Tired rhetoric
Peter Hoskin 1:31pm
Gordon Brown's speech to the Labour Party Spring Conference was hardly inspiring stuff. In fact, Rosa Prince tells you all you need to know over at Three Line Whip:
"Theme: Elitist Tories want cuts in public services and a referendum on the past (i.e. Europe) - Labour is delivering on opportunity for all."
Here - for intrepid readers - is Brown's version of that:
"So let me explain why only the Labour Party has the seriousness of purpose, the hunger for change, the passion for spreading opportunity, the mission of justice for all that can meet the rising ambitions of this new age.Why? Because the Conservative Party have already confessed 10 billion pounds worth of tax cuts, tax cuts that we can demonstrate beyond doubt, disproportionately favour the wealthiest in society.
And whilst New Labour will always get the right balance between public service investment, affordable tax cuts, and economic stability, the country has learnt only this week, the truth from the Conservative front bench, that their billions of pounds of tax cuts, will be paid for by billions of pounds of spending cuts, in our vital public services.
But don’t just listen to what they say, or what i say, look at what they do. I don’t need to tell anybody here that round the country, Tory councillors are cutting the very services upon which we all depend.
And this is the difference between the two parties, at the very time when to meet the challenge of change we need more opportunity not less."
The problem for the Prime Minister is that his own party's tiring of the rhetoric. As the Guardian's Deborah Summers puts it, there's a "sense of gloom" pervading the conference. And, on today's showing, it's hard to see what will lift Labour spirits. Do CoffeeHousers have any ideas?
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Comments
Chuck Unsworth
March 1st, 2008 2:48pmJesus H! This man is so much better than Largactyl. Had me completely narcoleptic within fifteen seconds. They ought to bottle it for the insomniacs amongst us. Although maybe 'bottle it' is the wrong choice of words here. This speech is just an extended version of the garbage routinely trotted out every Wednesday at PMQs. Even his own closest acolytes are finding it difficult to feign rapt attention. It's got to the point where any Cabinet Minister has the same effect on me. What is it about the NuLab guys which renders them so unremittingly dull and boring? Surely they can do better than this. Have they considered fire-walking, knife throwing, daring trapeze acts or just anything to hold our attention?
salieri
March 1st, 2008 3:03pmBut how could they when they've never had a proper job or learned any, ahem, 'skills'? The obligatory lobotomy doesn't help either.
Prodicus
March 1st, 2008 3:32pmHe still thinks that if you tell a big enough lie, preferably larded with the rhetorical equivalent of the assumptive 'innit' (copyright A Wedgwood Benn) it will convince. Pathetic.
David
March 1st, 2008 3:39pmI must have missed the billions of pounds of spending cuts. In fact, this week has been all about Lansley committing the Conservatives to increases in spending. How does Brown think his claims will resonate when that has been in the headlines? You know, part of me is thinking Lansley was deliberately sent out to say what he did because the leadership knew that Brown would trot out his tired old line (£10 billion has been used since the last election hasn't it?) and this would help skewer it.
Nicholas
March 1st, 2008 4:02pmFor a party that has been in power for 10 years and treated each of those years as its first in office the fact that Brown's "vision" consists only of slagging off what the opposition might or might do/have done is weak in the extreme. For Brown to even mention the word "opportunity" having wasted 10 years of them is an absolute sham. Weak. Useless. Ignoble.
Austin Barry
March 1st, 2008 4:10pmPeter, stop carping, I am reading Gordon's speech now and it is a fine..zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...zzzzz..pht..zzzzzzzzzz
kinglear
March 1st, 2008 5:17pmDC is much cleverer - he is telling the Welsh that the age of spin must end, politicians must tell the truth, accept responsibility, and be ( if not whiter than white) at least not morally reprehensible. Guido has had a line running on this for some time - middle England will vote in droves for any politician that appears to have principle. Mrs. T had it in spades.No turning there - unlike this squirming twisting lot
RW
March 1st, 2008 5:51pmNo-one's suggested anything to lift Labour's spirits, I see. Personally I'm quite content to see glowering monomaniacal depressive Brown dragging the rest of the Labour lot down to his own level of dysfunctional melancholy. Just means we'll get shot of them all the sooner, please God. He's doing a grand job there - don't knock it. But I can't help being struck by the text of his speech and the strange, bleak mental landscape it reveals. This is a disturbed mind taking refuge in endless reiteration of meaningless phrases - "the challenge of change" - which must somehow comfort him and make him feel he's coping. I wonder if this is how he talks to his wife and children, and what they think of him.
Bocephus
March 1st, 2008 6:13pmIf Conservative Councillors are making spending cuts, and knowing Brown it's probably not true, but if they are, it is only because the taxes raised in Conservative areas are being shipped of to Scotland and the north of England to allow them to build new schools and hospitals.
Having seen first hand the difference in school facilities in Labour's Scottish heartlands compared to the South East it is ridiculous they
can get away with it.
Verity
March 1st, 2008 6:21pmChuck Unsworth and Salieri - Thanks for the laughs. connection with humour. RW - Very astute. At the bottom of the paragraph, one is invited to "Continue reading" but it's too early to toddle off to the land of Nod.
Trumpeter Lanfried
March 1st, 2008 6:45pmRW: "Dysfunctional melancholy". Wonderful phrase! May I borrow it?
mart
March 1st, 2008 7:22pmWell I missed the news of which he speaks thus: "the country has learnt only this week, the truth from the Conservative front bench, that their billions of pounds of tax cuts, will be paid for by billions of pounds of spending cuts, in our vital public services." Seriously, none of the main parties is this straightforward in its statements over tax. Where did he hear this clear and unambiguous statement from a Conservative spokesman?
dexey
March 1st, 2008 7:23pmIn this little city it has been labour orever and it is new labour councillors that are cutting services. On the doorsteps they are saying it is Gordon's fault!
Verity
March 1st, 2008 7:51pmTrumpeter - Agreed. I was also struck, in the same post, by "...the text of his speech and the strange, bleak mental landscape it reveals. This is a disturbed mind taking refuge in endless reiteration of meaningless phrases." This is the best summing up of Brown I have read yet.
RW
March 1st, 2008 8:25pmPlease do, Trumpeter, but I probably cribbed it in turn from Aristotle and his connection of "bodily humours" to personality. I do wonder about Brown and the possibility of manic-depressive illness.
salieri
March 1st, 2008 9:15pmDepressive, certainly, but at the risk of straying into amateur psychoanalysis, I would beg to question the existence of a 'manic' persona. This is a unipolar curmudgeon who never fails to bring PG Wodehouse to mind: "it is possible to tell the difference between a ray of sunshine and a Scotsman with a grudge."
Max Kaye
March 2nd, 2008 9:05amI had a sneaking admiration for Blair (one really couldn't help admiring the Machiavellian, money-grasping people's vicar at his sanctimonious best). Brown, I just loath.
river
March 2nd, 2008 8:20pmSatellite television allows us in the colonies to observe the world's politicians. Bush and Blair took a while to age. Brown's virile locks turned gray in less than a year.
Oscar Miller
March 3rd, 2008 1:01pmPity the poor Labour supporters - Brown gives nothing for his fawnicators to fawn over.