The Final Delusion

My utter and entirely justified contempt for Gordon Brown is well-documented on this blog. But even he's managed to surpass himself in terms of delusion and sanctimonious bullshit flammery in his post-prime ministerial speech to a bunch of corrupt socialist African 'leaders' (dictators) in Kampala yesterday. 
But hey, that's just my view of the utter Brown catastrophe. Here's a bit of what he said. I think the entire speech, taken as watertight evidence of a diseased mind, conclusively demonsrates that he is, at heart, a quasi-totalitarian egoist with messianic tendencies. But, naturally, you must make-up your own mind:

All of our lives are connected: we can all impact for good or ill on the lives of people we have never met. And yet we don’t currently share a common society or effective global institutions that allow us to treat strangers as neighbours or give life to our feelings of fellowship, solidarity, compassion and care.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. I believe that it is possible for people, acting together, to build a global society, and design the institutions that would best serve its values

OK, Gord, you get on with 'building a global society'. But while you're busy designing the brave new world, the rest of us normal people will be searching for ways to harness individual compassion as a social force, lowering taxes to reward hard work and freeing the education system so that our brightest no longer have to feel disadvantageded because they aren't part of the anti-excellence Labour average.
I digress. The simple point is that Brown is a well-known, now-talkative lunatic, and Balls should just resign,

All hands on deck!

Hello to friends of denverthen. 'Estimologist' here. My brother has roped me in to his one-man effort to get the Communitarian revolutionaries out of Downing Street, with a piece of flattery that probably isn't true. But if it turns out I'm an idiot, I hope I'm a useful one!

The purpose of this blog, as I understand it, is to try to help our struggling country to its feet again, in whatever small way we can, so I'll try to keep it along those lines.

I'm not sure if this recessionary situation we're in is in fact the Big One that people have been rumbling about since the 18th century, starting I suppose with Malthus's Essay on the Principle of Population in 1798, and in our own era 'The Limits to Growth' (Club of Rome, 1972) and latterly many scholarly (and many more totally useless) articles on the internet about subjects such as Peak Oil. (I've not read these wiki articles thoroughly, they are offered as a starting point for the more interested digger, but one I find interestingly general and enlightening is a paper called 'How Civilizations Fall: A Theory of Catabolic Collapse' by a chap called J M Greer.)

If it is (the Big One), and it's not entirely Gordon Brown's fault, there is probably absolutely nothing that any number of well-intentioned rants by me is going to be able to do about it, but hey, it might not be, and even if it is, maybe it won't be so bad as all the Twenty-twelvers are saying. (Notable physicist and author Fred Hoyle thought that living in a dark age, post-catastrophe, would not be too bad, and that it might even be an age of liberty and innovation).

That said, the most effective approach I can think of to the Big One scenario is to try to make as many people as possible believe that this is it, on the basis that they will adapt their behaviour to avoid it, and maybe make it a bit less of a bother if it does happen.

One thing Mr Cameron is right about, either way, though: We can't go on like this.

~Estimologist.

Parachute PPCs

...Looks like Liz Truss's failed to open, given her impact on the Conservatives (and others) in the Norfolk consituency that didn't choose her as a PPC. "Lead balloon" springs to mind.

At all times, candidates for Member of Parliament should be local people. I would have thought that was blindingly obvious to all but Iain Dale, who's banging on about it in yet another pretty bitchy little post today (you have to wonder whether his personal ambitions in the direction of parliament have coloured his judgment on this), Conservative Party Central Office - and, oh yeah, the Labour Party. I doubt if Dale would be in the running for MP anywhere were it not for the prospect of the helpful parachute. Mind you, it looks like he might have given up after coming third in Bracknell. Don't get me wrong, however, I wish neither him nor Miss Truss any ill will. I just don't like candidates foisted on people. It's a stitch-up, it's patronising, it takes the electorate for granted and it should never be tolerated. To put it another way, there should be a law against it.

Conservative policy on this really does need to be clarified, as the excellent DT commentary from Melanie McDonagh (see link above) states. To say there are mixed signals coming from the Tory high command on localism is a major understatement. Pickles' presence, no less, is required.

==Update==
Iain Dale (I had no idea he read this little blog - maybe he has staff to do it for him) believes that the shortlist system helps to stop the "parachute effect" from ever happening, although he didn't put it quite like that (see comments). I'm not convinced, frankly, although I concede that the picture is more complex than the one I painted in my slightly bilious initial remarks. It does not, for instance, answer the question that is being put by Swaffham's Conservative Association: how much influence does, can and should Central Office bring to bear on local Associations in the selection of candidates? A better argument for universal open primaries (or open caucuses, to be precise) I have yet to hear. Mr Dale himself came a dignified cropper because of this excellent innovation as the people of the constituency for which he had hoped to stand opted for someone who, in terms of the crowded clusters of towns and villages in the south east of England at least, qualifies as a local man.

Interesting, that, and, I think, goes some way to proving my point. In the case of Elisabeth Truss, David Cameron on the radio just now said that he thought she would be an excellent candidate and that he hopes she is selected. I am sure he is absolutely right - she would most likely be an effective MP. But given that he sounds like he's otherwise washed his hands of the whole affair, it seems she's on her own, and we haven't been given the policy clarification on MPs' independence, localism and the relationship between constituency and party that is clearly needed.

We haven't forgotten about the expenses scandal yet. Does David Cameron (and, perhaps, Mr Dale) really need to be reminded just who MPs are elected to serve: constituency, parliament and party in that order?

Brown The "Useless Weirdo"

Sometimes Guido can be refreshingly pithy. His latest piece of pith is a fine example:

On his blog Bad Al Campbell argues that Dave hasn’t sealed the deal with the electorate thus; “December 5, 1996, Gallup poll. Labour 59. Tories 22. Now that’s what I call a lead. And they’re nowhere near it, because they have not sealed the deal, because they’re not serious on policy, because they haven’t changed much, and because a lot of people don’t really like them.”

Bad Al is really grasping with this line of spin. Labour are 19% behind in the polls; suggesting that if people don’t really like the Tories, they must despise Labour. The voters have come to a settled view of Gordon – that he is a useless weirdo. You can’t spin your way out of that…

"Useless weirdo," lol. A fine pith-making effort. I love it.

There is one other thing this particular blogpost throws up, however: the polls from those days, as psephological guru Mike Smithson has pointed out on politicalbetting.com until he's blue in the face, were unreliable, heavily weighted as they were in favour of Labour because of poor practices. Polling methodologies have changed beyond all recognition and for the better since then with the result that they are now, by and large, completely reliable sources that quite accurately reveal voting intentions. Campbell either knows this and is being dishonest or he doesn't and he's being stupid. Either way, he's a damn fool for making the comparison at all.

If you want to know more about why you should be careful with historical polls, Mike Smithson explains here.

Fact is, a 19% Tory lead according to modern polling techniques means a sub-200 seat wipeout for Labour if that was repeated at the general election. And it's a reliable poll. Campbell can't spin his way out of that reality, either.

The Challenge for Cameron

This is what I call top-class political journalism. Clear, cogent, cohesive and devastating. Another journalist seems to have finally understood the true scale of the damage set to be inflicted upon Brown and Labour by a country that has, quite simply, had a bellyful of them. It's worth the read...

They have no idea what is in store for them. Not really. When Labour convenes in Manchester for its annual gathering next September, its members will look back on this week's conference in Brighton as another era, another country, another world. Gordon Brown will be gone, David Cameron will be in No 10, and a new Opposition leader will be telling his or her flock not to despair – or, more accurately, to stop despairing. Factionalism, introspection, recrimination: these will be the hallmarks of the wrecked movement that once carried all before it as New Labour.

But that moment lies ahead. For now, the governing party is too busy ensuring that it will lose the general election to think of what life will actually be like once defeat is in the bag. Charles Clarke pops up to perform his constitutional role as the man who urges Gordon to go, for health reasons or something similar. Baroness Scotland, the Attorney General, is fined £5,000 for employing a Tongan housekeeper illegally – with the magnificent twist that she is in breach of a law she herself steered through Parliament. Baroness Vadera, one of Gordon's closest advisers, quits as a minister. Gordon himself, apparently shunned repeatedly by the President, is initially reduced to meeting Barack Obama in a New York kitchen, thus bringing a whole new meaning to the phrase "kitchen cabinet". The polls strike hammer blow after hammer blow to Labour's morale. David Cameron may not have "sealed the deal" with the public, but Gordon Brown most certainly has.

The entirely predictable corollary of these pre-conference fiascos is epically unsubtle positioning by the principal leadership contenders. Alan Johnson, whose false modesty is now starting to grate, admits that he's "not willing to rule myself out for all eventualities in the future". I'll bet he isn't. In a Guardian profile yesterday, Ed Balls was reported to have mumbled to a seven-year-old who asked "if he wants to be prime minister… that he would, if asked, adding that someone has to do the job". Again: you don't say, Ed.

Meanwhile, in New York, the other Ed (Miliband) told Mary Riddell in The Daily Telegraph yesterday that "I just think for me to start speculating about [the leadership] is a distraction and a bit presumptuous." Another big fat "yes"! Pressed on rumours that the PM might stand down before the election, the best Miliband could muster was: "I don't think that's going to happen. I don't think it would be right. Honestly." Not exactly a passionate oath of loyalty, is it? If I were Gordon reading that, I would mutter "Et tu, Ed?" into my porridge. Or perhaps just hurl the porridge against the wall, as seems to be the Prime Minister's preferred method of expressing mild irritation these days.

Mr Miliband's pre-conference mantra is that "there's no future for Labour in not being a party of the middle classes". This is true – indeed, it is obvious to the point of banality – but it is odd to hear Mr Miliband of all people say it, given that, for the past decade, he has been one of the most outspoken advocates of what he calls "fair taxes". And what Mr Miliband calls "fair taxes" is what the rest of us call "being fleeced" and "having less of our income left to us by the rapacious state to spend on our families". In his interview with The Sunday Telegraph today, Mr Brown claims that Middle Britain is top of his list: "These are the people who I identify with." Again, could have fooled us, Gordon. If the Brownites think that they will win over the electorate by reinventing the Blairite wheel at this late stage, they are in for a shock.

As, indeed, is the whole Labour movement. The shock of defeat lies not only in the loss of power, terrible as that undoubtedly is. A party driven from office must expect a whole array of traumas, great and small. For a start, the political landscape on the morning after the election is utterly transformed, and makes all pre-electoral prophecies instantly redundant.

The sheer scale of Labour's victory in 1997, the consequent tininess of the Conservative parliamentary party, and the absence of Michael Portillo from the Tory leadership race: none of this could have been foreseen at John Major's final conference as leader in Bournemouth in 1996. Most Conservatives knew they were heading for defeat. But it was 22 years since the Tory party had lost an election. It had forgotten the rank smell of failure, the ashen taste in the mouth, the sudden experience of irrelevance.

Irrelevance is at the heart of it all, and it is this that should most frighten Labour as it gathers by the sea. A party in power, no matter how divided, no matter how exhausted, no matter how useless, is still interesting: its exhaustion, its infirmity, its lack of trajectory are important because they affect all of us as citizens. If John Prescott is rude about Harriet Harman, it is a story. If Tony Blair is reported by Adam Boulton to think that Gordon Brown is a "quitter", that's a story, too.

Labour has grown used to the limelight, and has forgotten that nobody has a right to the public's attention. It is a paradox that the longer a Government lasts, even as it suffers cellular damage and approaches invalidity, the more convinced it becomes that its beliefs are obvious, that its arguments are plain common sense, that it does not have to win the battle daily. Philip Gould, Blair's chief pollster, used to quote approvingly the belief of the US strategist Dick Morris that, in modern politics, a government needs a "daily mandate". Plainly, Mr Brown believes no such thing. He exudes only contempt for his opponents and their policies, even though the polls suggest that Mr Cameron's personality and proposals have achieved considerable traction with the public.

The election of a Government does not represent a collective swoon before an ideological blueprint, but something much messier and more numinous: boredom with or suspicion of the other lot, intuitive enthusiasm for what the victorious party represents. That enthusiasm is provisional, probationary, and must be renewed constantly. Labour has completely forgotten this. It believes that Britain is a Labour country suffering a temporary bout of false consciousness. In fact, the opposite is true: after three general election victories, the scales have fallen from the public's eyes.

It will all look so different in Manchester a year hence. But let me predict this much about the week ahead at Brighton: Brown will give a decent speech, better than expected, which will include at least one killer punch (remember "no time for a novice" last year?). He will face down his internal assassins once more. The Labour Party will feel a little buoyed by its leader's determination. Then, it will disperse, go back to its constituencies – and prepare for Opposition.

All I would add is that contained within this piece is an implicit and powerful warning - for Cameron in particular and the Conservative party at large. If you unpack that warning, it might go something like this:
1. Do not take the power you will be lent for granted (again).
2. Do not lie to the people who gave you the job. Respect them by being straight with them.
3. Treat the offices of state which you will once more occupy - and the mother of parliaments - with respectful humility.
4. Seek that "daily mandate" and put it at the centre of your political philosophy.

Democracy is a continuum. Elections are merely the legal and essential expression of the need for a healthy democracy to change direction from time to time. The coming General Election, and the democratic change of direction we all so desperately crave that it will bring, is long overdue.

If Cameron follows these principles honestly and not as some sort of publicity gimmick or disingenuous 'triangulation' (stifling a debate by lying about your intentions, thus elbowing out any genuine antithesis), then there might be room for a glimmer of hope to emerge that British parliamentary democracy can become healthy once more, after the severe damage that has been done to it by years and years of Labour misgovernance and dishonesty and the daily abuses by MPs of every stripe of a system of remuneration that relied on their personal integrity to function.

If Cameron does this, he will have my vote until the day one of us dies. If he doesn't, he'll have one term and then, well, we'll need another "change of direction". We'll kick him out and continue our long, long search for a decent prime minister. (We might even give Boris a try!)

That's the challenge for Cameron. I think he's up to it. I hope I'm right.

Portillo Doesn't Really Get It - We've Moved On From Brown

Just been listening to Michael Portillo arguing on This Week that it's in Brown's political interest to 'sort out' the public finances immediately because Cameron's 'inexperience' will somehow then tell against him and Brown's 12 years in office (his 'strength') will suddenly, somehow win him support. This misses a lot of elephants in the proverbial room. For one thing, it is not only the electorate that seems to have collectively moved on from Brown, as even former Brownite, spendaholic economics guru, Anatole Kaletsky, has now acknowledged in the Times, the wider media has too.

Added to this is the fact that there is precisely no evidence to support the idea that Brown accepts the cuts argument anyway, let alone has a firm agenda set for spending controls. He is psychologically, stubbornly opposed to the non-expansionist narrative. His reluctance to admit his errors (and lies) over public spending is testament to this. He has not promised cuts in the way his Chancellor (sort-of) has, he has merely given vague, generalised assurances about efficiency savings and the abandonment of 'unnecessary' and/or 'wasteful' departmental projects - in much the same way as he did in 2005 when he told the same lies to cut the ground from under Michael Howard's feet over the latter's modest proposals, explained in his brilliant manifesto, for an efficiency drive. The idea of genuine reductions in government spending, and bringing the deficit and debt under control, are anathema to Brown. He might have been bounced into using the 'c' word by his own party, but he did so reluctantly and he did it disingenuously. He hasn't changed - and he hasn't really changed his tune.

In fact, I think Portillo knows this and he was actually seeking to make a clever if implicit, disguised point about how boxed in Brown has become, as is always the way with someone who has a genuine problem facing up to reality. The reality is that the electorate have had enough of him, in every possible way. The reality is that he can't immediately start setting the agenda for real public spending cuts because he'll be straying straight into the unmarked political minefield that is Tory economic territory: sound money and the small state. In other words, he won't because he can't. Whether he knows this or not is quite another matter. I think evidence suggests not. That's what the public suspects, too - and that's why he (and Balls with his sudden, bizarre, £2Bn assault on his own department), and Labour generally, have no credibility in this key policy area. Unlike 2005, when debt-fuelled growth and Brown's property bubble were reaching their peak, in 2009 no one's buying the Brownite lies and spin any more. A crash, Gordon, is a crash and the leaders in charge at the time of that crash and the recession that follows will be forced to take responsibility for it - especially if they are responsible for it!

For this and a whole host of other reasons, Brown-Labour has completely lost the argument on public finance.

Add to this the view that, as is clear now from a succession of polls, in the minds of millions of Britons, Brown caused not only the debt crisis but the crash itself and the rampant recession that followed, and there is more than enough evidence to suggest that Labour under Brown is facing total wipeout, assuming David Cameron's Tories don't make cannibalism and the culling of all six week-old puppies owned by small children firm manifesto pledges. Labour's only hope of avoiding this fate is to oust Brown - and November looks like the month. Last chance. Don't they get that?

Regardless of them, we really have moved on - and there are signs the mainstream media is beginning to sense that. Slow on the uptake, aren't they?

But not as slow, it seems, as the Labour party.

Hear Hear!

For the incurable optimist — of which there are no doubt several in the Downing Street bunker — there are signs that Britain is starting to recover. The stock market is booming once more, confidence is returning to the housing market and the recession may soon be over. Is it possible Gordon Brown really has saved the world — even if it is too late to save himself? Or, as Labour used to warble, might things only get better?

If only. The bleak truth for UK plc is that after 12 years of stupefying Labour incompetence, the worst is yet to come. Britain is once again on the slide towards the margins of economic influence and military clout. We have the worst public finances of any comparable western economy. The British Chambers of Commerce warned this week that the UK faces a ‘grim’ economic future, with a high risk of a relapse. Unemployment is not just spreading but setting like concrete for years to come. And our shabbily treated troops, once a match for the world’s best, will soon be driven humiliatingly out of Afghanistan.

This is not the slow, managed decline of an empire looking for a role. It is a sudden, embarrassing discovery that we don’t count on the world stage any more. Thanks to our lumbering Prime Minister, we have been given the unwelcome gift to see ourselves as others see us. And it ain’t pretty.

I am writing this from New York, whose citizens once saw Britain as a staunch economic, diplomatic and military ally. It is only a few short years since they hailed Tony Blair as a 9/11 hero and awarded him the Congressional Medal he was so embarrassed to collect. That was the high-water mark for New Labour.

Today, thanks to the Oil-for-Megrahi fiasco, we are a bitter disappointment to America. Newspapers from the Wall Street Journal to the New York Daily News are still running every fresh turn in this tawdry story.

It was perfectly summed up by a devastatingly editorial in the News: ‘Gordon Brown has given grounds to believe today’s British are a cowardly, unprincipled, amoral and duplicitous lot. Because he is all of those.’ Those are cruelly exaggerated words, but they put the finger on a single identifiable cause of Britain’s collapse. The new decline in Britain’s standing on the world stage is not just about Lockerbie. Nor is it even the decision to trade a convicted mass murderer for Libya’s vast oil reserves. It is about the shifty, furtive and ultimately disastrous management of a country which, in 1997, had every conceivable chance of becoming great again.

Labour strode to power with a huge Commons majority, the goodwill of the British people and the prospect of at least two terms in office. For the first time, Labour could ride an economy which had just taken off on a long and sustainable boom.

Tony Blair could have done one or two truly great things. His government had the cash and clout to transform a welfare state in which almost three million were on incapacity benefit. Instead, it left them to rot while importing migrants to fill almost all of the three million new jobs created. It could have performed drastic but urgently needed surgery on the lumbering National Health Service. Instead, it poured truckloads of taxpayers’ money into a giant bureaucracy, entrenching inefficiencies that will cost us up to £40 billion a year, every year.

And so it goes on. Read it!

If I'd known how to say it, that's exactly what I would have said - and many others besides me, I strongly suspect.

Fantastic.

Labour's Cold Equation

Martin Bright, a journo for whom I find I have increasing respect - I like someone who doesn't seem to let his personal political proclivities get in the way of journalistic professionalism (hey, I'm not a professional journalist) - pointed out today that a leadership challenge to Brown might still be on the cards, unbelievable as though that might sound after all the epic cowardice on the part of PLPists everywhere to date. It seems the cold political equation is finally getting through the numb skulls of senior Labour MPs. Keep Brown, and you're out for far, far longer than if you dump him, even this late in the game.

Rachel Sylvester's column today provides more than the usual share of insight and high-level gossip -- what more do you want from a political columnist?

The following paragraph is devastating about the Prime Minister's handling of the Megrahi affair:

"Even members of the Cabinet who remain publicly loyal are privately scathing about Mr Brown’s performance in recent days. “We can’t go on like this,” says one minister. “It’s beyond difficult — it’s farcical. We’re going from one fiasco to another and Government by fiasco doesn’t work. I’ve never been a plotter but I feel total exasperation."

Rachel is right to say that this is the Labour Party's Groundhog Day. As we enter the conference season all talk is of plots, conspiracies and coups. The difference compared with last year is that there is no obvious "Prince-in-Waiting" whose ambitions need to be crushed and no "Prince-of-Darkness" to ride to the rescue.

Jackie Ashley wrote yesterday of Labour "semi-stunned amble to the slaughterhouse". Today Polly Toynbee suggests a programme of political boldness, but drips with pessimism about the outcome:

There is nothing left to lose. High risks, high principles and high ideals might just save them now -- and certainly preserve enough respect to live to fight another day. What's the alternative? Quarrelling dishonestly into the salami-slicer over which party will cut what most, each pretending we can have it all when everyone knows its a lie?"

The left is in almost complete disarray. This is why the intervention of Jon Cruddas this week is so significant. As The Observer reported at the weekend, Cruddas is now taking on "the leadership" of the party directly. His Compass speech today could be seen as something of a watershed, if, as I suspect, it is the beginning of a Cruddas/Compass move for control of the soul of the party.

Cruddas's argument is clear and appeals directly to the party's grassroots. The Conservatives have revealed themselves over the summer as the Thatcherites they always really were, but the Labour government has failed to capitalise on this, he argues.

The Labour Party still has the ability to win the election, but it needs to get its message right or it will deserve to go down to a catastrophic defeat. This is as close as Cruddas has yet come to throwing down of the gauntlet. Now that would be an interesting challenge -- and not as easy to put down as David Miliband or even Alan Johnson.

It's Bright's clear-headed and consistent, erudite and honest views on the Megrahi debacle that have warmed me to him - as a journalist. Here we see some pretty good stuff on something people outside the World of Labour have known for quite a long time now, that Brown, simply, is "the problem".

From Bright's post you get the distinct impression that possibly, finally, improbably and unlike the last time(s) around, the Brown side of the cold equation seems to be understood by those that seriously needed to understand it. (The other side of the equation is the general election). The solution, for them at least, will be found by determining the right person to replace him. That's the distinct impression I get from Bright's, and other left-of-centre writers', opinions. My answer to the puzzle is rather different from most of theirs, but it should be an obvious one: Alistair Darling.

I think people actually trust him. He would sort of be Labour's Major in '92 (sort of). He is also the one, if I were a Cameroon, that I would be genuinely worried about. All the rest are so contaminated they would be almost as much of a liability as Brown so definitely is. All the economic calamities that have befallen Britain under Labour are associated, rightly, with Brown, not Darling. The latter still enjoys some credibility and no small amount of sympathy even among Right-thinkers in the general public, who see Brown's treatment of him as shabby in the extreme. Darling appears to have remained loyal throughout his trials, it seems. Not even when slimy Balls was maneuvering himself into the belly of Number 11 did Darling lose his poise. People like poise. Brown doesn't have any. Balls wouldn't understand poise if his poise teacher was Darcey Bussell.

Labour might still lose with Darling. But they would not lose as badly as they will with Brown. Hell, they might even win!

God help us all if it really has finally dawned on them that the equation is very real - and that the only solution to it that makes any logical sense is, astonishingly, Darling.

Bet you any money it hasn't...

Clean And Wholesome

Rather more impressive was this week's missive from Dave C found this morning in yours truly's Yahoo inbox. (Better than last week's cringe-making effort at any rate - hardly a difficult achievement).

With it came this rather quaint instalment of what I think is part of a series called "Political Pickles: A Culinary Campaign Adventure". I thought it rather fun. Rather...nice.



Clean, wholesome politics is on the Tory menu, folks. How refreshing. Above all, though, Brown-Labour simply isn't mentally or culturally equipped to comprehend this type of strategy - so it'll work. (And the muddled Lib Dems just don't matter, if you're wondering why I rarely talk about them.)

The Pickles Approach will puzzle the attack dogs of the Left. They will try to pour scorn over it, to belittle and smear the Conservative candidate. But all they will do (yet again) is alienate - yet further - people who find the Pickles Approach an enormous relief from Labour's venomous politics of character assassination and class hatred.

There's one thing about this little movie I am slightly confused about, though: this weird appeal for people to "come and campaign in Norwich". Well, chubby, chuckling, Tory chairman, much as I appreciate the invitation to drive nearly 300 miles to put leaflets through letterboxes in the pouring rain in a strange city - or whatever it is you want me to do (keep your stocks of pork pies topped-up?) - I think I'll have to pass on that one. No offence.

For Sale: Northern Crock

The Times is reporting that Gordon Brown is "desperate" to sell Northern Crock, the state owned Geordie bank, the collapse of which signalled the beginning of the world financial crisis and Brown's Great British Superbust, before the next general election. Front runner? Parasitical, ubiquitous supermarket mega-company, Tesco. (They're the only firm in the UK with any money these days.)

Says The Times:

Gordon Brown is keen to prove to voters that his rescue worked. If at all possible, he wants Northern Rock returned to the private sector at a substantial profit. Ministers say that he wants desperately to avoid a Conservative government taking the credit.

Whitehall officials told The Times that they “would not be surprised” if the bank were sold before the election.

The Treasury has drawn up a means of separating the good and bad assets to make it more attractive. Northern Rock holds deposits of £19.5 million and a mortgage book of £66.7 million. Some of the loans are so toxic that they are likely to stay in public hands.

Here we go again. Another day, another insult to our intelligence. Brown will let Tesco have the bank for a song in order that he can reinforce the serious delusion dreamt-up in his fevered imagination that he saved the world world's banks - and that he can stick it to the Tories.

Only, none of that is true, is it? The latest lie-structure component of this arch pseudologue doesn't bear scrutiny (surprise surprise). He's rushing the sale for no other reason than to screw the Tories. But he's got even that iniquitous bit of reasoning wrong. He isn't screwing the Tories. He's screwing the taxpayer, as always, saddling the public with The Crock's huge dollops of sub-prime, bad debt and handing over the healthy mortgages (guaranteed by public money, remember, otherwise they would not exist), to Tesco. Tesco gets the cream and we end up covered in shit, as will always be the case as Brown continues to try to buy the election.

You see, Northern Crock still owes us £8.6Bn, according to the Treasury. The company isn't worth anywhere near that much dough these days. And Tesco will get it on the cheap anyway, especially now McMental's announced it: ("I didn't get where I am today by not getting everything on the cheap, Reggie, young Gordon," says Terry Leahy). Perhaps a cool billion for cash, then? Maybe more, but not much. We'll see.

But let's say it is that number. What happens to the rest of our loan, all £7 billion quid's worth of it? I'll tell you: nothing. Nada. Tesco certainly won't be paying it. It'll be sucked-up into a supernova-expanding PSBR, fiddled away by the expert liars Balls and Byrne, and we'll never see or hear anything about it ever again. That's seven billion big ones, folks. Gone.

Wake-up! That's the price for Brown trying to buy the general election for which we, our children and our grandchildren will have to pay. And the rest? The £7,000,000,000 hit for a written-off Crock loan is chump change for Labour. Rather sums them up, don't it? But the reality is much worse. We are into the terrifying, GDP-busting, Labour debt world of "trillions" now.

But Brown will do anything, anything, to win his first real election.

He'll lie, he'll cheat, he'll smear and rest assured, he'll bankrupt the country. Why? He's done a simple political calculation in what passes for his brain and for a dishonourable, untrustworthy, demagoguic, pseudological imposter like him, the sums add-up. If he wins, he can do what he likes (so he figures). If he loses, then sod the country, it can go bankrupt for all he cares.

In his twisted mind, we would deserve that agony simply because we rejected him. Knowing that, a paranoid person might suggest Brown, who 'doesn't do' elections, might find some excuse to suspend the democratic process.

Rest assured: potentially, Brown is definitely that dangerous. He hates democracy - and that lack of comprehension is the thing will finally finish him.

Riots in the streets? Cameron is dead right about that. That's where we are heading now. Brown will bring the country to its knees before he ever lets go.

A delusional liar propped up by a spineless party. Folks, we are in big, big trouble.

Labour Will Lose Norwich North

According to the latest ICM poll in the constituency of former left wing Labour MP and super trougher, Ian Gibson, the Tories are going to take it comfortably. Obsessive psephologist, Mike Smithson, at his mega political betting website, makes some crucial observations about the numbers.

CON 34 (+1) LAB 30 (-15) LD 15 (-1) GRN 14 (+11)

The above ICM poll with variations on what happened at the last election was commissioned by Norwich’s University & College Union and has just been published. The sample was just 500 which means a much higher margin of error must be applied.

As can be seen the figures are broadly in line with current national polling and, indeed, it would be a huge surprise if the Tories failed to take the seat from Labour with a thumping majority.

The Tory margin in the survey would have been double the 4% but for ICM’s standard practice of realloctating half of those who say they will vote but don’t know which way in accordance with what they did at the last general election.

Clearly the campaign has not started and there is not that much awareness in the seat that a by election will soon by happening. A total of 18% of local voters had no idea that there was an election coming up.

No doubt the main contenders are working on the postal votes right now. Let us hope that afterwards the marked register for this election is not “lost” - something that happened after the last by election at Glenrothes last November.

It is worth pointing out, however, that beyond all these qualifications, there are some wider implications for Labour. Tories polling 34-38% in this previously safe Labour seat would not be spectacular, but it would be enough. I think they will poll more - in the 38-42% area, simply because of the 'Crewe factor'. Labour have forgotten how to campaign (you can guarantee they will opt for the 'keep the hated toffs out' option once again), have no money and can't recruit enough foot soldiers. Whatever message they manage to get across will so garbled, it will be politically unintelligible.

But the chief reason why Labour are heading for whopping defeat in Norwich is because of, you guessed it, Gordon "Getting On With The Job" Brown. People, in England at least, really do hate him now. He's managed to alienate just about everyone with his constant lies and spin and his wrongheaded, stubborn inability to change his tune. The 'hate the Tory toff' line, make no mistake, comes from him. It doesn't work, but he doesn't believe that.

The swing to the Tories in this seat could be as much as 16% - or more once the campaigning kicks in. Another epic defeat for Labour which should send shockwaves right through the party, then. But will it? Parliamentary Labour appears to be so collectively spineless that they backed the losing horse, just for a quiet few extra months in post, presumably.

If they do not remove him this autumn, I would say that they will have doomed themselves to the biggest defeat in their history, fake economic recovery or not. Whether the Tories benefit with a landslide or not is an entirely separate issue - it looks now as though they will not. What Labour should realise now is that, thanks to their nightmarish performance in office and the disaster that is Brown, they aren't just heading for defeat, they are heading for annihilation and third-party status as millions desert them for other parties, including a significant portion of their core vote in England and Wales.

But they've already had fair warning about Brown with the local and Euro catastrophes, so I suspect a heavy Norwich North defeat will be just one more unheeded nuclear air raid siren. This behaviour can only be described as nihilistic. If so, then such obscene political self-indulgence deserves to be rewarded with biblical disaster, as it probably will be.

Fake Reformers, Fake Reform

So the first Bercow 'big reform' is to cast off the Speaker's wig. This is a laughable, disingenuous gesture designed somehow to provide a visual representation of that 'clean break' the Berk referred to in his cringe-making speech yesterday. But if you take the wig off the man, all you are left with is the man - and this man is part of the problem. Dan Hannan:

...the hairpiece isn't simply a mediaeval relic. It's a reminder to its wearer it that his office is bigger than he is. It was a bad start when Michael Martin arrogantly refused the headgear. "It's just not me," he insisted, presuming to take the job on his own terms - an attitude which prefigured his eventual disgrace. Had the old boy slapped on the horsehair, it might have inspired him to try to live up to the role, to be a bigger man.

Tee hee. But through this first, empty act, Bercow's immediately fallen into line and begun to do precisely the kind of thing that Brown-Labour wants: distracting, fake iconoclasm motivated not by any genuine principle or sincere wish to modernise - or 'reform' - constructively a parliament that has been rendered rotten only by its current members' systematic abuse of its time-honoured traditions, but by a simple, dishonest desire to stay put. And they will do anything and say anything they can to that one end. As Peter Oborne said in a TV interview today, Bercow is the manifestation of the corruption that has crippled parliament. He was forced to pay six grand of evaded capital gains tax and over a thousand pounds' worth of dodgy claims for a personal accountant.

How can this man, along with all the other MPs now tainted by serious and proven sleaze, be trusted to reform the system? The answer is he most certainly cannot. The problem is, that question is part of the distraction. The fundamental point is this: forget trust - we're well beyond that - MPs, including Bercow, no longer have the moral authority to change or create law. For Labour to think that it can install its placeman in the Speaker's chair and carry on regardless is a (further) deep insult to the electorate. It is a travesty and the so-called reforms that will be generated consequently will be no more than meaningless windowdressing and a waste of precious parliamentary time.

It has already begun. Harriet Harperson's first announcement on reform is to table legislation making it a criminal offence (a criminal expense?) for MPs to fiddle their fees or fail to declare their interests punishable by 'up to a year' in stir. Have you stopped laughing yet? Aside from the fact there's no mention of existing legislation that covers the small matter of tax evasion - or of false accounting - here we have in your proverbial nutshell the contradiction that will confront this bankrupt government and the parliament it helped to corrupt: legislation like this would not be necessary if honourable members were just that, honourable. That they deem this legislation necessary merely proves to the public that they consider themselves untrustworthy. "Well, if they can't trust themselves with public money, why the hell should we," the public will rightly think. (I do.)

They will go around in circles, new Speaker in the chair he does not merit. They will make laws to constrain a future generation of politician who might well need no such constraint, given the inevitably far higher level of public expectation and scrutiny that new generation will accept it will have to endure. What's clear is that this government and this parliament were incapable of obeying the letter and the spirit of the rules they themselves partly created. They were also incapable of exercising judgment in the realm of propriety, both individually and collectively. There is therefore no reason for them to expect people to swallow the notion that they themselves, in some sort of "reflexive lawmaking", should be permitted to make a new law that forces them to obey the rules. We say: no thanks, you no longer have the right. Besides, it will miss its target because such a law is always contingent upon what those rules actually are and those rules are made by, you guessed it, MPs. You see? Going around in circles.

The old system might be flawed, but flawed or not its basic operating premise, that MPs are honest and honourable, is essential if we are to have real democracy. It requires a degree of faith on all our parts to be successful. An honour code is the only way our elected representatives can exercise the power we give them to supervise the sovereignty of parliament, thereby ensuring the continued health of the body politic. And therein we find the root-cause of the problem: one dishonourable MP can cause enormous damage to parliament and to that health. Six hundred dishonourable MPs, including the Prime Minister, and you have a severe crisis. And the longer they stay in parliament, the graver the damage they do, by the very fact of their continued presence. But it should be unsurprising to us that these people are reluctant to leave, regardless of this damage. They are who they are, after all: they don't care.

Bercow, with his fake iconoclasm, is merely another sign of that 'graver damage' to which I refer. This man is an insult to our intelligence, with or without a wig. He's the latest symptom of a decayed, diseased legislature. The chief carriers of the disease are Gord'elpus Brown and his gang of amoral Labourists. (Tory sleaze has become a mere secondary infection, incredibly.)

The cure? It's a purgative and it always works: a general election.

"Bercow's Not A Tory!" -Cameron

Puppet and master

Conservative Home has already given some inkling as to the scale of the animosity Labour has potentially generated by playing politics with the speaker's election. In cynically manoeuvering John Bercow into a winning position, the Labour goons have gleefully set Cameron and the shadow front bench on collision course with the man who now looks certain to be has now been elected to that office.

Revealing blog from Tom Harris MP:

"A Labour colleague was in the toilet next to the chamber just before the first ballot, when he was joined by David Cameron in the adjacent urinal.

“David, I’m about to vote Tory for the very first time in my life,” said my friend jovially.

“John Bercow doesn’t count!” replied Cameron."

Job done, then. Poisonous Brown Labour have screwed and skewed parliamentary process once more. These events must surely cast doubt upon the genuine freedom and secrecy of the voting process. And there we were thinking this sort of thing only happened in Zimbabwe and Iran.

A terrible result for British democracy, once again. Bercow has no support from the main opposition party and is a serial expenses abuser to boot. It will be in his interest to follow the Brown line of blaming 'the system', as though MPs are somehow victims of their own perfidy and greed, because 'the system' let them get away with it. And once more, we, the electorate, are told effectively to go f**k ourselves.

Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse...

God, Not Bercow!

So Labour's latest stitch-up is now under way. With rumours of whips being sent out to try to bully Labour MPs into voting for Beckett (God, not her!) reported in the Times apparently proving to be without foundation, it seems today's Guardian was right after all: there has been a plot in Labour's ranks to install the weakest Tory candidate, someone they will be able to push around, someone who is sympathetic to Gordon Brown's fake 'reform' agenda for the House of Commons and someone who allows them to tick the "Tories turn" box, thereby heading off that fair criticism (which Beckett's election would have generated).

Widdecombe looks out of it, which is a shame -she would have been colourful - but Young and Haselhurst are still in, so there's still hope that the nightmare scenario of Bercow or Beckett might yet be averted. I've crossed everything crossable.

Update 6.59pm
Bercow: 221; Young: 174

All the others are most likely out, according to Sky's MP twitter.

The nightmare's becoming reality....

Update 7.14pm
Some MP's just twittered:
"Some people are saying Bercow is a dead cert. Others not so sure. But Beckett and Beith's votes will mostly go to him."
Dammit.

Result at 7.45 8.30 8.00 8.45, apparently.
Update 8.02pm
Bercow has well-over 300 votes.

Update 8.28pm
Jim Knight MP has just twittered that it's a dead heat! The daddy of the House gets the casting vote in that case. Cool...

Update 8.30pm
It was rubbish - it's Bercow, comfortably. Damn you Labour. Another stitch-up.

Diddums Brown

The BBC, unsurprisingly, is making a huge thing out of Brown's discomfort during the challenge last week to his illegitimate leadership. He says he was 'hurt', according to the Beeb. But the entire article amounts to no more or less than a Gordon Brown publicity stunt.

We pay for that. And that pisses me off.

I agree with Brown: he was definitely hurt by evidence that he's not only useless, but a trougher too.

He was hurt - just not badly enough to make him an ex-Prime Minister.

Unless this troubled man, Brown, is ejected from the office that he stole, Britain could literally 'go under'. As long as this Labour government clings on to illegitimate power, Britain is not a democracy. It's a dictatorship.

If you disagree then you are either dimwit Labour voting fodder, or you just do not appreciate the legitimacy of anger in ours, the vox populi.

"Brown Out; Labour Gone" is the only message that counts. I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm just about ready to act. Directly. I'm angry, see. I don't know about you, but I have had enough.

Brown Out; Labour Gone.

Bye Bye Elections

Even in defeat, Michael Martin yesterday could not bring himself to show one iota of contrition for his attempts - using our money - to block publication of MPs' expenses last year. Instead he chose to mark the occasion of his long-overdue passing by launching a pretty scathing attack not on his own party, (to which he has always, outrageously, remained tribally loyal like a good little corrupt Scots Labour, trade unionist good ol' boy should), but on all three party leaders for 'not supporting him'. Well, the Guardian today firmly gives the lie to that claim and points the finger of blame squarely at the Labour benches, front and back, for the failure of MPs to reform the way they pay themselves.

Martin, effectively the first Speaker to be ejected from office for nearly 300 years, rounded on MPs, describing their response to his own package of reforms as "deeply disappointing".

He said: "I wish with all my heart that that package of recommendations had won the confidence of the House [of Commons] last July. And I wish that party leaders had shown then some of the leadership they have shown now".

He accepted that such votes on MPs' pay are traditionally not whipped, but pointedly said: "This does not remove the responsibility of leaders to speak up for common sense and for the obvious wishes of the country in seeking necessary reform."

He reminded MPs : "Half of all Members did not attend to vote, and more than half of those who did vote rejected the proposals. I regretted that then: I deeply regret it now, and I expect that many Members of the House now share that regret."

In reality, David Cameron did whip his shadow cabinet to support the package, and much of the resistance was organised by Labour backbenchers.

Brown himself did not vote, some cabinet members including Jacqui Smith and Andy Burnham rejected the package, and 30 ministers voted for the status quo.

We all know why, too, don't we. That's thirty ministers on the gravy train, house-flipping and tax evading their way to becoming millionaires. It is true that the Tories and the Lib Dems have been guilty of abusing the expenses system, but their sleaze pails by comparison to the systematic fraudulence of many Labourists, especially ministers. And all Martin could do is continue to try to fudge the issue and blur the truth with his self-regarding, petty, crooked little speech. No wonder Brown looked like he didn't give two hoots what the Speaker was saying. He'd probably authorised the final version.

("The Scottish Connection" is the big, as-yet unwritten story of this catastrophic government's disastrous effect on so many aspects of British society. For instance: the Union, the banking system, the economy, the Civil Service, the House of Lords, justice, liberty, the armed forces and now Parliament itself. All have been poisoned and laid low by the most venal and incompetent government in UK history, a government, it must now be acknowledged, that was from the very start utterly dominated by corrupt Scottish Labour members with Brown always at the centre of the chaos they have generated everywhere.)

Meanwhile, the fallout is beginning to land in the real world. After Kitty Ussher's resignation yesterday for stealing £17,000 from us, calls from Vince Cable for a by election in her Burnley constituency will surely gain momentum. As the Grauniad goes on to say, another Labour crook, Jim Divine...

...the fifth Labour MP to be forced to stand down over his expenses claims, indicated he may force an early byelection after he was told by the party's disciplinary panel that his expenses claims disqualified him from standing for Labour again.

It seems from the direction this scandal now appears to be taking this summer could be remembered as the Summer of Elections. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Cameron should take control of the situation, show some real steel, argue that since Brown has decided to abandon democracy in Britain altogether, he will order all his MPs to resign their seats and fight by elections, facing their constituents and standing on their records.

Such an unprecedented move, given Labour's utter corruptness and paralysis, would, probably, force the autumn general election we all now want. Even if it didn't, it would be the right thing to do and would defnitively demonstrate Cameron's ability to lead us out of this, the darkest of the dark periods in the history of our country. It would also reveal once and for all and beyond any shadow of a doubt that the man responsible for this darkness, James Gordon Brown, is totally unfit for the office that he stole.

System Error?

I know some of the major bloggers have written about this already today (Iain Dale, for example) but none has really nailed Brown for the real motives behind his sudden discovery of reformist tendencies. On the one hand is his dishonest desire to distract people's attention from the fact that the system is not broken - if anything it worked perfectly in weeding out those members of parliament who are not fit for public service. On the other is his desperate wish to deflect people's attention from one of the key and most vital aspects of 'the system' that he wants to 'reform' (attack): when members of a government fail to live up to public expectations they must face the will of that public via a general election. But Gordon doesn't want one because he's scared he will lose it. Pathetic.

But there is another question that has been oddly ignored by most commentators: when did the expenses scandal morph into a breakdown in our electoral system? By all means fix the system governing MPs' handouts, but what has that got to do with how we choose our MPs? Since when will the abolition of the FPP system of voting solve the problem of crooks conning their way into government? The answer is, of course, it won't. As I said above, it is nothing more than a smokescreen. Only, that's not entirely true. Unfortunately, there's more to it, as Janet Daley pointed out a few hours ago:

Nick Robinson at the BBC is reporting that Gordon Brown will propose to change the Westminster voting procedure to an alternative vote system. If this is true, it is the most shameless attempt to rig the electoral process in living memory. What the "alternative vote" would mean is that it would be virtually impossible for the Conservatives ever to regain power. Labour and LibDem supporters could simply institutionalise their game of tactical voting: by always placing each other's party as their second choice, they would guarantee Left-liberal coalition governments forever.

Mr Brown apparently intends to present this as part of his response to the MPs expenses scandal - but the scandal had nothing to do with the way MPs were voted into office. It was about the way they behaved once they had been elected. (If there is any genuine scandal about the electoral system, it is the over-representation of Scotland at Westminister but somehow I doubt that Mr Brown will choose to address that outrage.) Reconstructing the electoral system so that a Lib-Lab coalition could never be displaced would be more likely to produce even more complacent arrogance in the political class.

What we are clearly facing is a desperate, discredited prime minister who knows that he can never be re-elected under the existing rules and so, in his last five minutes in power, is planning to lock his opponents out of office. This proposal never appeared in any Labour manifesto. It has no mandate. It is a bizarre attempt to distract attention from what should be the real debate about Gordon Brown's record, and the failure of his high-tax, high-spend policies. What makes me think that it was the brainchild of Peter Mandelson?

These people are trying to rig the system from top to bottom. No general election, no referendum on Lisbon, no accountability for members of the government accused of fleecing the taxpayer, vast ministerial powers turned over to unelected Peers and now, as if that wasn't enough, a plan to destroy an electoral mechanism that is, frankly, the only thing left that still stands between us and an eternity of socialist excess and failure. Brown and his pisspoor posse have poisoned every British institution they've ever touched and lied about the chaos they've left in their wake at every turn. Now they seek to destroy the last chance for our political salvation, too. Our solitary remaining hope? David Cameron. Oh dear.

Business as usual, then.

Flint Quits

In the middle of Brown's most muddled and desperate press conference yet, in which he once again revealed his strange concept of 'taking responsibility', the news flashed up on Sky that Caroline Flint has said she's quitting.

Didn't she say she backed him yesterday? I guess she's seen the results.

Train wreck. He's quivering as he speaks and as events overtake him.

And guess who's replacing her as Minister of Europe: Glenys Kinnock.

*speechless*

==Update==
Caroline Flint's resignation letter is a bit of a hissy fit: "You treated [us] like little more than female window dressing (see above)."; "You have a two tier government: your inner circle and the remainder"; and so on.

Ouch. Sounds like the double-cross was put on her.

But Glenys Kinnock. I just can't get past that information. It's just too dreadful to contemplate. Plus the fact that we now have seven unelected ministers in our government. Including Mandelson, whose empire is now larger than Prezzer's was. Whatever his many, many, many faults, at least that fat fool had a mandate.

Brown doesn't do elections. Looks like he's not too bothered about democracy generally, either. He's a demagogic tyrant.
==Update2==
Flint's letter in full:

Dear Gordon

I believe the achievements of the Labour Government to date have been monumental and you have played an immense part in the creation of those achievements.

However, I am extremely disappointed at your failure to have an inclusive Government.

You have a two tier Government. Your inner circle and then the remainder of Cabinet.

I have the greatest respect for the women who have served as full members of Cabinet and for those who attend as and when required. However, few are allowed into your inner circle. Several of the women attending Cabinet – myself included – have been treated by you as little more than female window dressing. I am not willing to attend Cabinet in a peripheral capacity any longer.

In my current role, you advised that I would attend Cabinet when Europe was on the agenda. I have only been invited once since October and not to a single political Cabinet - not even the one held a few weeks before the European elections.

Having worked hard during this campaign, I would not have been party to any plan to undermine you or the Labour Party in the run up to 4 June. So I was extremely angry and disappointed to see newspapers briefed with invented stories of my involvement in a “Pugin Room plot.”

Time and time again I have stepped before the cameras to sincerely defend your reputation in the interests of the Labour Party and the Government as a whole. I am a natural party loyalist. Yet you have strained every sinew of that loyalty.

It has been apparent for some time that you do not see me playing a more influential role in the Government. Therefore, I have respectfully declined your offer to continue in the Government as Minister for attending Cabinet.

I served six years as a backbencher and, therefore, I am not unhappy to be able to devote myself to promoting my constituency’s interests and to support the Labour Government from the backbenches.

This is a personal decision, which I have not discussed with colleagues.

Yours

Caroline

Pretty livid, then.

But Glenys Kinnock...dear God, no. Not even Brown could do that to us, could he? Well, he has.

Labourlost Finally Finds Its Voice

Daniel Finkelstein earlier today noted a startling article on the reborn (and now half decent thanks to Dolly's departure - shame it's too late for them) Labourlist blog. Entitled 'Gutless Brown', it spells out in no uncertain terms precisely where Brown has completely failed and where Cameron has partially succeeded in tackling the expenses scandal. It's a decent analysis not-least because it delivers a reasonably honest appraisal of the state of play (unlike the latest ultra-rogue Comres Indy poll - which stinks, frankly!).

Two things: Labour activists are going to need a hell of a lot more of this kind of clear thinking if they are to have any hope of avoiding a Party-busting total wipeout come the General Election (an election that will, I think, certainly happen this year). They also need to wake-up to the fact that Brown's weaknesses were well-known long ago in Labour Party circles and yet still they thought that foisting this man without a mandate on the British people was acceptable.

As a succession of hideous polls now unequivocally prove, those weaknesses have done what weaknesses always do when they are stress-tested: they become severe liabilities. Brown's is a destructive character. He is antagonistic towards and suspicious of all those around him, save a handful of tainted, equally blinkered acolytes. In his politics, this destructive character expresses itself in a strange mixture of sophistry, browbeating, defensiveness and morose withdrawal. It is hardly suited to public life; that such a personality has been permitted to become Prime Minister of all things provides ample reason for the parlous state of just about every institutional dimension of the UK's existence: the economy, parliament, the Civil Service, Downing Street, the banking system, civic society, the postal service, public service, the NHS, educational standards, family life and so on and so on. All have been catastrophically affected by the influence of one man: J.G. Brown.

...at every turn in recent weeks, and yes, throughout his doddering premiership, Gordon has shown a shocking and at times painful lack of political instinct, which would have allowed a niftier politician (Blair, anyone?) to not only strengthen his own position but also bring about the transformative energy that Brown alluded to in that conference speech.

Time and again, we the rank and file, have had to squirm as the Prime Minister’s political judgement has been exposed as sorely wanting; the election that never was, 10p tax, youtubegate and now his reaction to the expenses scandal.

No one of course suggests that the poisoned system is Gordon’s fault directly (Parliament itself must take the rap for this) but what we can blame our leader for his appallingly lacklustre political response. Just where exactly has he been? As was so often the case in the Blair years when the going got tough, Gordon retreats to his bunker licking his wounds. Surely any party leader with but the merest handful of political nous would have sensed the virtually apoplectic anger of the British people and responded quickly, positioning himself as the man of change he has for so long tried to convince the electorate he is.

Rather, after his rather unfortunate brush with internet video, Mr. Brown returned to the bunker, presumably hoping everything would just be okay. How can he, or those around him at the very least, not have realised that a political vacuum is never left unfilled? That if Brown failed to position himself as that agent of constitutional change then David Cameron certainly would; which is precisely what happened. The good people of Britain could barely turn on their TV screens or radios without seeing or hearing the Tory leader sounding like a veritable expenses Hulk Hogan; I personally lost count of the number of Conservative MPs on which planned to ‘come down on like a tonne of bricks’ by the end of the week.

The point is that Cameron took the decisive action quickly and efficiently, both on offending MPs and coming out with a plan to solve the mess. This is surely why the latest poll in the Times on Saturday reported that whilst a massive 62% of respondents thought the Prime Minister had been personally most damaged by the expenses scandal a mere 5% thought the same true of Cameron (Ed Balls, presumably).

All of this despite the fact it is Conservative MPs with the most egregious claims. Cameron had the political wherewithal to sense the public’s anger, come out fighting and position himself as the change maker, something that Brown just clearly had not the guts to do.

This is all very well, but where is the call for his immediate removal? Where is the honest, clear cry for reform of the Labour party, starting with the rotten leadership and half the PLP? Where is the appeal in this article that the final connection be made by Labour activists everywhere between the state Britain is in - or merely the state Labour is in within Britain if they can't bear that much honesty - and the man they allowed to play with it for so long, first as Chancellor then as PM? I'll tell you where: nowhere. This is the angry Labour blogger's conclusion:

His only chance now is to go all for it, lay out a clear comprehensive stall for wholesale constitutional reform, expose the Tories’ ‘ifs and buts’ and come out with concrete proposals for a transformed political system. He really has little to lose now. You never know, he might actually form a legacy. Alas, I fear the bunker mentality will prevail once more, but we can at least hope. All of this is but the latest example of Brown’s tactical ineptitude. It will surely cost him, as well as us, dearly.

There's some fight in that - but it's aimed completely at the wrong target once again (the 'evil Tories' and 'the system'). What there is far more of is something that is becoming more and more familiar as the Brown disaster continues to unfold: a shrug of the shoulders and more supine drifting from a 'movement' that has lost its way so completely that it no longer seems even to care.

Brown's "tactical ineptitude" is certainly a problem for them, but it's now the least of their worries. If, for example, he is caught in a lie after his denials in this interview about the changes to the expenses rules in 2004 which directly benefited ministers, the remainder of his career could span a matter of days. What is far worse, however, is the almost bovine inability of Labour to grasp once and for all that without him, they stand a chance of limiting the damage to a term or two out of office whereas with him, they might as well tear up their membership cards and call it a day because Labour will be finished for generations.

Alas, I fear the bovine mentality will prevail and Labour will crash into a decline exactly like their Liberal predecessors in the early C20th - and as near-terminal. It will have taken the Liberals a century to recover by the time they beat Brown-led Labour into third place. How long, I wonder, will recovery take for them?

Brown: "I Know Nothing About Anything"

Adam Boulton has just nailed Brown live on air. Did Brown know about the rule change for ministers in 2004 which let them make money on their second homes, asked Boulton. Brown denied everything, looking terribly Nixonian. Pressed by Boulton, he repeated the denial and then attacked Boulton for clutching at straws. We shall see.

Brown then denied us our general election again by claiming that he was 'doing the job [he] was elected to do'. Er, when exactly was that, Gordo?

He hasn't 'finished the job', he says. The job of destroying the country in every conceivable way possible, I think he must mean. It was an astonishing, appalling, train-wreck interview for Brown - his worst yet - and one which Labour MPs (and ministers) will have watched with a mounting sense of horror as it went on, with an increasingly rattled and hostile Brown looking more and more isolated. This is a man under siege; or a wild animal, cornered, wounded and ready to lash out.

Brown's expression at the end was telling, therefore, too: he glared at the man who had just beasted him with razor sharp charm with undisguised hatred. Yes, hatred. One day very soon, Brown will crack on air and the violent temper of this dreadful man will be on display for all to see. It very nearly happened today. Again. I wish I could have heard what Brown said to Bolton after the interview. He looked like he wanted to kill him.

==Update==
Politicos have to be careful what they say to Boulton because he's a pretty free spirit who will speak his own mind on his blog (unlike that twat Nick Robinson). So it's probably not a very good idea to try to bully him, as, it appears, I was right in assuming Brown had. Here's a bit of what Boulton says in his blog entry on the interview, aptly titled 'Boiling Brown':

....there are still some questions to which I feel Mr Brown did not give a clear answer:
1) If Hazel Blears’ behaviour over her mortgages was in his words “totally unacceptable” why is she still in his cabinet?
2) Why is her behaviour totally unacceptable when Mr Brown has defended other cabinet ministers, including some such as Alistair Darling who have repaid money?

He says it’s to do with avoiding paying tax, but others also organised their affairs to be: “tax efficient”.

...Mr Brown became heated when I asked him why the Labour Government changed the rules in 2004 making it permissible for ministers to flip the designation on their homes often, to their apparent financial benefit.

Mr Brown threatened that I had better be able to prove “my allegations”, while denying that he had anything to do with the change, or even knew about it.

To make it clear, I am saying that a rule change was made, and that that had the effect of helping ministers improve their financial position.

I do not have the evidence to prove that the two factors were linked.

But I have now asked the Prime Minister and a member of the cabinet why the change was made, and have received no explanation.

Finally, on two other topics in the news some interesting developments:

Following GM’s filing for bankruptcy the Prime Minister says he hopes “most of the jobs at Vauxhall can be saved” - looks like there will be some redundancies then.

And on the Queen’s absence from this week’s 65th anniversary of D-Day – something I still find astonishing given that the Heads of State of both America and France will be present – Mr Brown, who will be attending, said it had nothing to do with him.

More Pontius Pilate than Caligula, then - or maybe the worst bits of both in one man. Hope Sky put the link up soon. I want to see it again!

==Update 2==
Here it is: