Who went bust the best?

Having dealt with irony in his interview with Andrew Marr (see below) former Prime Minister Sir John Major then moved on to delusion. In outlining where Gordon Brown had gone wrong, he also set about explaining where John Major had gone right. It turns out that, contrary to popular memory, the last recession was, in fact, his finest hour.

The problem with the present government is it is going broke in the wrong way. Because the current recession is a result of the credit crunch and collapse of the global banking system operating under very loose regulation (whose idea was that?), Gordon Brown has the "luxury" of public spending to boost growth. So pity poor Sir John whose misfortune was to create the wrong type of recession - one born of "inflationary growth" (again, whose fault was that?).

But brave Sir John spotted an opportunity for the country. His masterstroke was to cure the UK economy once and for all of the scourge of inflation that had plagued governments for 50 years. Engineering a recession to "cure" inflation is certainly a novel approach - like Henry VIII's radical solution to the problem of Anne Boleyn's headaches.

Presumably, therefore, the cure for the Conservative Party's split over Europe was to engineer the heaviest election defeat for 180 years. Another triumph for Sir John...