Brown's worst nightmare

Lucan C Heraclitus

Oh, I say do steady on Fraser old chap. This sartorial sally sounds fearfully frightful!

Praguetory

Top idea. I've found that nothing needles Labourites than the suggestion that you are better than them.

Henry Rogers

Fraser, Ken Cox's cartoon is really brilliant. In line with your wicked suggestions for winding up Brown until the spring breaks, couldn't the Speccie arrange for Ken to do a slight animation of Brown being shaken up and down and find a permanent home on the front page of Coffee House?

Don't like rich wingers

1.3% of UK taxpayers earn 150000 pounds or more; 2% of UK taxpayers earn 100000 ponds or more; 10% of UK taxpayers earn 40000 or more.Ergo 90% of UK taxpayers earn under 40000 pounds per annum.

Messrs Cameron and Osborne have never struggled to pay any bill at any point in their lives. They have no idea what economic hardship feels like and judging by their antics as young men have little or no empathy for it.

The Tories have no prescription and despite what Cameron said at their conference no plan either, expect to winge when the wealthy are required to pay a reasonable rate of tax.

As to the argument that these "wealth creators" will flee the UK, could they please take every investment banker/hedge fund wideboy with them and hop off pronto.

Thanks.

StephenDC

I think you are very complacent about the reaction the PBR is getting.

I think the argument action vs no-action is getting much more taction that you think.

And I also think that whilst higher taxes to come is sticking, so too is the idea that the tories have given up on their hardwon repositioning.

I am not nearly as confident as you that things will now completely unravel for brown. The idea darling is under threat for example is political cloud cookoo land.

On the contrary, I think the tory fightback might bolster their position in the short-term, but in the longer run they have conceded far too much of the political centre-ground they won in recent years.

P MACKINNON

this is an example of a man who has an exaggerated opinion of his intelligence showjng he has no common sense. gordon brown must welcome any reminder in words or cartoons of the bulling don club.REMOVE IT FROM THE BLOG

Jim

Only one issue with what you say Fraser - "As an economist he will know"........Brown isn't, nor has he ever been, an economist. He has a PhD in history from the University of Edinburgh and apart from 3 short years working for Scottish Television has never held a job outside of academe and politics,

Mike, Brighton

Fraser - if you had really wanted to wind Brown up why didn't you guys at the Speccie declare Charles Clarke or Frank Field Parliamentarian of the year?
Don't pretend it's not fixed! Boris admitted on HIGNFY that they gave the award to Blair one year just to wind Brown up and to provoke a Labour split!

PS Agree that Brown make elementary mistakes when he confuses political strategy for getting one over on or unsettling the Tories. We should see the 45p tax rise in this context as it explains all.

luke

Couldnt disagree with your analysis of the politics more really.

I think Cameron risks having given up his biggest asset - the "matching labour centre ground" - in return for a short-term victory on PbR.

The death of new labour is all media spin and will pass.

Conceding the matching of labour spending is a bad mistake which will let Brown again run the new lab argument at the next election that the tories are against the public services.

Focusing no debt is a longer-term mistake because cameron will now either need a plan to pay down debt or he will look un-serious and as if he has played people for fools and making political points rather thans serious economic ones. Will a tory plan to pay down debt really be popular come the election?

I think the argument that action is better than inaction is hurting the tories more than you think.

I expect cameron to end up matching the 45p rate so he is not on the wrong-sdie of a populist argument, and when that happens it will now be a pretty major victory for brown, and seen as such by the commentariat. Indeed it is already becoming a bit of a trial of strength for cameron over whether he will do so or not.

There are major risks for brown, but in terms of strategic positioning for the election to come, I think he has come out better from the whole of the PBR (including the week leading up to it) than cameron has, even if the wind is currently in cameron's sails.

Westmorlander

Oi, Labour troll. So, who ARE the wealth creators or do you think that Brown has abolished (as he has with boom and bust) for people to MAKE money in order to PAY tax.

Henry Rogers

Don't like etc,

Visit your nearest town centre on a Friday or Saturday night and you'll see that behaving daftly when young cuts across class barriers. Most people survive youth and grow up. That cuts across class barriers too.

The rest of your post suggests that spite against people you don't like rates rather higher than your concern for the rest of humanity.

Nick Kaplan

Don't like rich wingers; if you get your request, and all those on a high income were to vacate the country, it wouldn’t be long before we were all out of a job. So for my own sake I hope nobody takes your sort of leftist rant to seriously because I like the wealth creators of this country and the prosperity they bring us all.

Your own whinge reminds me somewhat of an old Russian fable about Boris and Ivan. The only difference between Boris and Ivan is that Ivan has a cow and Boris does not. One day Boris stumbles across a magic lamp from which appears a genie who grants him one wish. Boris wishes only that Ivan’s cow dies. This is the most base and nasty of all human emotions; envy.

If all the rich CEO’s were not paid their bonuses do you think it would make even a pennies difference to the prices of your food or oil or other commodities? If the wealthy in the country were forced to pay what you describe as a ‘fair level of tax’ do you think it would make the slightest difference to your life? I can assure you now it wouldn’t make you any better off in absolute terms and would, in all likelihood, make you worse off by doing you out of a job and ridding any company of the incentive to be efficient. So for what reason could you possibly object to the wealth of the wealthy? It could only be for the same reason as Boris wished Ivan’s cow would die...envy. I don’t like envious lefty whiners, so why don’t you stop whinging?

Oscar

What an incredible number of Labour trolls have come out for this post. Evidence that Fraser is quite right about how to wind them up ?

Marbury

I agree with StephenDC and luke. There's a lot of bubble thinking going on in this blog. Crude as it may be, the "Do something vs do nothing" argument has a lot of traction in the media and I suspect the country. Cam and Os have a long way to go before they recover the ground they've lost in the last few weeks. As for the brilliant idea that those two should play UP their Bullingdon heritage...well, I suppose that's why you're a journalist and not a spin doctor.

Verity

It's just a political cartoon. It will run off Brown's, or any long-time politician's back. He needs much more insight into Brown's grotesque character to draw blood.

Mike, Brighton

Don't like rich wingers :
So what? (To paraphrase that great parliamentarian Ed Balls).

It's true that Cameron and Osborne have never struggled to pay any bills.
Er neither have Brown or Darling, or Shaun Woodward (laughably Labour MP for St Helens South and easily the richest MP - I wonder if Shaun's butler votes Labour?).

Just luv your class-warfare based attack about "economic hardship" and "no empathy"..how many leading Labour MPs have faced "economic hardship"...not many! Did Harriet Harman receive free school meals at St Pauls? I think not!

If I have to choose between BrownDarling's half cocked, irrelevant and panicky plan and no plan then I'll go for the er "no" option. Please tell me how knocking 2.5% off purchases when prices are being slashed in the shops will make the slightest difference?

Also, again just love your "please take every investment banker/hedge fund wideboy with them and hop off pronto" attack ..er one small issue with that. If you can be bothered to look you'll find that Financial Services is c.10% of GDP. Add in other stuff like related IT services, consulting and accountancy and it's easily 15%.
That's a rather big hole to fill if all the "wideboys" (lol - love it!) "flee the UK". Would you have any idea of the economic impact on the UK if the financial services industry collapsed? Let's put it this way it would be bad in the same sense that 1929 was bad for stockbrokers or the Titanic was bad for Liner safety!

Please, please, please keep it up. Frankly it's great stuff you're writing. For every lefty class-based attack Labour stages it means a larger Conservative majority. Keep up the good work!

Laughing Larry

Good to see some lefties in here today. Welcome, hope you learn a few things. If times get too tough you can always holiday with Polly in Tuscany. Beautiful food, brilliant wine. Drop her line at the Guardian I'm sure she'll put you up for free. She is a comrade, after all.

Dave B

Re: doing nothing meme.

The quote below is from Daniel Hannan:

"...few politicians can resist the argument that Something Must Be Done. Well, the bail-out was Something alright. It'll be a long time before we've worked off the debt incurred by our leaders in a moment of panic."

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/daniel_hannan/blog/2008/11/13/why_so_many_freemarketeers_backed_the_bailout

Terry

What everyone talks about at the moment is the size of the government’s debts. It also dominated the news reports I heard. National debt is doubling, the current deficit has a large structural element which has not been addressed and the government prefers to hide the reality that large increases in VAT will be necessary in the future. Without the PBR none of this would have come out so clearly into the open. It also focuses on the fact that we entered the recession with borrowing already too high, which destroys Brown’s claim that we are well placed to ride out the storm.
Will the PBR measures avoid a recession? No! The best Brown can claim is that it might have been even worse, as if that is any compensation for negative equity, pillaged pension funds and worry about job security.

JONNY

Is Quentin Davies Bullingdon Club?
Does anyone know?
Or is he just too much even for them?
He sits there in his stockbroker's heavy pinstriped suits, with his huge anthropomorphically throwback patrician skull - winking away at his fellow Labour hoodlums.
And he how he worships the ground His Hero treads on. Poor sucker.
Quel succubus.

Joseph

Personally I think you've confused a few days bad coverage for the government with some sort of seismic shift in the public and i just dont think the latter has happened.

But I hope you are right.

CS

What a nasty attack on young working class boys made good. What exactly is your problem with footballers, Don't Like Rich Wingers?

However, at least your maths are sound. 100 - 93.3 = 90. You clearly work in the Treasury.

CS

Oops, 100 - 13.3 = 90 of course. Rather ruined my own point there.

CS

Oops, 100 - 13.3 = 90 of course. Rather ruined my own point there.

TomTom

As an economist, Brown will know

You do have a sense of humour...

In Western countries Economists NEVER get to be Minister of Finance - it is a post reserved for lawyers and in Brown's case, historians of the Labour Party in Scotland viz The Labour Party and Political Change in Scotland 1918-29

Fraser Nelson

luke, I agree that Brown's "helping people" v "no nothing" is a good line. But its also a false line. I believe the British public are not stupid, and will notice that Brown has done nothing. If he dangles, he must deliver. He isnt. He hasnt been "helping people" he's cut prices of about half of consumer spending by 2% and takes a bow for saving the economy. People will see through this and will feel mugged by Brown. The more credit he takes now, the more it will rebound on him.

mac

Sorry, Fraser, I thought the drawing was ordinary. As others have said, playing up the Bullingdon image isn't very astute but I suspect Verity's right: it'll have no traction anyway.

The image of doltish socialism conjured up by Nick Kaplan's tale is far better. It requires no effort to picture Boris the Russian as H. Harman, does it?

@"Don't like rich wingers". What, all them, or one in particular - Ronaldo, Walcott or Wright-Phillips, perhaps?

Alan Douglas

Slightly O/T, but I have an idea for the 4th plinth in Trafalgar Square.

It's so obvious really, and needs to be done really soon :

A BUST of BROWN

Alan Douglas

Marin

Yes, give him enough rope...

dont like rich wingers

westmorelander

The working class create wealth. Spoiled rich kids like Cameron and Osborne do not. Nor indeed do merchant bankers, hedge fund directors or various other con artists.

I have nothing against enterprise or entrepeneurs but ordinary working people are the real wealth creators upon whom any enterprise depends.This idea that there is a magic class of Tories who create wealth by shuffling other people's money around, or indeed losing it, is a nonsense.

Brown was a minister's son, what do you imagine, Kaplan, the stipend of a Church of Scotland minister might be? 140000 a year?

As to the daft idea that we are about to see mass emigration by overpaid, rich kids, well, I nearly split my sides.

If only.

dont like rich wingers

Well CS, please correct my arithmetic if I am wrong but if 10% of taxpayers earn 40000 a year or more does that not mean 90% earn less than 40000 a year?

dont like rich wingers

Well I must give ground to you on Wallcott and co.

Overpaid entertainers, indeed they do resemble Cameron and Osborne.

Lord Elvis of Paisley

I am putting something together at the minute and would be grateful if Coffee Housers could help me identify what they consider to be the WORST of Labour's achievements during their 11 year reign. This can be economic, social, education. Anything that you think is really, really rank. I have my own list, but would be grateful for some outside input.

Ian C

Darling has bought some time -but just until the budget in March. By then the banks will have needed more 're-capitalisation' and the PSBR will have overshot the £78bn forecast on Monday. Jobs will be a thing of the past for far too many.

Anyone who thinks that 'this will pass' needs a full frontal lobotomy.

TresQuattro

100-10=90, as the rich winger hater said. CS - you're comedy.

I think New Zealand has been led by a series of real economists in the not-so-distant past.

I think partisans are equally after each others' blood.

m dowding

I like rich wingers. I hate thug like full backs and goalies who let in trillions of own goals from such full backs who are always facing the wrong way! As for whingers, Labour to a tee!

Aless Bieri

Brown is clearly throwing away the support of the voters Blair won over from the Tories.

There are millions of middle class voters out there who dislike the Tory stereotype and liked the progressive ideas of New Labour, but they're not going to stand for this and will flood back to the Tories unless they're shown some respect by Labour MPs.

This group contains people like doctors, who will also be stung by the tax rises, giving them even more reason to abandon ship

William Norton

Lord Elvis: I think a more interesting/useful list would be a compare and contrast list of Labour's achievements (using that word neutrally).

For example: the school building programme. That's a genuinely good thing, apart from devolution the only thing they've done which is likely to be remembered 50yrs on, which probably a Tory Govmt wouldn't have done, so Labour get a tick for thinking the right things, BUT they've largely funded it through off-balance PFI tricks, and bodged the negotiation of the terms, which rather takes the shine off it.

Labour: heart often (but not always) in the right place; head all over the place. More productive line of attack?

Nick Kaplan

dont like rich wingers: I never said we were about to see the mass exodus of the rich, you were the one demanding it, not me. Essentially all I said was ‘be careful what you wish for; killing the Goose that lays the golden egg may not be the best idea.’ Or alternatively ‘don’t bite the hand that feeds you.’ (the top 1% of earners pay about 23% of income tax, if they leave, as per your request, who do you think will make up the shortfall?)

I believe that your problem with the wealthy (aside from your obvious and ungratifying envy given that it is a choice between some having that wealth and none having it) is your idea that their earnings are undeserved, but what measure of value are you using? The capitalist system measures the value of someone’s contribution by their Marginal Product of Labour, i.e. the value each worker adds to the productivity of a company is reflected in their wages. Footballer’s, for example, produce millions of pounds of value for their clubs and hence are paid vast sums of money, if a football club could make as much money with no footballers they wouldn’t be paid such great sums, so in what sense are they overpaid?

Also why do you believe as a disinterested party that your own measure of a person’s desert should determine what they get paid rather than the measure used by those individuals directly involved in the transfer? Only the most envious socialist could feign moral outrage at a transaction that has no absolute effect on him or anyone else not involved in it.

luke

Hear there is a very good ICM poll for the tories about to come out.

Verity

William Norton, I can't believe your impudence. Lord Elvis asked for contributions to a specific list he is compiling. Doubtless, he has a reason for compiling this list.

Who the hell are you to tell him what would be a better list? You don't even know the purpose of his list. How dare you ask with a smug, professorial air, "More productive line of attack?" You don't even know what Lord Elvis has in mind.

You are a typical smug, interfering Labour moron.

David Lindsay

Consider what would happen if a group of boys on a council estate, the same age as Oxford undergraduates, formed themselves into an organisation - complete with a name, a uniform, officers and a membership list - specifically for the purpose of becoming drunk and disorderly before committing criminal damage and even assault.

They would rightly be sent to prison.

Whereas the Bullingdon Boys go on to become, simultaneously, an aspirant Prime Minister, an aspirant Chancellor of the Exchequer, and an actual Mayor of London.

Eton is not the point.

Oxford is not the point.

The Bullingdon Club is the point.

William Norton

Verity: "William Norton....You are a typical smug, interfering Labour moron."

Five errors of fact in an eight-word sentence is cracking form even by your standards, Verity. Well done. Alpha minus.

mac

David Lindsay,

I'm sure Oxford Magistrates will be interested by your accusation that they would treat
miscreants causing criminal damage differently depending on whether they are university undergraduates or from Blackbird Leys estate.

Presumably, in your world all magistrates dastardly, illiberal Tories?

Ken

... Your cartoon needs some refining. The ghastly Scot should be wearing threadbare Andy Capp cap, dirty overalls, holey-soled dirty boots and holding his sarnies. Also coppers not banknotes should be falling from his mits. Make him lose a tooth or two. Class war is class war let's do it properly.

J H Holloway

Don't Like said...

'Brown was a minister's son, what do you imagine, Kaplan, the stipend of a Church of Scotland minister might be? 140000 a year?'

Oh dear. Did you forget about Gordo's mother? Member of the local 'big' family. Big local employer, I heard. Possible conservative voter, too.

The Browns also lorded it the wee town, as his father was both the local vicar and headmaster of the local school, wasn't he? The two most influential positions.

Of course, the Broons were a timorous wee family who worked hard and kept their heeds down.

Then again, his father did spend every Sunday in the pulpit, lecturing the locals and no doubt clocking those who failed to attend the kirk. Sounds like somebody familiar....

The Bellman

David Lindsay: A non sequitar. That Cameron, Osborne and Johnson have not been to prison more probably means not some mystical Bullingdon get-out-of-gaol-free card, but that they did not commit such crimes.

However, if you have evidence, I'm sure the Oxford police would be delighted to investigate. After all, they arrested someone for calling a horse 'gay', so fitting someone up for being posh and rich should be a doddle.

David Lindsay

Mac, living in rural England, as I have done most of my life and which is a very different matter from merely owning great swathes of it while living in Knightsbridge or Notting Hill, I suspect that the publicans of Oxfordshire are not without connections in the local constabulary and magistracy.

One of those publicans should simply tell the Bullingdon Club to stick the money that they offered them at the end of one of their "events", because he would be seeing them in court.

How would it look for Cameron if the Bully Boys were to be locked up for just long enough to have themselves sent down?

And how would it look for the University of Oxford if they were not sent down under such circumstances?

liz Brown

The leftie trolls writing here are showing themselves up as ignorant spiteful and downright nasty. They appear to have no idea of what makes the world tick and are obviously blinded to reason - but then perhaps they all benefit from the Govt's (ie the hard pressed taxpayer's)largesse
Fraser. Since when has the Dear Leader been an economist - I thought you knew more than to believe anything that stuffed up self important underachiever said

Verity

William Norton - Telling someone who is compiling a list for his own use that he is compiling the wrong list reeks of socialist interfering bossiness.

Oscar

David Lindsay
You should read Quentin Letts' account of the behaviour of Labour whips during Osborne's speech (reproduced on Guido). It's Brown's bully boys who are the real yobs defecating on our democracy not ex members of the Bullingdon club. The truth is Brown is polarising the nation with his nasty and juvenile revival of class war.

Athesius the Facilitator

This thread has got readers pulses going. Some of the Lefties have continued where those luddites left off yesterday in parliament.

Quentin Davies is the type of person that got his botty burned at the school bully's roaring fire while the bully's hangers on put large half smoked 'stogies' out on his raspberry ripples. He was always and still is a figure of ridicule on both sides of the house. But holy shmoly! he is also the procurement minister for the Armed Forces. God help us!

Oscar your dead right mate! But be satisfied that they do not mean it. Why? because they are to thick to understand what they where shouting about. Remember the only finances they understand is when they put their expense claims in.

Travis Bickle

The working class create the wealth?

Interesting view of the world - so why didn't they run their own mines back in the 1980's?

ps DLRW (or should I just call you Dirty Euro?) my family are working class and even they wouldn't believe your bullshit.

mac

David Lindsay,
Ah, yes, sequestered rural England, very different, very Betjeman. That'd be Hilary Armstrong's corner of rural England I take it, where constituencies stay in the family?

Augustus

Lord Elvis, if not the worst, certainly one of the most far-fetched 'achievements' of this government is the formal acceptance of the rulings of Sharia courts. This means that Britain has not just culturally, but also legally, surrendered to its new Muslim masters. And no politician dares to put up any resistance whatsoever to this continued Islamification. Britain is one of the worst countries in the Western world, which says a lot given how bad many others are, and it belongs to a growing group of nations where the authorities have more or less surrendered to Islamic rule, openly promote Islamic
'culture', and harass those who resist.