Brown meets the press
James Forsyth 12:29pm
The main news coming out of Gordon Brown’s monthly news conference is that nationalising Northern Rock is now clearly under serious consideration, with Brown and Alistair Darling both stressing that all options are on the table. The other notable thing was how Brown kept banging on about ‘the spirit of Christmas’ in, what came across on television, as a rather over the top fashion. One of the New Year’s resolutions for Brown’s media team must be to find a way of humanising him and allowing him to demonstrate some warmth and humour in a way that comes across as natural.
PS Bob Marshall-Andrews, who’d be disloyal to himself if he was Prime Minister, has come up with the most comprehensive take yet on the idea of Brown as a tragic Shakespearian figure, telling Michael White that Brown'has the jealousy of Othello, the indecision of Hamlet, the futile rage of Lear and, like Brutus, he goes to the wrong people for advice.’
Can any Coffee Houser top that?
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Comments
Fergus Pickering
December 19th, 2007 12:39pmAnd when he's killed the king it all goes wrong for him and he ends up with his head on a pole (though that bit's still to come).
EyeSee
December 19th, 2007 12:53pmTogether Blair and Brown were Laurel and Hardy. On his own Brown is Homer Simpson.
Tiberius
December 19th, 2007 1:04pmI don't know about topping that, but to me, the tragedy of Gordon Brown is akin to the fate of Star Wars' Anakin Skywalker, a man who seems destined to champion his creed, a force for good, but becomes consumed with the dark side in pursuit of unnatural powers. His fate, as the reviled Darth Vader, is inverse to his destiny as he suffers terrible personal loss after choosing a flawed route to happiness.
Tom
December 19th, 2007 1:52pmWhy can't we just stick with Macavity? He even got Darling along today to hide behind on the NR issue.
Amanda Huggenkiss
December 19th, 2007 4:12pmHe's more like Principal Seymour Skinner: the same laboured attempts at humour, the same risible conviction of his own authority. And Alistair Darling can be his Groundskeeper Willie. "That's the last time you'll slap your Willie around."
RW
December 19th, 2007 4:19pmMacbeth - the single-minded lust for power and the betrayal of friends along the way. The Weird Sisters are phantasms conjured up by his own tortured psyche, making him promises of greatness he has been desperate to believe since adolescence. His brief Premiership has been a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying, well, not a lot. The only question remaining - who will be the MacDuff who symbolically beheads him (off-stage)?
Max Kaye
December 19th, 2007 7:21pmShakespearean comparisons flatter him. Shakespeare's characters were never blunt or clumsy. They were complex and capable of considerable self-doubt, reflection and wit. Cable Vincent had it right: Mr Bean.
Mrs Campbell
December 19th, 2007 7:32pmWhy is George Osborne (or whoever is representing whilst he is in China)not insisting that Northern Rock be put into administration (the British version of Chapter 11) in riposte to the insistence of the Government and the Lib Dems on Nationalisation. Administration is a court supervised procedure which enables experienced insolvency practitioners to get a grip on the business in order to see whether there is any real prospect of either working out of insolvency or a sale. Admittedly you have to pay them...but then the Treasury is not going to be administering Northern Rock if it is nationalised so will have to pay insolvency practitioners to do the job anyway. Could the answer be that the Treasury ordered the Bank of England to lend all that money without finding out about Granite and is hoping that a nationalisation will enable the Government to get round the European rules on lending money and to drift the whole problem off out of the public attention span before the serious lack of security is fully understood? Administration is the clean answer to a serious private sector problem. Losses this big need cutting sooner rather than later
Sepoy Agent
December 20th, 2007 8:40pmHow I shall miss Bob Marshall Andrews when he stands down. He has been a delight during his time in Parliament, never afraid to speak against his Party, and giving me much amusement.