Lining up to give Brown a kicking

kinglear

Fed up? I should think they are in what used to be called a funk. Tony Blair, for all his faults, always led from the front. I can imagine the Granita conversation went, Tony: Hey Gordon, you are a bore. You will lose us the election.
I reckon if Brown had been the leader in 1997, things might not have been as bad for the Tories.

john problem

'Amazingly able'? Eh? 'I think that Gordon Brown could be a very, very great prime minister.' What? Please give more space to this fellow - he's the funniest thing since itching powder.

Ethan Hurlington

How will history judge Gordon?

well... for Blair, Iraq will always be considered his 'legacy'...

Gordon's? The thing I think he will be remembered for is making Blair look like an very, very great prime minister.

Gordon, please just go...

Oscar Miller

You just have to read Labour Home to see what a state they're in. Some of the most perceptive comments about Brown are on that site. The rank and file are well and truly alienated. They have a leader who never enters the fray and makes the tough arguments, like Tony Blair always did. Brown's not just out of touch with the country - he's totally out of touch with his own party.

carol scott

I actually think Blair would have been a much better PM if he had got rid of Gordon years ago. Such a terrible waste that, for all his flaws, Tony had to work with that dead weight dragging him down. Then nothing about Brown surprises me, I remember him well from Scotland in the 70s/80s. Apart from the first couple of years he has been a hopeless chancellor and the illusion of prosperty was due to general world conditions and the rest built on debt he encouraged.

London Calling

Gordon Brown will be remembered as the Man who betrayed his people for one silver coin... where's William Wallace when you need him? instead we got Robert the Bruce and the Nobles.

Feivel Luft

We should get rid of the entire cast of this toxic Westminster farce.They are inept and they are crooked for the most part.
If you don't know this by now, you have definitely not been paying attention.

Fergus Pickering

Robin Cook couldn't stand Brown. They didn't speak for years. He was right about Iraq. Looks like he was right about the man Brown too.

Oscar Miller

Carol Scott - entirely agree. Brown was always a poisonous presence in the Labour party - he certainly inhibited any genuine progress Labour might have made (on schools, hospitals etc.). It's one of the great 'what ifs' of history - what if Blair had not been saddled with Brown and instead had had an enabling, team playing Chancellor? Brown is a wrecker - he truly has the reverse Midas touch. He's had a stranglehold on British politics for far too long.

Ian C

We should remember that Blair had to ally himself with this man Brown and had he not done so would not have led a Labour Govt that lasted for 10+ years. Understanding this demontrates what it takes to get a decent government doing the things that matter in their time - something Thatcher did as did, in the main, the governments of 1945-64. The intervening administrations of Wilson, Heath, Major and Blair/Brown have all been judged (rightly) to be failures because they concentrated on the things they condescendingly thought important - dogma, not detail.

salieri

McBean may well make Bliar shine by comparison, but they are still Laurel and Hardy without the laughs. They bring to mind Dr. Johnson's salutary dictum: "Sir, there is no settling the point of precedency between a louse and a flea."

Let Coffee-Housers decide which form of insect took office first.

Oscar Miller

I think Blair could have succeeded without Brown. In fact he needed him like a hole in the head. Pre Iraq Blair would have walked the elections easily without Gordon. In my view Brown has always been a liability who, in the end, Blair did not have the political strength to defeat. There might be many reasons to hate Blair - but I think he was a political giant. Brown is a malignant louse and a flea.

Puncheon

I have long thought that Blair's biggest mistake, apart from Iraq, was in not sacking Brown immediately after the first term, if not before. I detest Blair for what he is, a chartlatan and mountebank, but I think his legacy and achievements would have been much better had he sacked Brown, who dedicated himself to undermining everything Blair tried to achieve. As he is now finding out, it is far easier to be a negative Treasury grandstand know-all, than be out front trying to achieve something.

Tiberius

Just cool the praise for Blair a bit, guys. Leaving aside Iraq, remember Ecclestone, Hinduja, Mittal, the assisted places scheme, fox hunting, and the social chapter for starters. I don't think any of these could be pinned on Brown.

Ann

Err ... Robin Cook was wrong about Iraq, unless you listen to leftish robots. Iraq was the one thing Blair got right.

And yes, Brown having the potential to be a 'great PM' is the funniest thing I've heard in years. He is about as incompetent and useless as it gets. He inherited a strong economy, and proceeded to destroy it.

Ann

Sorry, yes, Blair was right about fox hunting (and just for info: I live in the country).

Max Kaye

I'm with Tiberius: It's a sad day when Coffee House correspondents start harking back to the 'halcyon days of Blair'.

Blair was and remains a successful charlatan; Brown is a psychologically flawed control freak; both are loathsome political forms of life.

Oscar Miller

I'm not harking back to the halcyon days of Blair believe me. They weren't halcyon and I am not remotely nostalgic for the man. I'm only trying to give a fair assessment. What if? questions can be illuminating. Policies on health and education (the ones Conservatives support) were blocked by Brown purely for the purpose of beating up Blair. Brown was (in the somewhat hackneyed phrase) 'the roadblock to reform' and things could have been better. Blair was a better politician than Brown in nearly every respect.

salieri

Sorry to disagree again. Both are pond life.

TGF UKIP

Blair, from whatever motive, was right on Iraq and on "standing shoulder to shoulder." Brown has been disgracefully wrong to under-fund, to the point of undermining, the Armed Forces. A policy your precious Tories are even more disgracefully pledged to continue.

Puncheon

I agree with Oscar Millar. The two big areas of reform that Blair tried to push forward - health and education - Brown destroyed. I'm not nostalgic about Blair - as I said above he was/is a total charlatan, but Brown undermined even the little he looked like achieving. Brown is just a negative, destructive, no person.

John R

The armed forces aren't underfunded, they're under-equipped because all the money is squandered. For example, instead of buying our Apache helicopters from the US at £12 million each, we set up our own production line to make 60 of them here at £40 million each. Then there is the Eurofighter which still isn't operational, and we're ordering 232 against a need of maybe half that, with the remainder going straight into mothballs like half our previous buy of Tornadoes. These planes cost £86 million each. Then there's the Merlin helicopter, which costs more than a Chinook, can't lift as much and has a much worse availabiliy rate. And then there's the Sea Harrier, which can't take off in hot weather. And there's the SA80 rifle, a weapon so bad we had to send them all back and pay £460 each to get them partly fixed by Heckler & Koch, even though we could have bought brand-new, thoroughly reliable Armalites for £400 each retail! Even the MoD procurement morons could have got a discount off that price, for a bulk order of 50,000 of them.

That's where the money goes, and I haven't even talked about all those useless anti-submarine ships we keep building even though last time I looked nobody dangerous had any submarines...

Caroline

Oscar @9:11. Fair comment, but just think back to six months ago and the judgement of ConHomers on Cameron was dire. They threatened to get rid of him after party conference. And all it took was one little speech - from Osborne - and he was revived and survived! But unfortunately, right now the shadow chancellor’s popularity is sinking. 'Events' And in the middle of the night, that is Cameron's worse nightmare. Here’s looking at you too Boris.

TGF UKIP

John R I couldn't agree with you more on the matter of waste. We could have got more and better for less by buying US equipment. However, this situation is unlikely to improve for two reasons. Firstly the drive to "europeanize" defence procurement so we'll get less and worse for more and secondly some of the biggest BAE plants lie (fortuitously for BAE) in major political battlegrounds - Bristol area and Preston/Central Lancs spring immediately to mind. Like the US we're going to need more infantry with smarter command/control/intelligence communcations equipment, more flexible all terrain vehicles, more helicopter and ground attack air support (it wouldn't surprise me if the US went back 25 years and resurrected the production line for an updated A10) and more and better lift capacity (once again we're buying dicey, late expensive French instead of proven, off the shelf US.) BTW isn't the Treasury supposed to be the value for money watchdog?

Fergus Pickering

Oh Lord. Leftist Robots. Like Kenneth Clarke. Like Douglas Hurd. Like Malcolm Rifkind. Like Douglas Hogg. Those Robots eh? What was it Disraeli said about the Tories behind him? The finest brute vote in Europe.

BlairSupporter

Without the indecisive Brown, Blair would have joined the euro years ago. Without the dithering Brown, the defences of this country would have been properly funded. Without the visionless Brown, we'd have seen TRUE Blairism. Many of you would have hated it. I'd have loved it ... and I wasn't even a Labour voter. Blair was ... IS ... a political genius. And some of us DO miss him, enormously.

Oh, and btw, he was RIGHT about Iraq AND international and homegrown terrorism. But he wasn't vocally backed on any of this by Brown when he should have been. And in the end, fancy that, Brownism = Blairism without the conviction, nous or ability to put it all into words.

I said they'd miss the REAL PM once he'd gone. And they do.

James

The bottom line is Blair was a brilliant politician and on the whole, I think he did a good job for this country.

Brown on the other hand looks like a mere pygmy in comparison to Blair.