Letters

20 June 2009

Spectator readers respond to recent articles

Built on a lie

Sir: J. Alan Smith (Letters, 13 June) points out that Churchill from 1940-45 was, like Gordon Brown today, ‘a prime minister who was “unelected”’ — as though that should allay concerns about the democratic legitimacy of Mr Brown’s premiership. But the main concern about Mr Brown’s democratic legitimacy is not so much that he is ‘unelected’ as prime minister, but that at the last general election the then Labour leader, Tony Blair, promised expressly on 30 September 2004 that he, Mr Blair, would serve as prime minister for the full parliamentary term

Logically, of course, that entailed a promise that no one else, and therefore not Mr Brown, would be prime minister during the term. But it is worse even than that: when Tony Blair made his promise, everyone understood that he meant, specifically, that Gordon Brown would not be prime minister in this parliamentary term — a direct rebuttal of the Conservatives’ (all too prescient) accusation ‘Vote Blair, get Brown’.

So the real democratic problem with Mr Brown’s prime ministership is that by its very existence, it is a breach of the solemn and explicit pledge made by Labour to the British people at the last election. We have absolutely no reason to take lectures from Mr Brown now about ‘democratic renewal’.

Michael Grenfell
London NW11

Opponents are bonkers

Sir: Martin Bright focuses on the Labour party’s obsession with mental health (‘Insanity has always been integral to New Labour’ 13 June). This trait is not unique to Labour, though. Who can forget the Majorites dubbing the Eurosceptic supporters of John Redwood as ‘ward eight from Broadmoor’ in 1995? Or the Liberal Democrats’ Mark Oaten citing mental health issues allied to hair loss as the rationale for some very wayward behaviour? Or even, best of all, the fictional description of the ‘rise of the nutters’ in Armando Iannucci’s The Thick of It?

Paul Richards
London SW18

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