Gordon’s Secret Army? This is Cameron’s Fifth Column!

 a con, Big Society, David Cameron, Fraser Nelson, Gordon Brown, Iain Duncan Smith  1 Response »
Oct 262012
 
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I have a theory.  But before we proceed, let me lay the facts before you.

First we had Lord Bichard suggesting that pensioners might not get their full pension if they refused to sign up to voluntary work in the community:

Retired people should be encouraged to do community work such as caring for the “very old” or face losing some of their pension, a peer has suggested.

Lord Bichard, a former benefits chief, said “imaginative” ideas were needed to meet the cost of an ageing society.

And although such a move might be controversial, it would stop older people being a “burden on the state”.

Imaginative ideas, eh?  Not imaginative ideas which aim to stigmatise the elderly I hope.

Then we get Iain Duncan Smith arguing that families with more than two children should basically tell the successive ones that society doesn’t care to help them become employable workers and profitable consumers.  Talk about rubbing the runt of the litter’s nose in it:

Iain Duncan Smith told the poorest families to “cut your cloth” according to their “capabilities” and the money available.

The Work and Pensions Secretary suggested limiting benefits to the children of the unemployed as he pledged to end the “madness” of taxpayers housing large families in expensive homes.

Madness, right?  Not the kind of madness which aims to stigmatise the poor I hope.

(Oh, and if you’re interested, here’s a fact check on Duncan Smith’s declarations.  Just if, by any chance, the truth still interests you.)

Finally, tonight, and – sadly, to my mind anyhow – from the pen of Fraser Nelson, we get this absurd piece of tosh on how the charitable opposition to this Coalition’s welfare reforms is completely down to Gordon Brown’s Secret Army of Labour subversives.  Yes!!!  It’s Fifth Column time once again in our country: on this occasion, mind, this Cameron-careering juggernaut of a propaganda-driven excuse for a government aims to blame the failure of its own policies on the Machiavellian powers of a supposedly once-vanquished – as well as impotently ineffective – enemy.

Thus it is that it’s not the government which is failing to convince the country its medicine is the right and only one: instead, it’s (still) all Labour’s fault that sensible people refuse to behave insensibly.  As Nelson awfully sustains:

We saw this yesterday, when Iain Duncan Smith trailed a speech about welfare and poverty. A now familiar welcoming committee rose up early to greet him. The Child Poverty Action Group declared that there are no jobs to be had, so why punish those on welfare? A revered charity, Save the Children, has identified government cuts as a major threat to British children. Even the National Society for the Protection of Children warns that the “most vulnerable” children are “bearing the brunt” of Cameron’s cuts. And hearing them all, who would your average listener believe: a politician, or charity worker?

But these charities are not the kindly tin-rattlers they were. In 2008, Brown changed the rules so charities could join political campaigns. In theory, they could support any party – but as Brown knew, not many would use these powers to demand smaller taxes. It was a masterstroke. The charities sharpened their claws by hiring former Labour apparatchiks. Save the Children is now run by Justin Forsyth, Brown’s ex-strategy chief. The NSPCC has hired Peter Watt, a former Labour general secretary. Damian McBride is working for Cafod. Britain’s charities are nurturing a colourful, talented and efficient anti-Tory alliance.

Look.  You can’t have it both ways.  You can’t argue that Brown is a yesterday-politician one day and a tomorrow-politician the next.

Unless, of course, he wasn’t the yesterday-politician they so cruelly painted him out to be.

Now I hadn’t thought of that.

Had you?

A matter, perhaps, for another post.

But back to this evening’s thesis: Lord Bichard announces there’s no money for pensioners who don’t work; Iain Duncan Smith announces two kids is all you’re going to get; and Fraser Nelson announces any opposition to Cameron’s Tory-led government is an evil throwback of secretive individuals burrowing under the very transparency of parliamentary democracy itself.

And so to our theory.

Does this really not sound what a Fifth Column of insurgents – who’d taken over control of Parliament by barely legal means (say a group of politicos practised in the Goebbel-like arts of advertising) – might say of anyone else who was looking to defend democracy’s integrity?

Well, quite.  It does take a thief to catch a thief, after all.

If truth be told, I really don’t know what Nelson & Co are up to here.  From no benefits for a third child, it’s a small step to legislating against families having more than two children.  Once governments start fiddling around with such numbers and choices, the slippery slope of hubris leads them to all kinds of dreadful things.  And just remember, big families help create future workforces and consumers who consume.  Without biggish families down the line, they’ll be no one to pay the pensions.

Oh, but – bless him! – that’s where old Bichard comes in, isn’t it?  In this brave new web of Coalition policies, pensioners will end up paying for themselves.

We don’t need big families any more.  We don’t even need the poor to have families at all.  All we need is a land army of old people prepared to die on their feet and a pool of little rich kids who, with the right kind of schooling, will acquire exactly the right sort of voting habits.

This is, in fact, the Big Society by force.  People haven’t stepped forward in their droves to volunteer to make the state run for free, so now those in power have decided you will volunteer.

Or you won’t procreate.

Even when the English language and culture always taught us that both were blessed and honourable choices which humanised us.

*

So perhaps Gordon does have his Secret Army.

But in the Second World War, Western democracy couldn’t have beaten back the evil hoards if we hadn’t had our Resistance to hand.

Now could it?

The two big questions, of course, run as follows: does Nelson speak for Cameron tonight?  And does Cameron really want to frame the next three years as a war amongst the people?


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Is Ed Miliband becoming ruthlessly political?

 econopocalypse, Ed Balls, Ed Miliband, Gordon Brown, in a hole, New Labour, Tony Blair  No Responses »
Jul 042012
 
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Joris Luyendijk has published a fascinating blogpost on the nightmare which the financial services sector may now have become.  In it, one of his most eye-catching paragraphs runs as follows:

Over the past 10 months I have interviewed dozens of people working in finance in London and if I had to name one thing that this investigation did not do, it is restore confidence. External accountants explained how nobody at the major banks can have a complete overview any more – they have become simply too big. Well before RBS ran into deep trouble, IT consultants painted a truly terrifying picture of banks’ software operations. Forget too big to fail or too big to rescue, IT and accountancy interviewees said. We need to talk about too big to even manage.  [...]

Meanwhile, he gives a degree of praise to Ed Miliband for demanding a public inquiry into the whole mess, pointing out (clearly in the light of the above) that:

[...] His reasoning was puzzling though, arguing that only an independent inquiry would “restore confidence in our financial services”.

The assumption being that financial ignorance has been bliss.

A bliss which we should not hastily discard.

Which does make me wonder – and perhaps it should you too.  If a public inquiry on the lines of Leveson were set up to investigate everything and everyone involved in this mounting crisis of confidence, wouldn’t it seriously implicate politicians from within Miliband’s own party in one of two possible scenarios?  That is to say, either:

  1. they didn’t know – leading us to believe they were incompetent; or
  2. they didn’t care enough to do anything about it – leading us to believe they somehow benefited;

Is, then, he playing a far darker – and highly politicised – game?  Is he not only calling the political shots as far as general and widespread public opinion is concerned but also laying the groundwork for a definitive nail in the coffin of New Labour – and, by extension, any attempt that Tony Blair might be engaging in to try and make a comeback to the British political scene?

Yes.  I’ve seen tweets fly before my eyes over the past couple of days concluding that Miliband wouldn’t be entirely unhappy if Ed Balls’ wings were clipped a mite by such an inquiry.  As Gordon Brown’s best mate during New Labour’s regime, a public inquiry into banking practices over the past decade wouldn’t half keep some political people on their toes whilst it lasted – even if nothing shameful were uncovered by its end.

But far more important is the message that under New Labour, and years before the banking crisis became apparent to us mortals, certain activities, atmospheres and ways of seeing and doing were tolerated by a massive superstructure of essentially cruel makers and shakers.  As Luyendijk also indicates:

A wide-ranging public inquiry could bring out the deeply problematic scale and complexity of global banks. It could show that most banking employees do not have headline-grabbing salaries. And it could get some of those regular employees to talk about how their bank is a zero-trust, zero-loyalty environment, creating a culture of fear that makes sounding the alarm or blowing the whistle so unlikely.

Are you telling me New Labour would easily escape being tarred with the same brush?

And if not, are you telling me Ed Miliband doesn’t know this?


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"Osbornomics: political stardust but an economic placebo"

 Fraser Nelson, George Osborne, Gordon Brown, in a hole, latterday socialism, New Labour, Telegraph, the Real George Osborne, Tony Blair  No Responses »
Jan 272012
 
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A few choice phrases from Fraser Nelson’s latest piece over at the Telegraph:

George Osborne should be having similar thoughts. His old routine is now failing. The embarrassing truth is that, for all his talk about how you can’t borrow your way out of a debt crisis, he is now trying to do just that. [...]

And this (the bold is mine):

Treasury officials who have worked for both men are struck not by the differences between them, but the similarities. Brown was nicknamed Macavity for his habit of disappearing at the first sign of trouble; Osborne is known as The Submarine, surfacing only a handful of times a year. Both see economics as a game of political chess, each policy designed to outwit the opposition. [...]

Not a way of making the world a better place, then – more a tool to batter what the rest of us can only define as a proxy enemy.  For the real enemy is what we live from day to day.

Nelson also points out that:

[...] The political narrative thus detaches from the economic reality. And this is why a Government that is widely regarded as radical, and hawkish on the deficit, is making virtually no economic progress, while running up the debt like there’s no tomorrow.

And this:

Even Osborne’s critics cannot deny that, politically, his policy has brought devastating success. He has won the argument on cuts, even though – as the monthly spending figures show – he has hardly made any. [...]

Whilst for Labour the comfort is getting forever colder:

[...] The Chancellor told friends that he expected to be the most hated man in Britain by 2012, but there is surprisingly little hatred. Instead, there is ridicule – and it is largely heaped upon a Labour leader whose skills seem not to extend much beyond solving a Rubik’s Cube in 90 seconds.

Or, indeed, not eating a chocolate orange …

As I sift through Nelson’s piece – as always tightly, pointedly and fairly written (you can tell he worked for a tabloid, can’t you?  Nothing better for those with the verbose tendency to write about politics than to have to do so in the context of flashy headlines and tawdry entertainment stories) – I can’t avoid coming to the conclusion that Osborne is actually truly some politician of considerable standing.  More adept, perhaps, at the presentational arts than the PR man that is Cameron himself.

What has Osborne – in reality – achieved then?  Well.  He’s increased the indebtedness of the nation whilst at the same time savaging all manner of social services.  “And this is an achievement?” you wonder.  Well, yes – mightily so.  Because Osborne is a three-dimensional politician who plays the long game.  “And what may that be?” you might ask.  Why, make it financially impossible – absolutely out of the question – for Labour ever to bring back the socialism by stealth we enjoyed for so many years under the New Labour regime.

Osborne, in his apparent ineptness, has shown himself to be not a son of Blair but a son of Brown.  For neither have ever been inept; both are consummate manipulators of the body politic.

This isn’t, after all, a battle between right and left but – rather – between those who would use politics as a tool to do something useful in the outside world – and those who do politics simply to keep the opposition at bay.

The pursuit of power above all is at the heart of Osbornomics.  As Nelson so memorably points out in his piece:

[...] Osbornomics: political stardust but an economic placebo.

With one small caveat: whilst the placebo is designed to strategically convince us he’s doing everything he should, in reality it’s there in order for him to have the time to burn all those bridges back to any kind of British socialism.  That is to say, on his part it’s not unconscious at all.  It’s a deliberate administration of a drug which allows us to die.

And therein my absolute misery this morning.


http://youtu.be/zxg7j6rQDLM


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How Alan Turing’s pardon would be anything but an apology

 Alan Turing, apology, e-petition, Gordon Brown, pardon, repression, unclassifiable  No Responses »
Jan 042012
 
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This call to support an e-petition to debate in Parliament Alan Turing’s foul mistreatment at the hands of obscene legislation in 1952 Britain is surely quite misplaced.  The petition runs as follows:

We ask the HM Government to grant a pardon to Alan Turing for the conviction of ‘gross indecency’. In 1952, he was convicted of ‘gross indecency’ with another man and was forced to undergo so-called ‘organo-therapy’ – chemical castration. Two years later, he killed himself with cyanide, aged just 41. Alan Turing was driven to a terrible despair and early death by the nation he’d done so much to save. This remains a shame on the UK government and UK history. A pardon can go to some way to healing this damage. It may act as an apology to many of the other gay men, not as well known as Alan Turing, who were subjected to these laws.

In response to a previous petition, Gordon Brown – Prime Minister at the time – had already apologised on behalf of the nation thus:

Thousands of people have come together to demand justice for Alan Turing and recognition of the appalling way he was treated. While Turing was dealt with under the law of the time and we can’t put the clock back, his treatment was of course utterly unfair and I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him … So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan’s work I am very proud to say: we’re sorry, you deserved so much better.

Now I do realise the pardon in question is probably a legal figure and as a concept has quite a different meaning to its normal day-to-day currency – but, at least for my inexperienced soul and ears, to request that a man be pardoned for something none of us on the right side of progressive politics these days would care to see anyone punished in relation to seems, to say the least, morally inappropriate – even if it is, in judicial terms, technically exact. 

If we should be seeking to pardon anyone, it is surely that state and legal system which – after six long years of worldwide war, fighting a regime which despised Jews, ethnic minorities and homosexuals with an awful and similar vigour – continued to persecute in the name of Western civilisation the very human instinct of people everywhere to freely express their sexuality.

So I’m sorry but – unless someone can show me the error of my ways – I don’t think I’ll be signing this e-petition on the terms it has currently chosen to sustain.

Even though its heart is clearly in the very best of places. 

And the wider cause it aims to support is something we should defend without exception in all legislations and nation states.


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How Ed Miliband is clearly not his own man (and why this is actually a Good Thing)

 commentariat, David Cameron, Ed Miliband, George Osborne, Gordon Brown, High Noon, Margaret Thatcher, on a high, Tony Blair, trades unions  No Responses »
Dec 212011
 
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Whilst I’m on holiday, whilst I have my family around me, whilst I remember a whole host of happenstances which are important to me even as their relevance to the outside world is limited … this is when I make connections between the personal and the public.

My previous post focussed on how my friends and family are clearly getting older – though to different effect in each case.  That march of time is something we acknowledge only when we have time to examine and perceive its movement.  And this only takes place when we are at relative rest – something our agitated civilisation really doesn’t care to permit.

More phantoms from the past then?  And to what result?  This time, a perceptive piece which mirrors my thoughts on Ed Miliband at the end of September, where I suggested that in the initial critical reception to Hitchcock’s “Psycho” there was a lesson we could learn about that famously discursive and apparently unfocussed speech by Miliband at Labour Party Conference this year.

Anyhow.  What leads me to reflect once more on this subject is the perceptive piece I mention above and which contains the following paragraphs:

Miliband is doing well at the polls because he’s shifting – albeit very slowly – away from the elite consensus towards a more social democratic position which is more in tune with public opinion. His party has rigorously opposed Andrew Lansley’s unpopular health reforms, which mean the end of the NHS in all but name. And they have unequivocally opposed the coalition’s plans to sell-off the Royal Mail.

What’s more:

But the main thing is that Ed is heading in the right direction, even if media commentators, still wedded to a political model forged in 1979, don’t like this deviation from the script.

As a consequence, Miliband’s Labour Party has become the political equivalent of Stoke City football club. Tony Pulis’s team are continually criticised for their style – or rather their lack of it – yet they keep on winning. “They are doing much better than people think,” Match of the Day pundit Alan Hansen admitted after Stokes’s latest win, their fourth on the bounce. The same could be said of Labour under Ed Miliband.

The article also underlines the important fact that exactly where we should believe it must count – elections themselves – Ed Miliband’s Labour has won five out of five by-elections: the most recent, with an increase in share.

So how do we explain this curious circumstance on the one hand and – on the other – the fact that the media don’t really warm to him?  Although clearly an insider in politics, as far as family legacy is concerned, is he really quite deliberately playing the role of outsider – a “High Noon” kind of lonesome gunfighter … and is it this which means that distances are being maintained?

Look at it rationally.  Thatcher with gusto, Blair with considerable flair, Brown in his own way and Cameron and Osborne with a determined political guile have all collaborated in one way or another to the same kind of political adventure: pulling the wool most definitely over the eyes of the voting public with their various discourses and triangulations.

But what if a politician was wise enough to propose pulling – first of all – the wool over the eyes of the commentariat itself?  That is to say: let’s imagine that Miliband, in this case, intended not to give too many gobbets of psychological stroking in the direction of self-important observers – observers who had become so used to being seen as astonishing crystal-ball gazers, by virtue of a privileged connection and control over the people we actually wanted to vote into power, that they found it absolutely impossible to contemplate that any politician might wish to play a different more solidly democratic game and at the same time be half-competent.

And so they interpret, supposedly on our behalf but surely far more in their own rank interests, that Ed Miliband can’t communicate; Ed Miliband doesn’t know how to fight; Ed Miliband is in hock to big trades union interests; and Ed Miliband is plain and simply the wrong man.

Plain and simply the wrong man not because he’s wrong for us, the voting public, but – rather – because he’s very wrong for the commentariat.

So although I do agree that Ed Miliband is not his own man, it’s not because I think he is a conniving manipulator of dark interests.

Rather, I believe quite sincerely that he believes a dedication to the democratic cause requires him to be our man.

And that, if I am right, will one day be a most refreshing place for us all to be.

Except, of course, for our real phantoms of the past: the commentariat of old.


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Gordon and Sarah Brown’s campaign for jobs and justice

 "Beyond the Crash", Gordon Brown, gordonandsarahbrown.com, Luke Bozier, on a high, Sarah Brown, Webstars Ltd  No Responses »
Dec 062010
 
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I came across this website this evening via Luke Bozier’s Twitter feed.  And promptly pre-ordered the book.

As one of the splash screens on the homepage points out:

A manifesto for Jobs + Justice.

There is an alternative to a decade of low growth, high unemployment and endemic poverty. The alternative is a future of Jobs + Justice. Read the manifesto for a global growth plan.

And as Luke points out, it’s a beautifully drawn website. I just love the detail too: that “Unlike” feature which draws you, bemused, towards it – and turns into a Facebook “Like” button just as you hover over it.

Very smart.

That’s the difference between communication created to sell books and communication created to sell MPs.  All credit to Webstars Ltd, the developers of gordonandsarahbrown.com.


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Anthony Painter on the virtues of Anthony Blair

 Anthony Painter, Gordon Brown, in a hole, Tony Blair, unclassifiable  No Responses »
Sep 012010
 
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Anthony Painter has a stout and yet at the same time emotionally measured defence of Tony Blair on his website at the moment.  Well worth reading.  I don’t agree, mind – but that is the glory of online publishing.  We can read and disagree almost instantaneously.  Painter’s conclusion here:

The Blair years were good for Britain on balance and he was a good Prime Minister who made a monumental mistake. He was an expression of Britain at the time and now we are moving on. To pour scorn on Tony Blair is to pour scorn on ourselves. I for one consider it better to assume a standpoint of collective responsibility rather than collective guilt.

Oh, and he won three elections- the only Labour leader in my lifetime to win even one.

My response here:

Those who marched against the Iraq War should feel neither responsible nor guilty for what happened. Those, like myself, who straddled two cultures uncomfortably and at the same time chose unwisely, should feel both. But Blair committed the cardinal sin (and as that is his belief system, so that is the word I shall use) of believing he knew better than his god. I, and many other people, at least did not do that.

Blair is no less complex – though in different ways – than the Brown he is now kicking whilst down. What irks many people I am sure, myself included, is he seems to deny this complexity in himself even as he accuses his opposition (I mean his Labour Party comrades) of the same condition. His ability to crystallise and make simple the complexities of life means he is a good political narrator. But a good political narrator does not an honest one necessarily make. And – from what I can gather after today’s unseemly interventions in what should be a leadership race he absents himself cleanly and fairly from – he is most definitely not being honest with himself.

So how can he be honest with anyone else?

Therein lies our rage.

So there you have it.

As always, the two sides of Tony Blair – two sides which I am sure will divide us to the bitter end.

In the end, a consolidator not a reformer.

In the end, a divisive figure not a bringer-together.

In the end, a man who talked himself into a war using the very same eloquence he used to talk the rest of us into voting for him.

In the end, a grand narrator who was brought down by his own gift of the gab.

In the end, someone we dared to trust who dared to renege on that trust.


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The diamond that could be the grassroots with a leader in their midst

 Gordon Brown, Labour, Labour leadership campaign, on a high  No Responses »
May 192010
 
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My estimation of Brown continues to rise.  Sad how politics and such good men do not go together. 

I wish he were my MP, I can tell you. Read this article and see if you don’t agree with me.  It does, incidentally, also show how far behind the game Ed Balls, Peter Mandelson and Douglas Alexander were.

Whilst Gordon Brown most certainly was not.

In the meantime, the Labour leadership campaign threatens to become a succession, as an article by Jason McCrossan on Labour List points out:

As it stands, I fear another succession. I fear that the party – the grassroots – will be left excluded once more from shaping and forming our direction. We are in danger of spending the next five years with a sparkly new car – but one which is running on empty. We’re in danger of producing a polished lump of coal – but we have the ability to produce a diamond.

And that diamond should, precisely, be the grassroots with a leader in their midst – not a hero looking down from on high who knows how best to control the inner workings of the Party to his or her benefit.

If anything should most firmly demonstrate to the British public that Labour knows about democracy, this should be in how the internal workings of the Party are conducted.

And whilst political parties are still private spaces of public use, we will continue to suffer the consequences.

Let us not suffer them any more. 


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I’m going to miss Gordon Brown

 broken politics, Gordon Brown, on a high  2 Responses »
May 112010
 
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Yes.  Quite.  It seems, somehow, wrong that in times of complex crisis a country should turn to inexperienced youth.  It is – perhaps – a sign of our obsession with such youth that enough of us think we are doing the right thing … by doing just that.

Instead, we’re all going to suffer, aren’t we?

And we know it.

And we’re all afraid now.  Frightened even.

No.  That’s not quite right.  Some of us, the lucky few, will benefit from this obsession with youth, will benefit grandly – but at the expense of the rest.  Gordon Brown knew that this would happen and tried to bed down constructively a future fair for all.  He did his best.  It wasn’t enough.  In part, that was because he couldn’t explain himself better.  In part, that was because we didn’t care to listen better.

There’s blame on all sides.

And the coalition politics I really despise is that which makes so unhappily unworkable those unwieldy broad churches of monolithic political parties – so unworkable and unbelievable that people lose faith in that very tool which should inspire them to understand each other better.

Politics.

He dedicated a good part of his life to it.

I remember a Twitter user tweet in the last days of the election that if he had to vote for the man it would be Gordon Brown he voted for – not Labour itself, no, but, curiously enough, Brown yes. 

In the end, I think most of us believed that he had tried to do his level best. 

Sometimes, though, the ability to see it all makes more enemies than friends.  And in the cloven-footed practice of politics, in the dark side, in the side that drives you to embrace your demons, you need a fair-to-middling supply of friends to keep you on the right side of unhappiness.

In the end, then, we can assume, Gordon Brown had more enemies than friends.  But perhaps only amongst people who believe they count.  For the rest of us, we suddenly realised we had indeed found a brother – and friend.

So now, in the cold light of this saddest of days, I’m not happy to see Gordon Brown go.

I do, however, wish him every happiness and joy.


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Gordon Brown’s resignation email to Labour Party members

 Gordon Brown, Labour, on a high, resignation email, resignation statement  No Responses »
May 102010
 
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If you’re not a Labour Party member, you might want to read this, which I received this evening:

I wanted to explain to you the decision I have taken today.

I have said since Friday that it is crucial that this country, which I love so dearly, has a principled and strong government that can meet the challenge of securing the recovery and changing our politics.

As we know, the Liberal Democrats felt that they should first talk to the Conservative Party. Mr Clegg has just informed me this afternoon that he intends to continue those discussions and now wants to open up formal discussions with the Labour Party. I think it is sensible that we respond positively.

It is clear to me that there is a progressive majority in Britain and I believe it could be in the interests of the whole country to form a progressive coalition government. If the national interest can be served by such a coalition then I should discharge the duty to form that government.

But I have no desire to stay in my position longer than is needed to ensure that the path to progress is assured. The reason we have a hung Parliament is that no single party and no single leader was able to win the full support of the country. As the leader of this great party, I must accept that is a judgement on me.

Therefore I intend to ask the Labour Party to set in train the process needed for a leadership election. I would hope for a leader to be in place by Labour Party conference. I will play no part in that contest and will back no individual candidate.

Once again can I thank you for your unstinting help and committment to this wonderful party. Sarah and I appreciate the kindness you have shown us over the years.

I will of course stay in contact with you over the coming weeks and months.

Yours sincerely

Gordon Brown

I suspect that Gordon Brown – an almighty figure of tragedy at the moment – will be judged by history in a far more kindly way than we, as a nation currently wrapped up in its media-ridden navel-gazing, can find it in ourselves to do so today.

Today is not a day to do him justice.

But even today is a day to thank him for all he managed to do.
____________________

Further reading: Gordon Brown’s full resignation statement


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Love Labour’s lost

 Gordon Brown, Labour, New Labour, on a high  No Responses »
May 092010
 
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I’d already begun to think something was stirring in British politics when Cameron was unable to win an election his party had directly spent £18 million trying to buy – that is to say, £18 million without taking into account all the Ashcroft money poured into marginals in the years leading up to May 6th 2010 or the free and generally supportive publicity 80 percent of British media thought fit to bestow on New Toryism during the campaign itself.

Then, a couple of days ago, via Twitter, I stumbled across this humble story in New Statesman whose thesis went as follows:

One of the notable trends from this election is that Labour’s left-wing MPs performed disproportionately well. Not one of the 13 members of the Socialist Campaign Group lost their seat and several, against expectations, increased their share of the vote.

An interesting conclusion is also drawn:

[...] I also think it reflects the fact that voters tend to reward more independent-minded candidates and those who vote against their party when necessary. It’s also further evidence that the public are well to the left of Labour on Afghanistan, privatisation and inequality.

In the meantime, Paul over at Though Cowards Flinch – on the subject of a walkabout by Gordon Brown – has reached a parallel conclusion when he says today:

But it was bigger than that.  It wasn’t just a few people shouting out in adulation. There was much more shouting, and there was much more raw emotion than Toynbee can ever get across.

This was not about Gordon Brown.  This was about the working class of Skelmersdale in a mass spontaneous moment of class solidarity, and about reidentifying with Labour, as represented on that day by Gordon Brown, as THEIR party – a party which may have let them down on many occasions, may even have left them alone for a time, but which is still THEIR party, still my party.

This I saw in my own behaviours as the campaign entered its final week.  I became far more tribal in my responses than I had ever expected myself capable of becoming.  It wasn’t entirely about Gordon Brown – that is true.  But Gordon Brown’s speech to Citizens UK did kickstart dormant feelings of great moral purpose – feelings that New Labour’s managerial technocrats had laid to rest for a decade.

In that speech, Gordon Brown was able to express in the full glare of national media what he had always been able to enunciate in innumerable meetings across the country when in the presence of those who were well disposed to his persona.

It wasn’t about Gordon Brown, but – as Paul points out – in that moment the Labour Party found its true representation in Gordon Brown’s passion.

The Gordon Brown we saw that day was the Gordon Brown who most closely mirrored the aspirations of a decade of Labour’s lost.  Not the aspirations to material advantage and success whose promotion had allowed New Labour to triangulate a society into believing that a political party could be all things to all men and women – and still remain true to its soul.

No.  The aspirations I am really talking about are those which allow us to believe that striving for a better, fairer and more just world – striving on behalf of others and not because the thirst for personal advancement must drive us to this – is a commendable goal in itself; a goal which altruistically can drive us just as effectively as egoism.

That there can be more to life than that sad and sorry motivation which leads us to prioritise ourselves – and conceptualise an economic matrix of common interests that can only operate at the primitive level of self-interest – is something that Gordon Brown was able to express that day.

And that is when the campaign really changed its colour.

So.  There are many lessons to be learned, many conclusions to be drawn, about this curious and awkward month – this curious experience, this campaign without a clear profile, a see-saw campaign if there ever was one.  But there is one I would like to finish with, and it goes as follows: even if Gordon Brown may not be the man to take Labour all the way forward, he has been the man who has allowed us – all of a sudden – to proudly begin to turn our backs on unhappier recent pasts.  What the future holds is now far less uncertain than seemed the case even a few days ago.

Labour has won 258 seats promising a future fair for all.

That is some fine and laudable achievement in a country plagued by political infighting, gross media distortions and an economic class keen on selling materialism as its opiate.

Yes.  I too am hopeful that we can begin to string together a set of shared understandings of what this 21st century society will honestly be about. 

We now have a Labour Party to come home to.  Brown’s achievement – and this is Brown – is to have given us the key to at last re-engineer the achievements of New Labour to our liking.  To like the Labour Party once more – that is what is within our grasp.

And such a change – if re-engineered successfully – would, indeed, be immensely powerful in the future.

For it would allow us to finally believe that it might be possible to win elections – and even govern effectively over extended periods of time – without wanting to be all things to all men and women.


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Gordon Brown on the real change-makers

 change-makers, Gordon Brown, on a high, people, sorted  3 Responses »
May 032010
 
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An excerpt from Gordon Brown’s speech today where he asserted, quite rightly, the following:

The people whose names are not recorded in the books of history are the real change-makers.

More in the video below, whilst further background from Channel 4, surprisingly decently and even-handedly reported, can be found here.


____________________

Update to this post: the full speech can now be found here, via Labour List and Political Scrapbook.


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Gordon now apologises to us all

 apology, Gillian Duffy, Gordon Brown, unclassifiable  2 Responses »
Apr 282010
 
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Rob Fahey tweets this a moment ago.  Meanwhile, Gordon Brown apologises to us all in an email I republish below:

As you may know, I have apologised to Mrs Duffy for remarks I made in the back of the car after meeting her on the campaign trail in Rochdale today. I would also like to apologise to you.

I know how hard you all work to fight for me and the Labour Party, and to ensure we get our case over to the public. So when the mistake I made today has so dominated the news, doubtless with some impact on your own campaigning activities, I want you to know I doubly appreciate the efforts you make.

Many of you know me personally. You know I have strengths as well as weaknesses. We all do. You also know that sometimes we say and do things we regret. I profoundly regret what I said this morning.

I am under no illusions as to how much scorn some in the media will want to heap upon me in the days ahead.

But you, like I, know what is at stake in the days ahead and so we must redouble our campaigning efforts to stop Britain returning to a Tory Party that would do so much damage to our economy, our society and our schools and NHS, not least in places like Rochdale.

The worst thing about today is the hurt I caused to Mrs Duffy, the kind of person I came into politics to serve. It is those people I will have in my mind as I look ahead to the rest of the campaign.

You will have seen me in one context on the TV today. I hope tomorrow you see once more someone not just proud to be your leader, but also someone who understands the economic challenges we face, how to meet them, and how that improves the lives of ordinary families all around Britain.

Regards,

Gordon

It’s sad small moments like these that allow our anecdotal – and emotional – sides to take over.  However it pans out for Gordon and Labour, it won’t be as a result of our using the thinking side of our brains.  And I did use to be such a fervent advocate of channelling emotion in politics.

Sad sad times indeed.

Nice, even though, to hear a much-maligned exponent of a much-maligned profession admit to both weaknesses and strengths. 

We could do with far more of that I think.


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Why does politics have to be run on the same lines as business?

 a con, broken politics, Gordon Brown, Labour, LibDems, New Toryism  No Responses »
Apr 282010
 
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All modern evidence would seem to point to the wisdom of decentralising structures, so there is a redundancy in place in case of failure.  The Internet – at least in its current manifestation – is a classic example of such a structure.

Where this does not happen, however, is in small and big business.  I can understand why a hierarchical pyramid operates in small business – such businesses are often run on a wing and prayer; their owners perhaps much braver and deserving than the rest of us.  But big business?  How so?

The structure is as follows: an essentially exposed CEO at the very top of a pile almost feudally centralised down through interminable layers.  I do wonder about the wisdom of such a construction – and can only attribute its widespread existence to greed, ambition and the thirst for ever-greater concentrations of power.  But it’s hardly practical now, is it?  Nor, indeed, over the long-term, as secure as it could be – given that most people, even CEOs, generally have a finite lifespan.

There again, in the wider inexact scheme of things that is our economy, our planet, our life and our existence, there would be many who’d be happy enough to argue it works sufficiently well for us to be able to inexactly run with.  (Except, of course, when it doesn’t.  And thus he reels off – under his breath – an interminable litany of formerly famous financial services names.)  The really curious thing is that within these big companies, for those at the bottom of that pile, selfless collaboration, cooperation and teamwork are the watchwords we all have to abide by.  Completely different ideas to those which those at the top exude and choose to operate under.

But as long as the shareholders are kept happy, who cares?  Well, I do – for one.  If truth be told, I care little about what this means for the companies I have no real contact with.  Of course, I worry about their financial health and the implications this has for our shared economy.  And I would very much prefer other organisational structures to be far more widely employed.  But hey ho.  Sometimes we have to be realistic.  We can’t change the world in a day.

What I do find resistible, however, is that politics – a subject which touches us all, which impacts how we live our lives and defines how our society functions for the benefit of all – is being run on the same lines as these businesses.  Gordon Brown is not the first leader to fear putting a public foot in it – he won’t be the last either.  But the Labour Party’s ambitions to form part of the next government may now depend on some words said in the confines of Brown’s car.  Do we really appreciate the madness of such a situation?  Is it appropriate that the future direction of a country depends on the split-second reactions of one individual?  No matter that thousands of activists across party lines are pushing their manifestos and their colours.  No.  What Brown says now in Rochdale to Gillian Duffy, how Clegg addresses the camera in a leaders’ debate, whether Cameron cosies up to Clegg or Clegg keeps his soundbitten distance – these suddenly become essentially key ways of showing the voters how to make massive and important decisions.

This is a broken process if there ever was one.

It’s utter rubbish, actually.

And we need not more of it but less.

Especially if we really want to get the United Kingdom along the road to some kind of lasting political cementing of everything that is good about what this country could mean.


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