UK Chancellor Gordon Brown has, as we now know, ignored the advice of his civil servants and plundered the private sector pensions industry to fund a massive public spending splurge. More than 800,000 jobs have been added to the public sector payroll since 1997, what might be regarded as a large group of folk with a vested interest in keeping the gloomster and his fellows in office. Vast sums have been spent on education and health, to debateble effect (some good has been done probably but not to the extent that would justify all that money). But one of the proudest boasts of Brown and Blair has been how this effort has reduced poverty since the dark, satanic era of the Conservatives (sarcasm alert).
Thanks to some diligent digging by the weekly UK magazine, The Business, it turns out that the bottom 10% of the UK population have actually got poorer. Last Friday, it was the Times, meanwhile, which won a long-fought campaign to expose the pensions issue. It is nice to see old-style Fleet Street journalism at its best.
It is not turning out to be a great spring for the Scot. Have a happy Easter.
They’re tag teaming you.
Just when it looks like you stand a chance of getting a leash on Gordon, in will come Dave with a fresh load of energy and ambition and … (turn on echo machine) … ‘a mandate’.
Keep Gordon, vote UKIP.
Why would we want to keep Gordon??!!
Dave is a pillock, but not as bad as Gordon.
For what it’s worth, here’s what I think will happen.
Brown will become Prime Minister by default because Labour has no-one with the guts or the clout to challenge him realistically.
Then he has 2 years or so under the intense spotlight of media attention. Already his image is being tarnished for being fiscally prudent. And let’s face it, that’s the only image he’s got apart from dour Scot.
The image makers are working frantically in the background to try to get Gordon up to Statesman level but I think they will fail
They may have re-styled his hair, fixed his teeth, got him to a decent tailor but it just isn’t going to work.
There is something of the Nixon about Brown. His suit and tie will always look like they have egg stains on them, even if they dont. He will always look like he hasn’t shaved, even when he has.
You suspect him of someone with skid marks in the underpants and an adversity to deoderent.
In short he looks like a great big awkward gurning uncoordinated child. Which is what he is.
No amount of makeover will change that.
Thus Labour will lose the next election.
Then what??
This should be a stinging rejoinder to the NuLabour model, however this statistic will only be used as a justification for further redistribution. It’s not a ‘eureka’ moment for the likes of us – it’s a catalyst for the things we hate the most.
RAB,
Everything you say about Brown is true, yet, you said nothing about policy.
Cameron has (by virtue of not actually having done anything) yet to have his fiscal reputation tarnished, he is as plausible of a gentrified statesman as has been offered lately, his hair, teeth, and tailoring are no doubt purchased from the best establishments, his underpants are probably clean and his deoderant is no doubt environmentally friendly, he appears smooth and confident and is absolutely not in need of any sort of packaging makeover. Packaging is not where the problem lies.
He very well may defeat Brown. And then what do you have? You have a very effective force picking up the baton and carrying the UK with much greater energy and effect in a very wrong direction.
New Labour and Tory policies are in most ways so indistinguishable, they could be called New Lorry. Just the thing for taking the nation over a cliff. Now, do you really want to change to a better driver?
In the US, the more damaged a politician is, the less damage he can do. I assume the same holds over there.
Spot on, Midwesterner. If the boy David gets in then politics of principles and beliefs will be dead in Britain. Tony stood and was elected on the basis of power for power’s sake. NuLabour was invented solely to make Labour electable, not to achieve any great and noble purpose, not to carry out policy based on deeply and sincerely held ideals. The Third Way was a means of disguising the absence of ideals and principles. The consequence was an ad hoc government based on focus groups, media spin and kneejerk reactions.
David Cameron is trying to do the same to the Tories, make them attractive enough to become electable again at any price. If he is allowed to succeed then vacuous, shallow politics will be entrenched as the only game in town. At the next election, the cry from the barricades must be “Anyone but David”. (Hoping that Labour doesn’t pick the Milliblogger as leader as that could get a little confusing and electing the arch greenie statist fascist could be a step too far).
I have many talents Mid, but mind reading is not one of them. How could I talk about Brown’s policies, when he wont tell anyone what they are?
He has been in his counting house, with his inky fingers, licking his pencil (you just know he’s got to be a pencil licker!) these last ten years.
He gives the odd nod of agreement to Blair now and again, whilst quietly scuppering the more loony Blairite schemes by not giving them Treasury funding.
His finest moment was his five fatuous tests for joining the Euro. They may have been gibberish and/or impossible to meet, but he kept us out! Thank god for that!!!
There really is no point in talking policies, because New Labour has so muddied the waters that, to the public, there is practically no difference between what any of the three main parties stand for.
Besides the British public are much simpler and straightforward than that when it comes to elections. Arguement, policy, and logic dont come into it. Time does.
Labour got elected because they shut up about socialism, and the whole country was bored and disgusted with the Tories after 18 years of them.No matter that the Tories had got Britain back on it’s feet again with a roaring economy, that supposed great British asset “Fair Play” came into effect.
Let’s give the other blokes a go!
Well, now we have had 11 years of Labour, and we are bored and disgusted again, (frankly if logic was the criteria, there is much more to be disgusted about with this Govt than the last)
So it will be
Let’s give the other blokes a go! come the next Election. I am prepared to pop down to Ladbrokes and place a hefty bet to that effect right now!
Dave will be PM at the next Election. My only hope there is that he buggers up early on and gets “Maggied”. Then perhaps we’ll have Hague back again. Then things WILL be different.
I was referring to Cameron’s. Anything good he’s every said, he has self contradicted many more times. DocBud’s got it right. Both of them say anything, and mean nothing.
If Britain is absorbed into the EU, all is lost. Nothing else matters. The Dave has European ambitions. Maybe he hopes to be first Le Grand Wazoo of unified Europe. Don’t encourage him with votes.
Even if the shore looks very far away, it makes more sense to swim for it than to swim towards whichever end of the sinking ship is still farthest above water.
UKIP wears their core principle in their name where it cannot be written or interpreted away.
United Kingdom Independence Party
All I’m saying Mid, is what I believe will happen.
You will get no arguement from me as to the desirability of either Gorgon or Dave as PM.
Both will be disasterous. But we are cool with disasterous round here. It’s happened often.
We will cope.
I always vote my concience. So I will be wasting mine again on voting UKIP. (that will be 491 of us this time!)
In Bristol West which is a key marginal for the Tories.
Dave will never get my vote… But Hague !!
James, I don’t think this argument necessarily plays into egalitarians’ hands. One could argue that the case for capitalism rests on the idea that poor people tend to fare disproportionately well out of it compared with other people; a pro-free market publication or politician could therefore point out that socialism is bad for the poor as it locks them into state-created structures of dependency. A poor man in Hong Kong after 1945 was far better off and had far more chances than his opposite number in mainland China, for example.
I think that it is entirely right for free marketeers to try and champion the cause of poor and vulnerable people, and I think this might be a way to make the libertarian case in ways that cut past the usual cliches.