Can Brown's inner circle be broken?

TrevorsDen

The equation which counts is 'govt spending minus tax receipts equalls x'

Darling says 'x' is £180 billion this year. The start of the year is not encouraging. The higher the 'x' figure gets the more untenable Browns policy becomes.

Niccolò M

One amongst the trio must be thinking that a change of front man is needed. But when will he act? And when he does it must be utter destruction, for injury will only lead to retaliation.

Ivan

This is so much fiddle playing while Rome is burning. The country neither requires nor needs this kind of political machinations while the economy sputters, foreign wars continue, and social problems mount. A Government that is more focused on its internal comportment than helping the nation is by definition obnoxious. They need to go.

Jackie M Miller

It looks to me as though the 'senior government insider' sees Darling as having to choose whether he's working for the country or the party. That, in a nutshell, is exactly what is wrong with this administration. It thinks loyalty to party morally superior to loyalty to country. And that is why we have to get rid of it as soon as possible before the damage to the country becomes irrevocable.

Julianlzb87

It wouldn't be fair to the voters
to remove Ratsputin Brown before
an election. The voters deserve
the right and joyful pleasure
of driving a wooden stake
through his heart.

A Williams

Mandelson's motive is to keep Brown in position and so delay a General election until the Lisbon Treaty is ratified, hence all the speculation about an Brown being replaced in Autumn, after the Irish Referendum which is expected to be passed this time.

The Bellman

Isn't this one of the flaws of such a 'wiki-coup'? It's all very well dispersing and maintaining contact by Twitter, anonymous cellphones and the like, but that provides only the conditions for action. It does not allow you to develop the essential means, which is trust - and that can only be achieved by human interaction, preferably sustained over a prolonged period of intimate co-operation. You can concentrate physically, in a location, but you cannot ensure a concentration of will, still less direct it towards a unified end.

Frankly, with such a collection of self-serving spineless venal bullying cowards as the parliamentary Labour party, it's no wonder, bereft of the chance for a firm handshake and eye-to-eye soul-searching, that none of them trusted the others sufficiently to follow Purnell over the top.

And that's when the stakes are mere political survival. Imagine trying to use Twitter to organise a coup against Hitler, Stalin or even Chavez, where there's considerably more at stake than the opinion of a few Westminster hacks.

That, I venture to suggest, is why the so-called 'Twitter revolution' in Moldova, and the similar spectacles in Georgia and Iran, have been relatively easily faced down and marginalised. They cannot not live up to the hopes they've been made to carry by technocrats, because it's a means in pursuit of an end. A crowd is superficially intimidating, but only practically so if it has leadership to direct it. Peer-to-peer networking doesn't substitute for that. Twitter provides the illusion of mass movement; but, although you might seem to have more information and more support, with little practical opportunity to discriminate between the reliable and the hysterical, and the ability to apply that unity of effort to a common end, you're still a mass of sheep. Just sheep with shiny phones.

dave, surrey

'The most potent example is the position of the Chancellor, Alistair Darling, who is now unsackable,' oh the irony, didn't Tony Blair suffer from an unsackable chancellor

Short the UK

The madness of 10 Downing Street:

~Gordon Brown = Dr. Evil

~Ed Balls = Mini-Me

~Peter Mandelson = Number Two

~Harriet Harman = Frau Farbissina

logdon

Sorry but the very title unleashed my inner Guido which involves an old gay joke on how to widen the circle of your friends.

Those scurrilous knaves would be playing around with the smeary semantics of Anusol and Preparation H to their hearts content.

Let’s face it, their merry jesting is probably the only way to treat this lot whose inner machinations are centred around the most dishonest and reviled trio in political history.

So inept, so devious, so beneath serious contempt, isn’t the Guido brand of humour our only liferaft?

Simon Stephenson

If I were you, I shouldn't attach too much credence to what Steve Richards writes. He'll, more than anyone, write what the Labour hierarchy want him to write. For Richards, getting Labour elected is the be-all and end-all of his jounalistic ambition, and if it's desired for him to write that the sun rotates round the earth then that's what he'll write.

Sorry to be so dismissive of a well-known name in the national press, but I'm afraid that every op-ed column of Richards' that I've ever read has had as it's underlying message "Labour Good, Anything else Bad". This is the starting point from which every argument is made. Never from the validity or truthfulness of the policy or assertion being considered.

Verity

Daniel Hannan said it first: Mandelson's mission is to keep Brown in office until after the Lisbon Treaty has been ratified, after which the county of Great Britain is history. Mandelson's next project would be the euro, after which he and Tony can skip hand in hand through the lavender fields of the Langudoc and the vineyards of France and Germany happy, happy, happy.

cuffleyburgers

"Mandelson's motives remain perpetually mysterious" - NOT.

It has been increasingly clear that Mandelson is on a Brussels-backed mission to prop up the govt until after the presumed irish "yes" vote.

With Lisbon in the bag Brown will be defenestrated tout de suite, in the hope of limiting the Tories' gains so as to limit the risk of resistance to further integration against the will of the people of this country.

No need to be so coy, Hoskin.

Paul

Ivan, I totally agree with you.

Fellow posters, let us not encourage the journalists here to join in with the fiddling. We have a conduit through them, and the message I would like to send is that this Government was already finished a long time ago. As it is, we are speculating about the positions of deck chairs aboard the Titanic. A concerted effort should be made to remove Labour from office because the longer they stay in, the more lives they ruin.

Paul

logdon, I don't find Guido funny at all, and most times hardly relevant.

I agree with you Bellman

Paul

What Mandelsohn hasn't factored into his calculations is that if they keep trying to make us European citizens without asking us if we would like to be, then sometime down the line there will be a war, and he will end his days hanging from a lamp post.

Lanarkian

I cannot help but feel that there is something Machiavelian about Lord Mandelson at present. His advice to Tony Blair always seemed surefooted but now he is with Gordon Brown, the PM does not seem to make one coorect move. Revenge is a dish best served cold, maybe?

Verity

Paul - Mmmmmm ... lamp post ... wire ... what The Devil's Kitchen refers to so winsomely as "air tap dancing".

David Ossitt

Paul

"What Mandelsohn hasn't factored into his calculations is that if they keep trying to make us European citizens without asking us if we would like to be, then sometime down the line there will be a war"

I agree; but we sceptics tend to think of this only from an English or UK perspective.

There are many in the other EU countries who hold similar opinions, what is needed is a leader to harness this opinion-base into some kind of positive action.

Martin C

Daniel Hannan has it bang to rights. The whole rotten ediface will be propped up, irrespective of cost, until the Lisbon Treaty is ratified. Then and only then it can all be left to go to ratsh!it.
Prediction for you: Mandelson will simply step aside within a week or two of the Lisbon Treaty becoming irrevocable. Labour will collapse shortly thereafter - but it wont matter much then. You saw it here first.

howard

Let's hope Klaus, the Czech Prez will chew on Lisbon for another year, it might be sent back to their parliament due to concessions to Ireland. Also, the Polish parliament has been combing it, no approval yet + Prez not keen either. There is still hope, guys.

logdon

Paul
July 3rd, 2009 2:21pm

"logdon, I don't find Guido funny at all, and most times hardly relevant."

Is 'Paul' a pseudonym for Damian McBride by any chance?

Jim

It will be broken on the rocks of the coming fiscal crisis, as indeed will most of the rest of the establishment.
People don't seem to want to grasp the full horror of it yet, ostriches have got nothing on us.

Andy

"'Alistair has to decide whether he wants to be like Roy Jenkins – an austere chancellor who delivered a Budget that contributed to Labour losing the election in 1970 – or a genuinely Labour chancellor who wants us to win.'" Says it all, really - nowhere is there any consideration of what action is best for the country. I agree with the Mandelson/Irish 2nd vote theories. PM's plan is to get us subject to the constitution whether we like it or not.