In criticising Osborne, Brown has revealed that he is wrong and that he knows it. If the pound was not doomed, as Osborne warned, Brown would have said so. He has a history of being able to produce tractor production statistics on demand (even if they turn out to be irrelevant or misleading), so his decision to attack Osborne himself rather than what the man said is very revealing.
It is still more revealing to see how weak is the attack; to have to invent a constitutional convention out of thin air is frankly hopeless. If, as the BBC reports:
former Tory chancellor Ken Clarke said he had not heard "of any convention that opposition politicians - including the shadow chancellor - cannot comment on sterling"
then we truly know that Brown is desperately scraping the barrel for anything that supports his position.
Then, of course, we see that the attack comes not from the Chancellor, but from Brown and Mandelson. Whilst Mandy did well on the Today programme, lasting a good two minutes by my measure, his mere presence shows that the only available counter to Osborne is political - not economic.
Blue Eyes is right. We shouldn't be shooting the messenger; we should shoot the pianist.
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