Timing contrition

Yow Min Lye

Ah, step forward James Purnell with a mandate to "decontaminate the brand".

Beer Moth

"It's 'brand' "

And there, in that phrase is the reason of their sorrow and our incipient bliss.

JohnOfEnfield

Labour are kidding themselves. Brown (it is he who has been in charge of the UK's finances for the last 12 years) has not only maxed out on the UK's credit but stolen all our private pensions, run tens of billions debt up on PFI, run the armed forces into the ground, helped give up the UK's EU budget refund and ruined the UK banking industry and nationalised most of it.

He has fully lived up to M Thatcher's description of socialism as "running out of other people's money".

In addition he has bee a senior member of a government which has gone to war in Iraq by giving us false information, which has attempted to scare us to death over terrorism, hooligans, battered babies, swine flu et al so our civic rights have been gradually stripped from us in an Orwellian manner. The Quango state is out of control. As is immigration. We serve the State now, the State doesn't serve us.

He is now giving our money away in Copenhagen like drunken lunatic.

I for one will NEVER forget, NEVER forgive this far left, mendacious Labour Government.
They have broken our country.

"Rebranding", if it should be done at all, should be done with a red hot branding iron applied to the most sensitive area of Brown's anatomy.

PS - Has he he paid the £3 Cheque that bounced yet. Not a man of honour is he? Never was.

salieri

Beer Moth,

Be fair: a fixation with the 'brand' was exactly where Cameron started - and beyond it he has never developed.

What's left of politics but the language of marketing once principle has become inconvenient?

Tom Pride

JohnOfEnfield
re: red hot branding iron

Whenever I hear or see that great gurning porker it’s a quote from Pulp Fiction which comes to mind:

Marsellus: “I'ma call a coupla hard, pipe-hittin' niggers, who'll go to work on the homes here with a pair of pliers and a blow torch. . . . . I'ma get medieval on your ass.”

Appropriate for the man who shafted a country.

Mitch

This will be the last Labor government I shall ever see or anyone else alive today.

Beer Moth

salieri

Yes you are right in that the Tories and their just-as-shallow 'brand' are waiting in the wings. And perhaps 'bliss' is too strong, but my pleasure will be in the fact that both these hollowed out husks of political parties, will be nearer the acknowledgement that they need to re-acqaint with the people.

Boudicca

Apologise! Is that all. I hope it takes a d..n sight more than an apology before Labour is ever in a position to recover. (Actually, I hope Labour never recovers).

lawrence greek

The Tories have an even more pressing reason to emphasise that this is Labour's mess - there is no doubt when QE is switched off and the pissing of money at the public sector ends, every economic indicator is going to get worse, much worse. Chances are they will be in power when this happens and Labour will crow, and crow, and crow about how they were right all along. This must not be allowed to happen.

De Rigueur

When I read pap like this I begin to understand why the country is in such a state.

This Forsyth chap is supposed to write for intelligent people, not some soapy meeting at an advertising agency.

Socialism is dead, has been for some twenty years. For goodness sake all you chaps at the Speccy please do not give credibility to the left or siblings of the left, they didn't have any moral, or political credibility then, and today they have even less.

You should be trying to undo some of the damage that is being done by the X-Factor crazed media - not adding to it.

Take a cold shower and do your best for your country and humanity.

John Moss

In the scenario of a Conservative win, which I hope for despite the mess which will be inherited, I wonder if Osborne will immediately invite the IMF and OECD to investigate the UK's financial situation and publish a "Doomsday Book" report in advance of the emergency budget that will follow the election?

This would wrap up not just the cash debts, but also the off-balance sheet stuff like PFI and public sector pensions, unsecured liabilities of the banks we own, etc.

That would be likely to provide a damning indictment of Brown's folly and make an interesting and unusual introduction to a Budget speech! It would also set out a real "baseline" from which progress could be measured.

Invite them back in four years time, just before the next election and you have an independent report on progress.

Pramston

The Labour party is incapable of an apology. Already it is expending it's efforts in laying traps should the Tories win rather than taking decisions in the long term interests of the Country. Their plan is clear, let the Tories make the difficult and unpopular decisions caused by Labour mismanagement, attack them mercilessly and rely on the complexities to obscure the causes in the publics mind - hey presto back next time round to visit further lasting damage on the Nation. No disrespect to the British public but I bet it works too!

Dorothy Wilson

'Rather, he argues, the party needs to understand that its "brand is now nearly as contaminated as the Tories before it."'

If this guy is into marketing jargon he should have a look at a model known as the product life cycle curve. It is bell shaped and rises steeply, then drops just as steeply.

Rhoda Klapp

Let me get this right. They are still doing it, and they are hatching a plan to apologise?

Wouldn't the best plan be to stop ruining the country first. Then they can stuff their apology where the sun shineth not.

Tankus

The only way that they could have a decent apology, is through multiple public execution's .

Preferably of the Spanish inquisition type , on TV , with close up's of their faces showing the pain.

Blair first.

I think it would be nationally cathartic.
Give us some closure from the suffering caused by the blair/brown national destruction project. We NEED THIS !