Now you see it
NOW I know what Gordon Brown and his small team of chosen sidekicks mean by transparency. For this I must thank the can- did cameras of ITV which this week gave us We Are the Treastoy. Only last month the Chancellor was jetting out to urge trans- parency on the International Monetary Fund and all 180 of its other members. I thought then that it might usefully begin at home: 'At the Treasury his regime has been marked by a water-gardener's approach to disclosure — selective leaking and planting, with a liberal top-dressing of manure.' The cameras showed us this process in action. His team were shamelessly transparent about it. How long can they go on assuming that they are the Treasury — waving its chief economic adviser goodbye, confident that theirs is the advice that matters? On all past form the answer is: until their first sterling crisis. By then, of course, they may have abolished sterling.
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