Brown pummelled in PMQs

Verity

This man is so loathesome, it is difficult to know where to begin. In fact, listing his shortcomings would make a tedious read. But there is something seriously wrong with him.

AlanofEngland

"When the Irish “no” vote came through last week, Macshane was overheard to say of the British public “would bring back hanging and kick out immigrants” if they had too much power." Did Britain have a vote too? I must have missed it!

salieri

Garbled nonsense, certainly, Fraser- though I think you meant to say that paying tribute to the armed forces does NOT come naturally to Mr. Macbeth- but also the grossest and most nauseating hypocrisy from someone who pares their expenditure to the bone, and jeopardises their lives accordingly, in order to pay his army of parasites, scroungers and camp-followers.

Chuck Unsworth

Fraser,

You "agree that the cause in Afghanistan is noble". Can you please tell us exactly what that 'cause' is? I have yet to hear anyone explain precisely why British troops are there, or what their 'mission' might be.

Imposition of Democracy? Which particular kind?

Keeping drugs off our streets? Fatuous nonsense. What about invading Colombia, then?

Preserving oil supplies for us? Ah, that's more like it.

Defeating the Taliban? Are they actually distinguishable from the ordinary Afghans? And why is it necessary to defeat them?

Destroying Al Qaeda? Who are they, really? Can they be accurately identified or are they some sort of chimaera dreamed up by the 'security services'?

As to Brown, well he has finally turned into a gibbering wreck. NuLabour has left it far too late to throw him overboard so they must sit in the lifeboat whilst their 'Leader' pilots it full throttle onto the rocks. Thereafter it'll be 'sauve qui peut'.

And Second Mate Darling's performance on Today this morning was quite simply excruciatingly, embarrassingly, awful. There's not a single Minister with any real authority or gravitas or the remotest vestige of competence. Still, the days to the General Election are numbered.

John Page

On television it didn't feel like a pummelling, though I agree with all your individual points except that the Spicer question was best. Clever certainly, but not telling. When Brown responded to the question about the UN Security Council, he actually talked about the Secretary General - I wasn't sure if he'd just misheard it. Certainly he was hopelessly at sea with Clegg's questions. On the whole his performance was poor, sure, but it seemed somehow to meet expectations.

Verity

Chuck Unsworth writes re Brown: "NuLabour has left it far too late to throw him overboard...". No,no! Throwing overboard is just not done in lefty circles any more!

They should take a leaf out of the book of the beauteous Obama. Remember when he claimed his white mother was a racist? American commentators wrote that he had thrown her under the bus. Then when he was finally, finally, finally forced to renounce black racist activist Rev Wright, the papers wrote that he had finally thrown Reverend Wright under the bus (causing one concerned citizen on Little Green Footballs to ask if at least he threw Rev Wright under the front of the bus). Just last week I read that he had also thrown someone else under the bus, but I can't remember who.

Anyway, surely Labour can take a leaf out of their newest hero's notebook and throw Gordon under the bus?

Jack R

At least Cameron did raise the important issue of the EU; I hope he keeps plugging away on this, and pushes for UK national sovereignty as a guiding principle.
So much of UK policy is hamstrung by EU laws, notably those which abolish national control over mass immigration, and over such cases as Abu Qatada where British 'justice' protects him and prevents the UK deporting him because of our involvement under the European Convention on Human Rights, which the Tories should commit to abolish.
Despite all the negative evidence about the activities of the EU, there are too many Tories, it seems, who go along with the EU's federalist, enlarging, unpopular project.

David Lindsay

Yet more troops to Afghanistan, where we have absolutely no business whatever, and are doing absolutely no good. What, exactly, would constitute victory or defeat in Afghanistan (or Iraq)? And why, exactly?

Like Blair, Brown is from the Thunderbirds generation, in which the good guys in a wholly British television series nevertheless had to be given American accents in order to appeal to British children.

But whereas it is difficult to imagine Blair watching anything more sophisticated than that even now, it is difficult to imagine Brown watching anything so unsophisticated even then.

So what is his excuse?

adrian drummond

To Chuck Unsworth:

I understand that 'we' are in Afghanistan because the West can't afford to have this country return to being a large training camp for Al Qaeda.

However, I think you raise some very interesting questions which very few people can give coherent answers to.

Peter Jones

“The (English) freedoms that we have in Britain are in no small part due to the fact that we have taken on the Taleban in Afghanistan and refused them to allow to break the democracy of Afghanistan,”

***The very same freedoms rights and Liberties he and McLabour are intent on signing away to their masters in the EU.

Verity

Peter Jones - Cameron would be no different. He is one of them.

Canon Alberic

Reference the above quote: it displays a disconnection from reality that indicates an alarming combination of cynicism, ignorance and mental illness. I'm sick of being told (by the ending hegemony of the Guardian/BBC commentariat) that Mr Brown is a "decent" and god help us "highly intelligent" man with an inability to show his true self wholly consistent with the personality traits of genius - what if, as is increasingly apparent, he's a publically exposed egomaniac barely able to string two words together taking us all to the rocks with him? I thought this like othere recent performances was properly Shakespearean, aweful and truly terrfiying - where will it end? And the really scared wierdos around him on the front bench....

Ian C

We're in Afghanistan in order to prevent it from returning to being a failed state. If that does not work it is likely to cause us long term harm, as it has in the past.

Sounds like a good enough reason to be there to me.

That said it can be cocked up as some say it is being. But we certainly have good enough reason to be there. Whether we cock it up is another matter altogether and because of other cock ups (Iraq) some people confuse the two and so question our purpose.

That is why it is so important to get it right, have the resolve and the resources to do it properly. And not to give up just because it's difficult.

Chuck Unsworth

@ Adrian Drummond

I assume you mean Afghanistan returning to being a large training camp etc. Well, so what's the problem with that? Let's not confuse Al Qaeda with the Taleban, either.

Al Qaeda has been repeatedly talked up as a powerful force, plotting to destroy the whole of western civilisation. That is simply garbage. What is happening, however, is that the West's actions in dealing with these people - notably those of America and Britain - are antagonising even the most moderate critics in the Middle East and, more generally, Muslim communities everywhere else in the world. Indeed it actually increases support for those crazies who wish to kill the West.

Sooner or later we will all have to deal with each other. Confrontation is simply not negotiation. You do not secure your borders by invading other countries. These American-led and sponsored adventures in the Middle East have done nothing to improve our national security or prosperity.

Time for some coherent answers, I think.

TomTom

Funny listening on WATO to an Army PR Officer telling us how many children were being vaccinated in Afghanistan was surreal.

I had not realised my taxes were sending soldiers to build an Afghan Welfare State after generations of amity and fraternity between Afghans and Britons.

It is a funny world were the British Army is despatched to provide social services in distant lands....the old days when they fought to win and impose order were better days.

If we invade Iraq we should CONTROL Iraq which we have never managed to do. If we invade Afghanistan by proxy as we did, we should not have to kow-tow to Narco-Barons for the right to fund their villas and provide welfare to their subjects.

The idea of fighting to win has gone and instead it is a form of semi-armed Peace Corps Britain despatches to do good works for politicians cramped by indecision and cloudy judgment

David Lindsay

Yes, up got the Eurofanatical Henry Jackson Society stalwart MacShane, to crow about the French re-accession to NATO, thereby giving Brown an opportunity to "deny" that there was any "plan" to merge the Royal and French Navies.

Well, there probably isn't. There is now so little to the Royal Navy that a merger could not happen. Rather, there would be a simple takeover, as part of a French-dominated single EU "capability" under overall American command, much as the US has wanted ever since the Forties.

In the pre-Sarkozy days when the Henry Jackson Society's Statement of Principles was being drafted, it was assumed that America's regent in Europe would be Atlanticist, if moderately armed and non-nuclear, Germany. But in the new Sarkozy Age, that distinction now goes to heavily armed and very definitely nuclear France instead.

Also part of this grand scheme, by the way, is the abolition of the Royal Air Force: http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/index.php?menuID=1&subID=482.

And then Sir Peter Viggers asked who would win a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. He clearly assumed that the No side would. But why? In 1976, the polls were two to one against at the start of the referendum campaign. But the final result was two to one in favour. After a month or six weeks of the BBC on the issue, the same thing would happen again.

Instead of a referendum, Parliament should simply have thrown out this Treaty. The failure of the Tories to put down an amendment to that effect, without mentioning a referendum, says everything that needs to be said about them.

M Alexander

Chuck Unsworth...At last some plain speaking.

Fraser...If you want a noble cause support intervention in Zimbabwe.

Nicholas

You didn't mention the regular planted question - this week one of the parochial, pudding-faced, pudding-bowl haired Labour matrons "asked" the Great Dictator about "DNA'n'CCTV" so that he was able to respond with a short precis of his gobbledygook waffle to the IPPR. You know, all the stuff about a 21st Century technological response to crime (the same response they have been at for 8 years with the connivance of the New Labour State Police and which doesn't work). The stuff he is too frightened to defend against DD in H&H because he prefers to control rather than encourage debate (a bit like New Labour "consultations").

So contrived. The whole Labour thing is just one gigantic and not very clever sleight of hand. Watching Brown deliver his usual weekly history lesson about the wicked Tories in Ye Olden Days (yawn) I realised just how much I loathe this duplicitous, conniving man and all he represents. Brown really is the alien that emerged from Blair's human suit. Ugly brute.

adrian drummond

Chuck

I agree with many of the points you raise. Personally, I believe that many of our troubles are of our (UK/US) own making. Coherent answers? I have some thoughts but will not stick my head above the parapet and voice them. I do, however, support the Powell Doctrine (I served in NI so that's saying something).

Verity

Here is the latest Obama's latest throwing-under-the-bus exercise:

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/30364_Obama_Throws_Kenyan_Cousin_Under_the_Bus

Verity

PS - I highly recommend going to the link. Some of the comments posted are very funny.

adrian drummond

Fraser, you say - and I'd agree with you - that Brown got pummelled today at PMQ's. How is it then, over at Politis Home, the House Magazine's commentator of the year, Andrew Rawnsley, reports that a snapshot survey shows that Brown won today's PMQ's. Now there's quite a discrepancy between these two views.

Andrew Rawnsley, PoliticsHome

A first- and a good one- for Gordon Brown! He won today's Prime Minister's Questions in the view of our SnapShot survey of the event, his first victory over David Cameron since we began this measure.

Members of the PHI100 are asked to rank the performance of the rival leaders on a 1 to 10 scale where 10 is the best score and 1 is the worst.

Gordon Brown is rated at 5.8, just giving him the edge over David Cameron on 5.7. That is the one of the best scores for the Prime Minister since we began the SnapShot and one of the worst scores for the Tory leader.

An additional reason for the Prime Minister and his supporters to be pleased is that the Tory leader chose to attack Mr Brown on the Lisbon Treaty, which might be thought to be tricky terrain for the Government.

Mr Brown benefited from a 7.3 from the non-aligned members of the panel who marked Mr Cameron down at 4.7. The Prime Minister, who has often struggled to impress left-leaning panellists, received a healthy 6.3 from them. Right-leaning panellists, who tend to mark the Prime Minister harshly most weeks, gave him an above-average 5.1.

David Cameron got his most generous marks from right-leaning panellists who put him at 7.1. Left-leaning panellists had him at a below-average 4.7.

Only Lib Dem panellists were really impressed with Nick Clegg. They gave him 8.5. Non-aligned panellists scored him reasonably well at 6.3. But right-leaning panellists (4.9) and left-leaning (4.0) were underwhelmed by the Lib Dem leader. His overall score for today's performance is a below par 4.9.

ericblair

Fraser, what PMQs were you watching? For the first time in a long time Brown caught the interest of his own benches and was successful in highlighting latent splits within the Conservatives over Europe, as they are fundamentally split over security. This PMQs did not prove that "the end is indeed near", and this complacency, so widespread among Conservatives, could yet come to haunt them.

Hysteria

ericblair 10:13 - I agree with you - I didn't see a whole lot of encouragement for team DC. As I posted elsewhere, it is about time DC started to act and sound like the PM in waiting.

Nicholas

Erm, the PoliticsHome "snapshot" methodology seems to be some way short of being scientific.

I thought Brown was terrible. The "English, British & French Navies" comment was hard to reconcile with a Brown "victory".

As for "highlighting the latent splits within the Conservatives over Europe", he was highlighting their splits in the last century.

David C

Nicholas, I agree with you and Adrian Drummond.
What came across was Brown's blustering and bullying attitude (especially in regard to the EU and the Irish vote). I think this plays into David Davis' stand on authoritarianism and 'government knows best' centralism.
I was amazed when I saw the Politics Home verdict. I didn't realise that to win you merely had to shout the loudest.