Gordon Brown to dignity: ‘You’re fired!’
After hearing his latest populist self-abasement, you really have to wonder if there’s anywhere left to go for Gordon Brown in his desperate quest to make the British people like him. Today we have:
I like TV programmes like X Factor, Dragons’ Den and The Apprentice. They show the value of aspiration, how anyone can achieve things.
This after his claimed love for the Arctic Monkeys (a claim later disavowed during his recent conference speech, with the ‘joke’ ‘I’m more interested in the future of the Arctic Circle than the future of the Arctic Monkeys’ seemingly the zenith of the Brown sense of humour), his declaration that Paul Gascoigne’s goal against Scotland at Euro 96 is his favourite football moment, and his new whiter than white smile.
Has he actually watched X Factor, Dragons’ Den and The Apprentice? If these were to be the benchmarks of aspiration under a Brown Premiership, then we really are buggered. What next, a new theory on wealth creation? ‘Winning the national lottery shows the value of aspiration, how anyone can achieve things’?
The programmes are even more pernicious than America’s so-called Horatio Alger myth in their power to delude. At least in Alger’s books the aspiring protagonists ‘achieve the American dream of wealth and success through hard work, courage, determination, and concern for others’. Under Brown’s model, the same success is achieved by merely sucking up to some domineering and ill-mannered patron.
It’s the very essence of ‘networking’ which is rapidly becoming the only way to succeed in Britain today (if you didn’t go to Oxford or have a father who runs a newspaper) despite the activity pretty much translating as ‘pretending to like someone you don’t in order to extract from them something you want’. It’s also the very essence of the Blairite meritocracy which has poisoned the well of genuine aspiration and dictates that it’s not what you know but who you know that allows you to get on in life. You find someone richer and more powerful than you to do the heavy lifting for you. It’s writ large throughout Blair’s career – to pick a random example – from the trade union fix that got him his safe Sedgefield seat to his perching himself on Bush’s right hand.
In a week where Blair, yet again, showed himself to be the philistine we all know him to be, was it too much to expect that Brown, the man regarded as his successor and New Labour’s intellectual powerhouse, might resist trying to outdo him? Like I said, where left for him to go from here?
Expect him to say sometime soon that he’d like to give that Paris Hilton one. It’s just about all that’s left in his race-to-the-bottom quest to prove he’s just like us. That’s if he isn’t going to allow himself to be photographed after a night out, sick down his suit, kebab in hand, a love-bitten blonde on one arm and a celtic-design tattoo on the other. Maybe the next time he gets asked a difficult question in Parliament he could strike a pose and shout, ‘You on crack, bitch?’
Posted on November 5th, 2006 at 9:58am under Brown, Culture, media and sport, UK politics
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• 10 Comments |
It’s the very essence of ‘networking’ which is rapidly becoming the only way to succeed in Britain today (if you didn’t go to Oxford or have a father who runs a newspaper) despite the activity pretty much translating as ‘pretending to like someone you don’t in order to extract from them something you want’.
Couldn’t have put it better myself. That aside, any politician who uses a show like Dragon’s Den (where people have to suck up to a bunch of complete and utter tossers in order to receive funding for their business) as an example the British people should follow needs to be watched like a fucking hawk. The more time passes, the more daunting the prospect of Prime Minister Brown becomes.
[...] I see Justin at Chicken Yoghurt is even less impressed by Brown’s remarks than am I, and considerably more eloquent about it. Technorati tags: UK, Politics, Reality TV, Gordon Brown Posted in UK, Spin, hubris | [...]
I have a theory that Brown and Blair are Podpeople, descended from the Ascended Masters to rule over and robotize the populace. David appears to be a fellow clone too.
If there are any TV producers reading, a reality show where you win by quitting shitty jobs run by tossers in the most satisfying manner possible would be a winner, I reckon. “This week, Brian told his boss to stick his franking machine up his arse, but Kath emailed everyone in the company her boss’ top five porn bookmarks…”
“Blairite meritocracy”!
Are you sure you have the right combination of words there?
Best regards
I think so, although it would probably look better as: …Blairite ‘meritocracy’…
his declaration that Paul Gascoigne’s goal against Scotland at Euro 96 is his favourite football moment
A Scot said that?
If there are any TV producers reading, a reality show where you win by quitting shitty jobs run by tossers in the most satisfying manner possible would be a winner, I reckon.
On a site where fridgemagnet is a moderator, he may recall somebody (not me) posting the following haiku:
This Haiku is my
Official resignation
Now go fuck yourself
A Scot said that?
Yep.
Agree completely except for the judgement about Oxford- I went there and you still have to network and perform all the jumping throuhg hoops- apart from that you are entirely right.
Yes, but isn’t the point about Oxford that it makes that networking extremely easy?
(Actually the hardest thing is probably to go to Oxford and then subsequently not do well. Stil, I managed – twenty years after finishing there, I’m penniless.)