For Brown, it's never his fault

Andy Leeds

Guido is right: he is mental. It is never his fault and nothing he ever does is wrong. What amazes me is that a large section of the British People give him and his rotten party 30+% of the vote. God help us all.

Otto

.....Er....when was the last time a leading politician of ANY party admitted they had been wrong?....Get real.

toco

This demonstrates just how frighteningly delusionary and in self-denial the man is-he clearly requires professional counselling at the earliest opportunity.His presence in public life is no longer tenable nor appropriate.

Athesius the Facilitator

If all the press are aware of his lack of candour why don't you get together as a pack and hunt him down. He is a waist of victuals for Gods sake! Do it! Do it know!

Even if it's just to shut Richard the Balls up.

Mazza1230

Surely even diehard Labour supporters can see that this man is deranged.

TrevorsDen

Reports suggest it was a train crash of an exchange.

What was Brown doing being interviewed on a Mothering Sunday afternoon?

Costello

There are many politicians i hate or despise or merely disagree with but he is the only one i can think of who i genuinely regard as being demented and mentally unbalanced.

Moraymint

I agree with Otto.

"Never contradict. Never explain. Never apologise. Those are the secrets of a happy life!". John Arbuthnot Fisher in a letter to the Times of London, 5 September 1919.

Since then, politicians have clearly adopted this paradigm. I've yet to hear or expect to hear a politician admit to, or apologise for anything.

That's why our political class is so despised.

Chuck Unsworth

"I didn't" and "we've taken". That's an interesting combination. "I" when it comes to avoiding the shitstorm and "we" when it comes to potential blame for things going wrong.

This is not the approach of a great Leader of Men. It is the action of a paranoid bully. So much for collective responsibility and action.

Kelvin MacKenzie got it in one. No matter what Brown utters, we must assume in all cases and at all times that he is lying. But clearly, Johnson has now been labelled as a liar by Brown.

Noa Zrk

Now't to do with Gordon, never was, never will be.

He likes to give himself credit though and apologise on our behalf for things we never did.

So let's vote him out, forever.

PollyB

Otto: David Cameron admitted he got it wrong over the married tax allowance announcement.

The Tory leader said this morning: "The truth is, I give dozens of interviews every week and on Monday I messed up and there is no other way of putting it.

Is that real enough for you?

john

I saw that interview today, and I genuinely believe Brown has got to the stage where he simply does not know whether he is lying or not. I saw a man in a state of profound self-delusion, who is simply not fit to hold the great office that he so cynically usurped from Blair.

Cameron is far from perfect - like the rest of us - but is he unbalanced, like Brown?

If Brown clings on as PM, this country is in very considerable trouble. In fact, an emboldened Brown could do far more damage than Hitler ever did.

I still have faith in the voting public to get it right - and they HAVE to reject this tortured man.

Alex

I remeber Margaret Thatcher admitting she got it wrong about...

..no wait a minute...

... I got that wrong...

Boudicca

I watched the interview ... when it comes to transgressions, Brown is like a small child denying all responsibility to his parents. He has guilt written all over him; the evidence is there to behold, he stammers, looks anywhere but in your eye and keeps repeating 'it wasn't me. I didn't do it. It was xxxx .'

He must have been terrified of his father or teachers when he was young, to be so determined never to admit to any error. His poor brother must have copped a lot of undeserved spankings when he was young!

GDT

Can't the armed forces carry a coup d'état?

Alex

@John "In fact, an emboldened Brown could do far more damage than Hitler ever did."

NOW do you see why the polls are narrowing...

Otto

Moraymint
March 14th, 2010 7:35pm

.....Probably one of the reasons why I'm such a fan of Jackie Fisher's......he was a realist......as for the Greek Chorus about Brown who seems to be behaving no differently than any other pm to me (the furore about "bullying" would have been news to Mrs T)..... he is benefitting from the increasing public perception that in the "land of the blind" he is literally and figuratively "the one eyed man"......one may not like him but he is recognized as a wonk with "bottom" and Cameron is not....it really is that simple and I'm steadily coming to the conclusion he's probably going to win the election.

TrevorsDen

The way Brown conjugates a verb ...

I won't let you down
You are wrong
We cocked up.

I am reminded of the joke about The Lone Ranger and Tonto.
The pair are surrounded by red indians on the warpath
"Looks like we are in trouble, Tonto" says The Lone Ranger.
"What you mean 'we', white-man" replies Tonto

HairyNoddy

He was also heard to gibber that Britain led the world out of recession. Are we actually out of recession yet?

daniel maris

Hardly a surprise that leading politicians refuse to admit to any mistakes. Don't remember Mrs. T or Blair being much good at that - except for those faux admissions "Yes - I should have been tougher" (translation - "I'm such a caring guy,maybe too caring.")

As for me I have more or less made up my mind to vote UKIP. I don't agree with everything they propose, but they tick a lot of my boxes:

1. Escaping from the EU.

2. Putting a stop to mass immigration.

3. Introducing referenda provision.

4. Opposing political correctness.

5. Opposing Shariah law.

What is the point in voting for a Tory Party that won't get out of the EU, can't control mass immigration (because of EU membership), doesn't believe in direct democracy, has brought in political correctness within its own ranks and finally does not see the Shariah religion as a problem.

They might be a good bet if you earn over £100K a year and care only about your personal wealth. Otherwise, I'd advise voting UKIP if you care about your country.

TGF UKIP

Why wouldn't Brown behave like this after all who's going to hold his feet to the fire?

Colin

PERSONAL INTEGRITY is his vulnerability. In political terms, at least, he's a pathological liar. The way to deal with this monster is to be very specific, totally factual and to call him out on matters of integrity and competence at every opportunity. It's not that hard, really.

He can bullshit for Britain when he's allowed to be vague or generalize; but he can't handle accurate, specific attacks on his INTEGRITY. The same goes for matters of competence.

Analyze his public performances. If he's given even the slightest sniff of an out, on any question, he'll take it and use it, regardless of the veracity of his response. He doesn't care, his psychology means that he absolutely has to close off the debate, no matter what. However, when he's confronted with specifics, he's in trouble. Just look at his PMQ performances on Youtube.

John Moss

It took us 49 years to increase the National Debt by £350 billion, from 1946 to 1997. By the end of this tax year, Brown as Chancellor and PM will have increased it by another £420 billion.

He may well be in denial, mental, or whatever. I don't care about that.

I care about the fact that he is an incompetent fool who has ruined our pension industry with his ham-fisted tax grab, our financial service industry with his hopelessly inadequate regulatory regime and is now happily wrecking the whole of the rest of our economy, because he thinks, "it's the right thing to do".

He's got to go.

Moraymint

HairyNoddy
March 14th, 2010 8:39pm

The recession hasn't even started in the UK yet. Indeed, it will be a depression when it eventually comes. All our political class did was collude with the banking mafia to punt the mother of all economic catastrophes a short distance down the road.

We've now arrived over the can again; only this time there will be no punting it down the road. This time, our economy will unravel like a cheap jumper.

English Electric

Yes, that exchange leapt out at me as well. There was something pathalogical about it.

But I think most people assume when others speak, they speak the truth. And I think the public are buying it.

Thomas Cussans

It's dead simple. He is mad.

Otto

A lot of you guys need to take some objectivity pills....I'm not a fan of Brown and even less of that scumbag Blair but some of you need to get real I'm afraid.

General Zod

Alex, there's a bit of a difference in that Margaret was PM for 11 years and for a long time she got right far more than she got wrong unlike the disfunctional liar currently polluting Downing Street.

Tiberius

I've enjoyed watching Trev's programme tonight, but who was that guy who popped up described as "columnist, News of the World"?

Otto

General Zod
March 14th, 2010 10:32pm

.....As it happens Brown was Chancellor for about 11 years and on the basis of the numbers (the greatest period of sustained British growth since the 19th Century)he got more right than wrong.....he's certainly told no more porkies than Mrs T and I'm one of her fans but I'm not blind to what happened....After all she was a sitting PM with a comfortable majority and three election victories overthrown by her own party....an event unique in the annals of modern British politics so all was not well in the state of Denmark was it?

General Zod

Er, no, Otto.

There is a big difference:

Margaret took over when the economy was in a desperate state (not as bad as Brown has managed, but bad nonethless);

Brown took over from Ken Clarke an economy in rude health.

Major Plonquer

Gordon Brown's compulsive lying goes back to an incident that happened when he was a young boy in Kirkaldy.

One day he was playing in his back yard when he tripped and fell. He instinctively reached out and accidentally pushed against his family's outside toilet. The rickety old loo slid and fell off the cliff in his back yard and crmbled into the Firth of Forth.

Later his father, a stern Presbyterian minister, asked him if had anything to do with the toilet's mysterious plunge off the cliff.

'No father', stated Gordon.

'Son', said his father, 'always remember the story of George Washington and the cherry tree. Washington is your hero and like him you should never tell a lie. Always tell the truth'.

'Ok, father, I confess. It was me who pushed the cludgie off the cliff'.

On hearing this minsiter Broon flew into a rage and thrashed poor Gordon to within an inch of his life.

'But father,' squeeled Gordo, 'what about George Washington? What about the cherry tree? What about never telling a lie?'

Paw Broon replied, 'Yes, that's right, son. But George Washington's father wasn't up the cherry tree at the time'.

This is a true story. Honest.

daniel maris

I think Otto is right. There is a degree of anti-Brownian hysteria. I bow to no man in my detestation of Brown, but it is absurd to cite a refusal to admit to mistakes as some unique brand of evil in politics. And Otto is right to note that if - as we are generally encouraged to do - we use GDP increase as a mark of political success than as a Chancellor he cannot really be surpassed since WW2.

If Brown is to be opposed he should be opposed with policies not fantasy politics.
David Cameron won't even tell us if he was off his head on class A drugs at University. He's hardly the benchmark of honesty.

mitch

In 13 yrs of this idiot in office that was the most hostile audience he has ever faced and he came apart.
The mans a basket case and needs help, his contact with reality is tenuous at best and he is going to have to face facts that sometimes,most times he is WRONG AND IT IS HIS FAULT.

Liz Brown

I cannot bear to watch this deluded fruitcake - my blood pressure goes off the Richter scale

emil

Very strange that Brown's main defenders on here *claim* to be UKIP supporters. Says it all really. ("I'm no Brown fan but he was a very good chancellor!" _gold and pensions come immediately to mind_, and all that nonsense)

Andy Leeds

Otto is completely wrong. Brown took over from Ken Clarke an economy in fine fettle. The budget was in surplus and the debt ratio was falling - it hit a low of about 38% - but these things were entirely the result of Clarkes policies. Brown held the office twice as long as Clarke and we now have a budget deficit of approaching £200 billion. Within that figure, no matter what lies this idiot Brown tells, there is a huge structural deficit which can only be cured by tax rises and spending cuts. He has managed to increase the debt from £300 billion (less than 40% of GDP), to by 'March 2009 general government debt was £796.9 billion, equivalent to 55.5 per cent of GDP' and is probably now heading towards £1000 billion. So he has not just destroyed the States finances in the short term, but also in the longer term too. Many of us will never live to see the debt ratio brought down to the level this idiot inherited in 1997. Far from ending 'Boom and Bust' this stupid, arrogant man has created the biggest boom and created the deepest bust from which the economy will never recover. He ought to be hanged not reelected.

Alex

General Zod, I'm not sure what you think Thatcher got right the Brown got wrong.

I remember that we had the oil bonanza, (£10billion a year at 1984 prices for 17 years), and while Brown has taken the procedes of the GDP increase and built hundreds of schools and dozens of hospitals and employed more teachers and doctors and policemen, Thatcher and her various chancellors did nothing. UNemployment soard, we had riots in the strets of our major towns and cities, poverty doubled, crime doubled. The bonanza disappeared, leaving no noticeable improvement in the country's physical or social infrastructure.

It all ended on black Wednesday, when the economy of the country with the greatest mineral wealth in Europe went down the pan in a welter of incompetence not seen before or since.

Brown's got a glass eye and a lopsided grin, but he (and Blair) built the country up from a pit of neglect. Of course he got some things wrong: who hasn't? But compared with Tahtcher and her Chancellors, he's a beacon of competence and caring, and actual delivery.

Greenslime

Whilst being quizzed by an NHS clinical psychologist, Brown's face was a picture; "will you just shut-up, you bitch", his look said. His response to her questions was to puke out a load of tractor factory statistics. Absolutely no understanding that money thrown at something does not resolve a problem unless the money is spent correctly and, apparently, no interest in the point of view of a member of the coal-face crew. Notable also, was his continual reference to the fact that the spending of allocated cash was entirely a local responsibility. "No point blaming me squire, it's not my fault! Proof that reincarnation does happen. Joe Stalin is back with us.

TrevorsDen

"As it happens Brown was Chancellor for about 11 years and on the basis of the numbers (the greatest period of sustained British growth since the 19th Century)he got more right than wrong..."

'Pro-Brownites' or apologists for Brown need to stop and think.

Thatcher took mover a wreaked economy, Brown took over one that had been in growth for several years and was actually paying back debt.

Brown followed Tory spending plans and thanks to the 3 billion sale of 3g licences continued that trend.

However, once in 2001 he began to think for himself .... even when we had the growth quoted above he ran up deficit after deficit after deficit.
He did not pay down debt he increased it year after year. That's how we have arrived at this structural deficit of £90 billion which every vociferous labour supporter seeks to brush under the carpet and pretends can be washed away with a teeny weeny bit of growth.

Growth will not pay it back nor will growth support the very spending which created it. If only for this fundamental grotesque flaw - then in no way can anyone say that Brown was a good Chancellor.

And much of the notional growth owes more to mass immigration and rise in population (which inevitably created its own bogus growth) than sound economic management. Our growth per capita remains poor.

Brown remains an appallingly, fundamentally, bad Chancellor. With Ed Balls and Charlie Whelan and Damien McBride advising him - could it be any different?

Dorothy Wilson

Sorry - the above comment escaped before I had finished.

It should have ended: The problem arises when we cannot repay the loan and find we are paying interest on the interest. UK plc is very close to that situation now.

Moriarty

@Otto

David Cameron admitted he got it wrong on married couples' tax allowances. But perhaps you won't let that count as it was all of a couple of weeks ago.

Greenslime

More tractor factory statistics being spewed out by McBroon on Radio 4's Women's Hour right now...

Oh, and he has created 2.5m new jobs since 1997 and brought many children out of poverty who had been put in that state by the Tories. Jeeeeezzzzzus!

Nicholas

TrevorsDen: "However, once in 2001 he began to think for himself .... even when we had the growth quoted above he ran up deficit after deficit after deficit. He did not pay down debt he increased it year after year. That's how we have arrived at this structural deficit of £90 billion which every vociferous labour supporter seeks to brush under the carpet and pretends can be washed away with a teeny weeny bit of growth."

Quite. And the other thing that needs to be mentioned is that this prolific spending did not result in comparable improvements in the areas in which it was made. In fact in many cases they have declined in both quality and fitness for purpose.

Once we get beyond the myth of money spent on public services = immediate improvements and accept the Conservative model of value for money we might get somewhere as a nation.

Socialists, Brown apologists and Brownites of course believe that money grows on trees (or at least out of Bank of England printing presses) and that when things get tough the answer is to increase tax revenue to the point where those providing it leave the country, enterprise declines and business is stifled. The socialist self-sustaining tax model where the public sector increases tax on the private sector in order to fund more public sector growth and intrusion which in turn increases taxation opportunities is not a good model for the future.

Nicholas

Alex's post is hilarious revisionist history, no doubt being taught as part of the curriculum in all those newly built schools. The Great Leader with the glass eye and lopsided grin. Let's have a march of thousands of schoolchildren waving red flags and giant posters of the Saviour who "built the country up from the pit of neglect" to make it a successful socialist state comparable with East Germany, Roumania and North Korea.

Percy

@Alex

Please stop I had to go and change myself I was laughing so hard.

Dorothy Wilson

"Dorothy Wilson
March 15th, 2010 9:28am Report this comment

Sorry - the above comment escaped before I had finished.

It should have ended: The problem arises when we cannot repay the loan and find we are paying interest on the interest. UK plc is very close to that situation now."

I seem to have been having a bad morning. The "above comment" does not seem to have escaped. It seems to have disappeared.

In it I was responding to the people who claim Brown has a good record as Chancellor because of the increases in GDP during his tenure. Unfortunately, those increases were achieved on a pile of debt. I then made the comparison with someone who gives the impression of prosperity but is doing so by borrowing on a credit card. It is when the interest on those borrowings gets to the point where even that, never mind the capital, cannot be repaid that the shallowness of the illusion comes home to roost.

Simon Stephenson

I'm afraid I agree with those who suggest that this exchange is not really a very good example of Brown's mendacity.

The shortcoming with popular media exchanges is that they fail to include conditionality as part of the question, and so prevent the person being questioned from giving an honest answer without looking a total nitwit. No competent politician is going to participate in such a playground-level assassination of his character.

Now, if instead the questioners admitted the conditionality of what they were asking, then we'd get a proper level of honesty in the replies. We must be able to differentiate between wisdom after the event and negligence/incompetence at the time of the event. So let's have more questions framed in the way of:-

"With the benefit of hindsight, it appears that our forces in Afghanistan have been provided with sub-standard transport. Is it unreasonable to expect that this shortcoming should have been foreseen and dealt with at the time?

or

"We are all aware that politics is about choosing between different allocations of scarce resources, and that it is nonsense to believe instead that it is just about ensuring enough resource is given to deal with every problem that arises. Should we therefore be content with the quality of the processes that led to the decision to commit such major levels of public funding to the NHS Connecting for Health IT project?"

or

"We know it's not possible for consequences of actions to be limited only to those which are supportive of general intention, so should we be concerned that educational standards are being compromised through school league tables causing some teachers to over-focus on "teaching to the test" at the expense of teaching the subject?"

Let's raise the level of enquiry to where it actually tests competence, not contents itself with scoring meaningless points.

Paddy

The interview reminded me of Saddam Hussain.

Alex

@Greenslime "Oh, and he has created 2.5m new jobs since 1997 and brought many children out of poverty who had been put in that state by the Tories. Jeeeeezzzzzus!"

Well there are 2.5m more people in work, which is a good thing (unless you're a Tory apparently)

And child poverty has halved, which is a good thing (unless you're a Tory apparently)

And child poverty did triple under the Tories which is a bad thing (unless you're a Tory apparently).

Now Greenslime, tell me why "the same old Tories" is such a resonant slogan.

And tell me why the polls are narrowing...

General Zod

Alex, merely asserting things to be true does not make them so.

Nicholas

Alex are you standing in for Richard today as the resident Labour troll announcing the narrowing polls?

Labour are going to be slaughtered.