Bernie Madoff was today sentenced to 150 years in prison for defrauding thousands of innocent victims. When his Ponzi scheme was rendered unsustainable by the financial crisis, the exposed Madoff admitted his guilt and stated he was too ashamed even to seek his victims’ forgiveness.

Yet Madoff’s theft of £40 billion ($65 billion) over two decades is amateur in comparison with Gordon Brown’s masterly and on-going heist. In May 2009 alone, Gordon Brown’s government managed to spend £19.9 billion more than it received in income. At that rate, every two months Gordon Brown’s government will steal more from future generations of British taxpayers than Bernie Madoff managed in twenty years. Gordon Brown’s government spent more than £26.75 million more than it received in income in each and every hour of May 2009. That is £331 for every adult, every pensioner, every child in the UK. In just May alone.

Whatever happened to the abolition of boom and bust which Gordon Brown proclaimed ad nauseam as our ‘prudent’ Chancellor of the Exchequer? Gordon Brown was as qualified to be Chancellor as Bernie Madoff was to be Chairman of NASDAQ. Yet Gordon Brown and his Ponzi-scheming Cabinet continue to claim that taxes will not need to rise and that government expenditure will not need to be cut despite the dire state of the public finances. Worse still, he tries to smear all of those who acknowledge the truth. Gordon Brown’s United Kingdom is rapidly becoming Fiscal Fantasy Island.

Gordon Brown and his Party are dishonest. They treat the electorate with contempt, like idiots indeed. Perhaps we were idiots to believe their lies three times. But, we now know the claims to have abolished boom and bust were ridiculous. We know that prudent governments have to balance their books. We know we can’t afford to go on holiday to the USA or Europe because the pound is so weak. We know that the rich have become richer and the poor have become poorer. We know that huge, vast, enormous sums of money have been wasted on non-jobs and quangocrats. We know that the OECD is forecasting that the UK economy will contract by a massive 4.3% this year.

At least Bernie Madoff had the decency to admit he was a liar and a fraudster. The Grand Jury of public opinion will almost certainly convict Gordon Brown and his accomplices at the General Election. And, even if Gordon Brown manages to hoodwink the electorate, he will not be able to deceive the financial markets: watch the pound plummet if the global markets even imagine that the Fiscal Fantasy Island Fraudster could be at the helm of UK plc for another five years.