Brown loses another popularity contest

Chris Blore

Poor old Gordon. It can't be nice knowing that you're on your way out and soon to be forgotten, especially after all the effort and years of backstabbing it took to get there!

Tiberius

Can we really have any confidence in a man who dithers over a wax dummy? He has his finger on our nuclear button!!

Trumpeter Lanfried

Tee hee.

Michael Sweeney

Fine Fraser. The Conservatives scored a significant victory last week and Brown is clearly on the ropes. But this type of facetiousness is just kicking a man while he is down. Labour looks like it is imploding. No need for this nonsense. After Ashley, Harris and Williams in last week's Guardian, this type of comment doesn't reflect well on the Westminster media class. I'd prefer you to focus more on Conservative contradictions than whether Tussaud's have decided against a silly waxwork.

Nick Kaplan

I think the sculptors at Madame Tussauds should make a wax model of Brown, we could put it in number 10, and it might be a more effective decision maker than the real thing!

Austin Barry

Pity. Tussauds could've charged 10p a pop for people to stick pins in the Great Leader's "I feel your pain" effigy. Gordon: Caledonia's Saint Sebastian.

Ted Tedford

Michael Sweeney: I think people who have had Brown's jackboot on their throat for the past eleven years should be allowed to gloat. It might be unseemly, and it might not be magnanimous, but it is an entirely human reaction to the circumstances, and there's nothing wrong with indulging it. It's less damaging than taking to the barricades or armed insurrection. And at least it is not of the same order of viciousness of much left-wing sneering and triumphalism during the last decade.

(Although this *is* an old story: the Telegraph first ran it in March.)

Austin Barry

Michael, as our American chums say, "lighten-up, dude".

John

Michael, don't be so bleeding pompous.
If ever there was a man who deserved to be kicked when down, it's this pathetic coward, bully and liar and fifth-rate 'intellect' who has been shafting us for 11 years.

Another brilliant laugh at the expense of this disgraceful gang - I love it!

Mr Angry

Kicking a man when he is down Michael ? This unreconstructed socialist is destroying our country !

Are you referring to the same media class that repeatedly reported on Brown's towering intellect whilst ignoring all his well known character flaws etc in the weeks leading up to him becoming PM ?

slothrop

Isn't this the second time Madame Tussauds have tried to get some easy PR out of having a pop at Brown? weirdly significant in a way that even corporate PR types are using him as a whipping boy.

Oscar Miller

If Tussaud's made this decision last March, maybe they should be employed by the pollsters. Looks like they have their finger on the pulse of public opinion.

salieri

Noble sentiments, Michael, but I'm with Ted and Austin on this one. A little comic relief is welcome after what we've all had to endure for so many years of gloom. The intriguing question is why Tussauds wanted to create a waxwork when we had one already.

A. McB.

Kicking him when he's down??? He is "down" by his own fault -- therefore deserves to be "down" and moreover, to be kicked while there! Let there be no misunderstanding that we might feel sorry for him and that he "deserves" yet another chance. He really ought to go. Before we're ALL down.

David

Perhaps they should try an abstract approach to portraying Gordon, based not so much on the moral compass as on the triangulating compass. This would present a new and welcome challenge for Tussauds. Given that Gordon`s triangulation is leading him into an ever decreasing circle, if Polly Toynbee in today`s Guardian is to be believed, this would surely be a surefire crowd puller.

Alex

LOL. It would have been a waste of money anyway, since they would have to bin it in May 2010.

Besides, surely they want to have waxworks of personalities people want to see, no?

Phil

Michael Sweeney - you need to relax.

Mike

It does save them the expense of melting it down in 2010 or putting it into the Chamber of Horrors.
Michael - after 11 years of this awful government, I'm very happy to kick them whilst they are down. Frankly I'll carry on kicking until they are out of office

Water

What a lapse of judgment by our little Brown aww.

mart

I'm with Michael. The Spec is supposed to be "champagne for the brain". This story (and a few of the comments?) are a bit too bitter.

Water

John Brown is daft in making such a decision, but as for a fifth rate intellectual…that would be you! Calling Brown a gangster hahaha never have I heard such childish drivel!

TrevorH

I agre with the critisism about kicking Brown when he is down. You should be giving him a good stamping.

Brown is the man who was plotting to get gullible tories to defect, who for years was planning to depose Blair and was constantly plotting against Blair. he was schemming to pbliterate the tories right from the moment he stood on the doorstep on 10 Downing St.

Why shopuld anyone feel sorry for this tin-pot machiaveli.

idle

I assumed that the waxwork was residing in Downing Street and the real thing was skulking around Mme Tussauds, writing about other peoples' courage, or whatever he does.

Water

Sweeney is absolutely right the general quality of comments has plummeted.

Sweeney don’t calm down and don’t relax your gut instincts are correct! The Spectator used to be a refuge where you could relish the comments that were put forward.

Austin Barry

Mart, I agree that some of the comments on this thread are bitter and unfortunate, but Brown has engendered such a profound dislike and distrust among the Lobelia-growing classes that one must expect this kind of invective, unhelpful though it may well be. It would perhaps be appropriate and cathartic if, when Brown is finally ousted, he be made to parade through the streets of London so that he may hear the citizens' howls of execration: a modest proposal.

Verity

Trumpeter - Seconded!

Michael Sweeny - "But this type of facetiousness is just kicking a man while he is down."

You are right! As Trevor H implies in his comment above, kicking is too mild. He should have a good kicking, and indeed, will be getting one if he clings on until the general election.

I do disagree with Trevor H, though, when he refers to Brown as a "tin pot Machiavelli". Machiavelli was a dazzlingly clever thinker.

Michael Sweeney

Oh dear. What did I say? Cameron may well have decontaminated the brand, but not some of his supporters. For a moment I thought I'd visited a Respect/SWP thread by mistake.

RW

Well, this is disgraceful, refusing such tribute to our revered Prime Minister. A wax image should be made immediately, and then placed with appropriate ceremony in Louis Tussaud’s House of Wax at Great Yarmouth, where the 150-or-so life-sized figures are famous for bearing little if any resemblance to the celebrities they are supposed to represent. We could call it "The Prime Minister Who Wasn't".

Water

You’re right there Verity Machiavelli was a legend. Where as PM B is probably better looked upon as a hebetudinous Lipizzan.

Invicta

Well it was hardly challenging for Tussauds to make a waxwork out of a waxwork.

Verity

Invicta - V good!

Michael Sweeney writes "Cameron may well have decontaminated the brand, but not some of his supporters."

You "know" that the people who have answered you are supporters of Cameron? How did you conclude this, not knowing us and all?

You have intuited the wrong thought about me, because I disapprove of Cameron and will not be voting Tory as long as he is the Leader.

In addition, I don't recall having given Cameron, or anyone else, permission to be "decontaminate" me.

I would add that a body of political belief, or thought, isn't a "brand", so I find the vacuous pr-speak rather illiterate, as well.

Max Kaye

Michael Sweeney, I disagree: There is no better time to kick an overbearing, obnoxious, psychologically-flawed, control freak who lies about everything.

For the past 11 years I've paid outrageous levels of tax because of this man and his cohorts, and as it's unlikely I'll ever get a penny back, I'm relishing this opportunity to dance on his political grave.

John

"Sweeney is absolutely right the general quality of comments has plummeted" -
and your comment "never have I heard such childish drivel" is a perfect illustration.

Travis Bickle

Couldn't we get a waxwork made and installed in Downing Street, with the "Real Gordon" sent to Madame Tussaud's?

Avana Beach

May is simply alive with opportunities to vote. And you can't lose on this one as the options seem to be 'Dummy In 'or 'Dummy Out'

http://www.madame-tussauds.co.uk/GordonBrownVote/