Labour's unintentional comedy

Stepney

Proves 5 things:
a) Brown's arrogance.
b) His hidden perspicacity
c) The fact that the Labour front bench are a bunch of incompetents
d) Their inherent unworthiness to govern
e) Their immediate and mid-term future is going to get very, very messy.

Frank P

So why is your editor refusing to adequately expose not only their disarray, but also their deliberate covert plans to overrun the country with aliens to 'rub the noses of the right in it'? Scorched earth should be a suitable topic for debate between the editor and his blog commentariat, not just a subject for non-staffer journos (the stalwart Melanie and the lightweight Alexandrovic Massieanic comrade). Reeks of editorial suppression of a 'sensitive issue'. Suppress it and it will explode in your faces; the firecrackers from these blogs should be a warning to y'all.

Paul Hughes

I tel you what is the most disgusting thing of all. If this cretin knows he isn't up to the job, if he knows that his colleagues aren't up the the job, why the hell is he so narcissistic as to delay the GE until the last possible moment? I really can't find words strong enough to describe this shame upon our nation. "I'm crap but my mates are worse." Get the hell out, Brown, call the election and let's give somebody else a go.

Colin Pritchard

Frank P: I agree with your sentiments but your comment having been published goes some way to disproving your allegation of suppression.

That said, I too am amazed that the Press have not been jumping up and down in anger on our behalf. And where is the Heir to Blair. I would have thought this was tailor made for the Leader of the Opposition. I suppose he is following the focus groups again rather than leading. opinion.

Dewi

The lack of available candidates wouldn't have anything to do with the Brown camp's decade-long trashing of anybody who looked threatening, now would it? Nah.

Moraymint

Like I've said before. The Labour Party's epitaph: "We were an insult to democracy".

Andy

At least one journalist has dared to mention an important reason why Labour is totally unfit to govern and should be dispatched instanter:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/minette_marrin/article6898174.ece

Irene

It pains me to say it but I agree with Brown on his views about his colleagues, I do think he is right, but if he views Milimetre as lightweight why has he backed him for the EU job

Dennis Churchill

If your selection criteria are about getting a statistical cross section then you will get regression to the mean.

Verity

Read Peter Hitchens on "The Slow Motion New Labour Putsch That Swept Our Nation Away", and get very angry.

You should be arguing about how many millipedes can dance on the head of a pin; you should be rallying the Conservatives to pull together for one last heave. (Such a project would not involve David Cameron.)

http://tinyurl.com/ygjh924

Beer Moth

Colin Pritchard.

The fact that reference to the Neather silence, has appeared in this comment - and others - goes no way at all toward disproving that suppression of the matter is taking place.

Only Mel P has given it the cover it merits. Pete H and Doc Massie both attempting to play it down as being of little worth.

The BBC have whistled their way through the week without mention. The front pages are entirely devoid of any word about it.

A former adviser to No 10 has made it known that the Labour government arranged for the country to be swamped by immigrants. This arrangement is still in place. We have how many hundred-thousands entering each year and it is to carry on, amidst growing tension across the land.

Why is this not on every front page, including that of the Spectator?

Walsingham Ghost

Fraser, O/T but you really need to lance this Neather 'boil' before it does lasting damage to your credibility.

When regular commenters start suggesting you pack your bags and move over to The New Statesman, you must surely realise that there is an issue that requires airing on this Blog.

WG

toco

Reminds me of The Sleeping Beauty in reverse.Who is the ugliest of them all?Yes they are all pretty awful but the hapless Gordon Brown should look in the mirror and wonder whether he is perhaps not the candidate for bottom of the class.

R King

Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling kind of reminds me of Laurel and Hardy. They were both pretty useless at everything they did but Laurel and Hardy were meant to be funny.

There is a close physical resemblance as well.

"That's another fine mess we've got into Alistair"

Verity

Fraser's bucking and winging it, hoping we'll get bored, but at some point, he's going to have to deliver the dance he promised.

Moraymint

Beer Moth

"Why is this not on every front page, including that of the Spectator?"

I think part of the answer lies in the success of the great Marxist project that Blair/Brown initiated in 1997 and which has now all but brought this country to its knees (which was predictable enough).

Setting aside for a moment the outright destruction of our economy that these nutters have achieved thus far, the fracturing of the United Kingdom through costly, half-baked and ultimately pointless devolution arrangements and other constitutional changes, and the general breakdown in our society that one now witnesses and experiences every day, this government has cleverly and deceitfully evolved the UK into a compliant, soft totalitarian state.

For the past 12 years, the Labour government has passed a new law every three and a quarter hours, every day, for every year they've been in office. Did you vote for that?

That's why issues like Neather don't get traction. A critical mass of the electorate (millions of whom draw some form of state benefit or other, with millions more working for the state itself) is at its happiest watching the X-Factor; by and large, these people couldn't give a toss about the politics of this country.

Bear in mind, also, that some 7 million of our voting brethren still believe that Gordon Brown is the man to lead us to bright, sunlit uplands. They must be well informed?

Finally (and this is the scary bit), neither the Tories nor the Liberals offer remotely credible alternatives to the incompetent shysters that still reside in Downing Street and cling to the offices of state. The Tories are obsessed with following rather forming public opinion and have nothing to say on turning around the economy. Watch next year as a socio-economic catastrophe unfolds with Dave at the helm working on his "efficiency savings" to get us of out of the £2,354 billion debt and contingent liabilities hole left by Brown, with us steaming towards 5 or 6 million unemployed and with hundreds of thousands of immigrants pouring in to the country to see us comfortably on our way to the 70 million UK population predicted by 2030.

The Liberals are irrelevant, as ever.

And there you have it. Neather; who he? Who cares? Pass me a lager and a packet of crisps; time to flick through a few TV channels.

The UK. Now, a model Marxist state: the proletariat quelled; the middle-classes neutered and struggling to cope and survive; the political class all powerful and nicely covered financially.

Time for Peasants Revolt II, methinks.

teledu

In the land os the bland the one-eyed man is king.

Nicholas

I received an email from David Cameron about three critical issues none of which was the treason of the Neather-revealed mass immigration outrage. There was no fire in it to fill my belly - it was like spam from an insurance company.

We are dissidents here, called foaming xenophobes and racists by the comrades. No doubt they would lock us up for "wrong thoughts" if they could. I suspect a lot of CHers are dissidents, looking to the Speccie to be the dissidents rallying call. Oh, the disappointment.

The mad hatter's shambles of Brown and his gang and the dire trash this piece represents of them shows they deserve no consideration. But until someone rips into them good and proper they will continue gurning and dissembling, pompously announcing initiatives as if there were no tomorrow and the nation were not in such a sorry state of crisis. Brown and New Labour are the current focus of all my hate and should be yours too.

When it comes to New Labour the Speccie pen needs dipping in vitriol and the posts need to be literary handgrenades tossed into Brown's bunker one after another - then "you need to go in with the bayonet while the fragments are still pinging off the walls". Show no mercy, one last push and the communist rabble will be on the run.

pete-s

Another story that most are unwilling to promote (unusually in the Independent though), is the story of Bercow condemming the BNP in the youth Parliament. It shows Bercow to be unfit for office, but most are keeping quiet about it.

Chris Rose

My goodness, I never realised Brown was astute. For once, I quite agree with him.

Minnie Ovens

Wonderful!
First time I've been in complete agreement with Mr Brown.

Ken

Moraymint: Precisely and now we can include this
about "student" migrant scams as to why Neather ought to remain a very hot topic:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8332314.stm

strapworld

Mr nelson, I ask again for the third time.

You have promised me, directly, and others to write about Neather.

That you have failed to do so, and reply to me and others shows an arrogance and contempt for your readers and contributors. I regret that but you should really show more respect.

If you say you will do something. DO IT! If there is any reason why you cannot please explain.

I am left with the opinion that you are not a leader but a follower. I thought Editors led by example. Am I wrong?

Beer Moth

pete-s

The Bercow tirade: brilliantly analysed by the Master:

http://www.archbishop-cranmer.blogspot.com/

Boudicca

Well said Moraymint.

mac

Meanwhile, Sarah Brown's in Glasgow, posturing - sorry, make that "campaigning" - with Willie Bain. The Bunker must have had confirmation from their Weegie comrades that sufficient postal votes are already arranged. Presumably, the constituency machine has been told not to lose the voting registers this time. Even Maguire and Marr would find it difficult to explain that away a second time.

Thomas Cussans

Fraser:

New editor, prestigious magazine, lots of influence. You write unusually well, you come across well on the telly, best of all you have followed up a major story with proper seriousness, to wit Brown's lies about Labour's cuts.

But here's your first major challenge as editor and it grieves me to say that so far you are ducking it: the Neather revelations.

Point one, you have a clear opportunity to make the political running, to change the terms of the debate in ways that Labour will hate. Point two, vastly more important, you have no less clear an opportunity to expose the instinctive lying that has always underpinned New Labour.

Would Blair, Brown and Mandelsone have backed away from so obviously game-changing a chance in 1996? It is a matter of real regret to me that Dave, who I think is fundamentally just about heading the right way – and shut up, Verity, I know what you are going to say – has, to date, said nothing about this outrage.

Flag it up! In a nutshell, here we see exactly how Blair et al, for no better reason than electoral advantage, plotted and conspired to betray the essence of Britain. And you, the new editor of the Spectator have nothing to say about this astounding attempt to sell the country out?

Over to you, old bean. Don't let us down.

Cogito Ergosum

Hattie says she will force through the reforms to MPs' expenses. Perhaps Gordo will make this a confidence issue. Perhaps he will be outvoted...

Conundrum: is it nobler in the mind to contemplate Gordo's defeat or MPs not reforming their expenses?

Dirty Euro

If you all agree with the PM. Do you also agree with his views on everything else?

HFC

Pete-s 4.48pm.

And another worrying part of Speaker Bercow's comments to the children was his allusion to their ethnic minority representation - he congratulated them on having 22% from ethnic minorities.

FFS, the 2001 census measured the UK ethnic minority population component at 7.9%; are we to expect a trebling of that number by the time the 2011 census is conducted?

And the fact that so high a proportion of over-confident opinionated juveniles from ethnic backgrounds alien to the indigenous English have insinuated themselves into the Yoof Parliament is deeply concerning for the future of democracy in this country.

JONNY

I wouldn't take what Peter Hichens writes too seriously.

Dirty Euro

I quote HFC "And the fact that so high a proportion of over-confident opinionated juveniles from ethnic backgrounds alien to the indigenous English have insinuated themselves into the Yoof Parliament is deeply concerning for the future of democracy in this country."
I ask you why the ethnics supporting democracy is a threat? Explain that one to us all?

TrevorsDen

What a sad bunch of tosspots we are finding creeping into these 'pages'.

The Speccie and coffee house has not covered up Neather.

Nor has the press.

The fact is it does not take Neather to convince me about Labours immigration plot and the additional fact is that Neather is not the proof that the pea brains imply. Publicly he has subsequently qualified his remarks.

The final harsh fact is that in 2005 Tories fought the campaign strongly on immigration and got nowhere. Tories have regularly pointed out the flaws in labours immigration policy long before Neather. Flaws like most new jobs created ae immigrant jobs and that unemployment is mostly British unemployment.

Its pretty pathetic to see the dopy anti Cameron headbangers using Wedgewood Benn logic to make their flimsy case.

Edward Sutherland

Thomas Cussans: Couldn't have put it better myself.

Anne Wotana Kaye

Blighted Brown hasn't learned that the stink comes from the head of the fish.

2trueblue

Well said TrevorsDen. In 2005 things looked fine and dandy, the economy was not a problem and the Bliar and Liebour spin was in full swing. Nobody wanted to know about immigration. Labour convinced the electorate that they knew what to do.

When things are fine people give litle thought to the long view. Now the reality is here, it is hardly good to kick the one party who forecast that we had a problem. The fact that we see little of policy from Cameron is perplexing, but what is the alternative? He outlines it too early and gives away his project? I do not believe that Cameron is an idiot, so he will suffer the jibes awhile longer. Neither do I believe he is vacuous or vain. A man who can unite the conservatives must have something? If you refuse to believe that then you must question your view of the tories as a prospective government.

Brown knows the truth about himself and his lot. Little good that does him at this stage. Shame he won't do us the favour of leaving early.

Any Colour but Brown

"Dirty Euro
If you all agree with the PM. Do you also agree with his views on everything else?"
Is that supposed to be a serious question?

Billy Blofeld

I can't take anything Brown says or does seriously any more. Brown makes lame ducks look sprightly.