Brown's rage at Blair's victory

Annabel Herriott

I read that splendid article this morning. "The Gordfather" A complete shredding of our Prime Minister. Fascinating to see his progress gradually unfold into its full glory,and then gently unravel! Good on Tom Bowers!

Carrie

I think it was Charles Clarke that was once quoted as saying, he wished Brown had stood against Blair for the Labour leadership in 1994. He then would've been comprehensively beaten and therefore would not have had the hold over Blair that he did for his 13 year leadership reign. Things would have been a whole lot different that's for sure. Shame Blair was so gutless and scared of Brown.

Austin Barry

The relationship between Blair and Brown seems to reflect that between Rimbaud and Verlaine. The one gifted and charismatic, the other charmless and mundane. "I know these passions and disasters too well," wrote Arthur Rimbaud in 1873, "the rages, the debauches, the madness." When he wrote this the French genius poet lived in Camden, close to Islington and Granita where another tortured relationship was born. And, in Islington in 1967, the charismatic and gifted playwright Joe Orton was murdered by the charmless and mundane Kenneth Halliwell. History repeats itself, in perpetuity and in place, as tragedy and farce.

Verity

Carrie - I don't agree. Blair pulled down the pillars of our ancient institutions and ripped apart our ancient social fabric with deliberate, and ambitious, malice.

Without the sullen presence of Gordon Brown, Blair could possibly, such is the stupidity of the socialist and neo-socialist voter, have won a fourth term, albeit on a slender thread. Thank God the monster of Gordon Bonkers loomed up.

JohnAnt

Carrie - yes, but it was obvious in 1997 who Blair was (and wasn't). The voters have to take some blame, and also the Tories, for not turning themselves into a party of effective and dangerous opposition.

Robert Mugabe

People are posting as if the next election is in the bag. It may not be because of two factors: the in-built advantage to Liebour of small low-population seats in Scotland and the north. More crucially will be Liebour's on-going ballot-stuffing operation of which we have just seen a small taster in Erith & Thamesmead. Unless the useless Tories get off their well-padded arses and act now they may well lose the election to this blatant cheating and British democracy will be finally dead. What they need to do is to set up a special unit at Central Office with a twofold brief: a) to monitor and keep an eagle eye on Liebout's manipulation of the postal voting system, (especially I fear to say in Asian areas where heads of families record votres for the entire family) and be prepared to challenge dodgy results in court. b) To mobilise and sign up the thousands of British ex-pats who have postal votes. As most of these people have been driven out of GB by Von Braun's regime, they will be natural Tories. However, because the Cameron clique are so useless I don't expect this to happen, so the GE may well be lost.

Rosa

James, you can't be admitting that John Major's Tories actually would have been better than New Labour? If only we could buy hindsight in bottles

I voted for Major and was proud of it at the time, but now I have doubts

I had hoped that the plan was for Blair to last one term, then be expelled by a reinvigorated Tory party. The real total tradgedy is that failure of reinvigoration

The Laughing Cavalier

At bottom, Blair is a weak man who needs to be liked and avoids personal conflict. That's why he did a deal with Brown instead of taking him on in a leadership contest and why he lacked the courage to sack him later on.

BrianSJ

JohnAnt
Yes, it would be nice to think we might have a Tory opposition one day.

AndyLeeds

I don't think you can really blame the Tories. The public voted in huge numbers for Blair twice in a row and our electoral system gave him a large majority on less votes than John Major achieved in 1992. Even at the last election, when Blair lost the vote in England, he still won a large-ish majority and is bolstered by Welsh and Scottish MPs. The media also must take a large slice of the blame. Even now, during this current row over smeargate, some parts of the media (notably the BBC) are giving the Labour Party a very soft time. The reality is sections of the media hate the Tories and make it very difficult for them to get their message across.

As to Brown the reality is he always was a very second-rate figure and his management of the economy and the States finances has been incompetent. But what would you expect from someone who has never really had a job ?

Tim Carpenter (LPUK)

The voters do take the blame.

All those people who believed that "things will only get better!" just as all the naive, wishful thinkers in the US have just ushered in "Change!". "Yes we can". Yes we can WHAT, pray? Yes we can impoverish the nation? Change from freedom to slavery?

Brown had a hand in much of the domestic policy decisions and priorities IIRC, via his bunker in the Treasury. Not sure how much control he had over Home or Constitutional affairs, though

David Ossitt

Robert Mugabe
April 20th, 2009 7:30am

"People are posting as if the next election is in the bag"

Robert or may I call you Bob?

It is in the bag; the only issue is just how big, will be the defeat, the rout, the break up, of new labour.

The Lib/Dems will also do very badly; this will give the Tory's the opportunity to put right all of the wrongs of the past years.

If they do not get to grips; and restore order to chaos they will never be forgiven.

TrevorsDen

Voters? Maybe. But what about the press?

What everyone forgets is that what kept inflation under wraps and growth and GDP apparently looking good was mass immigration with the people swept aside shunted onto bogus benefits.

All of which has brought social division and increasing congestion and strain on health and social services.

Labour have paraded debt masqueraded as growth, as wealth. The media have stood mostly silent. The BBC in particular are grossly ignorant and institutionally left wing partisan.

Voters yes but reporters more so.

And the dumb ignorant Labour Party? Its hard to know who is the thickest of the thick? Blair for giving Brown free reign? Brown for being dumb enough to believe his own publicity? Or Balls for thinking 200 years of received wisdom was beneath his massive over egged ego?

Or the labour membership for being happy to see Britain trashed in favour of a list of lies damn lies and statistics.

a expat

a number of fellow expats and myself have been badgering various political parties to become aware of hte biase against overseas/expat voters and how it plays into NuLab hands and we are getting no response at all never mind action.

Postal votes should only be allowed under very specific circumstances and if voters are able bodied and can travel to the polls they should be denied postal votes. the poster about asian communities and the head of the family voting for all is absolutely correct in what they say.

come on Tories, Lib Dems and Nats, wake up to your huge diaspora of expat voters and start working to help them elect you!!

Labour's Filthy Hospitals

Actually Blair won a majority in 2005 with a smaller vote share (35.7%) than Callaghan lost with (37%) in 1979.

The only unequivocally effective policy Labour has ever implemented has been the gerrymandering of the vote.

Andy Carpark

There is a separate episode recounted in Bower's biography of which I can only remember,

"Brown began to shout at the television set. The shout became a scream."

Tiberius

Bob Mugabe; how's the farm doing?

The Tories do have a strategy to deal with the cheating and bias you refer to. It's called Lord Ashcroft's marginal seat campaign. They are not useless.

Rosa; Labour went nuclear with Blair as leader, the new weapon of spin blowing away Major and Hague, who fought the 2001 election with the obsolete conventional weapon called policy. It is only since Cameron became leader that the politics is again being fought on anything like even terms.

Verity

I wish people would stop referring to Pakistanis as "Asian". They're only from the Sub-Continent; not the actual continent of Asia.

And yes, postal votes should only be allowed in very specific instances. Or we could simply not bother with polling stations and have a free-for-all by post. The method in Britain is, you have to go to the polling station to cast your vote. This applies to everyone who is entitled to vote in Britain, except those with handicaps, by special permission.

Robert Mugabe

Tiberius - The Ashcroft operation just chucks money at candidates in winnable marginals : that is not the same at specifically focussing on Postal vote fraud. As 'expat' confirms, the Tories are doing nothing about harvesting overseas postal votes that are theirs for the asking. Not surprising since the only fight the Cameron clique know abt is the weekly tussle for the best table at the Ivy. I'll give you an example of Tory uselessness: my rural seat (Lewes) was taken by the Lib Dems in 97. At each election since, the Tories have fielded a different carpet-bagger with no intrinsic interest in the constituency. The latest is a rich smoothie lawyer called Jason Sugarman who will move on like his predecessors when he has been beaten (again). Its that sort of combination of arrogance and amateurishness that might lose the next GE by default.

Hysteria

Mugabe/Expat etc....

as I have posted before - if you are an overseas voter you are effectively disenfranchised. I have written to my MP, the Ombudsman etc on this and I have my facts right on this.

EU law (really !!) dictates how soon before an election papers can be sent out - the time allowed is so tight that by the time you receive the papers (especially if you are expatriate), and get them sent back, you will be too late.

Compare and contrast with the US system where postal votes are counted well after the polls actually close.

This problem is a matter of record. We can draw our own conclusions and assumptions about the voting preferences of thousands of pensioners and professionals living and working overseas....!

Tiberius

My point, Bob, is that the operations you cite yield a lower return. The Tories are concentrating on the marginals because that's where they will pick up the seats they need to win. Everything else at this stage is peripheral.

Brown cancelled the election that never was over the polling in the marginals. Vote rigging in an already safe Labour seat in Birmingham , for example, is a mere bagatelle in comparison.

Verity

Robert Mugabe writes, re the Conservatives in the constituency he lives in: "At each election since, the Tories have fielded a different carpet-bagger with no intrinsic interest in the constituency."

Unlike Labour, which is parachuting Philip Gould's 22-year-old newly graduated daughter into some safe constituency in London.