Clemency suggests

Email registration

Free weekly email update

Great products and special offers for Spectator readers

Click here for great value reader offers and events

Click here for the latest Spectator Wine Offers

Brown revealed

Wednesday, 18th June 2008

My friend Robert Halfon has an excellent post on Gordon Brown's 'shallow salesman' sneer:

Far from wounding Mr Cameron, Mr Brown instead insults hundreds of thousands of people across the country – if not millions - who earn their living by being precisely that – Salesmen. By implication, he also criticises not just the Salesmen but also their families and close friends. After all, if being a Salesman is 'dishonest', then being associated with a 'Salesman' is dishonest also. So the many many people who sell cars, windows, heating systems, health products etc. etc. are according to the Prime Minister, either 'shallow', 'slick', 'used' or 'dishonest'.
...The truth is that most salesmen work very long hours, often work on low basic or commission only and have to travel far distances in order to make a living. Many years ago I worked in telesales, and I was struck how many people were doing it as a second job in the evenings in order to provide extra support for their families or had suffered some kind of financial hardship. Far from being used as a political insult in which Mr Brown can attack the Prime Minister, salesmen should instead be celebrated for their hard work, entrepreneurial spirit and for providing services that many people could not do without. Mr Cameron should wear the salesmen badge with pride.

I think it says a lot about the outlook of our wonderful PM that he should regard the word 'salesman' as an insult. His predecessor was sometimes a bit too starry eyed about the capabilities of businessmen and women, but at least he had an instinctive appreciation of the moral worth of wealth creation. Brown, on the other hand, appears to have an instinctive loathing of capitalism, and to regard it merely as something to be tolerated for the benefits it can bring.

Previous Back to Stephen Pollard Next

Blogs: Clive Davis | Melanie Phillips | Americano | Coffee House | Trading Floor

Actions: Print this article | Email to a friend | Permalink | Comments (4)

Post this entry to: del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit

Rick Hamilton

June 18th, 2008 3:58pm

Brown secretly fears people who can actually sell something successfully. He has failed spectacularly to sell any of his dreadful schemes to the electorate and is reduced to forcing a stream of hated bills through parliament by any trick in the book. This apology for a government couldn't even sell itself to the voters in 2005 - it is only the unfair FPTP system that gave them 55% of seats when only one voter in five chose Labour. But why worry, they are finished and they know it.

Chris O

June 22nd, 2008 7:20pm

Mr Brown can attack the Prime Minister is the same freudian slip as Harriet Harman about Gordon Brown on Question Time !

Bob

June 23rd, 2008 7:20pm

Oh for pity's sake. Brown wasn't insulting hard-working sales staff doing honest work (although they can take offence if they want to join the millions around the country who do so at the slightest provocation). He was attacking Cameron for treating politics AS IF it were a double-glazing hard sell. Nothing wrong with double glazing. But politics can't be sold that way. Stephen is over-reacting and being provocative. Nothing wrong with that - it's his job. Unlike sales people.

Richard

June 24th, 2008 9:42am

Yeah, I think Bob's nailed it. Can't think why Finkelstein at the Times Comment thought to link approvingly to this post. It's just not very... substantial. Besides, capitalism isn't some inherently "good" thing - it's neutral at best. And Brown's perfectly entitled to loathe it, for quite logical reasons, providing he tolerates it. Which he clearly does. Duh.