In April Labour thought the housing crash was a joke

The FT Westminster Blog offers some mild praise for Vince Cable package to rescue people caught up in the current problems in the housing market.

What is really telling, though, is that it quotes those Labour MPs who, as recently as April, thought the whole thing was just a big joke.

There was Angela Eagle:

The Liberal Democrat motion has been much commented on, possibly because it reads like the storyboard for “Apocalypse Now”, or perhaps even “Bleak House”. According to the motion, we are facing an “extreme bubble in the housing market” and the “risk of recession”, and we must “act to prevent mass home repossessions”.

Presumably that is why the hon. Member for Taunton (Mr. Browne) got through his entire speech without mentioning any of those things until the last minute—they obviously keep him up late at night.

Fortunately for all of us, however, that colourful and lurid fiction has no real bearing on the macro-economic reality. In difficult economic times—here I find myself in agreement with the hon. Member for Fareham (Mr. Hoban)— [ Interruption. ] —at least in part; I do not want to get him into trouble. In difficult economic times, it generally pays to remain calm and to apply a cool, analytical mind to the situation. Hysterical over-reaction, as this motion demonstrates, might attract a few cheap headlines and some doom-laden Lib Dem press releases, and it might even frighten a few voters ahead of local elections, but it is not mature or responsible, as my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Mudie) took some time to point out.

Now that we have had “Apocalypse Now” and “Bleak House”, I am going to talk about “An Inconvenient Truth”, which is that the economy is strong and stable.”

And Siôn Simon:

It is alarming me to discover that people as esteemed as the Liberals think that we are in the grip of an “extreme bubble”. If we are in an “extreme bubble” now, could she tell us what sort of bubble we were in during the early 1990s when people’s homes really were being repossessed by the hundreds of thousands?

You can find the whole debate in Hansard for 2 April 2008.

Two points should be made in defence of these Labour MPs:

• Angela Eagle is a junior minister and has to say whatever she is told to say;
• Siôn Simon is an idiot.