Gordon Brown, you arrogant, incompetent cunt.
Right, now I’ve got that out of my system, can I raise for debate whether Gordon Brown has a fucking clue about what he’s doing or not.
I’d like to say it was a recent dip in form, but his lack of political/management ability has been apparent from the very off.
Firstly, on the very day he was confirmed as leader of the Labour Party he announces that the winner of the Deputy Leader would also be Chair of the party. This is not merely a slight resuffle, it is a funamental change to the organisation of the party. Did he not think it might be nice to inform the members who were voting that that was his intention, or had he assumed that the party was his game now so he could make the rules up.
He then announced that the decision of the House of Commons which he disagreed with regarding the Supercasino would be set aside. Whilst something had to be done about this decison, this anti-spinning PM had the gall to say that “all options would be looked at” whilst senior sources were saying it was “dead in the water”. Well which is it? And if you are going to not spin things, can you not try and do it a bit better, because that looks for all the world that you were spinning a decision you’d already taken.
Then the farce of a Foreign Officer minister saying that the UK and the US would no longer be “joined at the hip” (playing to anti-war people and Europhiles), but then GB saying that the US is “our closest bilateral partner” (cue cheers from Atlanticists and war supporters).
Then the own goal of the election that never was. It is hard to believe that Tony Blair would have managed to turn a record lead for Labour in the polls in to a record lead for the Tories in just two short weeks. But that was because, despite all his faults, Tony Blair (and his advisors) were much more skilfull politicians.
Now, with the Metropolitan Police found guilty of organisational failings that led to the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes, neither he, nor the Home Secretary, nor indeed any Home Office Minister is made available to comment on the verdict. Given that they will have worked out strategies for the verdict going either way, it is shameful that the best they can do is do nothing. I can’t imagine he would have buried his head in the sand had the police been acquitted.
This issue is not a matter that he, or his government, can ignore. It has affected Britain at an international level and has done a lot of damage to the reputation of the police in this country. Gordon Brown should really be ashamed of himself.
I have heard two comments that sum up Brown well. One from Michael Portillo on This Week, who said that Blair’s government, for all the accusations of being Presidential was not a one man show. There was always Gordon Brown to offer opposition, plus other heavyweights such as Mo Mowlam, Robin Cook, David Blunkett, and Charles Clark. Most of them finished their career in various states of ignominy, but they were never scared of the argument. Sadly, Portillo correctly observed, this is now a one man show.
A more pithy summary came from a friend. Gordon Brown is a Chief Exec. He’s not a Chairman of the Board.
Hmmm…I’ve been aware of your enthusiasm for Tony Blair in the past, bearded baby, so perhaps it’s not surprising that you’re getting positively incensed by his successor for “not commenting on a story about an investigation into police malpractice” and unilaterally making barely newsworthy changes to his party’s constitution whilst the blood from eighty thousand innocent Iraqis has barely dried on Blair’s hands.
A point of which I am aware, which is why I said that Tony Blair had faults. The spin and the war alone should have been enough to condemn Labour to electoral defeat, but he and those around him had a political skill that avoided that.
The Brown bounce couldn’t have collapsed more spectacularly. He took over with a lead in the polls (remember them?) albeit a reduced one, and Brown was not “That Bloody Man”. Add to that an inevitable withdrawal of troops from Iraq, surely that would be enough to make the next 18 months less of a campaign and more of an annunciation. But what has happened now is that Brown could going from being the Saviour of Socialism to Leader of the Opposition in just 18 months.
It will annoy you all for me to say it, but Blair was right when he said, “Power without principle is barren, but principle without power is futile.” The polls now give the Tories either a slight majority or a minority government. The situation is grave as Labour could yet be condemned to a further few years of hand-wringing futile opposition. There are a surprising number of people I know who would consider voting Labour (either have done in the past or are swing voters) who are already saying that they wouldn’t vote for Gordon Brown. And what is interesting is that they don’t say they wouldn’t vote for “Labour”, they say they wouldn’t vote for “Gordon Brown”.
The harsh reality is that power IS everything in politics. A silver medal is worthless in the House of Commons. Which is why I was a fan of Tony Blair – not for his shit-eating grin, his laboured earnestness, and quite a lot of his policies. I was a fan of him because he realised the most important thing was to be in power and that sometimes Mohammed had to go to the mountain of voters that decide the next election.
And it is a fucking disgrace that nobody from the Government commented on the murder of an innocent tourist. It cannot be swept under the carpet. The police fucked up, but yet again nobody seems to take the honourable course. I’m not saying they should have commented on it because I’ve become so dependent upon the Blair spin machine that I don’t know what to think without it; that I can’t comprehend what it is like to have a PM that doesn’t see the need to comment on every single news item. It’s about showing a bit of leadership and attempting to rebuild the Met’s tarnished reputation.
After all, it’s a simple question – if Sir Ian Blair was sacked, would the Met’s reputation be worse or better?
From what you’re saying, Brown has been such a colossal disaster, on a par with Ian Duncan Smith, that his party must be seriously considering cutting their losses and replacing him now, rather than face devastating electoral humiliation.
But why am I getting the feeling that this isn’t going to happen? You don’t even need to be a fan of Brown to know that it won’t.
Any government which isn’t at least ten points behind in the polls is performing spectacularly. Blair’s prowess led to a shift in the goalposts (Thatcher was catastrophically unpopular throughout her premiership except on election days) but the fact is that most people in politics probably think that Brown would win an election without too much difficulty were it to be held tomorrow, next month or in two years.
I don’t dispute what you are saying about responsibilities and I think the home secretary should make a statement about the Met, but I am reasonably confident about two things:
a) Brown has more genuine principle in his little finger than Blair had in his whole body, and
b) Brown is no less a political animal than Blair, his style is just different – he is still in my view ahead of the game, not behind.
I’ll just mention for the record that I am reserving judgement on Brown as PM as it is too early to say. For now, I’m seeing an awful lot of political machination and quite a bit of policy (but not enough). For now my standards and expectations are so depressingly low that I am just grateful we don’t live under Tony Blair any more. I’d be saying the same if we had a Tory government, until their policies became more abhorrent than Blair’s, which isn’t guaranteed.
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