TELEGRAPH 24.9.08
1.- Leader Gordon Brown convinces his party but not the country
Labour has now had its Sarah moment, just as the Republicans did in
America last month. This time the star turn was Sarah Brown, wife of
the Prime Minister, the first party leader's spouse ever to perform
the role of warm-up act. She didn't quite say "stop picking on my
husband", but it came close.
In the event, Mr Brown did not need help. For a party leader said to
be a terminal case, he proved himself more than equal to the
challenge. Labour delegates loved the speech. It hit all the right
buttons for the faithful and acknowledged that Labour was in the
fight of its life against a resurgent Tory party.
Its emphasis on a commitment to "fairness" and the genuinely
passionate passages about the NHS were intended to shore up the
party's core vote, recalling Harold Wilson's dictum that Labour "is a
moral crusade or it is nothing".
It was an impressive performance that, for now, has ended all talk of
rebellion and leadership challenges. His barb that "this is no time
for a novice" was ostensibly aimed at David Cameron; but to everyone
in the hall, its principal target was David Miliband, the Foreign
Secretary, whose chances of replacing Mr Brown have diminished over
the past few days.
This was a speech Mr Brown should have made a year ago because it
would have obviated all the talk about what he stands for. It invited
his party to take another look at him, to reassess his qualities and
to stick with him. I am, he told them, a serious man for a serious
time. Could anyone else do better?
That was how it played in the conference hall. For those in the
outside world, the flaws were evident. He made public spending
promises with abandon despite the alarming hole in the nation's
finances. He praised the Armed Forces, albeit fleetingly, for their
heroism in Iraq and Afghanistan yet refuses to will the resources to
enable them to do their jobs properly.
He invited plaudits for taking decisive action to save Northern Rock
when early intervention might have prevented a multi-billion pound
commitment of taxpayers' money. He spoke of ushering in a new era of
social mobility; yet in the 11 years that Mr Brown has been in charge
of economic and social policy, it has actually stalled, trapping the
poorest children inside a self-perpetuating underclass with
generation after generation on benefits.
Mr Brown did acknowledge the enormity of the shocks that have rattled
the world's financial markets; but his prescriptions for the "new
global settlement" he envisages lacked detail or, in some cases,
plausibility. Gone, mercifully, were the hubristic boasts of "ending
boom and bust", blown away by the realities of the economic cycle.
He also accepted that difficult decisions would need to be taken
about future public spending because of the looming recession, but
left the impression that it would be the Tories that would have to
take them.
Mr Brown appears determined to carry on spending money the Treasury
does not have on the sort of micro-managed social engineering
projects that he loves to announce, like subsidised visits to the
theatre for young people and free nursery education for two-year-olds.
He promised to "continue our record investment in public services" as
though the good times were still here. He confronted the Tory charge
that he blew all the money during the boom without putting anything
aside for a rainy day.
"We did fix the roof while the sun was shining", [a total bare-faced
LIE! -cs] he said, pointing to record investment in schools and
hospitals. Maybe so; but in that case the builders took the country
for a ride with waste and inefficiency on a grand scale.
It was, then, a speech that meant a great deal for Labour but much
less for the country at large. There was little to convince voters
who have already made up their minds about Mr Brown.
This week in Manchester he has earned the right to continue leading
the Labour Party; but he did not succeed in setting out a case as to
why Labour deserves a fourth term.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
2. Gordon Brown's conference speech won Labour over, yet they're
doomed if he stays -EXTRACTS
By Simon Heffer
Nothing exemplifies the point that politics is a confidence trick
more than a party conference. The sea of happy, smiling, applauding
people at the end of Gordon Brown's speech in Manchester yesterday
proved this point.
Many of them had for the preceding two or three days been sitting in
bars and restaurants discussing the inevitable catastrophe that would
- indeed, I believe still will - befall their party if an inept prime
minister remains at the helm.
As one went around the conference it was far easier to find those who
said they wanted him out than those who said they wanted him to stay.
I have been to 23 of the last 24 Labour conferences, and have never
attended one so choked by a miasma of gloom and defeatism.
Ah, but how they loved him yesterday. Hypocrisy is clearly a talent
that goes right to the roots of the Labour movement these days.
( - - - - -)
Let us note one other thing, though, before we move on to consider Mr
Brown's survival prospects. This was a speech addressed solely to the
client state. Anyone middle class (an enormous proportion of the
electorate, let us not forget) will have struggled for the hour's
duration of this thoroughly uninspiring list of past so-called
achievements to find anything in it for them.
Its sectarian nature was breathtaking, almost enough to make one
think that Mr Brown might be about to go to see Her Majesty and ask
for a dissolution of parliament and an election. (- - - - -)
What is most remarkable is that the country can never have had so
much wrong with it, without any of what is wrong being remotely the
fault of the Government. At least, that is what Mr Brown appears to
think, taking his cue in complacency from an eyewateringly abominable
speech the previous day by the Chancellor, Mr Darling.
There is an enormous amount seriously wrong with this country in the
non-economic sphere that is the Government's fault in its 12th year
of office: dismal schools, dirty hospitals, a drugs problem out of
control, an epidemic of knife crime, millions trapped in welfare, and
a repulsive authoritarianism that holds civil liberties in contempt
and is efficient only in persecuting harmless members of the public
who use the wrong wheelie bin.
None of this, which makes life in this country at best a trial and at
worst a misery, was on the non-existent list of things to apologise
for yesterday. But, worst of all, neither was the economy.
(_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _)
It is because this government has, during the period Mr Brown has
been First or Second Lord of the Treasury, created excessive amounts
of money and done a prodigious job of spending much of it itself,
almost all on the clientele.
(- - - - - - -)
Yet Mr Brown seems to find nothing to apologise for: quite the
contrary. Borrowing, which is already excessive and applying upward
pressure on interest rates, may rise to an incomprehensible £100
billion a year. As well as threatening higher loan repayments, this
will also bring savage tax increases.
That, though, will be all right, because those rises will fall on the
millions at whom Mr Brown's speech was not aimed yesterday. (- - - -
- - -)
Parts of his aggressively Leftist speech yesterday smelt of the
1970s. We know therefore what to expect, God help us.
The rank and file are distressed at the squandering of the party's
electoral capital. The hard Left, notably in the unions, detect an
opportunity for class politics bigger than any since the era of Foot
and Benn. The Cabinet is paralysed.
(- - - - - - -)
Mr Brown is in denial. So are most of his Cabinet, who in proper
Soviet style put on a magnificent display of being all in it together
with him. (- - - - - - -)
He lived up to expectations. That is why his party, if it won't
remove him, is doomed.
===========================
THE TIMES 24.9.08
Labour needs a wand to make Gordon Brown disappear
The attempts to rally round the Prime Minister are hopelessly
misguided. He should plan his exit strategy now
Alice Miles
Oh that was painful. Agony. It was squirmingly, screamingly,
startlingly bad. It was dull. It was plodding. It was morose. "When
he speaks to you it's like a mental block; I just zone out," said a
woman on Newsnight's floating-voter panel the night before. "Cheer
up!" the panel unanimously urged the Prime Minister.
Cheer up? I nearly hanged myself from my hotel trouser press. In
place of levity we had seriousness, hard work and a moral purpose.
And New Rules.
There were some nice lines, but mostly it was a list, not a speech:
thud after thud of meaningless proclamations - we will be the party
of law and order, we will be the party of the family, this will be
the British century.
Voters wanted a sense of direction. He gave them health checks,
broadband connections and nursery places for Mancunian two-year-olds.
(You cannot legislate to end child poverty.) They wanted his personal
journey. He told them how he was once not in danger of being half-
blind - but of being completely blind. They wanted hope. He gave them
a victims' commissioner.
Just as I emerged from under the pillow, home straight in sight, Mr
Brown gave us David, the ten-year-old tortured to death, and 20,000
children dying from disease. This wasn't a speech, it was a funeral
oration. Even the sole joke was miserable: lucky I never expected to
be popular! Boom-boom.
And delegates lapped it up. This is Labour at its worst, introverted,
dogmatic, and huddled around a loser.
It was "an excellent conference speech", said David Blunkett
afterwards - "it'll need a bit of assessment as to how much it
reaches the public outside". Nicely put.
Yes, we need a new settlement, with an exit door for Gordon Brown. He
has to go and he will. In the strange otherworld that has passed for
a conference this week - "taking tea on the Titanic", as one minister
put it - that much is absolutely clear. Mr Brown is a good, decent
man but he cannot lead Labour to the next election, not even with
J.K. Rowling on his side. He cannot communicate and he cannot
inspire. Look at the polls; Labour is facing obliteration. Mr Brown
is its Voldemort, the flight of death.
But how? How should he go? That need not be nearly as bad as the
crazed grins on the faces of half the Government this week have
supposed. The answer lies in the return of Tony Blair's praetorian
guard: Alastair Campbell, John Prescott, Neil Kinnock, Philip Gould,
the ghosts of 1994.
New Labour has turned full circle. Peter Mandelson has even,
hilariously, got himself into the identical position of actively
supporting Mr Brown (they talk often on the phone) while knowing he
should be supporting a different candidate, David Miliband or James
Purnell or whoever it turns out to be. It will be fascinating to
watch that one play out again.
The ghosts have, for the most part, got it completely, utterly wrong.
These guys should be managing an exit strategy for Mr Brown, not
hanging out on the conference steps like dementors, bullying passers-
by into accepting stickers or pledging loyalty to the leader. They
have got themselves in the wrong place on this. As a short-term
tactic it is just about OK, but it is not - to borrow a familiar
critique Mr Campbell used to make of successive Tory leaders - a
strategy. "None of them are in the same class as Gordon Brown," Mr
Prescott declared of putative rivals. That is absolutely untrue:
wrong, wrong, wrong. The campaign for a Labour fourth term could
destroy its chances of achieving one.
It is over. The Blair-Brown era needs to end and they all should
leave the stage. Mr Blair, now supposedly Labour members' preferred
leader by a massive 43 per cent (they wouldn't say that if he were
still here), may be the solution to unravelling this. It was always
about both of them, Blair and Brown, and they should finish it
together. I understand that in private discussions the two men have
already faced the reality that the Prime Minister might not last the
term. Mr Brown is no fool and he is a good Labourite. I think he will
find a way to end it.
He should do the best a good man in his position can do; work out an
exit strategy, call a leadership election and remain as Prime
Minister until Labour elects a new one, perhaps next spring. The
alternative is the slow and painful decline of the Prime Minister,
resignation following resignation until Labour is as wounded as its
leader, Mr Brown trying to cling on until his preferred heir is ready
to inherit the crown. Meanwhile, the Conservatives escape unscrutinised.
Labour needs to find the best, the person who can cast a spell, its
Harry or Hermione. It isn't good enough to seek to clear the way for
David Miliband, as some are trying to do. He has not done as well as
he should have this week to be considered the natural heir apparent.
"They used to say Michael Heseltine tickled the clitoris of the Tory
conference," remarked one bright Labour aide after watching him
address 200 natural supporters at the ultra new Labour Progress
group. "David has just come in and patted them on the head." We need
to see all the candidates in a clean, open contest, untainted by the
ghosts and battles of 1994. Let us have no "Blairites" or
"Brownites". Let us have David Miliband, and Ed Balls, James Purnell,
Harriet Harman, Jon Cruddas - anyone else who thinks they stand a
chance. Andy Burnham, perhaps. Ed Miliband, even. They should all stand.
The contest must be as wide as possible, to see which one possesses
the magic the party seeks. One thing this week has shown very
clearly: there is nothing to be downhearted about. Labour has a lot
of talent to showcase. But Mr Brown has to make space for it. That is
his moral purpose.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
. HAVE YOUR SAY
You have hit nails on the head but the man IS clearly difunstctional
(sorry! touch of the Prescott's, his big fan). Brown should be a
solitary rat-catcher in the drains under London. There he can shuffle
and mumble, smile illogically, laugh wierdly and at least not put the
Nation into more debt.
John, Kouvola, Finland
So Brown is the man to see us through a major UK recession that's
mainly his creation. That's like having the arsonist in charge of the
fire brigade.
Richard, Newcastle, England
Why do you spoil an article by making the grossly dishonest statement
that Brown is a good,decent man ? he is neither and if you paid some
attention to the spiteful, underhand treachery, lies and bullying he
has employed to further his career and ideology you might like to
retract the comment
Bryan, Totland, UK
============================
OTHER COMMENTS - Extracts
The Sun
There was plenty of 'I' and 'me' but only one vague reference to
someone named 'Tony'.
We saw a couple of crowd pleasers - free prescriptions for cancer
patients and, eventually, the long-term sick.
There were plenty more promises on health care, crime-fighting,
literacy and care for the elderly.
The PM called this the "fairness" society, a "new settlement for our
times".
It was almost as if he were writing off a decade of Labour government
After 11 years in power, is it fair we are still struggling to teach
kids to read and write?
Is it fair the elderly must sell their homes to pay for a bed in
second-rate care homes?
Is it fair three million new jobs have been created, yet just as many
claim to be too sick to work?
Financial Times
"A stunt of such effrontery that Tony Blair must for once have nodded
in approval," Matthew Engel writes in his sketch for the Financial
Times.
Brown buys time
Gordon Brown gave a clever speech to the Labour party conference. But
it was neither compelling nor convincing. Mr Brown inevitably lapsed
into claiming credit for statistically dubious achievements - 3m new
jobs, for example, or 1m new businesses. A familiar ruse.
Mr Brown's problem is that whereas his reputation was built on
economic competence and the ability to deliver crowd-pleasing
policies in the good times, the treasury is now empty and his record
is being revalued negatively.
He appears to be offering himself as the best available manager in
the circumstances. These circumstances will win him some time - for now.
Independent
How Brown blew his big chance
The man to dig us out or the man who got us in? - - - - -Instead of
there being a fiscal surplus, as there was at the same phase of the
previous cycle, there is a huge and growing deficit. In the first
five months of this fiscal year revenues are coming in well below
budget while spending has been well above.
The Tories accuse Gordon Brown of pursuing a scorched earth policy:
of wrecking public finances so that when they take over they will
have to slash spending and put up taxes, and take the blame. I don't
think that is fair. Assuming Labour can hang on somehow for another
18 months, the full catastrophe of our public accounts will become
clear. We will have the largest deficit as a percentage of GDP of any
major EU country and conceivably even larger next year than the US
and Japan. Where the blame lies will be obvious. Voters aren't fools;
tribal yes, foolish no.
- - - he would like more time to try and undo the mistakes he knows
he has made - in particular the mistakes he set out not to make in
1997. But we won't give him the time, nor should we.
Daily Express
BROWN'S 'FAIRER' BRITAIN? WHAT A JOKE...
GORDON Brown was last night accused of attempting to pull off his
grossest deceit yet.
Battling to save his job, the Prime Minister audaciously claimed to
be "on the side" of Middle Britain.
----- Campaigners also dismissed his claims to be on the side of
Middle Britain. Mark Wallace, of the TaxPayers' Alliance, said: "This
was a thoroughly deceitful speech.
"Gordon Brown's words were about sympathising with ordinary people
and protection in the credit crunch. But while people are struggling
under a huge tax burden, he plans to increase public spending even
further."
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