John Rentoul Calls it Right on Brown and Cameron

paracelsus

'I would go further and say that Gordon Brown could yet be recognised as a truly great Prime Minister if he stood down as leader for the good of his party.'

Talking like a true party hack. Forget the huge debt, irresponsible fiscal plans, worsening poverty, dire state of education etc, etc, we are supposed to believe that as long as he is true to the Labour party, he should remembered as a great Prime Minister.

In one post, we have an insight into the basic, fundamental thinking of a socialist and Labour hack. Screw the country, only the party matters!

You really should return to the New Statesman, you'd fit in with their distorted world view.

Nicholas

I think you are both living in cloud cuckoo land.

It is not just Brown it is the whole New Labour experiment. And, as for "Labour values", what are those? Are those the same as "New Labour values", or the values demonstrated by the government over the last 12 years, which seem to be neither Labour nor New Labour?

The Tories are polling 19% ahead of Labour and the latter are dead in the water. The country is tired and wants change. The longer New Labour refuse to give them the opportunity to express this the worse their defeat is going to be.

The New Labour regime is marked by arrogance, self-delusion and indifference to the real wishes of the people, so I suppose it is at least consistent in going to its doom that way.

Gareth Edwards

First - thanks for taking that courageous stand against a Tory taking over something you were writing for, by resigning from it!! That damn right wing media will be the end of us all. A few of my friends said - wow - what a fantastic gesture - who is Martin Bright? after I'd breathlessly told them about your courage under fire at Yates Wine Bar, again recognising the enemy as being Tory with insight born of genius.
Errrrrrrrrrr....yes, I remember - you've just said gordon Brown may well be remembered in the same league as Churchill and Thatcher......great post.
Anyway

Fergus Pickering

The New Labour project, as I remember it, had no policies except one - to replace the Tory Party. Well, that one seems definitively to have gone tits up, wouldn't you say? The Tory Party was there when Labour was not, and when Labour sinks forever, the Tory Party will still be there. Because, don't you see, it speaks to something which IS always there, not your sort of something, I agree, but something. What Lying Tony should have tried to do was to replace the Liberal Democrats. He could have done that. Clegg is really the onenwho is Blair Lite.

As for Gordon Brown the great Prime Minister, have they been putting something in your breakfast cereal? What we have here is a mad windbag with a very bad temper. The eyesight problems are neither here nor there.

mac

Yes, Rentoul's really incisive. Pollyesque, in fact - let's just ignore the 19% latest Tory poll lead, shall we, as his and your myopic wishful thinking trumps common sense?

And you think James Gordon Brown could be regarded as a "great" PM? Are you in some way related to Mrs James Gordon Brown?

john miller

I was going to comment on this having read the title, as I strongly disagreed with Rentoul in his article.

But by the time I got to the bottom of the post, I realised it was one of Martin's deep sarcasm pieces. "Gordon Brown truly great prime minister" - we'll you didn't really need that one - we'd all got the joke long before then.

RobC

Having read Rentoul's column I was overcome by the sheer ignorance of his convoluted no but yes but no caricature of Cameron's speech.I am amazed that there are two equally deluded socialist journalists shamelessly trying to portray a washed up and thoroughly incompetent Brown as a genius.He will be remembered not for his greatness but for the appalling legacy of debt he has bequeathed to future generations.

Tiberius

The Conservative Party could indeed become a very beatable force - if it emulates Labour and reverts to its atavistic tendencies.

Blair warned Labour, in his last conference speech as PM, not to revert to the Old Ways. Brown, being a useless politician as well as economist, has done so, and is in danger of wrecking his party.

Dean

John Rentoul got too close to Blair when he was writing his biography and has never really recovered his objectivity, which means that the Labour Party largely ignores his advice, even when it makes sense.

It is interesting, however, that Rentoul mentions the poll finding that voters are more sympathetic to Labour "values". I suspect what this means is that voters are intuitively opposed to measures that harm the more vulnerable sections of society. But if protecting the vulnerable were what Labour had spent most of its time doing the past 11 years, they wouldn't now be facing defeat. Most of their time in office has in fact been spent wasting taxpayers' money on a whole range of pointless, meddlesome initiatives which, taken together, have vastly expanded the role of the state and its power to interfere in people's everyday lives. Add to that the culture of political correctness which shows more compassion for the culprit than the victim and you can easily see why they have become so unpopular. This is not what the electorate was promised, or what the Labour Party was set up to do.

The roots of this failure pre-date Brown's premiership. The rot started with Tony Blair, his failure to define what modern social democracy should stand for (compassion yes, kneejerk liberalism no), and - since 2002 - his increasing tendency to appease the far left of his own Party. I gave up on Blair the day he decided to let Ken Livingstone to stand as Labour candidate for London mayor. To me and thousands like me that was final proof that the era of New Labour was over.