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Politics

Brown cares more about faction fights than the betrayal of 25 million citizens

Fraser Nelson

Wednesday, 21st November 2007

Gordon Brown's attempt to control everything means he controls nothing

There is so much faux theatricality in the House of Commons that it is rare to hear a genuine gasp of incredulity of the sort that coursed around the chamber when Alistair Darling laid out the scale of the latest and greatest disaster on Tuesday. The personal details of 25 million people, including the bank account numbers and sort codes for every child benefit recipient, had been put on two computer discs which were sent from HM Revenue & Customs in Newcastle to the National Audit Office in London a month ago, and lost in the post. The personal details of every parent in the land are on the loose.

Despite attempts by the Chancellor to blame this on the ‘junior official’ who sent the data or the courier company, systemic problems are quickly becoming clear. Mr Brown’s merger of the Inland Revenue and HM Customs has bequeathed an organisation so dysfunctional that it is possible for data of this sort, of incalculable value to identity fraudsters, to be handled and transferred in the most sloppy, careless manner imaginable. Stories are now emerging about how, post-merger, it was not unusual to find entire rooms of unopened mail.

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Julian Cox

November 23rd, 2007 2:13pm

Having quite rightly behaved like a dog with a juicy bone over the election fiasco, why is it that now there is something over which the nation does in fact have every right to be consulted - a clearly incompetent administration without an electoral mandate - Cameron and the Conservative front bench are silent on the issue? We should immediately turn to our friends in the Country Alliance to find a hound desperate for the smell of blood and capable of going into full cry. There can't be so great a carbon pawprint over a can of Chum, can there? Never was there a stronger case for a concerted campaign to let the people choose. If it is not parties that win elections but governments that lose them, Brown would be sent to the gulag of electoral opprobrium that he alone has created. Unleash the pack from the kennels!

J ogden

November 25th, 2007 7:20pm

The reason brown put darling as chancelor is he could not do the job of the transport minister properly make a mess of one and promote them to a higher post how dense can one get.by the way have we got a m.p called blair is it right he is in the middle east i wonder what he will get up to nexst/

John O'Kane

November 28th, 2007 8:03am

"...reputation for competence"????

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Glasgow East is Brown’s dirty little secret: a hideous, costly social experiment gone wrong

Fraser Nelson

Glasgow East symbolises — as few other places in Britain can — the fact that the problem Labour faces is not just lack of leadership but lack of mission. What is to be seen in this constituency encapsulates and dramatises Labour’s abject failures to comprehend, let alone tackle, the nature of the poverty which grips our council estates.
For all the latest on the Glasgow East by-election, visit Coffee House