Fraser Nelson is a Times columnist and a former editor of The Spectator.
That Gordon Brown is a compulsive, effortless liar is demonstrated yet again by today’s feature-length interview in The Guardian. He is hoping that the majority of journalists who interview him will either a) not find the total spending figures, or b) be unable to adjust them for inflation. I’m not saying Katharine Viner was credulous
George Osborne was in bed when he heard Andrew Lansley on breakfast radio last week discussing health spending. It was an unremarkable story about Labour’s budgets, with no hint of the political bombshell about to drop. The shadow health secretary was saying that the Tories would increase health spending — which is, of course, official
I have so far treated Gordon Brown’s green shoots strategy with derision. He has convinced himself that a recovery is going to take root and make the nation realise that they do, in fact, love the Dear Leader. Whereas I first believed his green shoots were a mirage – now, I am not so sure.
Cameron kicked off on the 10 percent issue. “Some Labour MPs were a bit confused when they were told about 10 percent: they thought it meant his opinion poll ratings.” The gag went down well, and Cameron picked up where he left off with those spending totals that Brown read out in PMQs last week.
For those who missed Rory Bremner doing an impersonation of Gordon Brown’s dancing on YouTube, the Prime Minister has just done a repeat version during his atrocious speech in Blackpool. You wonder if he has been watching aerobics videos, instead of “how to improve your diction” videos. It was all hands up, then hands down.
Yet another one of Gordon Brown’s ‘octet’ – the eight advisers named in The Spectator three years ago – is moving on. Michael Ellam is finally on his way back to HM Treasury and I wonder why. Has he just got fed up, like Tom Watson? Or is he being sent to HMT as Brown’s
When Gordon Brown sends ministers out to lie about his spending plans, he can only really depend on Ed Balls to do it effortlessly. Some, like Andy Burnham, don’t understand his elaborate scam – and tie themselves in knots trying to. But Liam Byrne is a former businessman who does understand a balance sheet (and
George Osborne’s article today is a breakthrough in the public debate about cuts. I argued in the NotW yesterday that, so far, no party is telling the whole truth because the Tories have been using phrases like “spending restraint,” which is hardly commensurate with the cuts in prospect. That point is now out of date.
This is the graphic to my News of the World column, representing the choice at the next election: two sorts of cuts. If Gordon Brown were smart, he would argue that his cuts would be better-aimed and more compassionate. Instead, he chooses to lie, saying – as he did in PMQs – that the choice
Gordon Brown does not change his ways, or his tactics. It will have shocked him to find the newspapers rejecting as a lie his claim that he would not cut spending. But he’ll be thinking, “they’ll get bored of this rebuttal and I won’t get bored of my attack.” So his strategy is to bulldoze
Now that Gordon Brown’s central attack line of ‘Labour investment v Tory cuts’ has been exposed as a lie, what will he do? His claim that he has planned no cuts under Labour has now been comprehensively exposed as false by Fleet Street today. Plus bloggers are producing figures and proofs – Dizzy and Chris
Andy Burnham has just let the cat out of the bag on Channel Four News: Labour would cut by 10 percent too. Our new Health Secretary has just been given a robust interview by Jon Snow and was asked if he would say there would not be cuts elsewhere if health is protected. His reply:
Little did I imagine, when I calculated that the Tory spending parameters would involve a 10 percent cut in non-NHS departments, that it would attract such an audience. Brown repeaed it on Marr, as if it were an official Tory figure. But when Andrew Lansley mentioned it this morning as an official Tory figure then,
The exchange that follows is not a spoof. It happened on the Today programme this morning and simply defies parody. David Miliband is taking of the need for “radical change”. James Naughtie says that it “failed to occur”. He replies: “No no no. It did occur on the economy. You cannot deny that we have
It’s over and Brown is safe. This, at least, is the verdict from the Commons bars from which I have just done a brief tour to sample the mood on behalf of Coffee Housers. One minister I spoke to – by no means a diehard Brown loyalist – whipped out a list of dissenters who
Cameras are forbidden from filming the committee corridor in full action, which is a shame because it is quite a sight. It seems that Brown’s loyalists have been instructed to go and brief as many journalists as they can—not that anyone is being fooled by the spin, but it is an amusing sight nevertheless. Just
Ben Bradshaw has come out of the PLP meeting claiming Brown gave “the speech of a lifetime”. What a shame the rest of us never see this fiery, articulate Prime Minister. When he goes out in public he is trapped in the body of a stuttering, gaffe-prone bully. Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth was also sent out of the meeting at
I’m standing outside Committee Room 14 where Brown is having this supposed make or break meeting. As soon as he swanned in, there was a cheer and the banging of desks. Had he walked into a Tory meeting by mistake? No, this was his henchmen doing their version of crowd control. And there is plenty
To understand why Jane Kennedy has gone, ask yourself: what does Gordon Brown fear most? Not the spineless Cabinet. Not the PLP. But he could be ousted if someone uses on him the tactics he ruthlessly used to depose Tony Blair: line up junior government members and have them resign hour after hour. Last summer,
It gets worse for Labour members. As if yesterday’s survival of Brown were not enough, as if tomorrow’s Euro results will not make them suicidal, Guido has today exposed the lines that the automaton ministers are told to take about it all (see here) and the effect seems to be to hollow out the soul
