Cabinet support?

mac

I'm sure that all those in your 'silent' category will be being phoned right now, Brian, and arm-twisted by Nick Brown and his little helpers to publicly support the Great Helmsman!

Tiberius

Harridan:

labotomized into using the word "person" instead of "man".

If only she'd realized that if she'd said "man" she would have been opening herself up to be a suitable replacement!

That's the problem with being progressive, Ms Harman - always the wrong outcome.

Nicholas

Since you kick of with Balls (!) my reaction is "So what?"

They are all partners in crime. Blair took power on the premise that New Labour had become moderate and a party of social democracy on the centre left. It was obvious from day one that a bandwagon of the unconverted hard Left and other anti-British malcontents had followed him into power.

Blair was the leader of the party. Regardless of whatever private deals were made between him and Brown there was never a contract of understanding between Brown and the Labour party nor between Brown and the electorate. Brown is, in that sense, unelected, both as Labour leader and PM. The Labour party connived in his coronation because they knew, or thought him to be, a man of the hard Left who would allow full rein for the barmy, ideological ideas that were not ever part of the advertised New Labour manifesto.

Since Brown took over the New Labour mask has slipped, revealing more of the ideological hard Left behind the scenes. The tendency towards authoritarianism begun under Blair has been accelerated under Brown. Much of Brown's agenda was not per manifesto nor bought into by the electorate. The fact that he has turned out to be useless as a PM had not been bargained for. The hard Left within Labour/New Labour have been, literally, hoist with their own petard.

This is about a group of devious plotters who seized power from Blair and are pursuing an extreme agenda. They have the whip hand of the strident PC brigade and the pocketed BBC mouthpieces to ensure dissent is controlled, if not eliminated. The Conservatives are terrified of saying or doing the wrong thing so have become a rather impotent force in the drama unfolding.

The only two things that distinguish this government are the extent of the deceit they are prepared to exercise to stay in power and the amount of propaganda they churn out. Everything else is and has been destructive bad news for Britain.

This is the sleaziest, most incompetent and deranged government the country has ever had. They have taken the art of denial and bare faced lying - as well as bare faced arrogance - to new levels. Without the support of the PC hard Left minority within the media and the new "post-1968" Lefty establishment this government would have fallen long before now. As it is their continued activities hover perilously close to the criminal, as does their record of various outrageous scandals since coming to power.

They are, without doubt, the "tyranny" that the 1689 Bill of Rights envisaged. Unfortunately they accomplished the task of disarming Britons and rendering them incapable of insurrection in the early years of their power. The police are in their pocket and their stupid foreign adventures have ensured the armed forces are fully occupied abroad. There is nothing and no-one who can rid us of their pestilence.

Frank Pulley

Jacquie Smith

"Gordon Brown is Prime Minister and he puts his credibility to the test every day in helping people and making this country a better place.”

Nice of you to remind us who is PM, love. Believe me - we knew already! As for putting his credibilty to the test, no! You got that wrong. He no longer has any credibility; he spent the small sum he had, plus the rest of the British economy long ago.

What he (and his cabinet) is now putting to the test is the credulity of the electorate, but I guess that even that has almost disappeared, as far as he and they are concerned. You are well sussed - the whole bloody useless baneful bunch of you. In the name of God, GO!

Frank Pulley

Nicholas

Another little masterpiece of denunciation! A veritable fusillade of home truths aimed dead on target. If you are a parliamentarian (and if you are not you should be) then stand up in the House and deliver that verbatim. Or somebody from the Tory Party, plagiarise it and use it as a clarion call. God in heaven, where is HM Opposition? Why do we have to come to this blog to hear what should be resounding from the mouth of every Tory MP in the land? Perhaps if our Editor was to spend less time boondoggling and pretending he's bloody Zorba the Bubble & Squeak, he might be able to drum up some hard hitting, inspiring copy like Nicholas, rather than waxing fluent about his last jolly! Is this a conservative political opinion forming magazine, or a sodding travel brochure?

C Powell

Brian: this is serious. There are real fears out there in the markets about what's going on and what may happen next. If more institutions go belly up, this will affect all of us. We need a proper government which is competent and has the country's confidence. We don't have that now. Either Labour shuts up and gets on with dealing with these issues i.e. by doing what's necessary with the financial and banking authorities to ensure stability (at least in the short term) or we should have a general election without further ado.

What we emphatically don't need is this sort of adolescent nonsense, exacerbated by their five5 minutes of fame in front of journalists all over-excited by their "story". I just wish some commentator - or even one of the front bench - made this obvious point.

Austin Barry

It will be amusing to watch as the Cabinet fecal bacteria split and die or form separate cells. And in the middle of the petri dish the putrifying carcass of the Great Leader, as dead as his search for a cohesive narrative, as dead as his monocular 'vision' for a 'fairer Britain', as dead, bar the continuing stench, as the Nu-Labour experiment.

TGF UKIP

Another brilliant post Nicholas. You are angry, Frank Pulley is angry and the vast majority of Coffee Housers are angry and well able to give vividly expressive vent to their anger. Unfortunately, the only people who don't seem particularly angry are those who should be shouting their anger from ther roof tops and nailing Gordon & Cos sorry hides to the wall.

Unfortunately, though Dave and the gang don't do anger - not nice, and The Guardian, Independent and Today Programme would definitely not approve.
In any case , be rather difficult to express too much outrage when they have co-opted so much of the New Labour agenda as their own.

Nothing more illustrates their failure than the finding in last weeks ComRes poll that more voters blame American banks than Gordon Brown and his government for Britain's economic problems. What a devastating condemnation of that political dwarf, Fraser's second best mate, Osborne.

Given the scale of the incompetence, corruption and lying, what should most anger Coffee Housers is that if the Cameron Tories were a properly, ferociously professional opposition they would be able to bury Labour and the Left for decades to come.

They ain't though, they're a bunch of partrician fops and dilettantes out to appease and ingratiate themselves with a media part of which hates them and the other part remains rightly sceptical.

Heir to Blair, Dave might wish to consider himself but certainly not when it comes to opposition politics matey. More like Heir to Mary Poppins.

Coffee Housers should be at least as angry with their apology for an opposition as they are with Gordon & Co.

salieri

Don't agre this time, TGF (save for the anger). The best thing to do with terminal convulsions is to stand back and watch them happen by themselves.

C Powell

TGIF UKIP: we ARE angry with our Opposition as I, Nicholas and many other Coffee Housers have said on this and many other threads over the past few days and weeks. We have been asking someone - anyone - amongst the Tories to stand up and say that this cannot go on. They do not listen, anymore than Gordon & Co.

We are angry at the destruction of a fine country, which stood for democracy, freedom, the rule of English law, liberty and a sort of basic decency. We are angry at the contempt shown for these values and concepts by those who aim to govern us, we are angry at the contempt shown for us by our so-called leaders, we are angry at the destruction of the whole concept of honourable public service, we are so angry at so much that has been done to to our country that this post could be a lot longer than it will be. Above all, we are angry that when it is obvious that people are crying out for basic, decent, honest, competent leadership, those who would be in charge are hiding and saying nothing hoping only that they will get their turn before long.

I must say that I admire the way the French start hurling paving stones at their politicians when they go too far. (Perhaps a folk memory of what happens to the elites when revolution starts lingers.) And look where our polite participation in the system has got us: to the most spied on, surveilled, bossed about country in Europe with more to come and with a deceitful, corrupt, incompetent political class which neither serves nor respects nor fears us.

Paul L

I agree Frank. The Zorba drivel was less champagne and more sunny delight for the brain.

Tiberius

Anger gets you nowhere, guys, especially when these problems were opted for by an electorate that not only voted these half-wits in to get rid of Major (understandable perhaps), but also voted them in twice more because the Tories had leaders with bald heads.

Such national lemminghood for me is beyond anger - it's just simple disbelief.

Morus

Woodward has just done Newsnight. He's very loyal. In fact, given that Brown knows he has nothing to gain (as an ex-Tory, he's done well to get in the Cabient) he trusts Woodward as much as any of them. It will be Woodward who tells him that it is time to go - if anyone else tried, Brown would suspect their motives (Balls, Ed Miliband etc).

TGF UKIP

Tiberius, back to the ComRes poll - 22% consider Dave to be a heavyweight, and 55% a lightweight politician. Now do you think this might be at all connected with the fact that he is unable or unwilling to administer anything more deadly than pinpricks to this government.

Blair was seen as a heavyweight because he set out to dismantle and destroy the Major government and succeeded. Dave is no Heir.

It is not and should not be sufficient as Salieri says to merely stand by and watch the terminal convulsions. The Tories should be out to destroy Labour by ramming home the message that it is their spending, borrowing, taxing, regulating and legislating binge that has brought Britain its present crisis. They should be ramming home that Labour is an unfit party to govern and that every Labour government spends, borrows and taxes its way to disaster. They should be ramming home the message that Labour should never again be elected to power in Britain. In short they should be out to destroy the Labour party as an alternative government for decades to come.

And finally, if Labour simply implodes there will be no credit attaching to the Tories. Indeed, one would have thought that Dave with all his vanity would want to be the one waving his sword with one foot on the dying socialist monster. Fat chance!

John de Finchley

I would strongly challenge the claim that statements such as "he is the right person to lead this country and to lead our party", by such as that little weasel Darling, are "unequivocal support".

It is possible and I think the idea to read that as saying "he is the right person because we're a disaster, he's a grotesque freak, he got us into this mess and if we're going down, he is the scrote who should wear the blame for the next three decades".

Nowhere does Darling - or Benn, or Miliband - actually say he is competent. Their remarks could perfectly well be taken as meaning that Broon is the right man to gulp down the long, long draught of chilled sick that is coming the Labour Party's way in 2010.

Tiberius

TGF: you don't address the tastes of the voting public. When I say "bald", I don't just mean it in the literal sense of a man being follically challenged. Cameron made voters listen to the Tory Party again.

Your theme of NuLab destroying Major is, of course, correct. But this obsessive attack was at the expense of spending time on policy - the first sign of NuLab's vacuity and the level of danger it presented which we are suffering from now. Although you and many on here won't believe it, the Cameroons are formulating policy instead of spending 24/7 just dissing the governing party to try to win an election for its own sake.

Clegg said only yesterday that Cameron was arrogant and was complacent about being the next PM. These charges might stick if Cameron was actually either of those things, so kicking the Government while it's down is not necessarily wise. Why risk it when you're 20 points ahead in the polls?

Totally agree Cameron is not responsible for Labour's implosion. Brown has been worse than even his fiercest critics assumed he would be. No sword waving from Cameron because, quite simply, he is not vain. And I don't agree that good politics requires fist waving, even metaphorically. The Prescotts of this world can keep that habit for themselves.

mac

Tiberius calls it right for me too; the electorate accepted the blandishments offered by the unprincipled snake-oil sellers and is waking up to take an interest only when they feel matters have gone too far, as they most certainly have done. If it's something as mundane as rubbish collection or holiday companies collapsing that finally does for the incompetent, centralising tractor-factory troughers who are our 'leaders', that'll do; but we must hope that the Tories in office institute policies that make an early start in rectifying the serious damage that New Labour has visited on the national fabric. On balance, I think they are right to keep their powder dry while New Labour disintegrates in front of the electorate.

TGF UKIP

Tiberius, you claim that the Tories appear to be such a uselessly lame opposition because they are concentrating on policy development.

Well, that really should be a cause for even greater concern for all you Tories when you look at what they are producing.

A half assed education policy of which Blair and Adonis would be proud but precludes grammar schools and any form of selection and any right by parents to top up the state contribution (granted though it is a policy which clearly produces plenty of dinner party ammo for the up and coming of Richmond on Thames) A health policy which involves tossing over the NHS together with an extra £28bn to the "professionals" of the BMA etc. A defence policy which, quite disgracefully for a "Conservative" Party means no more resources for the Armed Forces. An energy policy which ignores the lights out crisis hurtling towards us in favour of lightweight, vacuous, specious, green puffery - pure Dave.

And who's in charge of implementation of all this carefully considered wonderful "policy" but arch back stabber Maude. The very same Francis Maude who, as its Chairman, has guided his company Prestbury from a floatation price of 80p to a suspension of trading price of just one and three quarter pence. What glad, confident morning it must be to be a Dave Tory, Tiberius.