Tag Archives: gordon brown

No to a general election this year

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So – lovely, lovely Nick Robinson, a journalist who I only hold in the highest esteem you know (!) – is saying the general election is off. Looks like Gordon Brown wimped out in the end!

Tony Blair must be in seventh heaven – to see Gordon brought so low! And to be frank – I wouldn’t blame him. Gordon has made a right pig’s ear of the whole business – toying with us the electorate, flattered by polls, cynically using Maggie, Iraq and his big tent appointees to big himself up.

Tony Blair – with whom I disagreed fundamentally on major issues – at least had the balls to take the flak. Gordon Brown, keeping head below, parapet just let Blair take all the flak and brooded in the background resentful of their relative positions.

It’s good for Gordon to get a dose of leadership reality. It’s hard. It can be extraordinarily humiliating. It’s quite different to how all these boys it will turn out – and that goes for Brown, Cameron and Campbell. But I have always felt that Brown sneered silently at Blair’s leadership. Well – what goes around comes around.

Blair’s moment of revenge – I think!

Gordon Brown breaks his word

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Oh dear. It really isn’t new Gordon at all is it? Off jets the PM to Iraq (handily clashing with Conservative conference, trying to steal some of the media coverage from them) and announces 1,000 troops are to come home – but 500 of them were coming home already. And – what happened to GB’s promise to make announcements first to Parliament?

Double-counting numbers and putting spin first. It’s the same old Gordon!

Nick Robinson refuses to show me his balls

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I had my hopes up when lovely Nick appeared on the TV this evening … but alas, they were dashed.

Another BBC news reports about Gordon Brown, general election date and all the will he won’t he dithering.

On to screen strides Nick Robinson – he whose balls I wish to see – and we see him confront the Home Secretary about general election date – but what then happens? Soft question, easily batted away.

None of the tough questions about why in a democracy the PM should be able to pick the election date that most suits the PM’s electoral prospects. None of the tough questions about the hypocrisy of Brown saying he wants to get on with governing – whilst at the same time happily stoking up election date speculation.

Now – I know Nick Robinson can be a tough interviewer when he wishes – indeed, I still remember him clearly chasing Sir Ian Blair (London policeman) down the stairs, along a corridor and through to the outside, thrusting microphone in his face and asking tough, aggressive questions.

So come on Nick how about it next time – how about addressing the tough questions to Labour?

What's happened to Tony Blair?

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I have been astonished at the lack of Blair at Labour’s party conference. Obviously not in person – but it is as if the collective guilt of those he left behind has painted him out of their history. Hate to point it out guys – but you all (with honourable exceptions) voted for the war, kept quiet or in Gordon’s case – signed the cheques.

You can’t lay it all on Tony – you were all there, cheering and voting him on. New Gordon? Doesn’t wash with me!

Gordon Brown and election dates

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Having complained before about how easy a ride the media are giving Gordon Brown over his rather arrogant attitudes towards election dates, treating our democracy as if it is his own personal plaything – full credit to Jonathan Freedland for writing:

The absurdity that the timing of our elections is in the hands of the prime minister has to end. It doesn’t just destabilise our politics; it is grotesquely unfair. British elections are running races in which one of the contestants gets to fire the starting gun. So when Gordon Brown finally names the date, let him also vow to be the last prime minister to exercise that privilege. Let’s give our parliaments fixed terms – and end this guessing game once and for all.

Well said!

UPDATE: And also good pieces over on Paul Linford’s blog and The Herald.

Plans for the NHS

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Well, well, well! So Health Secretary Alan Johnson has outlined plans which aim to make the NHS more user-friendly for patients in his speech to the Labour conference. He said patients should be treated close to home and GP surgeries should open “at times and in locations that suit the patient, not the practice”.

I will be quoting this incessantly at Haringey PCT if they try and move our GP practises into the polyclinics! That’s the point I keep making. We need to be treated close to home.

As for this shenanigans with Brown and the election – a real man, a real Prime Minister – would put the country first! I rest my case!

I'd like to see Nick Robinson's balls

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Well, well – another day yesterday of Gordon Brown playing “will he, won’t he” on the general election date.

It’s typical boys and toys stuff – as if the whole electoral system is just his personal plaything to bounce around as he likes.

For all his talk about New Gordon, Open Gordon, Democratic Gordon – it’s still the same old control freak Gordon, treating our democracy – OUR democracy – with contempt. Why should the date of elections be up to him and him alone to pick – and only on the basis of what suits his own vote winning desires the best?

(My own view? Fixed term Parliaments, save for automatic general election on change of PM, vote of no confidence in the Commons or cross-party agreement).

And yet whilst he brazenly displays this contempt for democracy – where are the likes of the BBC’s Nick Robinson? Just meekly playing along as if having a democracy where the Prime Minister gets to fiddle the electoral system to suit his own ends is the only possible imaginable
game.

Sorry Nick – not impressed!

Show us your balls – and start asking Gordon Brown the tough questions – like why should the date of a general election be picked just to suit Labour? Or why Gordon Brown wants to face both ways saying he wants to get on with governing – but doesn’t kill of the date speculation one way or another?

The occasional lobbed soft question to Gordon does the media’s reputation no favours at all. So come on Nick – put Gordon on the spot, ask the tough questions – and keep on until you get an answer.

Will he ? Won't he? Will he? Won't he?

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Lovely summer party by CASCH (a Crouch End residents’ association). Lots of anger about Haringey Council’s failure to move swiftly to help local residents affected detrimentally by the knock on from a CPZ nearby. Haringey Labour are saying no funds until next year – but these schemes are self-funding so if there was the will there would be the way.

Went straight on to canvassing in Crouch End – testing the water with a ‘if Gordon called an election tomorrow – which way would you vote’? It was very interesting; it always is interesting meeting people – but even more so in these times of fevered political speculation.

People seemed to still be angry with Labour – and the change from Blair to Brown not making the difference perhaps Labour were hoping. The Iraq war is still a key issue. And whilst Labour keep hoping that it will fade and that anyone who swung their vote away from Labour because of Iraq will somehow swing back – that didn’t seem to be the case on the doorstep. Not surprisingly really – as the war is not over and even when we do get our troops out, the mess will still haunt us. That feeling of responsibility and culpability doesn’t vanish with the change of face at No 10.

Anyway – seemed good to me – even though my canvassing is very stringent. I will only put someone down as Lib Dem if they are completely and unequivocally enthusiastic and always vote Lib Dem – anything else I categorise other ways. But as my opponents read my blog – not going to give away canvassing secrets here!

As to the political question of the day. Will he ? Won’t he? Will he? Won’t he? Brown not answering just puts me off – albeit I am already off! So to speak.

How Gordon Brown has changed his mind on the general election date

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It’s there in black and white, supported 100% by Gordon Brown – “We [the Labour party] will introduce as a general rule a fixed Parliamentary term.”

Oh – the date of the commitment? The 1992 Labour manifesto as supported by one G Brown. I agree with him – the 1992 vintage that is. It shouldn’t be down to just one person – the Prime Minister – to decide whether or not to hold an election (and making that decision based on their own party’s self-interest).

I want to see fixed-term Parliaments, with provision for early elections if (a) the government loses a vote of confidence, (b) there’s a change of Prime Minister or (c) there is cross-party support (to cover unusual crises or surprises). Cross-party support is crucial for (c) as otherwise it would just once again let the PM pick whatever date they want – and then get it through with a whipped vote. Quite how this would work depends on what happens to House of Lords reform (finally!), but the basic idea is clear.

But back to Brown – I’m amazed what a soft ride the media have been giving him on this. We all know what he’s up to – he wants the election to be on the date that best suits him, and wants to sow as much confusion as possible in the interim as to when it might or might not be. Where’s the democracy in that? Yet the media have gone along with his game.

It’s one of the odd paradoxes of modern political reporting – it’s usual bathed in an instinctive cynical covering about how all politicians are liars and fools – but also is often terribly conservative in playing the traditional rules of the game rather than questioning them (when was the last time a journalist blew the whistle on an unattributable dishing of one politician by another? You see – the rules of the game are that unattributable personal attacks are ok, so they just report them time after time).

So if I was a journalist – I’d be asking Brown to justify why he’s changed his mind, and why – in a democracy of all places – the PM should be able to fiddle the system by picking a date of his or her own choosing? When Mrs T used to do that, Brown opposed it – ah… perhaps that’s where his new-found admiration for her comes in!

My appearance in The Sun

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So – back from the wilds of Brighton and the Liberal Democrat conference. Just a few ‘tidy ups’ as I was basically blogging by video diary.

I didn’t understand the reference at the time that the Chair, Jon Ball, made to me a one of the four Lib Dem Sun ‘lovelies’ when he introduced my keynote speech on Wednesday. Coming home – some kind person (!) has emailed me the link – and there I am with Jo Swinson (27), Julia Goldsworthy (29) and Kirsty Williams (36). Sadly – they do publish my age! Still – whereas I used to just rail against the innate sexism in such articles – now (at my advanced age) I am just grateful!

More seriously, on the last morning, the speaker who summated in the Liberal Democrat Youth and Students Emergency Motion on Darfur, a Darfuri Abdo Abdullah, gave a most powerful speech.

We had had the Global Day of Action on Darfur on the Monday (blogged about by one of the organisers here). But there is nothing more powerful to advocate both the need for speed of deployment of the AU/UN hybrid force and the need for our government to stop sending Darfuris back to torture and murder – then someone standing in front of you who has seen his own family murdered.

I spoke in this debate and of course, made Darfur one of the key issues in my keynote speech the day before – but will the Government act? Brown says he wants troops deployed earlier than next year. Given he is Prime Minister, he has the power to push it – but he seems satisfied with warm words alone. Cold comfort to dying Darfuris.

You can see more of my conference photos over on Flickr.