“Day the markets breathed again”. And why wouldn’t they, when Nursey has come along again to apply another bandage to their self-inflicted wounds and kiss them on the forehead to make everything better?

“[The] financial markets [are] ceasing to work,” says Arrivederci Gordon, apparently oblivious to the fact that the markets haven’t been working for some years for they are the same markets that allowed bankers to risk this country’s – and many other countries’ – stability.  Oh, and that he was the head of Britain’s financial system for more than a decade…

“This is the first government to do what a large number of governments are going to do over the next few days,” he thunders on, apparently oblivious to the fact that two, eight or fourteen wrongs do not make a right.  That the USA and most of the rest of the world are as inept as us is no cause for celebration.

It is revisionism of the most distasteful kind for this man to seek to detach himself of blame for the catastrophic economic crisis we are experiencing.

And words like “catastrophic” are, for once, not hyperbolic.  In a rolling news culture when Britney Spears having a haircut can be the lead story on cable news channels for a couple of days, this is the Real Deal – this shit is serious.

Deregulation of the financial markets – begun by That Bloody Woman in the 80s and hastened by Bliar and Broon in the 90s – has manifestly not worked.  It has demonstrably failed on such an epic scale that our government has just had to assume the largest peacetime debt in our nation’s history simply to try to keep the show on the road.

Anybody who thinks that the recent bailouts will solve the crisis are crackers.  I do not decry governmental intervention in the circumstances.  I do not believe that the government was wrong to step in to prevent people like my grandmother from potentially losing their meagre life savings.

But NOTHING HAS CHANGED.  Five multi-millionaires have lost their jobs, that’s all.  There have been put in place no conditions to prevent a recurrence of such reckless gambling with the country’s prosperity.  Regulatory oversight has been neither increased nor improved.

If anything, Arrivederci Gordon has reinforced the malaise.  He has rewarded the disastrous behaviour of the bankers by leading the charge to bail them out without putting in place any disincentives to repeat the recklessness that got us here in the first place.

Fred Goodwin (and his ilk) got away with it for a decade or more before the roof caved in: he’s already got his cash in the bank (nicely protected by Arrivederci Gordon’s deposit guarantee, ironically).  His forced resignation will hurt his ego a bit but his risks have already paid off handsomely enough to enable him to devote the next few years to spending more time with his family and golf caddy in great comfort.  Why should he care now?

In fact, this will be nothing but an unfortunate blip in his cv.  Yesterday’s Daily Telegraph declared – apparently with a straight face – that Goodwin’s “grasp of finance is in the Alpha class” and he is “unlikely to be in the growing queue of jobless bankers long enough to get his hands dirty or his handicap more respectable”.

And if one of his minions has seen Fred trouser £5m a year while driving the motor the wrong way down the dual carriageway before eventually crashing the car AND WALKING AWAY FROM THE WRECK WITHOUT A SCRATCH, why shouldn’t he or she do likewise to build a career?

Gambling is bad.  Gambling is addictive.  Reckless gambling with unafforable consequences should be discouraged.  We know this because Arrivederci Gordon has been saying so for a while: remember he’s the one who scrapped the planned megacasinos not all that long ago.

The financial markets are populated by gamblers, hooked on the rush of playing with other people’s money, other people’s security and other people’s lives.  Why is their gambling habit any better?

Buried beneath last night’s bulletins’ headlines about how City bankers were back in the wine bars mutually masturbating each other and wiping themselves off with £50 notes was the news that far from abandoning his attempt to be allowed to lock people up for 42 days despite being spanked from one end of the House of Lords chamber to the other, Arrivederci Gordon fully intends to press ahead with that plan – but only introduce the measure after the next terrorist attack when fear and loathing will mean that the niceties of reasoned argument and logical debate can be put to one side.

Having taken a few pot shots at those gambling with other people’s money, Arrivederci Gordon is now playing a game of dare with other people’s lives.  Way to go, Gordie!

Until our Prime Minister can formulate any kind of coherent ideology or strategy other than reacting to events after they happen, he remains a dead man walking.

What he, Captain Darling and the laughable heads of the Bank of England and Financial Services Authority have done in recent days may indeed steady the economic ship for a while.  But eventually the news agenda will move on.

The recession will still be here – we’ll still be losing jobs.  We’ll still need to have a plan to deal with global warming.  We’ll still have men and women dying in Iraq and Afghanistan.  We’ll still be a terror target because of our clueless foreign policy.  Public transport will still be a sick joke.  The hospitals will still be dirty.  The schools will still be crumbling.  We’ll still have internecine squabbling about the succession.  He still won’t be able to inspire or lead.  He’ll still send insomniacs to sleep when he speaks.

Gordon Brown is a decent man.  There is much to admire and respect about him.  But he is out of his depth and in the wrong job.  Nothing that has happened over the past fortnight has changed that one iota.  And once the dust settles, his inadequacies as a Prime Minister will be thrown into sharp relief once more.

He might now survive even if Labour lose Glenrothes but, unless they retain the seat resoundingly, the respite will be short-lived.  Next spring’s elections are only six months away.  And as we’ve seen this October, even a week is a very long time in politics.

I genuinely see no way that Gordon Brown will lead the Labour Party into the next General Election if, as expected, that election takes place in 2010.

Movie cognoscenti will know that the two words that follow “Arrivederci, Gordon,” are, “Hurry back.”

It was said at least as sarcastically in Gregory’s Girl as it’s meant on this blog.