The team that couldn’t shoot straight
I remember the Labour candidate knocking on my door in the run up to the 2005 general election and trying to persuade me to vote for her with the carrot of Tony Blair being gone soon. I wonder if she’ll be using a similar tactic at the next election:
The Prime Minister has pledged that he will step down at “some point” during the next parliament should he beat the Conservatives in two years.
Mr Brown has let a few senior Cabinet colleagues know that he intends to quit in time to allow his successor at least a year to fight the election after next, a move designed to stop speculation about his leadership.
And so it comes to this. Repeating the mistake Blair did - saying you’re leaving might steady nerves amongst the (still) faithful in the short term but from now on everybody else is looking at their watches every five minutes and tapping their feet impatiently.
New Labour Prime Ministers at the beginning of their tenures are like the England football team at the beginning of a major tournament. This one’s going to be a winner, trust us. This time, more than any other time, this time, we’re going to find a way, find a way to get away, this time, getting it all together.
The wild, blind optimism in the face of the evidence. The poor team choices and over-preponderance of donkeys and journeymen. The dull, midfield scrappery, missed opportunities and own goals followed by an early exit.
Then the next one comes along and the orgy of hope over experience starts all over again. If Blair was Sven-Göran Eriksson (they both had a habit of screwing things away from home), Brown is definitely Steve McLaren, supremely out of his depth and living in denial as the country’s prospects slide into the toilet.
Which leaves us with the candidates to be Brown’s successor. Young Andy Burnham lacks experience and his tactics are almost solely focussed on clumsy attacking rather than anything more elegant. David Miliband has yet to graduate from the under-21s. Charles Clarke looks like a grumpy testicle.
Giving the job to Jack Straw would be like giving the England squad to Pete Doherty - an initially amusing, left-field choice but massively inappropriate with an excellent chance that the country will end up eliminated and its progress set back decades.
Update: I should have called this post The Damned United.
Posted on June 21st, 2008 at 12:00 pm
| See also • B-Day • ID cards reshuffled • That’s not a “no” |
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There’s only one Andy Goram
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VaP1HB7Vew
When wsa the last England own-goal in a major tournament?
ejh’s latest blog post… Aspirations
You sod.
Hang on. There’s this from the qualifiers for Euro 2008. Does that count? It’s certainly pretty spectacular.
It is. But I suspect you were thinking of the tournament rather than the qualifiers…
ejh’s latest blog post… Aspirations
It’s a fair cop.
I suppose one could view Wayne Rooney stamping on Ronaldo’s knackers as an own goal of sorts.
ejh’s latest blog post… Aspirations
Here we go. In their first game of the 1954 >Finals, England allowed Belgium to snatch a 4-4 draw with a 94th-minute own goal by Jimmy Dickinson, England having themselves just taken the lead in injury-time. The game took place in Basle, where coincidentally tonight’s quarter-final is being played (and at the same stadium). I believe this is the only own goal England have ever conceded in a Finals tournament.
ejh’s latest blog post… Hallucinations
ejh, are you honestly telling me that taking Theo Walcott to the last World Cup in place of Defoe wasn’t a spectacular own goal by Eriksson?
Jim Bliss’s latest blog post… T. Boone calls the peak
ejh, are you honestly telling me that taking Theo Walcott to the last World Cup in place of Defoe wasn’t a spectacular own goal by Eriksson?
I’m disinclined to think that Defoe would have made any significant difference. Though it was bizarre that Walcott was taken by a manager who was manifestly unwilling to play him.
ejh’s latest blog post… Hallucinations
Bliar did this to silence gordon who is gordon scared of now?
Charles Clarke looks like a grumpy testicle
[round of applause]
Philip’s latest blog post… Delicately Balanced Fundaments