Every Labour chancellor has a primal fear of falling foul of the financial markets – and with good reason. Stretching all the way back to Philip Snowden’s currency crisis in 1931, the party’s history is studded by run-ins with the massed forces of capital in which capital has invariably emerged victorious.
The devaluations of 1949 and 1967, together with the sterling meltdown of 1976 and the “cap in hand” International Monetary Fund humiliation, are an indelible chunk of Labour’s collective memory. Gordon Brown is unusual in being chancellor for so long and not to have experienced the sinking feeling that accompanies a run on the pound – but that was only because he moved from 11 to 10 Downing Street a few weeks before the global financial crisis started to unfold in the summer of 2007.
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