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 ....

Gordon Browns Cabinet of Pygmies and Yes men

Gordon Brown has set his inner cabinet team as being all his personal friends and protégés, many of whom have barely been MP’s for more than a few years.

Apart from the fact that it displays what a paranoiac Gordon Brown is by removing any ‘big beasts’ against whom he might be unfavourably compared, it also makes this possibly the worst cabinet in modern UK history. Judging by the "Annus Horribilis" that PM Brown is now having, it shows.

So let’s have a look at this collection of misfits and inadequate’s, seven of whom have been MP’s for less than ten years:

Chancellor of the Exchequer: Alistair Darling (a.k.a 'Mini Me' or Gordon Brown) MP from 1987 (Scotland) Treasury Minister under Gordon Brown since 1996. Taken over just in time to preside over, and take the blame for, any collapse in the economy. He has so far managed to get embroiled in the Northern Rock collapse, and the loss of 25 million data records .... not bad going.

Home Secretary: Jacqui Smith had been an MP since 1997 (England), and first held minor office in 2003. She was plucked from this relative obscurity by Gordon Brown in 2007, and is an admitted former drug taker who has been nicknamed “Jacqui Spliff” in some quarters. She is most noticeable for her perpetual spinning of every disaster to blame it on the Tories (best), or predecessor (2nd best), but not herself.

Most recently was found to have buried yet another illegal immigration story until the press discovered it. Is very PC and ‘on message’ in her public statements e.g. funded the LGBT history month (Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender) – or recently telling everyone who would listen that ‘mass immigration is good for UK’ despite evidence that at best it’s a neutral cost, and that in reality many groups (especially from Turkey, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Somalia), all Muslims, are just benefit migrants and are an active drain on the economy as well providing a source of terrorism.

Foreign Secretary: David Miliband (who is fast becoming an international joke). Been an MP since 2001 (England), and served as a backbencher for barely a year before ‘fast pathing’ to one of the big three jobs in UK politics. Working for Gordon Brown, before becoming an MP, appears to be the key reason for his fast track promotion to the post of Foreign Secretary.

Recently tried to suggest that, the countries of the Maghreb, and the Middle East, could all become members of the EU inside the next 25 yrs. He was described by an old style Labour MP (‘Bob’ Marshall-Andrews – England 1997) as "this pillock on his gap year” as he careers from capital to capital dispelling pearls of wisdom.

Schools Secretary: Ed Balls (Couldn’t make this name up) MP since 2004 (England). Worked for Gordon Brown since 1994 and therefore didn’t have to bother with waiting for high office. Ed has managed to be in post just long enough to watch the UK fall from 3rd to 15th (out of 41 participating countries) on the Pirls ladder of core reading skills. And fresh in we have fallen from 4th to 14th in the teaching of science.

That crashing noise you hear, is yet another new labour key policy hitting a brick wall..... it seems a long time since "Education, Education, Education" was one of the New Labour battle cries.

Cabinet Office Minister: Ed Miliband Bother of David Miliband (You get the picture) and son of a Marxist theorist (who said communism failed?). Worked for Gordon Brown from 1994 and became another “shoe in” MP from 2005 (England).

Secretary of State of International Development: Douglas Alexander became MP in 1997 (Scotland). Worked for Gordon Brown in 1990 … staunch Brownite from the start. (Odd how 'Thatcherism' survived as a political dogma whereas 'Blairism' has gone).

Housing Minster: Yvette Cooper Married to Ed Balls (Really, you can’t make this nepotism up) Former policy adviser to Gordon Brown. MP since 1997 (England)

Defence Secretary: Des Browne MP since 1997 (Scotland) worked for Gordon Brown at the treasury in 2005. Recently got on the wrong side of more ex generals and defence chiefs than you could shake a pointy stick at. He is the first man to be Scottish Secretary as well as Defence Secretary, which prompted the row. Somehow this became an attack on Gordon Brown as well, when he was accused of treating the forces with "contempt".

Transport Secretary: Ruth Kelly MP since 1997 (England) worked for Gordon Brown at the treasury in 2001. Only claim to fame is that she is a strong catholic who has issues about some pro homosexual policies (she overcame her scruples) .... She also had problems with child sex offenders employed in schools, and also sending her son to a fee-paying school, rather than the comprehensive system. Was a Blairite. (Seeing as everyone else in the Labour Party does the same thing, I am not sure why this was 'controversial' rather than just plain 'hypocritical'?)

Three things immediately strike you about this list:

1. Every one of these appointees has barely served anytime as MP’s, most have served no apprenticeship as a junior minister, and some have done nothing before elevation.
   
   What do all those time served labour MP’s, who have been MP’s for decades think when they see policy wonks given safe seats and instant cabinet status? If I was one of them, I would be looking round for others of a like mind, forming a caucus of 70 Labour MP’s, and then giving Gordon a list of reforms to get rid of these little oiks.
   
2. That everyone in his inner cabinet is a personal appointee of Gordon Brown, there are no ‘Blairites’ (if such a thing exists) and no political counter weights, aka ‘Big Beasts’ who could offer his cabinet a political balance, such as that which Brown provided to Blair, or Heseltine did for Thatcher. You have to assume that his well known fear of being contradicted or challenged, has caused him to pick political pygmies who will never be big enough to threaten him.
   
   This is particularly noticeable when you consider the make up of previous Labour governments: Clement Attlee’s postwar government contained Ernest Bevin, Herbert Morrison and Stafford Cripps who were all household names before taking office. Harold Wilson had his successor James Callaghan, the urbane Roy Jenkins and the intellectual bruiser, Denis Healey and even maverick George Brown.
   
   The famous Thatcher joke was her and the cabinet sitting down for a meal and the waiter asking her what she would have to eat? and she said “ Steak” and the waitere asks her ‘what about the vegtables?’ she replied “Oh they’ll have the same” … she could get away with this joke because the cabinet contained Heseltine, and Clarke, but what has Brown got apart from a cabinet of yes men and women?
   
3. How the MP intake in New Labour is now centrally controlled with ‘local party democracy’ all but obsolete. Virtually every one of the ministers listed was a ‘parachuted’ into safe Labour seats that they would never have been selected for except via central control. E.g. one of these urbanites represents ‘South Shields’ and another Doncaster …. Hmm how long will they stay their once they retire? … Taxi for Miliband!
   

As an aside, I reckon this practise of parachuting of (mostly southern) appointees into safe Northern seats, damages Labour (and the same for the Tories) in the long run, by killing local parties. Anyone with ambition to be an MP now realises that becoming a councillor, and working for a local party, will get you overlooked when the time comes to select a party representative for MP in a safe seat. The route now is central office and a safe seat as the PM’s or Chancellors gift. This is the death knell to local seats and councillors and local democracy, all things that the PM says he wants but obviously can’t commit to.

I would be interested to know how many MP’s these days come from the city they represent and what was the figure 50 yrs ago?

I think Gordon Brown may have shot his bolt …there is a wave of anti Brown feeling sweeping the country at the moment, and its reflecting in his personal rating as he slumps to his lowest rating. Many Labour voters see New labour as Pro Immigrant, Anti White, Pro European, and anti English, according to the conversations I am now hearing.

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