A crisis without a hero

Miranda

"but because he is experienced’ and voters think that because he was Chancellor he must know the way home from here."

I disagree. Anyone who has turned back to Labour was a Labour supporter anyway. They wanted to be blinded, and you in the media have kindly dazzled them with your untruths and unbalenced analysis.

How about shining the light of truth on the matter - then how many would give him a chance? He's raided the cupboard and the piggy bank to build his house of cards. Tell the truth for goodness sake, we have one of the worst budget deficits, forecast to be 90bn stirling in 2009/10, and taxes have risen 69% in the last 10 years, and for what. Still think Brown knows the way?

How many non Labour voters do you think give him credit anyay: I would guess none!!

mitch

Hillary has kep quiet cos her bloody husband caused all this forcing banks to lend to hopeless cases.

Derbyshire Ben

I get the gist of what you're saying James but this is one of those situations in which the hero(s) will appear with hindsight.

molesworth 1

What about rumoured VP-candidate rearrangements from both parties?

JimBob

Vince Cable?

Chuck Unsworth

Let's be clear. Brown's 'experience' is one of hyping public spending to the point of economic collapse. It includes selling off all assets at knock down rates to anyone with cash, blitzing pension funds, gold, literally anything that he could get his grubby hands on. It includes running away from responsibilities, mendacity and gross incompetence.

I could go on for days, but the point is when these loonies start on about 'experience' they'd better understand what that really is.

What 'experience' did Brown bring to high office of state? Sordid, backstabbing politics, no integrity, no honour, not even any ability.

Dirty Euro

We need a super hero to save us.
How about Highlander, there will be only one. He could chop the heads off the silly debt banks.

Malcolm Redfellow

Forgive me: what did you expect?

Two paragraphs on the UK (i.e. English; i.e. metropolitan) dimension.

Admit, quite frankly, that anything this side of West Quoddy Head, ME, US of A, (why isn't there an "East Quoddy Head" closer still?) is out of the picture this week.

Therefore, our politicos are keeping down, and avoiding shrapnel. Nobody wants a head above the parapet for the time being. We certainly don't need "heroes" here. Even the self-basting, self-regarding, all-purpose Salmond seems to have piped down: suddenly no talk of a guid Scot poond having the beating of all of us.

To quote a hero who knew when and where it mattered: "Hard pounding, gentlemen: but we shall see who can pound the longest."

Oh! By the way: "benefiting".

locolou

At the moment the polls are saying brown is the hero - this article may turn out to be wishful thinking sadly

Jonathan

So Brown is the more experienced is he. I seem to recall a certain David Cameron was at the Treasury some years before Brown ever got there, probably just getting on with the job (but not repeating the fact ad nauseam).

Athesius the Facilitator

I seen Godger Brown being interviewed tonight by N Robinson. He still can't help himself, going on about 11 years ago and making petty party political points. This man needs a bash on the 'scon' with one of my "mashy niblicks". Anyway, what on earth is he doing being interviewed during the Tory conference. Surely a statement about this crisis would suffice. It's another Iraq moment as far as I'm concerned. We have no hero's coming out of this especially the Prime Minister and Chancellor.

But one person should be given a bit of a "chuck up" and thats Gylian Shepherd who warned John Mcfalls treasury committee 3 years ago of the impending doom but she was ignored. (And possibly laughed at and smeared by one of the 'draperite' spin doctors to boot)

Oor Willie

Heard Brown in his interview with Jon Snow on Channel 4 blatantly re-writing the history of recent events AND SNOW LET HIM AWAY WITH IT (even giving grovelling thanks for the interview at the end). Pathetic!

Austin Barry

Brown has arisen as a Phoenix from the ashes of this almghty mess. Lazarus has nothing on our Caledonian chum. In private his shoulders must heave in joy as global economic collapse burnishes his 'gravitas' and 'experience'. Also, his miserable git persona now seems entirely appropriate. Gordon, the beast who slouches towards the City to be born.

TGF UKIP

Verity, is Obama's culpability as a "Community Organizer" engaged in blackmailing banks into giving mortgages to poor black people who couldn't afford them, getting wide public circulation yet? And is it going to register politically?

Nick Kaplan

TGF; It wasn’t just Obama’s work as a community organizer that makes him complicit in this crisis. The law firm Obama used to work for represented clients suing Citigroup for not issuing enough Sub-Prime to meet their community reinvestment act obligations! Remember these are the same Sub-Prime mortgages that Obama now condemns as irresponsible and greedy. Will the hypocrisy ever cease?

GS London

If it's Vince Cable, I'll eat my hat.

That fellow rails in platitudes.

The Laughing Cavalier

Brown is not the solution but a part of the problem.

Talia

What's so depressing is how gullible voters are. Can they not see who's been in charge while this has been happening? God help us.

seb

The polls appear to have recorded a modest Brown Bounce since Mrs. Brown’s husband spoke to the faithful in Manchester. Many, no doubt, are dismayed that roughly thirty per cent of the electorate are prepared, at the moment, to vote for a government that has racked up such a colossal deficit and lumbered the nation with many lethal long-term liabilities over public employee pensions and the private finance initiatives.

Perhaps the pollsters need to ask more probing questions. For example, they could ask Labour supporters whether they have any idea what public sector borrowing requirements, public debt and balance sheet concealment mean. Those who do demonstrate some inkling of the nature of Mr. Experience’s catastrophic mishandling of the state’s finances could then state whether their understanding of this mess has any bearing on their admiration for the present government.

I suspect that the answers, if any, to these questions, would go a long way to explaining Gordon’s Surge. A failure by the opposition to explain to the electorate that Mr. Brown is in fact blind in both eyes could guarantee that tomorrow’s crisis is a thousand times worse than today’s. As numerous comments have pointed out, our media - Mssrs. Snow, Robinson and Marr - are hardly likely to reveal the extent of the bad news to the nation.

Ian C

When this is all over the Democrats will get it in the neck for supporting 'socialism' for the rich and Labour for letting us be so vulnerable to storms seemingly far away.

In the meantime, Obama gets past McCain who has been headless, and GB lives on for a little longer, saved by the cuticles on his shorn fingernails.

JONNY

I'm wondering.
If the British electorate rejected Churchill just a month after he'd won the war.
How much use will they have for Funeral Director Brown, once the high drama is past?

Frank P

"The Medium is the Message." (M McC)

Perhaps we are due for a little redaction - or at least a reminder that "there is nothing new under the sun ... but there are lots of things we don't know" as Ambrose Bierce said and Donald Rumsfeld - er - amplified a little.

Verity

TGI UKIP - Oh, yes indeed. ACORN is the organisation of Association of "Community Organiser" enforcers. And you'll have read Nick Kaplan's response.

I've recently read the suggestion that Bill Ayers wrote Obama's book about his father for him. I would give that notion credence because Obama doesn't seem to have the ability to stick to an idea or a thought long enough to write a book.

Equally, Obama was right in the middle of the right time for positive discrimination in the US. From everything I've seen and heard from Obama, he is not Harvard Summa cum Laude material. He never wrote any articles for the Harvard Law Review of which he was, strangely, editor.

He was promoted way beyond his competence because the time was right, and he was thus promoted - supposedly black; elegant; nice looking - way beyond his level of competence.

But that was OK. That was exactly what was required. A passive - and let's face it, you have never seen him as an aggressor, even during a presidential debate - figurehead for the brave new world the Marxists were busily building.

Obama has done and said nothing that would justify him being a candidate for the awesome office of President of the United States. Zero. Always travelled below the sight line, but busy, busy, busy. Got a mansion, got wealth, got large associations, got a wife who got on the diversity gig at around half a million a year - no one knows what she does, actually - and Princeton (may have been Cornell - an Ivy League, anyway), a beacon of light in opennes of learning has retroactively "sequestered" Michelle's PhD thesis. The first time ever in its history. For the duration of the campaign.

Join the dots.