From: The Unit To: GB Subject: A cruel Yule

Tactical Briefing

So, pretty good week. Two massive areas of concern for us. One: "I Saved the World"-gate. Two: the possibility of a total economic collapse.

Obviously at the Unit we feel we need to focus strongly on the slip of the tongue. Because while a total national economic collapse will obviously be damaging, the narrative of your involvement in the crisis is what we can viably have an effect on.

As the pound battles to maintain its position as a second-rank reserve currency with the Algerian dinar and dives towards one-to-one equity with the Bulgarian lev, there are two potential images of you for the public to latch on to. The one we need to promote is you as the wise old wizard of economics. A guru in a tweed shirt who sits atop a misty munro with an abacus dispensing advice to people who come to seek your counsel, such as Obama and Sarkozy.

Competing with this is the potential view of you, fiscally speaking, as a reformed alcoholic who has decided after an initial half-pint that current circumstances demand that, for medical reasons, you need to start drinking a pint of port at breakfast and shots of tequila and rum at regular intervals throughout the day.

"I Saved the World"-gate obviously helps promote the second image. Think we need to be aggressive on this one in terms of our response.

We need to operate on two fronts. In private briefings we need to stress strongly that you very much did save the world, while in public we very much stress that you never would say such a thing, and if you did (which you didn't - it was a tape distortion), it wasn't a Freudian slip but a normal slip. Laughing about it is typical of the Tory toffs who enjoy all forms of physical pain and indisposition in the lives of normal working people.

As regards how you did save the world, maybe we could hint at a scary scenario that we managed to avert? A midnight wobble that only you and Bush etc know about.

Maybe international banking leaders were on the verge of doing something odd? Perhaps you talked them down from attempting to expatriate large quantities of gold to the International Space Station because they feared market volatility? Maybe they wanted to try to create an underworld kingdom with very low interest rates?

They went bonkers, briefly, but you handled it, possibly even locked them in a room and hosed them down, metaphorically and/or literally speaking?

Also, we think we can spin the positive sides of the coming downturn more. Cheap houses for first-time buyers? And as imports become more expensive, so UK manufactured goods become more attractive. Unfortunately recent figures suggest the UK has a similar industrial base to sub-Saharan Africa in terms of manufactured goods. We still make some small plastic items such as low-quality curtain hooks - and also computer game concepts, and new ice-cream flavour vibes - but little in between. But we needn't focus on this.

Let us know your thoughts.

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