Gordon Brown

Iain Dale, yesterday at 10:54am:

If ever you wanted an example of the difference between Gordon Brown and David Cameron as Prime Minister, look at what's happening in Washington.

Brown and his Ministers cow-towed to the Americans over the one-sided extradition treaty and refused even to raise the subject of Gary McKinnon with their American counterparts.

I suspect that Iain was typing that blogpost before he had read this story:

David Cameron has been criticised after mistakenly saying the UK was the "junior partner" in the allied World War II fight against Germany in 1940.

He made the historical slip, neglecting the fact that the US had yet to enter the war, on the second day of his first trip to the US as prime minister.

We all want and expect a prime minister to have at least a reasonable understanding of modern history, but let's put to one side Cameron's historical illiteracy and ask the question 'why did Cameron feel the need to refer to the UK as the "junior partner" in World War II?'

The only answer I can come up with is that Cameron was kowtowing to the Americans.

Why Iain Dale feels that Gordon Brown and his ministers were towed by cows to talks on Gary McKinnon's extradition treaty remains unclear. Possibly an Eggcorn.

We're well used to Jonah Brown ruining the chances of British teams and athletes. How nice that David Miliband is continuing that proud tradition.

Murray's loss will have cheered up a great many England fans but it didn't make up for our poor show in the football.

Yesterday John Denham addressed the Fabians on the question of how Labour should speak to England.

Denham revealed that Gordon Brown vetoed his proposal for state funding of a St George's Day celebration.

The shadow communities secretary also discloses that shortly before the election Downing Street vetoed his plans for state funding for an official St George's Day celebration of Englishness. No 10 told Denham it feared there would be a counter-reaction in Scotland.

Seriously? Are we really expected to believe that! Why would the Scots object to the Government funding a celebration of England's national day?

The answer is that the Scots wouldn't object to state funding of St George's Day. The 'counter-reaction' from Scotland that Gordon Brown fears is a heightening of the perception that the UK Government is the government of England. Brown is fearful of distancing the Scots further from Westminster by acting in England's national interest, even when acting in England's national interest does not in any way harm Scotland. It is a political problem that stems from the fact that England has no government of its own. The fact that the UK Government cannot act in England's interests without worrying about what the Scots will make of it tells you a lot about the unsatisfactory governance of England.

At least we now know why Gordon Brown refused to participate in any public debate on St George's Day.

I ask you all to write to the Labour leadership candidates to ask them whether they support a national holiday in England on St George's Day.

Just as the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats looked as though they were edging towards a deal, Gordon Brown appeared outside his bunker and announced his intention to quit as the leader of the Labour Party in order that a "progressive alliance" could be formed.

By doing so he has done England a huge favour.

A Labour-LibDem coalition that relied upon support from the SDLP, SNP, Plaid Cymru and the Greens would be the best possible government for England. Such a government would rely on the votes of 58 Scottish Labour, Lib Dem and SNP MPs, 3 Northern Irish SDLP MPs and 32 Welsh Labour, Lib Dem and Plaid Cymru MPs to legislate for England against the wishes of an English Conservative majority. The price of Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish support would be their protection from the budget cuts that England will endure.

It is a recipe for constitutional crisis. It would propel The English Question into the mainstream of British politics and drive millions into supporting an English parliament.

I hardly think that such a progressive alliance is likely and I stand by my earlier prediction that the Lib Dems will do a deal with the Tories. In constitutional terms a Labour-Lib Dem progressive/rainbow alliance would be against the UK national interest because it would undermine the Union, and in political pragmatic terms it would be an extremely weak government that could not possibly claim legitimacy as the government of England. It would be madness. But politicians have been known to do mad things in the pursuit of power, and in order to keep the Tories out the Labour Party will do anything, and many rank and file Lib Dems will agree with them.

As an aside, by opening up the prospect of a Labour-LibDem coalition Gordon Brown has strengthened the Lib Dem's hand, enabling Nick Clegg to effectively name his price in his talks with the Conservatives and seal the deal. Gordon Brown is not a stupid man, he probably knows that a Labour-Lib Dem coalition is unlikely and possibly unworkable, but by falling on his sword his intention may be to force the Tories to acede to Lib Dem demands thereby helping the Lib Dems neuter and divide the coming Tory administration. And if that is his intention, then he has played his hand very well indeed because the conservatives in the Conservative Party will not like this one little bit.

Gordon Brown has apologised for his part in the failure of British banks:

Mr Brown said: "In the 1990s, the banks, they all came to us and said, 'Look, we don't want to be regulated, we want to be free of regulation'."

"All the complaints I was getting from people was, 'Look you're regulating them too much'. And actually the truth is that globally and nationally we should have been regulating them more," he added.

"So I've learnt from that. So you don't listen to the industry when they say, 'This is good for us'. You've got to talk about the whole public interest."

Oh wait, he hasn't apologised.

The Financial Times' Jim Pickard speculates that Gordon Brown has finally admitted responsibility because it's "better to come out with this now than be pinned down during the election TV debates by Cameron and Clegg". I rather suspect that Jim is correct, and that what we have here is a stage-managed show of contrition from a conceited, deceitful and arrogant bastard.

Various newspapers took what I assume to be a Press Association wire based upon a Downing Street briefing, and reported Gordon Brown's desire to have a 'Democracy Day'.

This is the Guardian's version:

He will tomorrow try to put himself at the helm of the move for political renewal in the expenses scandal by promising a "democracy day", holding referendums to change the voting system for the election of MPs and to endorse a wholly elected second chamber replacing the Lords.

However, this is what Brown eventually said:

But I have one final mandate to ask of the British people as well. It is a mandate to improve public trust in our democracy and in our public life. Politics has been scarred by recent events. In the next few days I will put forward a comprehensive plan so that the people of this country can be sure that there is transparent, accountable, open and democratic politics being pursued in this country, at every stage accountable to them in the future. And I want us to renew the contract between the people and those who they are sworn to serve.

From a prime minister with no direct electoral mandate over vast swathes of government policy in England, and from one who baulks at reform of the Barnett Formula, this is a laughable statement. But where is the mention of a 'Democracy Day'? To me 'Democracy Day' implies a national 'Britishness' day, for example the 7th June "to remember the Reform Act 1832 also known as the Great Reform Act". Sadly it seems likely that Brown has in mind a one-off Democracy Day on which the public can vote on Gordon Brown's idea of how Britain should be governed.

Brown also told the assembled press core of his plans for the marketisation of England's police, cancer care, general practitioners and schooling, all dressed up as a guarantee "to every single citizen of Britain".

''And I want to give a direct guarantee to every single citizen of Britain that, when you need the police, when you need help with cancer care, when you need your GP at the evenings and weekends, when you need as a child to have personal tuition in your school, then these public services will be there, directly guaranteed to you as individual citizens when you need them, and accountable to you and your family.

All that was announced previously as part of the 'Working Together' policy document.

Priscilla has some interesting stats on Gordon Brown's thirteen years:

When Gordon Brown arrived at the Treasury in 1997 he inherited a deficit of £6 billion. It is now £67 billion.

The UK was the seventh most competitive economy in the world. It is now 13th.

It was the fourth most competitively taxed: it is now the 84th

It was the fourth most lightly regulated: it is now the 86th.

13, unlucky for some....Well, all of us actually.

Is there a general election looming or something? Gordon Brown has promised a new national holiday called "Pride in Britain Day":

Brown’s latest idea is inspired by the Pride of Britain awards, created by Piers Morgan, the former Daily Mirror editor and friend of the prime minister. This annual ceremony, broadcast on ITV1, honours ordinary people who have shown extraordinary bravery, dedication or kindness.

May I remind the Rt Hon. Twat from Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath of his words on St George's Day 2008:

As far as St. George's day is concerned, it is a matter for public debate on whether this is going to be a holiday.

Has that public debate happened? I must have missed it.

It's not often, or ever come to think of it, that you get a Labour Party politician engaging English nationalists in debate on a public forum. Which is why Andrew Gwynne MP should be applauded for this article and subsequent comments: "England, a constitutional conundrum".

My favourite exchange is this:

Mr A.D.Dagger says:
February 26, 2010 at 8:06 am

Perhaps? just as a starting point Andrew. You could pop along and see Mr Brown and ask him to be honest when making speeches on issues such as NHS, education, transport etc. Get him to tell everyone he is referring to England. Put him in front of a mirror to practice. E.n.g.l.a.n.d. Because so far he hss proven completely unable to say the word. I wonder why?

Andrew Gwynne says:
February 26, 2010 at 8:13 am

To be fair, on Tuesday both he and Ed Balls both spoke of government investment and reforms in “England’s schools”.

Wyrdtimes says:
February 26, 2010 at 9:12 am

Do you mean this speech on education? http://www.number10.gov.uk/Page22580

Where he mentions Britain nine times but England not once?

There really is no comeback from that. But it makes you wonder doesn't it? Perhaps Labour MPs don't even realise that Gordon Brown is doing it. Perhaps they don't object or even notice when Brown talks about "British schools" when he means "English schools", or about "a Britain of nations and regions" - where Scotland and Wales are the nations, and England the regions - or about that "golden thread of British liberty" that runs "from that long-ago day in Runnymede in 1215 to the Bill of Rights".

I think I'll send Andrew Gwynne a copy of Simon Lee's "Gordon Brown and the British Way" and ask that he distributes a few copies to his fellow Labour MPs.

Having just watched Gordon Brown on the Piers Morgan show I felt moved to write something, shortly after I'd recovered from feeling moved to vomit in disgust.

Gordon Brown is such a horrific individual that practically anything about him is fair game, his character, his looks, his disability (which includes his character and his looks as well as his impending blindness). What isn't fair game are his children. Which makes it all the more sad that he chose to drag his wife on that programme to parade their sorrow over their children in search of votes. I hope that it doesn't work. More than that, I hope it backfires and people see it for what it was - sickening and distasteful.

Sadly I rather think that the British people enjoy this kind of stage-managed mawkish self-pity these days. It's perhaps not the British value that Brown was hoping to identify, but having studied Britishness for so long there's a good chance that he knows his target audience.

All I can say is it ain't for me. There was something about it that I found slightly horrifying and distinctly un-British. Here was a sitting Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, yes our Prime Minister - albeit one we didn't want or ask for - talking to Piers-fucking-Morgan. Good grief Charlie Brown.