This is how you should use your reprieve, Gordon

13 June 2009

Irwin Stelzer says the PM should seize the opportunity presented by this stay of execution: plot a path to fiscal sanity, cut red tape and restore Britain’s stature on the world stage

Now that Gordon Brown is determined to go down with the Labour ship, or to sink it, if you believe his harshest critics, he might want to consider a few things he can do in the short time left to him at Number 10 to enable historians to be kinder to him. Leave office he might be forced to do after the general election he has so long resisted. But it remains open to him to do so with a sense of satisfaction that, on present form, will be denied him.

Of course, nothing is certain in politics. Remember Harry Truman, who in my country took a victory turn thumbing his nose at headlines announcing that he had lost the 1948 election? Or John Major in yours? Two developments might save the Prime Minister’s bacon.

The Tories might self-destruct — David Cameron buys a gas-guzzling Hummer, or George Osborne files for bankruptcy after an unsustainable personal borrowing spree. Not likely. More possible, but still in the unlikely category, would be an economic upturn. The green shoots sprouting might grow to mighty... whatever it is that green shoots grow into. House prices might turn up a bit, the rate of job destruction might ease, both of which would lift consumer confidence and hence retail sales. The banks might be able to follow their American counterparts’ lead and begin to repay the bailout money that the Treasury has made available. Credit might become easier. In short, a quick, sharp recovery could remind voters that they have a choice between a flawed Prime Minister who seems to have rescued the economy, albeit from a disaster partly of his own making, and a policy-light Tory party that plans to take the country to some destination it cannot or will not reveal.

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Rhoda Klapp

June 11th, 2009 1:40pm Report this comment

Well, this is daft. If GB could do this, then he wouldn't be the Gordon we've come to know and despise. If he announced those things as policy, we wouldn't trust him to carry them through, for we can remember all the previous policies which were only for (multiple) announcement, never implementation. He is not going to change. Or see the light. If he did, I would rather suspect some sort of cybernetic replacement than the real Gordon.

Daragh Nugent

June 11th, 2009 2:00pm Report this comment

No need to go to Israel or Italy to learn about PR. A short trip across the Irish Sea will do it. Horsetrading in back rooms is back.

Tom Johnston

June 11th, 2009 10:25pm Report this comment

Drivel, I can find no other word for it.

Ian Girvan

June 12th, 2009 9:19pm Report this comment

Irwin Stelzer must have had his tongue rammed into his cheek when he wrote this. We all know that Brown is incapable of taking any of the measures he advocates. And therein lies Brown's madness; even now, it would be an election-winning formula.

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