Tag Archives: gordon brown

Fear and control freakery in the Gordon Brown bunker

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Following up the account in the FT earlier this week about how Gordon Brown has already cut himself off from most people and is only listening to a tiny circle of advisters, today it is Martin Kettle in the Guardian:

Relations between the key players at the top are worse than in the summer. Brown’s long hours and short temper – he lost his cool with Bob Shrum, his American adviser, the other day – shape a bad mood inside No 10. Some staff are leaving already. Others are having second thoughts about staying. Good people feel excluded. The animus against Balls in particular is very great. He should concentrate on being a better minister, they say. Michael Heseltine was right, says one veteran. The problem isn’t Brown. It’s Balls.

Some of this stuff comes from the usual suspects. And, yes, similar things used to be said about the Blair government. For Mandelson and Campbell in 1997, read Balls in 2007. But if the large domestic lesson from the Blair years was that they wasted too much time thinking like an opposition not a government, the same already seems true of the Brown years. Blair, though, had time on his side. Brown does not.

(Hat tip: Guido Fawkes)

This sort of bunker mentality comes to just about any political leader in the end – but usually after years in the job, rather than before they’ve even been in the post for their first 12 months. Not a good sign for the future!

Fixed term Parliament bill to go before Parliament

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Gordon Brown’s ‘will he? won’t he?’ antics this autumn over possibly calling a general election highlighted the absurdity of letting the Prime Minister choose when to call an election.

Yet why should the PM get to choose the election date? We all know how PMs have chosen the date – they choose a date when they think they have a decent chance of winning. Fixing part of an election system just so you can maximise your own chances of winning – isn’t that normally called fixing an election?

Democracy after all is for all of us – it’s for the public to control who runs things, not for those in power to manipulate the public into re-electing them.

The alternative is to have fixed terms for Parliament. My colleague David Howarth has come out 12th in the ballot (polite Parliament speak for lottery) to choose which MPs are given (a small amount of!) time to present their own bill to Parliament. David’s said his private member’s bill will be one for fixed term Parliaments.

Even Gordon himself used to be in favour of fixed term Parliaments, so it’ll be interesting to see what he says and does on this!

In the bunker with Gordon Brown

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Interesting piece in the FT from Sue Cameron about life under PM Gordon Brown for those in government:

He has been in Number 10 less than six months but, to the horror of civil servants, he has already hunkered down and cut most communication with the rest of government. Insiders say that no papers, no ideas and no decisions are getting through the barbed wire – only announcements from the leader that have been discussed with no one outside Mr Brown’s inner circle.

As a result, the corridors of power have become the corridors of impotence. Whitehall teems with unhappy cabinet ministers who have not been consulted or even informed about proposals that concern them – little details such as the date of the Budget, troop withdrawals in Iraq or the cancelling of the general election.

Not much change there then from the old Gordon Brown! Reminds me of what I wrote after Gordon Brown’s election as Labour leader:

What can we expect under Gordon? More announcement, re-announcements and then announcement for a third time of the same pots of money – and a dark, brooding, master pulling the central strings from behind closed doors. I hope I’m wrong, but …

Vulture funds: Gordon Brown stands by and does nothing as the poorest suffer

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I’m in The Guardian talking about the dreaded scourge of vulture funds:

Liberal Democrat shadow international development secretary Lynne Featherstone released figures she had requested from the World Bank about the extent to which British courts had been used by so-called “vulture” funds to sue poor countries.

These showed £237m-worth of suits had gone through British courts despite Britain being a vocal supporter of greater aid for poor countries.

“Gordon Brown talks at length about justice for Africa but instead his government should explore ways of creating an internationally binding system to ensure companies can’t prey on heavily indebted developing countries,” she said.

“Failing that, in the interim, the government should start looking at how our national laws can be changed to bar vulture funds from using Britain as a tool to milk heavily-indebted poor countries.”

Vulture funds buy up poor countries’ sovereign debt at a fraction of its face value and then sue for its full value plus interest in court. Many are US-based but use courts in Britain and France to pursue their victims.

UPDATE: There’s more in the story on the Liberal Democrat website.

What to make of Gordon Brown's speech?

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Well – Gordon was sooooooooooo dull that the Speaker had to tell everyone off for holding private conversations! That’s what happens in the Chamber when the person on their feet fails to hold the Members’ attention. You don’t expect it from the Prime Minister though.

As for the substance of what he had to say – Vince Cable summed it up well: after all those years waiting (and even delaying the election so he could lay out his visiion more clearly) – there wasn’t any vision there. Instead we just saw the cosy duopoly of the Tory Twins – i.e. both Labour and Tories agree on so many, many things now – leaving the Liberal Democrats to stand up for the public against the cosy self-interest of the political establishment.

As the for the behaviour of MPs: the racket and the baying and the shouting was shameful. If this is the example that Parliament gives in terms of grown up behaviour, debate and governance…

Brown and Blair – the squabbling continues

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Earlier this year I wrote a piece previewing how Gordon Brown might turn out as Prime Minister. One issue I picked up on was just how long-running and deeply rooted in the Labour Party is the internal fighting and bickering around Gordon Brown himself:

This dates much further back than Blair announcing he would not fight another election. As Philip Gould has recounted, it even goes back before the 1992 general election:

“The whole thing was so debilitating because every time Gordon appeared on TV, someone in John [Smith]’s camp would say, ‘Look, it’s another bid for the leadership’, Patricia [Hewitt] remembers.”

Someone I can’t quite see fifteen plus years of squabbling stop overnight at the leadership election.

And lo … it has come to pass with already there being a series of accusations of Blairites trying to undermine Brown. The latest comes in today’s Sunday Times:

Sources close to the prime minister reportedly accused Blair allies of trying to use Seldon’s book as a “crude attempt” to undermine the government.

Some things never change!

PMQs: I get to question Gordon Brown

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Lynne Featherstone at PMQsSooooooooooooo – at last my number came up in the ballot and I get to ask a question at Prime Minister’s Questions (basically – other than party leaders – MPs are picked at random to ask the other questions).

Although I think Gordon Brown had other worries today (like his political life) I managed my question competently (I thought) and was rewarded with a reasonably progressive answer. He was forced to admit that Haringey School’s funding deal needs “continued looking at” following my impassioned plea for a fair funding deal for the borough’s schools (the topic of my online petition).

I asked the PM to end the injustice that Haringey schools received on average £736 less per pupil than in inner London, even though local teachers are paid on inner London pay scales. Gordon Brown conceded the point and stated that outer London funding would continue to be looked into.

I will follow up with a letter as a chink has opened up and I am damned if our kids are going to get less than neighbouring boroughs for another three years until the funding formula is substantively reviewed. Waiting for a review may be fine in bureaucracy land – but those children aren’t going to get those three years of education back again – and of course we don’t know for sure what the review will even decide then, or on what timescale. So get a move on Gordon!

Iraqi interpreters

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In the evening I sponsor a meeting in Parliament for the campaign to treat properly Iraqis who work for the Brits during our war there.

Dan Hardie, whose blog pushed this campaign to the fore, had brought together Mark Brockway (who was in Iraq with the army and employed interpreters), Andrew (who worked on the economic infrastructure), Richard Beeston of The Times (which has given the issue much impressive coverage – except for one blip in one piece which ignored the massive contribution people like Dan have made to the campaign) and three MPs: me, Ed Vaizey and Chris Bryant.

Mark and Andrew both gave eye witness accounts of what is going on in Iraq and how those who helped us by translating or other service now are being hunted down and killed. It was graphic, appalling and compelling.

These horrors made the mealy-mouthed, half-arsed announcement by G Brown yesterday to allow those who worked for us for more than 12 months some financial (very low) package to resettle and under agreed circumstances admittance to the UK look completely inadequate.

To me, I longed for Gordon just to say what needed to be said – we have a moral responsibility towards you and you are welcome in our country. That’s what Denmark did. In fact Denmark recognising the danger in which their employees now were – flew them and their families out.

Anyway – the key issues that came up for pursuit are: the need for our military to provide proper contracts with those who work for us, proper record keeping, inclusion of family members, removal of barriers for Iraqis needing to come here (currently they cannot get visas in Iraq but have to leave and go to Jordan before they can even apply), an immediate statement from the Government to our Iraqi employees which gives them the information and instruction as to what to do to access what was in the package, a website for them to get in touch (many are in hiding), and of course – the extension of the package to all those who worked for us – not just those who did twelve months. As Mark pointed out – many of the work periods co-incided with troop turn of duty – which was often six months! I have tabled an EDM to this effect. (An EDM – Early Day Motion – is a sort of Parliamentary petition – so please lobby your MP to sign it if you’re not one of my constituents).

Tomorrow, have discovered I am No 8 on the Order Paper for Prime Minister’s Questions – so hope we get that far down the list.

Once more into the fray!

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It felt just like going back to school – but only for a moment. Then it was back into the familiar routines when Parliament is sitting and as if the summer recess had never happened.

The big one yesterday was Gordon (I used to be taken seriously) Brown – coming to the House to give a statement on Iraq. I was trying to think: if he hadn’t made such a pig’s ear of the last few weeks – would this have been well received? Partially – is the answer.

His news on reductions in troop numbers – albeit not enough – and half-hearted help for the Iraqis whose work for us in the war now means the Basra death squads are hunting them down and killing them – was typical Brown, picking up on the big issues but only making partial and unsatisfying moves on them.

As I am sponsoring tonight’s meeting on the fate of the Iraqi interpreters who worked for the British armed forces, I was glad the the pressure that has mounted on this issue (mostly thanks to the blogosphere who pushed it to the fore) had obviously got to Gordon.

As usual, Gordon threw his big arms around the Iraqi employees tent – not wishing to look bad publicly (which he does) for using them then throwing them to the dogs. But he didn’t say what he should have said. Instead we got the mealy-mouthed Gordon version which was a financial package to help resettle somewhere – and ‘under agreed circumstances’ some would be allowed to come here.

A more detailed statement will follow this week. It had better!

One sure way to tell if Cameron means what he says

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So – David Cameron’s been all over the media criticising Gordon Brown over general election dates. But whilst he’s happy to criticise Gordon Brown for what he did (and didn’t!) do, he’s dodged one question: would he behave the same way himself if he were the Prime Minister? In other words – is Cameron really sincere in what he is saying, or just going for the cheap points?

Well – his bluff, if that it is, is about to be called! As Ming Campbell announced in a TV interview today, the Liberal Democrats will be tabling a bill calling for fixed-term Parliaments tomorrow (the first day Parliament returns). We will see whether or not a certain Mr D Cameron is at the front of the queue to support the bill, or if he really secretly thinks, “actually, I’d quite like to abuse our electoral process myself too”. Over to you David!

Appearing on Radio 4's The Westminster Hour with Carolyn QuinnI might also have a bit of fun teasing Ed Vaizey, my new Facebook friend (!), when we appear together on The Westminster Hour this evening on this!

The show is starting up its regular MP panel again, so expect to hear me on a fair few Sunday evenings between now and the end of the year. It’s on Radio 4, 10pm – or if you miss the show you can listen again on their website.