Will Brown's conference speech be a mea culpa?

Pat

It shouldn't be Mea Culpa, it should be Mea Goin.

Just Crass: Thats Gordon.

Asa

I don't think the electorate are going to suddenly adore Brown (again! - after all we had the 'Brown bounce' era) just because he says 'I'm sorry'

oldtimer

If he wants to stay in office, he should put himself up for election - by the public electorate not just the Labour m/c.

The idea that saying sorry is a sufficient justification to stay in office to implement "reforms" is as laughable as it is arrogant.

Besides who would believe him? And.no doubt, we would have to endure yet more bungling incompetence. It is not a runner.

mac

Steady on, James: La Ashley's column is 'always' worth reading? She (and her husband) fawned ludicrously over Brown before Blair departed. The past year surely has amply demonstrated failings that no mere conference 'mea culpa' can correct. If Ashley and the other Brown sycophants think that'll be enough to restore their hero's standing then what they write will have comedy reading value, I grant you that.

john miller

I know I'm going to get tired of saying this after people get tired of reading it, but his advisers are having a laugh. The Blair trick of quivering lip and confession worked a few times, but he made sure the public were briefed that it was nothing really to do with him, but he would carry the can because he was the boss.

Well, Brown can only do the petulant quivering lip and what can he say sorry for?

Sorry, I lied whan I said I'd bring an end to boom and bust?

Sorry, I lied about the 10p tax rate?

Sorry, I lied when I said there was not going to be any loss of public money over the Crock?

I know the great British public back the underdog, but the dog has to start out that way. Brown's been in charge of domestic politics for 11 years - a bit too late to say I'm sorry.

Trumpeter Lanfried

It actually doesn't matter a damn what he says at conference. He could read out the telephone directory for all the difference it will make. The great British public is no longer listening.

Those of us interested in politics (a minority) are simply ticking off the dates till Thursday 24th June 2010. Just 661 days to go before this mob slink away with their tails between their legs leaving the wreckage of the British economy behind them.

Alan Phillips

Anything that's said now will be seen through.

It ain't what you do but the way that you do it, goes the song. And for too long the arrogance and we know best attitude, has nailed his true colours to the mast. Anything done now is for himself first then the party, with the country being playing a bit part.

He and the Labour Party are going, the degree of how far is the matter now.

Tiberius

I'd forgive him if he personally reimbursed all our pension funds the £120b he's dispersed through water treatment plants via gents' urinals.

Otherwise he can burn for all eternity in a political hell.

Austin Barry

Perhaps Brown, isolated and in despair, imagines an exit from conference in the manner of "L'Entranger":

"For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with howls of execration."

David C

John Miller and Alan Phillips encapsulate Brown's problem.

11 years of High Office and now all his works are collapsing.
Brown is safe. His money and pension are safe (I believe he could even get a Life Peerage and the Order of the Garter, if he so desired). It is the rest of us who will bear the brunt of Brown's 'student politics'.
He can apologise, he can throw himself on the mercy of the electorate (I expect that to be thin on the ground), but non of it will stack up against the 11 years of social experimentation; new laws, new regulations new restrictions implemented to the point where inhabitants no longer recognise their own country.

Behind it all is Brown's mismanagement of the economy. 'Mismanagement' that would put a company CEO in prison.

I look backwards to the days of Peter Carrington and John Nott with wonderment: all of it a world away from this government.

John:
One more addition to your list of lies and broken promises.
The lie that we were to get a referendum on the EU. A promise in the Party Manifesto, casually dismissed because it suited Brown not to give the people their say.

John de Finchley

@ David C: excellent point in your last paragraph and the likeliest line of attack from the Tories - "If you're so sorry for your mistakes, we dare you to correct one right now and hold a referendum on the EU constitution."

Max Kaye

Even if Brown flagellated himself with a shiite-style razor-tipped cat 'o nine tails, he'll find no forgiveness from the British public.

Hysteria

I dunno - the great British public are a gullible crowd - they voted in this lot three times so I could well see an honest "Gee I am really sorry" speech having a positive effect. (The Brits hate to kick a man when he's down)

TGF UKIP

There have been several posts today by James Forsyth and Peter Hoskin on Brown, the predicament he and his party are in, their internal feuding and their putative "fight back."

Not surprisingly these posts have triggered quite vitriolic anger rightly felt by Coffee Housers at their abuse of this country over the past eleven years.

However, as this is a very Tory website, my question is where are the Tories and why aren't they giving vent to the righteous anger you all feel. As I have posted before, just imagine if the Major government had been just half as bad as this lot, how they would have been flayed, hanged, quartered and shredded by Blair/Brown/Mandelson/Campbell.

As for this apology for an opposition, though, well Mrs Marr goes a long way to putting her finger on it "It's true that the waves have arrived at a time when governement have borrowed heavily; it's also true that the Tories did not oppose any of that spending and investment when it was announced." Indeed, La Marr even let's the Cameron Tories off lightly for even now they still cannot bring themselves to resile from "that spending and investment."

It really is about time time that all the Cameron groupies on this site accepted that we have the worst government faced by the worst opposition and alternative government for at least the last fifty years.

Whatever, did poor old Great Britain do to deserve such a crop of politicians as this.

Alan Phillips

And it is with this the boot needs putting in. When he says sorry, the tories need to say does sorry pay your bills, does sorry allow you keep your car on the road, if the petrol prises don't get you the VED might. It sorry any excuse for the intent of the 10p tax cut....

Time to be ruthless me thinks...

Maurice Smith

The real problem for the Prime Minister is that he could never apologise in a convincing way.
Anyone who has studied his mannerisms will know that when he .....

(a) Is lying.
(b) Is trying to score political points by comparing any given situation to what happened under the previous Tory government'
(c) Is unconvinced of his own argument.

..... He sucks inwardly on his right cheek. And the regularity where this occurs is almost sickening to observe.

Virgil Tracy

Does anyone know if his speech is on Monday or Tuesday?

Just out of interest?