Blair, Brown and bad politicians

It is very depressing indeed that Britain was managed 1997-2010 by men of low calibre and principle such as Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Peter Mandelson is cut from similar cloth.

There is an old saying in politics: shit floats to the top. The only means of part remedying the problem is to have greater openness in government and more accountability by parliament. It is absurd to have the reform of government departments, for instance, brought about or stymied to avoid the tantrums of ministers.

Brown’s misspelt letters to grieving families

Whatever Brown’s motives for writing hand-written letter to the relatives of soldiers killed in the Afghan war is – e.g. guilt at having innocent blood on his hands – is unknowable. Yet, Brown seems to have broken the most fundamental rule of politics: sincerity is no substitute for sense.

In sending such a letter unchecked by his advisors he unnecessarily became a hostage to fortune. In doing so he was a political idiot.

Some suggest that the queen should have written the letters, but Britain’s elderly queen, though, would have just delegated the task to someone else; that is the story of her life.

Gordon Brown’s speech to Congress: a fraud

A US speech writing company was paid over GBP 40 000 to help compose Gordon Brown’s speech to Congress. One Guardian columnist defended this.

Put simply, political leaders can either run countries or they can write speeches – there isn't time for them to do both. We wouldn't expect Gordon Brown to redesign the No 10 website single-handedly and nor should we expect him to write his own speeches.

There is a key difference. Brown never holds himself out to compose the Number 10 website; the uniformed observer, though, would think that he had written what for Brown was the speech of his lifetime to the US Congress. If Brown had got up and started,

Good evening, everybody. Here is a speech that a speech writing company in your country, West Wing Writers, has written for me. I will now read it.

At least that would have been honest.

Getting out of Afghanistan

Some have argued that it is difficult for Gordon Brown to extricate the British military from Afghanistan, but it is easy; here is a statement Gordon Brown could make:

The involvement of Britain in the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan was a mistake. While many British military personnel have perished, nothing has been achieved: Afghanistan has not become a Western-style democracy, nor has our involvement contributed in any way to enhancing Britain’s security. For that reason I announce that the British military will be withdrawn as soon and as quickly as possible.

It’s as simple as that.

Brown to target parents of ‘anti-social’ children

The death agonies of New Labour are truly ugly. In a last ditch attempt to scrape a few Daily Mail votes Brown is planning a host of coercive and repressive measures against the Britain’s burgeoning underclass.

Few deny that in Britain’s broken society - now more unequal than at any time since 1945 - steps need to be taken to provide jobs, social help and wealth distribution for those inhabiting junk estates and the inner cities. Yet the swelling of these ghettos is the direct result of New Labour’s market fundamentalism, a policy resulting in mass unemployment, inadequate and insecure housing leading in turn to family breakdown and crime.

For Brown to court so-called Middle England voters by kicking the working class victims of New Labour’s own policies just about sums up Brown and his party.

Judging Brown’s economic record

There is no reason at all to praise Gordon Brown’s economic record – neither as chancellor nor as prime minister. The reality is his myth of eternal growth based on market fundamentalism fell apart in the collapse of the credit boom in 2008. Amid a failing economy, Britain today under New Labour is now a more unequal society than at any time since 1945.

The argument that Brown should be applauded because he used public money to bail out collapsing banks in the crash of 2008 just doesn’t add up. It’s rather like praising a man who has defecated on the carpet and then succeeded in cleaning some of it up.

Gordon Brown addresses the US Congress

It is utterly sickening to learn that the zenith of Brown’s miserable New Labour career is to address the Congress of the United States.

What we want is a government whose first loyalty is to the British people and which will cooperate on the basis of equality with our partners in Europe. Britain should not be a satellite of the US, whether that country be governed by Bush or Obama.

By all means, ask the US to give Brown and Blair US citizenship and then send them there, never to return.

British Party Politics

This short piece is a snapshot of the political situation following the municipal and Celtic assembly elections in May 2007. In some ways it has proved prophetic, but in other ways not.

The assumption of office of the minority SNP administration in Scotland and the likely rainbow coalition in Wales of Plaid, Tories and the Liberal Democrats (very damaging for Plaid in my view) creates a strange set up across Britain: Labour out of office in Edinburgh and Cardiff, but still holding the fort in London.

Labour’s position is contradictory and precarious. In the local election in May its vote fell to 27 percent (less than for Foot in the 1983 general election). New Labour for all its centre right polices was driven back to its urban heartlands north of the Severn Walsh line. Middle England for whom New Labour was designed wasn’t voting for it. In the so-called ‘sink estates’ whose interests Labour has abandoned, it wasn’t socialists who were chipping away at Labour, but the fascist BNP.

Cameron, now dressing up Toryism as an up-market version of Blairism, did well in the south and rural England, but made no headway in the English cities or in the Celtic countries. He may win in 2010 but only with difficulty. The fragmentation and ghetoisation of British party politics, which has accelerated since the 1980s (masked by Labour landslides in 1997 and 2003,) is very much evident, all of which makes the outcome of Westminster first-past-the-post elections somewhat arbitrary. But with the Liberal Democrats moving rightwards and jettisoning affinity with Labour, and with Celtic nationalism strengthening, the long term prospects for Gordon Brown’s Party geared towards the interests of people who don’t vote for it appears more and more precarious.

N. B. The rainbow coalition in Wales did not happen.