Brown bombs on Boulton

Joanne

You're spot on James. When Labour are in trouble they always resort to the class warfare rhetoric. Disgraceful.

Kwizikl

Did you hear that total Bullshit ..."I feel the hurt that they feel. Petrol prices have gone up, food prices up , housing ..."
WTF !!!! he gets his food for free , his petrol for free and his house for free !!!
Pass me the sick bag Prezza !!!

Simon

Brown seems to stress that he comes from a ' pretty ordinary background'. I lived in a small Scottish town two decades ago and from my experience the town church's (Church of Scotland) vicar was no'ordinary person'. Brown is the son of a vicar. His class-based line of attack is totally spurious and smacks opportunism in the background of his removal of 10P tax rate which hurts the really working class and not the vicar of Kirkaldy

Prodicus

Brown's antecedents posted all over the sphere today, showing his 19thC salesman/merchant forefathers, their labourers and their family servants. Peh.

TrevorH

I am a Tory and I was brought up, as a child anyway, in a house with a chilly outside toilet with a nasty crack in the wooden lavatory seat!

Your right - this class based attack shows how bereft Labour are.

Brown has spent his entire life insulated from the needs and aspirations of normal working people. Spent it in acedemia in TV journalism and in politics.

He has no idea how to actually help people - thats why he has built up this fanasy world where his means testing his credits his benefits his constant tinkering make sense.

To him maybe but not to us in the real world.

James J

Yes a strange interview. What happened to the Brown of old? Are our political class now so mediocre that they can only look good when things are going their way? Frankly I don’t think Brown would survive real problems. We must consider whether Labour will be able to hold on for its full term, led by Brown, or will a major domestic or foreign disaster force a leadership contest and an election?

Bernard from Horsham

I seem to remember Brown saying "When I go round the Country". To my knowledge, he's been locked up in the bunker for several days. He has NO idea what's going on, period.
The mere fact that he refused to accept that anyone would lose out over the 10p fiasco, shows how delusional and out of touch he is.

Liz

Ooh - I'm another Tory who grew up with an outdoor toilet. And I'm only 32. I wonder how many of us there are?

Fergus Pickering

Heavens my dear chap. They're not vicars. Vcars are Englishand often poor as church mice. They're Church of Scotland Presbyterian Ministers. And very comfortably off too, as you say,

Ann

Yes, delusional is just the word for it. He's not connecting with reality. Very sad, but do we want a PM who is not quite there, sanity-wise?

Diablo

He seemed to say - no, he actually said - that "we have been able to keep interest rates down" when the MPC of the BoE is supposed to be completely independent. It is charged to raise or lower the BoE rate to meet the Government's inflation target.

Does this mean that Brown has had some sort of influence over the decisions that the BoE makes? OK, the Chancellor of the Exchequer picks the members of the MPC (as Brown did for 10 years) but as First Lord of the Treasury he should not be involved.

So, why is he claiming he's kept interest rates low when we all know that banks are now charging borrowers at a much higher level and real inflation is well above the official rate of inflation?

Simple: he's living in a fantasy world that is unravelling day-by-day.

Meltdown has now commenced.

Roger Davies

When did Brown ever meet anyone from the real world? This man really does need to get himself a good dose of reality.

Water

When Boulton mentions the possible increase in excise duty it’s funny how Brown shirks all responsibility. The best bit by far is his reaction come time for speculating a date for the GE, Gordon’s reaction is truly entertaining.

Water

His performance on Sky News was hardly indicative of a mad man! Definitely a chap very adapt at avoiding the questions though. Elusive empty rhetoric is always going to remain in politics that’s a given. Whether we’re talking about Brown or any other politician expect more of the same when backs are against the wall. The problem ultimately is the lack of deliverance on all the promises for clarity that are given again and again. Oh yes and the smile haha!

David

I'm confused:
when Mrs Thatcher indulged in 'enemy within' class warfare rhetoric, was that a good or a bad thing?

How is talking about your upbringing 'class warfare'? When David Cameron said 'I went to a good school' was he subtly putting down the rest of us?

Simon

I listened to the BBC radio4 today programme this morning and the BBC pinkos asking Doug Alexander, Brown's sidekick questions about Brown's credibility. Alexander like his master was going on about how only Labour is best placed to handle crisis etc.. etc.. I did notice that the BBC pinko asked the question that they should have been asking every time they interview these Labour career politicians. The question was: while the Labour says that the current economic difficulties are all global made and not Labour made, why the Labour at the same time does not acknowledge that the ten years of prosperity they are banging on was global made and not Labour made and in particular not due to Brown? Alexander who never had a proper job before coming to politics was taken aback perhaps questioning the temerity of the fellow pinko opposite , started Brown-style gibberish monologue. It appears that the Brown bunch sitting at the Downing Street bunker practice these gibberish monologues to avoid answering specific question.

Water

To infer that they are communicating well...

David

Simon,

Probably because the UK's 10 years of prosperity under Labour endured the global technology bust, crises in SE Asia and S America and sluggish growth in our main markets in Europe. Today's global financial problems are talked about in almost unprecedentedly apocalyptic terms even in the financial press.

dearieme

Brown could probably truthfully say "I'm not proletarian but these distinctions matter less in Scotland" but I don't think it would be a vote winner.

Water

When we look back to the PM’s speech to the CBI where he stated “All over the world - and this is what lies behind protectionist sentiment - peoples and countries are worried that they will not be globalisation’s winners but its losers, its victims not beneficiaries” well the people seem justified and rhetoric aside the message is quite clear he was not justified and apocalyptic terms seem somewhat apt.

Fergus Pickering

Didn't the USA have ten years of prosperity too? Perhaps Brown just did what they did and now we're both in the doo-dood. But we are deeper in, are we not? And that is Brown's fault,isn't it? I'm aasking, not telling. All this economics stuff is too hard for me.

kinglear

I rather liked the comment someone made that at worst Old Etonians actually knew how to lead. Brown clearly doesn't.

David

Fergus,

Well the US went through a big post-dot.com and 9/11 bust earlier this century, and their national debt is worse than ours...

...and as a smaller nation, we will always be more dependent on global conditions.

But most of our trade is with Europe and we have consistently outperformed the rest of the EU.

Which is not to say that we don't have long term problems - chief of which are high consumer debt, low skills and poor infrastructure.