The Foreign Office minister, Lord Malloch-Brown, who is retiring from government later this month, has apparently told colleagues that he has seen better strategic thinking in Latin America than in Gordon Brown’s government, which he describes as “chaotic”.
This will come as no surprise to anyone who recalls the Prime Minister being lectured earlier this year by the Chilean President, Michelle Bachelet, who told him that her country was better prepared than others to survive the downturn because it had it had taken decisions during the good times to “save some money for the bad times”.
A taunt often hurled at the PM is that he has, through his economic mismanagement, reduced Britain to the level of a banana republic. Lord Malloch-Brown’s pronouncement would tend to suggest that such comparison is grossly unfair to banana republics.
