The chip on Brown's shoulder

Chuck Unsworth

"I am inviting the leaders of all parties to engage positively in these debates and back our constitutional reform and governance bill."

What the cretinous Brown means by this is that everyone should agree with him - or they are not 'engaging positively'. Why does he think that they are obliged to do anything at all? Time and again we see Brown accusing everyone - even those who simply do not respond to or agree with his crackpot schemes.

It's time he got out of cheap Town Hall politics and into something more adult. But maybe he knows no better. He's never been able to negotiate or even debate. As Chilcot has confirmed vividly.

Nicholas

A charlatan. Why now Brown, why now? Don't you think a couple of months from a GE is rather odd timing to suddenly start preaching "the big issues of reform" when your party has had 13 years in power?

The biggest reform needed is the proscribing of the New Labour party as an extremist organisation endangering Britain.

Barbara

'I'm inviting all party leaders' and what about us the public? Why should they decide what we would have after their behaviour this past few months who would trust this lot, for me none. Why now? After 12 years of this government I see it has a ploy for votes or to create a system to suit then not us. Are they that afraid of the new emerging parties they are now considaring change, me thinks this is suspect to keep the minority parties out, not change for the better at all, deceit again, not honesty which we should have, I say lets DUMP THE LOT.

TrevorsDen

Brown is a lying conniving dissembling bar-steward.

I wonder who in the labour party he gets it from?

emil

Reminiscent of Brian Clough, "we have a full and frank dicussion and then decide I was right all along", except that Clough was good at his job and knew what he was talking about.

NV

The problem is that it works with the clientele - from personal experience I know that the clientele will accept that this is being done as an opportunity to clean up politics and willl not be seen as a cynical move.

Tiberius

Well the Flailing Fat Fool wouldn't want the oyster and caviar prices to go up, because his champagne socialist comrades like Harridan really would be queuing up to sign letters for his removal.

Austin Barry

I don't doubt that Brown and his cadres are studying the voting system. Unhappily, I suspect it's the postal vote in marginal constituencies and how it can be, er, enhanced in favour of the party.

toco

The one thing the alarmingly deluded Brown is not is born again.It would be totally impossible to ever give birth a second time to such a devious,aggressive and cynical person.

Adam

This reform stuff from Brown is the Uber-Brownie. Labour have spent over a decade undermining our democracy. The list of their destructive actions is too long to go into here. It would probably crash the Spectator server.
To pick out a few we have the 'End of Democracy Bill' AKA The Legislative & Regulatory Reform Bill, the guillotining of debates, transferring ever more power to the Anti-Democratic EU - without a referendum, as they promised in a manifesto, the farming out of decisions to unaccountable quangos, ministerial statements to TV rather than the HoC, the appalling government timetabling of commons business etc etc etc.
Its still going on. We now have Labour's traditional rise in government advertising in the lead up to the General Election and the attempted gerrymandering of the composition of the studio audiences for the TV debates. Not to mention the absurd elongation of this parliament after so many crises, and when there are such big decisions to be made.
Now he talks about reform. God give me strength. Oh and another thing, what the hell were those pathetic jibes at the Conservatives' policy vis-a-vis Nuclear power? (Which Cameron has stated repeatedly) What is Labour's policy? They've only been in office for over a decade! I remember that the longevity of the Nuclear Power plants being an issue under John Major.
I can't take Brown for another minute let alone 90 days!

wrinkled weasel

Take a look at the comments on the Guardian piece - almost all negative, many have been removed by moderators. That's the Guardian. If he has no mates on that, next stop, bargain bin of history.

If I was in charge of the Tory campaign, I would focus on one, single, easy to understand massage: Brown is not to be trusted. Brown is a liar.

A simple message that even the morons who vote Labour because their dad did will be able to grasp.

strapworld

Troops are killed through lack of equipment. The lack of helicopters is understood by everyone. Yet this lying toad tells us he provided everything they needed!

The civil service head of the MOD tells Chilcott that Brown 'guillotined' the MOD budget just when we went into Iraq. Treasonous!

Nice to read wise words from wrinkled weasel, missed you pal! May I suggest a simple message to get to the masses "Brown believes we are all as thick as planks."

p.s. Wrinkled weasel, have you been visiting those massage parlours? "massage" instead of "message"???? naughty boy!

Vulture

Bruin is garbage. But the significant thing abt his very late conversion to AV is that it shows that he accepts that he has lost the election. It's a measure with no chance of becoming law, solely designed to tempt the LibDems into coalition (hence the guff about 'Progressive politics") by adopting their favourite policy in the event of a well-hung Parliament.

I don't actually think it will play well with the punters in the Dog & Duck because PR/AV is an arcane issue that only LibDems and politics wonks get wet abt.

Only a moron like Bruin could think that this is what the public wants to see come out of the Exesgate scandal.

Maggie

I notice this morning that one of Gordon's many irritating verbal deceits has now been taken up by the Lib Dems. Gordon is wont to say "What the public wants..." when really he means "What I want...".
Lord Owen told us on the Today programme this morning that "What the public wants....(is a hung parliament)!!!

denis cooper

From a strictly partisan point of view, a good move by Brown.

I saw this being discussed on Newsnight. Hain was fluent (glib) in its favour, and Huhne said that the LibDems would support it as a step in the right direction, even though of course they really want proper PR. Pickles was pathetic, trying to pretend that FPTP is the fairest system but failing to convince. To be generous to him, that's a very difficult argument to make.

In constituencies where the Labour candidate will need their votes to get elected, some people who normally vote LibDem may well switch to Labour in the hope of getting AV in place for the following election.

There could be the kind of collusion which occurred in 1997 - eg allegedly the LibDems went easy in Reading West, and quietly encouraged supporters to vote Labour, and in return Labour went easy in Newbury and quietly encouraged supporters to vote for the LibDem candidate. It could even end up with a Labour-LibDem coalition government ...

The Tories are trying to counter this by using it as another reason why UKIP supporters should vote Tory, but their problem is that many UKIP supporters recognise that the political system needs proper and fairly radical reform, not the superficial and counter-productive nonsense floated by the Tories, and if they're moved at all by the argument that reform could mean the end of the Tory party then they're actually moved in the opposite direction to that intended by the Tories.

Dinosaur

We might have more luck if we put up posters of Brown rather than Cameron. Brown is the issue the whole country can agree on - we ALL want him out!

Maggie

I also saw Newsnight but I wouldn't call it a discussion. Hain set out his improbable position unimpeded. Pickles wasn't allowed to finish a sentence. Huhne was his usual obnoxious self. Wark failed to keep order. It was a shambles all round.

Battle 2807

Why dont the Tories just say "aha, Brown is promising a referendum AFTER the general election. Where have we heard that before? and what happened to his last promise of a referendum???"

Dorothy Wilson

Message to Broon: As the country is in such a dire financial state because of your mismanagement don't you think you should concentrate on that rather than try to gerrymander the voting system so that you can stay in power?

Message to DC. Challenge Brown to agree to reforming the counstituency boundaries to eliminate the bias in favour of Labour and to reduce the number of MPs thus reducing the cost of Parliament.

Nicholas

Maggie:- "Wark failed to keep order."

That would be the Labour supporting friend of the Browns Wark?

I thought after his disgrace we had seen the back of the arrogant newspeaker Hain, but no, there he is, large as life and twice as orange, just like all the other New Labour resurgents. In our faces, on our TV's, gracing us with their "vision", denying their transgressions, and unfortunately still in power. God, when is this charade going to finally end?

And I wholeheartedly agree about the misuse of the phrase "What the public wants . . .".

denis cooper

Maggie - But in any case Pickles had nothing to say of any significance.

Dorothy Wilson - So the best reform proposal that the Tories can come up is to cut the level of our democratic representation? If they want to cut costs, why not just chop 10% of MPs' salaries and expenses and leave their numbers unchanged?

JONNY

I think he wants to prune the excessive number of Scots MPs, who have their own Assembly anyway.

Maggie

France has 577 for a population the same size as ours. Germany has 598 for a population of 82million. The US has 535 for a population of 300million. Our 646 is far to many for the UK population of 61million, especially when large numbers of them have been happy opt out of their responsibilities and leave every to Tony and Gordon.

Marcher Baron

As far as I know, "what the public wants" is to see the back of Brown and New Labour. Possibly some of them also want Labour to be annihilated so they never darken the electorate's doors ever again!

skynine

"But every time they have been tested on the big issues of reform - from devolution to the future of the hereditary peers - the Tories have been found wanting."

Is he intending devolution for England? About time I would say after all he devolved heath, education and transport in his own back yard.

Why do the English voters have a Scottish MP telling them what to do?

denis cooper

Maggie

It's meaningless to make international comparisons with other countries with very different systems.

I've yet to see one convincing argument why we should expect to get better government with fewer MPs, and there are good arguments that if anything we should expect it to get worse.

The central problem we have with our MPs is not their QUANTITY, but their QUALITY, and while cutting their numbers is a simple matter it will do nothing to solve the real problem. In fact it's just a distraction from addressing the real problem - maybe it's even intended to be a distraction.

I'm afraid this is very much the kind of facile and wromg-headed proposal that Cameron tends to produce, whereupon all loyal Tories believe that they have to parrot it.