A Labour-supporting friend of mine, who should know about these things, emails with a serious question: “Do you think that GB having to withdraw the YouTube doctrine on expenses is the biggest humiliation in Downing Street communications since the Women’s Institute? I can’t think of an equal.” Well, I can. The botched election and the Damian McBride affair, to name but two – but that bizarre YouTube dance, admittedly, is a close third.
As my friend continues, “I used to think the Brownites were all tactics and no strategy but that’s unfair. They are **** at tactics too. Amateurs. The budget is the worst I have seen since Howe in 1980.”
Seriously, much damage has been done by that YouTube dance he performed. As Quentin Letts says of his eyebrows: “They could have been attached to a fly fisherman’s line, so spectacularly did they jump.” To look at that video now is to see a government in meltdown. Show it to anyone from overseas, and say “this is our Prime Minister” and they’d sell whatever sterling they have left. The collapse of the expenses deal would be funny if the same incompetence had not also ruined the public finances for a generation.
P.S. For those of you who haven’t seen it, click here for the techno version of Brown’s YouTube Doctrine.
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