewhere we will meet"

Radiohead penned 'Electioneering' back in 1997, shortly after Tony Blair's New Labour government came to power. Despite the cynicism of Oxford's favourite miserablists, there was a sense of general optimism in the air. How things have changed. Their lyrics seem more prescient than ever given Gordon Brown's desperate attempt to rally the troops yesterday in Brighton. Although his speech was certainly defiant, the whiff of electioneering was overpowering.

Brown slammed the City as "ideologically bankrupt" in a speech strewn with rhetoric designed to appeal to Middle England and mobilise core support. His assertion that the credit crisis was a failure of rightwing Conservative ideology certainly left a bitter taste in the mouth. He claimed that "what let the world down" was "the Conservative idea that markets always self-correct but never self-destruct". He then blamed the "right-wing fundamentalism that says you just leave everything to the market and says that free markets should not just be free but values-free".

This element of his speech was, at best, what Hollywood might term a 're-imagining' of the current financial predicament and, at worst, a distortion of the truth. It takes a unique kind of amnesia to completely neglect "his own 10-year record as chancellor – when he championed City interests". After all, Brown is a man who had previously spent years advocating and championing a 'light touch' regulatory system and the notion that the market is a more efficient allocator of capital than the state. Robert Peston snappily articulated this state of affairs in his blog today – "Brown snubs Brown". He outlined that whilst the PM's comments were intended as an attack on the Tories, they really just "put the boot into the Brown years at Number 11".

To be fair, lots of people felt exactly the same way about the City during the economic boom, but for a PM who has demanded financial accountability, previously called for an end of the "age of irresponsibility", and even written a book looking at courage, he has probably emerged from this in a less than heroic light. That said, Sarah Brown felt otherwise as she exclaimed "My husband. My hero!"

A more profitable line of argument for the PM, and one which he developed in yesterday's speech, may be to attack the Conservatives over their lack of economic credibility. As today's Independent points out, "the Prime Minister did have a strong case to make about the hesitant and confused manner in which the Tories reacted to last year's global financial meltdown". In pursuing this line, he would, at least, put the onus back on David Cameron to explain how the Conservatives' calls over recent years for even-lighter-touch financial regulation would have helped to avert the crisis.

JS

"I'm not afraid of death. I just don't want to be there when it happens."

Woody Allen can be relied on to reflect the concerns of many of us when it comes to death. He also said "I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it by not dying."

According to claims made by American scientist Raymond_Kurzweil, 73-year old Mr Allen may yet just about get his wish. Writing in The Sun today, Mr Kurzweil (who, it should be noted, has a book to flog) suggests that the pace of developments in nanotechnology could mean man becoming immortal within 20 years.

This raises all kinds of intriguing questions – medical, philosophical and otherwise. On the face of it, you'd have to see this as a good news story – no more deaths from cancer or heart disease or whatever. But there are downsides. As Bryony Gordon writes in today's Telegraph, "I'm not convinced that I want to live forever. After all, how do you feel alive when you know that you're never going to die?"

And goodness only knows how Mr Kurzweil's prediction will impact on the pensions and insurance industries. Actuaries, pension managers and insurance providers have struggled with the implications of life expectancy increasing at the rate of two years every decade in the UK, let alone the concept of death becoming obsolete. What happens to everyone in the pensions and insurance industries if no-one dies? I suppose at least we'll all have plenty of time to re-train.

AF