Darling admits defeat ...?

AndyinBrum

"took Labour 10" 10 what?

Richard

Sorry but this is really desperate stuff.
Darling said Osborne was a good tactician and He (Osborne) thinks he has got the tactics right.
The argument as anyone can see for themselves if they watch the news today they will see the NI Wheeze is falling apart now....where is Osborne by the way? hiding from Paxman!
Cameron has aready said he won't go on newsnight either.
Defeat ....surely you have to recognise this is just round one....long way to go, oh and round one is even on my card.
Why is it that Gershon admits 40,000 jobs to be axed from the public sector plus unknown jobs in the private (IT projects) yet Stuart Rose says he won't be able to afford to recruit in M&S (if the NIC tax is applied) where the average wage in M&S is 14K ...6K under the threshold where NIC kicks in......doesn't make sense. Making the argument on NI seem very political no as he claims about protecting jobs.
I suppose the publicity over Sam Cam wearing an M&S dress at the party rally was coincidence!

Fox in a box

Very interesting to read Brogan's full transcript.

I'm loving this election campaign because the Labour Machine simply cannot control the press as they normally try to.

The architects of this mess are unable to hide from proper examination and their positions are repeatedly unravelling as they attempt to keep all the plates spinning.

The sustained pressure of questioning will destroy Labour - you've got a Prime Minister who can't tell the truth, but a Chancellor who's a terrible liar!! (as in he can't do it)

Much more of this and Brown is going to hit meltdown! I love it.

paulg

Don't fall for that, its the oldest trick in the book, going down on one knee and feigning being winded. Then they will hit you in the balls on the way up.

Its not over til the fat lady sings.

Marbury

"Not good politics". Wrong. It is, in its small way, brilliant. Labour's whole strategy - and Darling's personal strategy - is to present themselves as imperfect but unspun, versus the slick but empty tacticians of the Tories. So if they can get to the point where people actually discount Tory "wins" of the news cycle, then they'll be doing well. And ideally, all good Tory publicity might even be interpreted by some voters as yet more evidence of their shallowness, thus turning the traditional campaign game on its head. These are sceptical times; this is not the last war, David.

Paul Wakeford

One good thing about him - he can be honest. Something that his predecessor and boss is congenitally unable to be.

Torontory

And what Cameron and Osborne need to keep stressing, as DC started this morning on the Today programme, is that reductions in headcount can be achieved through natural wastage. Many government departments have staff turnover rates in excess of 25% so 20,000 - 30,000 jobs is not an excessive challenge.

Dan

It won't have helped Darling's mood the way he was bashed aorund by George Osborne on BBC's 1 O'Clock news.

Mr. Green

10 Nokias?

Simon Stephenson

Interesting, Darling's final comment quoted on Ben Brogan's blog:-

"Our judgement, and I believe the politics, are right because the politics of this election must be what is in the interests of the country in the long term. What is it that is going to create the jobs in the long term? Not short term tactics. The politics and the judgement, I believe, we’ve got right."

Just how cynical, deceitful and shameless can you get?

Labour has spent 13 years mouthing platitudes about the "interests of the country in the long term". Never, at any stage, and certainly not now, has it set out how it intends to create this future - what are the implications, the downsides, and why in overall terms what they are planning for us is better than any of the other choices.

Millions of us want to know not only what Labour foresee as the good points of their vision of the future, but also what we may have to give up in order to get there, and stay there. We want to know how we are going to get there, warts and all, so that we can judge whether or not this is the route we want to go down. This is democratic politics, not three similar-thinking communitarian oligarchies focusing their entire attention on winning the star prize - the totemic side-issue upon which to land the killer blows that will fell their opponents.

But the majority, unfortunately, has been weaned into a land of make-believe in which assessing the choices of reality has been relegated to the ranks of academia. No time soon, I'm afraid, will electoral politics stray far from the farce it has become.

And for Martin Bright's benefit, this is why people such as Geoffrey Wheatcroft have become so disenchanted with it.

Tim Carpenter LPUK

To blazes with politics, is the policy right or not?

I think it is.

It seems Darling is a person saddled with dishonest politics and ideology. The dissonance in his head must be deafening.

General Zod

I think it's worth putting a bet on Brown's losing his temper in a major way with an interviewer on live TV at some point during the campaign.

JasonDB

Darling was absolutely eviscerated by George Osborne on the 1 O'Clock news. Let's not keep George too hidden in an election in which his policy has so far made all the running.

mitch

brown cant keep living on his la la planet for much longer, Prepare to see him "tired and emotional" very soon.

Chris lancashire

General Zod has a point - Brown may well explode. Remember he spent the last election well down in the slit trench and subsequently has been surrounded by sycophants. He is unused to being challenged and his amazing economic theories actually exposed.

RJ

At least it's comparatively nice to have a Labour MP not go foamy mouthed and get Ashcroft Tourettes.

logdon

General Zod
April 9th, 2010 2:44pm

Guido had a nice little clip last week of Brown momentarily but completely loosing it during PMQ's.

When the mask drops or more likely the Bonkazipam (TM Private Eye) wears off, the inner Brown certainly shows.

His face contorted in such a way as to suggest he was channeling an Edgar Allen Poe character in the throes of finally descending into the dark pit of irreversible madness.

Always the bridesmaid at Blair's Hello style ten year wedding, he finally makes it to the aisle, only to find out later that his dick has dropped off.

Andy Carpark

Brown losing his rag on air? I'd be disappointed if he doesn't start catching flies in his clunking fists and stuffing them into his mouth. I also predict that he will die within one week of the adverse election result, probably from a ruptured aneurysm. He should then be interred, like Lenin, in a glass coffin, but clad only in his Y-fronts. Before rigor mortis sets in, they should spare the usual bindings that stop his jaw from dropping, so that posterity can remember him as he really was.

sinosimon

the most important change to come of this is the final nail in the coffin of any reputation for honesty darling still clung onto. he deliberately lied on every available news media about what cameron said on R4 this morning. i listened to the today show, and have read the transcript to check my recollection. there is no confusion, no room for uncertainty, cameron was NOT referring to the NI tax money when he spoke, yet darling lied repeatedly in saying that he was to every interviewer, and also to osborne on the bbc lunchtime news. Can we please see an end to the 'darling is an honourable man' meme that has been reproduced ad nauseam? he is someone who supported the international marxist group when they were celebrating the murder of british soldiers by irish terrorists, and has put his personal position before the good of the country by allowing brown's wrecking to continue unabated, including siding with the prime mentalist against the advice of his own treasury officials over the NI tax rise. he, like brown, is a disgrace to the office he holds.

The Escaping Fox

Jaw dropping stuff

Ke H

AndyinBrum @ 1351
DAYS dear boy!

Simon Stephenson

Marbury : 2.08pm

"Labour's whole strategy - and Darling's personal strategy - is to present themselves as imperfect but unspun"

Unspun! Labour!

You'ld have to have sawdust for brains if you think that Labour is unspun.

paulg

@Richard I like you! the conservatives have just beaten you to the ground with a bottle-in a boxing match and you still think you we are in the lead! classic.

later with shot gun wounds lacerating your stomach and blood filling your orifaces you'll raise your head off the ground and pronounce victory! classic

Snowman

The NI ‘controversy’ isn’t even tactical manoeuvring, just a momentary hiccup in the in-fighting amongst the phylum of the anointed. It gets the blood boiling amongst the connoisseurs of politics, but leaves the vast majority of the electorate in blissful ignorance, charmingly untouched. If you truly think that ordinary folks have nothing else to do but watch point scoring on details of policy when, even if their lives depended on it, they couldn’t articulate the policy itself, book a psychiatrist, urgently.

A question I asked more than two dozen burghers of all voting ages (mostly 40 plus, and mostly male) a couple of days ago at a market in a country town: ‘So where do you stand on the NI controversy?’

Shall I tell you what the answers were? Not one of the great unwashed knew what I was talking about, few didn’t even know who Osborne was, and one man insisted, as an example of the rot in politics, that ‘a Government Minister was offering to run a taxi service for a foreign company’. This may have referred to Stephen Byer’s on the Despatched programme, I didn’t explore. As the point of the state of contemporary politics was inevitably touched on, the majority of those who ‘debated’ the question with me saw all politicians of any colour as ‘mendacious’, ‘cut off’, ‘corrupt’ and ‘in it for themselves’. That’s often translating from a rather more colourful language.

I didn’t dare ask who they were likely to vote for (nobody volunteered), but from their chatter I reckon some will abstain, some will vote with despair for the devil you know.

It pains me to say it, but Richard’s lot have a good chance of squeezing through unless something big and noticeable hits the unwashed’s pocket before the polling day, or at least seeds the fear that it might inflict pain later. Sad this, I’ve always believed that if anyone could resist the temptation of the twelve silver pieces it was the British electorate.

Silent Hunter

PaulG:

Thanks for the belly laugh at Richards expense.

Perhaps that should be . . . at Richards expenses.