Clunking Off The Political Stage

Gordon Brown, the former Prime Minister ans currently Labour MP for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath in Scotland, will stand down as an MP at the next general election .... cue an outpouring of praise for a man who many believe has ruined Britain for a generation to come.

First comes the bullshit from those other members of the Westminster bubble, some of it from people who in reality must have loathed him: 

• PM David Cameron said: "Gordon has given a huge amount in terms of public service and his contribution in government and Parliament ....."
• His successor as leader of the Labour Party, the back stabber Mr Miliband said "Gordon has been a towering political figure for a generation" .... instrumental in Labours "investment in health and education and the minimum wage. He worked with other world leaders to stop the financial crisis becoming a great depression. And even recently he played a really important role in the Scottish referendum making sure there was a no vote". 
• Finally arch manipulator, Peter Mandelson said ..."no-one could take away" his achievements in office. "The balance of achievements will be very much in Gordon Brown's favour."

Then comes the BBC 'analysis' of his career ..... laughable in its dismissal of any failures in this left wing socialist hero (contrast that with the lukewarm analysis of the achievements of the real 'giant' of this political era, Margaret Thatcher, when she died).

• As 'Chancellor Mr Brown oversaw a decade of growth', 
• He made the Bank of England independent and 
• Played a key role in keeping the UK out of the Euro.

Reality:

He was a flat track bully as a politician, beating up those who were weaker, but backing away when faced by those with more balls such as Tony Blair. He was a fair weather Chancellor of the Exchequer ... good at spending money during a world wide boom, even the money we didn't have.

• When he took over as Prime Minister from Mr Blair it was only when he was guaranteed that there would be no contest in 2007 .... in fact he never seems to have competed in, let alone won any election where he was seriously facing opposition.  Even his Scottish Westminster seat of Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath is a Labour safe seat, with a 20,000+ majority.
• As PM he chickened out of going to the country immediately, and it looked to everyone like his fear of defeat was the ruling factor. He had never taken on Tony Blair in a contest either, despite much personal antipathy between them, for much the same reasons.
• As Chancellor, by borrowing during a world wide boom, and even inventing the private Finance Initiative, to build it now, pay for it later, he has mortgaged the countries children, and even grand children's future. He has set up debts that we and they will still be paying for long after the shoddy assets he built (virtually all in the NHS, over which he, like many Labour politicians, obsessed), are gone. 
• His 'decade of growth', was a decade shared by every major nation in the world barring Japan. How hard is it to do that? Answer, not very hard. The hard part would have been to not bankrupt us during a boom .... the moral of the crickets and the ants comes to mind when thinking of his chancellorship.
• As Chancellor he stole money from the best run pensions industry in Europe .... it never recovered, and many of us not on an MP's golden pension, will suffer for this until the grave.
• As for 'keeping us out of the Euro', well he apparently decided to do it without bothering to tell Prime Minister Tony Blair (who favoured membership and thought it was the UK's "destiny" to join it), and for political reasons, not necessarily the economic ones at that time .... he always cited his 'five euro tests' as having not been met.  To be fair, he feared that any instability in the euro-zone could threaten his overall reputation for successful economic management, which by chance is what's happened. So he gained some credit by the accidents of the economic cycles, but as for his overall reputation for successful economic management? Well that's entirely another matter.

Saviour of the Union?

This Is Who Many Scots Blame For Their Woes

 
As an architect of Scottish Devolution, and the inevitable path it went down, to describe him as a key player who 'played a  really important role in the Scottish referendum' is a strange one .... he was a major signatory of the Scottish Claim of Right in 1988. To this document and its principles he remained ever true, and his late intervention in the referendum may have been motivated by the fear that he would considered as one of the key architects of the union's dissolution if the Scottish National Party won. Now when it finally happens in a few years time, people will have forgotten his part in the breakup of the country and its balkanisation and his hands will be much cleaner.

Browns Loyalties Never Doubted

He was never this colossus that the Left and the Labour party, will try to make him into ..... in fact it was his parties attitude to white English working class concerns, over his governments open door immigration policies, well illustrated by his run-in with a Mrs Gillian Duffy during the 2010 election campaign (he called her a bigot ... but worse was forced to grovel an apology which he patently didn't mean). Its the consequences of that immigration policy, which is in many ways the driver for the current UKIP rise, which combined with the eventual inevitable break up of the British Union, that will be his real legacies ....

But to end on a positive I'll say this.

He faithfully kept his oath to the Scottish Claim Of right ....