So, in an attempt to restore the smashed trust in our political system and our politicians, to give us the ‘different type of politics, a more open and honest dialogue‘ he promised upon becoming prime minister, Gordon Brown has said the inquiry into the Iraq war will be held in private and will not report back until Summer 2010 (that is, after the general election).

In parliament today he was unable to say whether the inquiry will have the power to compel witnesses to appear before it or whether they will have to give evidence under oath. Brown did his best to blame the Tories for the way the inquiry will be conducted. ‘The opposition wanted a Franks style inquiry [the inquiry into the Falklands war] and that’s what we’re having,’ he said making it sound like a generous concession to Tory lobbying. You’re all in this one together, lads.

One of the members of the inquiry’s committee is Sir Lawrence Freedman, professor of War Studies at King’s College, London. Writing in the Independent in 2003 at the outbreak of the war, he had this to say…

Even if it takes time to dislodge Saddam’s regime, the US – and also Britain – will emerge from this conflict hardened in their power and ready to exercise far greater influence over not only the development of Iraq but also the wider Middle East.

Let’s hope Sir Lawrence is better at recording history than he is at predicting it.

Update: Jamie: ‘Let the assistant gravedigger bury the dead‘. There aren’t any words, really. Not longer than one syllable at any rate.

Update updated: A good point from Bob:

But at the end of the day I suspect few will change their opinions because of the inquiry, in public or private. And I’m one of those. To me, Blair either lied on WMD or was conned by the US. Fool or Knave, it makes no difference, both were things for which he should have been made to resign, and if he had some evidence which would persuade me otherwise I’m damn sure he would have put it in the public domain by now.

Updated update updated: Here’s inquiry committee member Martin Gilbert comparing Bush and Blair to Roosevelt and Churchill.

This isn’t repellent because it’s a supposedly left wing PM that’s the target – fuck Gordon Brown. His crime in my eyes is getting involved with this shower of deceitful turds in the first place, and he’s been up to his nuts in every scam and scandal of the New Labour years. He wanted the premiership so badly he was prepared to do anything to get it, and now he is getting it, good and hard.

But let’s not dance around what we’ve seen with last week’s press circle jerk and shows like tonight’s Dispatches. It’s a naked attempt by a massive chunk of the nation’s ruling class to pin all the faults of the country they created – the fucked financial system, the sleaze-ridden politics, the empty PR machine that is New Labour – on Brown, leaving the rest of them to get on with business as usual.

Read the rest

When the Prime Minister has the sheer brass balls to go on national television and say…

Well I’ve got to tell you, I was brought up in a household where integrity and telling the truth and doing everything honestly was what really mattered.

…surely the only sane response is: so what the bloody hell happened then, Gordon? That whirring sound you can hear is Gordon Brown’s parents spinning in their boxes at speeds matched only by his whirligig moral compass. The weather being what it is right now, I’d quite like to be standing next the Prime Minister’s moral compass – the breeze coming off it as it blurs around its spindle must be cold enough to chill beer.

(more…)

So Gordon Brown, anti-sleaze crusader since 1983 2009, says Hazel Blears’ behaviour over her expenses is ‘totally unacceptable‘ although she ‘didn’t break any rule or the law’.

Unacceptable but within the rules. How does that even make sense? Where else in life does such a moral contortion work? Is it like competing in a chess tournament wearing only a jockstrap, for example? Starting an Ian Huntley tribute website?

Needless to say, it’s this kind of thinking that leads to horrors like hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis. Sure, bombing civilians is unacceptable, they said, but it’s done in the spirit, and to the letter, of the rules.

Amazing, almost cinematic scenes at Westminster last night as a young, naive idealist arrived at Parliament, saw the corruption around him and declared he would do all in his power to end it. Our democracy, he said…

…cannot operate like some gentleman’s club where the members make up the rules and operate them among themselves.

What passion. What vision. Just who is this Young Turk? Gordon Brown, you say? A name to remember for the future, I’ll wager. And he’s been an MP for how long? Since 1983?

Right. The script for this remake is going to need some work.

So, the Prime Minister has made it his mission – his personal mission, mind you – to bring the 2018/2022 football World Cup to Britain. A legacy! A legacy! Thank God, at last a legacy for Gordon!

It’s clear then that the Prime Minister is the only figure powerful enough to secure the massive prize of being able pay over the odds to watch millionaires kick a ball. It’s a vital personal mission for Gordon Brown.

So, what other personal missions has he declared he’s embarking on since becoming Prime Minister almost two years ago? A personal mission to secure peace in Iraq and Afghanistan? A personal mission to force through the vital measures needed against climate change? A personal mission to make sure we have a more equitable society? A personal mission to secure the release of his heroine, Aung San Suu Kyi

Er, not so much, no…

Click image for the full effect

Still, it’s coming home, it’s coming, football’s coming home…

Update: Gordon’s taken the brave step of publishing an open Letter to Aung San Suu Kyi. No word of a personal mission yet.

While we’re on the subject of Gordon Brown’s heroes and heroines, another featured in his book was Dame Cicely Saunders. She was regarded as the founder of the modern hospice movement, helping terminally ill people to die with dignity and as comfortably as possible.

You wonder what she would have made of the likes of this, done on her admirer’s watch…

Hospices are struggling with debts as funding promised by the government has failed to materialise, campaigners say.

…or this…

The Government has rejected calls to boost funding for children’s hospices to equal that of adult services.

…or this…

More than a third of hospices expect they will fail to raise enough money this financial year to fund their services.

…or this…

A HOSPICE for terminally ill children from Gloucestershire is appealing for toys and presents for the children following a major cut in funding.

What, if any, example or guidance Brown has taken from his heroine? Speaking late last year about an assisted-suicide law, Brown found a scrap of what passes for his personal morality, and said he opposed such a law because ‘I think we have got to make it absolutely clear that the importance of human life is recognised’. And then you read something like this…

The standard of care of the terminally ill in the NHS in England has been criticised by MPs. Palliative care has been given a low priority, said members of the Committee of Public Accounts.

[...]

They said people who died in hospital did not always receive first rate care, such as the most effective pain management, and were not always treated with dignity and respect.

In other words, the dying should grit their teeth and show some Brownian courage. To be fair, he doesn’t get much dignity and respect either.

The closer Gordon Brown’s Courage: Eight Portraits gets to the remainder bins, the more perverse it becomes as a joke. Gordon Brown and courage in the same sentence. We laughed at the time. We’re not laughing now.

For those who don’t remember, just before being anointed New Labour leader and Prime Minister, Brown released his anthology of profiles of Edith Cavell, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Raoul Wallenberg, Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy, Nelson Mandela, Dame Cicely Saunders* and… Aung San Suu Kyi. Nobody really knows why. Theories abound about the book being a rather pathetic pitch for some sort of reflected glory.

With most of them dead and Mandela already out of the nick, it’s been interesting to watch Brown’s actions for Aung San Suu Kyi. There haven’t been many. For instance, Brown’s heroine has received just five public utterances of support from her biggest fan since he became one of the world’s supposedly most powerful men, according to the Number 10 website.

So what can we expect from Gordon now that Aung San Suu Kyi is ‘to face trial for breaching the conditions of her detention under house arrest‘ (the breach consisting of being under house arrest when a bloke decided to swim a lake to visit her uninvited)?

It’ll be worth keeping an eye on the news. The Burmese junta had better back off before Gordon is forced to express regret and concern. Maybe we could bomb the top security prison where Ms Suu Kyi is being held with unsold copies of Gordon’s book.

(You can join Amnesty International for as little as two pounds a month.)

And then, just as a sneaking sympathy for Gordon Brown begins to creep up on you, you see him telling us which movie changed his life…

I choose “Chariots of Fire” because it’s all about the potential of young people being realised.

Like, what? Who writes, thinks or talks like that? It doesn’t exactly reek of sincerity and authenticity, does it? Are we really to believe, as the elderly Aubrey Montague and Andrew Lindsay dodder from Harold Abrahams’ memorial service, the Prime Minister sat back in his chair, sighed heavily with emotion and satisfaction and thought to himself, ‘yes, the potential of those young people was realised’?

Did watching Ben Cross and Nigel Havers doing the College Dash really help fuel Brown’s alleged passion for social justice? Watching Eric Liddell refusing to run on the Sabbath inspired compulsory voluntary service and over-stuffing the country’s universities, did it?

Which media handler thought this sounded human, let alone plausible? Who said, ‘perfect, send that’ upon reading it? Do these people have a single thought that doesn’t automatically factor in Gordon Brown’s febrile fantasy that he’s somehow making this country a better place? Couldn’t they, just once, have said: ‘Bollocks to it, tell them he thinks Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is bloody ace’? (Or whatever film not heavy with disingenuous symbolism he does actually think changed his life.)

Christ, you could make the same ‘potential realised’ argument about Scarface. Young man from dirt-poor background makes a shitload of cash and pulls Michelle Pfeiffer. Or the Star Wars prequels. ‘Prime Minister, which film changed your life?’ ‘I choose “Revenge of the Sith” because as Anakin Skywalker slaughters the younglings in the Jedi temple and completes his journey to the Dark Side, I saw that it’s all about the potential of young people being realised.’

Come on, enough’s enough now. I’ve just knawed gnawed my fist clean off…

Gordon Brown suffered a further humiliation last night after a guide to his make-up routine was left in a taxi by an aide.

The step-by-step instructions to applying bronzer and foundation were left in a London cab along with a pile of sensitive documents.

They included a guide to applying make-up and listed products the Prime Minister used to improve his appearance.

Can you have negative levels of dignity? Brown’s personal popularity is so low that wearing a donkey jacket to the Cenotaph would actually boost his ratings.

Could this be a door opening for Gordon?

Gordon Brown last night raised the stakes in the battle to reform MPs’ expenses and allowances by turning a Commons vote into a test of his authority in the face of a sustained revolt within the Labour party.

Here’s what I’d do if I were him. Push hard in the next 24 hours that this is a lone crusade to clean up the pigsty of MPs’ expenses. Designate the patch of land I’m standing as the moral high ground. Dig my heels in and lose the vote. Throw up my hands, declare forcefully that I tried my best but the dirty bastards wouldn’t let me sort this out. You sort it out. My conscience is clear, my soul pure. Skedaddle to the chairmanship of the IMF or the World Bank with the laughter ringing in my ears.

It’ll only take you a minute…

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to resign.

One’s a unsettling and bizarrely painted puppet with a fixed smile and wooden demeanour. The other is ventriloquist dummy, Lord Charles.

Lord Charles	Gordon Brown

The mechanics of the relationships depicted in those photographs are also worryingly similar.

Yay UK! Yay us! Yay Gordon Brown! First! First! First! First! First! First! First! We’re back! We’re number one! Revel in it, bathe in it, gloat in it. Up yours, Angela Merkel! Hop off, Nicholas Sarkozy! In your face, Berlusconi! Our man gets to Obama first!

Although talks will be dominated by the recession, the two leaders are also expected to discuss the situation in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

They’re vital, Earth-shaking issues, to be sure, that can only be resolved between two political titans. You can see why Gordon felt compelled to get on a plane and travel all that way in an undignified scramble for face to face talks with Obama.

It’s money well spent even in these times of thrift. No doubt they’ll throw off their jackets, roll up their sleeves and talk deep into the night about how they will re-fashion our broken world…

The prime minister will hold half an hour of personal talks with Mr Obama…

Ahem. Ok. Sorry, everyone. As you were. But what’s this…?

Writing in the Sunday Times, Mr Brown said the two leaders would discuss a deal “whose impact can stretch from the villages of Africa to reforming the financial institutions of London and New York”.

Maybe they communicate using mental telepathy – exchanging their massively complex and detailed ideas at the speed of thought, perhaps?

No?

Look, I’m sure something meaningful will get said and done in half an hour, you know, after the handshakes and the introductions and the small talk and the photocall. Hopefully the photographs will be nice. Obviously pictures of Gordon skyping the new president wouldn’t have looked as good on the Number 10 website or sounded as glamorous on the Downing Street Twitter feed…

Still, first, eh? First! First! First! First! First! First! First!

Update: Oh no! We’re not even going to get a proper photo opportunity. Downing Street should think about taking an official photoshopper with them on foreign junkets, just in case.

The Prime Minister on books:

What are you reading currently?

[Q]uite a few books about the Middle East at the moment, because I think it’s really important to find out what’s going on.

‘It’s really important.’ You think?

I used to leave my revision to the very last minute as well. When I was 16.

Gordon Brown on Tony Blair’s job as peacemaker in the current crisis:

Have you spoken to Tony Blair in his role as Middle East peace envoy?

Tony’s on holiday at the moment.

Wherever he is, I hope it’s pissing down.

Philip on Gordon Brown’s relentless optimism…

“Today, the issues may be different, more complex, more global” than the Second World War, an altogether simpler and more local affair; yet nevertheless, “the qualities we need to meet them the British people have demonstrated in abundance before”. After all, we survived the First and Second World Wars by mortgaging ourselves to the Americans (who could afford us at the time); we survived the industrial revolution by stealing from brown people and subjecting our own people to vile factory conditions, draconian poor laws and the workhouse; we kept smiling through the Black Death by blaming it on Jews and witches: whitewashed with a minimal twenty-first-century gloss, these are all good, sound New Labour coping strategies.

Read the rest…

GORDON Brown sat on the railing of the old iron bridge that takes people in and out of the small town of Bedford Falls and stared at the freezing water.

Read the rest…

We’ve just got a puppy. Lovely little fella he is. Before we got him we sat our eight year-old down and had a long talk about how a puppy would change our lives and how much hard work and dedication would be needed.

Now we have the puppy that’s been forgotten. Cuddling the puppy is fine – who doesn’t like cuddling puppies? But the walking, training, and active input? The shiftless eight year-old doesn’t enjoy that so much. It’s hard work. You see, when you’re eight, the idea of having a puppy is very, very nice. The annoying reality? Not so much.

Which brings me to human rights. Obviously.

You see, when you’re the government, the idea of having human rights is very, very nice. The annoying reality? Not so much. Look at the kids losing their minds in Yarl’s Wood detention centre. Reminisce on the ‘humanitarian intervention‘ conducted with airstrikes and cluster bombs and depleted uranium and beatings and hoodings and murder. Watch a British government nuzzling beheaders and torturers in the name of business. See Jack Straw flashing his petticoat at the Daily Mail and accusing the Human Rights Act of being a ‘villains’ charter’.

For some unexplained reason Gordon Brown gave the keynote speech at the Equality and Human Rights Commission yesterday to mark the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Chuckle Brothers, a more appropriate choice, were presumably busy. You really do have to wonder how Brown summons the balls to turn out on such occasions. Anyone with a scrap more of self-awareness and scrap less self-denial would have stayed at home, nursed a beer and covered up the mirrors.

He even had the sheer big brass bollocks to quote Eleanor bloody Roosevelt – ‘Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home…’ – and then proceeded to list atrocities far away while his government helps cover up corrupt arms deals with dictators, demonises the unemployed, terrorises asylum seekers, and debases itself before tabloid newspaper editors who hate their readers almost as much as they hate foreigners, homosexuals, the unemployed, the weak, the vulnerable, and New Labour. The so-called underclass, the despised Great Unwashed of Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell’s and Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre’s sweaty power fantasies, have far more insight into human dignity.

Like the eight year-old with the puppy, Gordon has a pleasant but hazy idea about human rights. Everything else is irritating piles of poo and puddles of pee for somebody else to clear up. Yeah, that’s right – I said poo and pee.

Here’s Gordon Brown in a Freudian slip – power fantasy mash-up. To the Prime Minister’s right is Secretary of State for Scotland Jim Murphy who, like the good little New Labour automaton he is, kept a straight face. Harriet Harman’s expression was, however, a peach.

Anybody else would have made a joke of it. But Gordon just kept on like a very humourless steamroller.

Gordon Brown marks World AIDS Day:

On this day, we remember those who have lost their lives to this terrible virus and those who have suffered from prejudice, misunderstanding or from lack of available treatment and support.

The Government marks World AIDS Day:

Two years ago, Sitiwe, who prefers not to give her full name, lived in the UK and was on regular medication for HIV. She was able to go about her normal life without worrying that her health might suddenly deteriorate. Last year she was deported to her native Zimbabwe.

To be fair to Gordon Brown, he was speaking in the past tense.

* Don’t forget the distinction.

Officer, arrest that man!

When Gordon Brown went to bow and scrape before some of the world’s most murderous theocrats last week, he took ‘27 leading business figures‘ with him. We can’t be sure who all the companies were but I think we can safely assume swimsuit and pet food manufacturers weren’t invited.

One company who was invited however was – surprise, surprise – arms dealer BAE systems. Because nothing signals the beginning of a new era of financial accountability and openness that Gordon Brown has called for than touring countries with human rights record to make Satan puke with a merchant of death mired in allegations of corruption.

And all for a reputed 500 million quid’s worth of business deals for British businesses. That’s a whopping 1.35 per cent of the £37 billion the government are pouring into the banks.

That’s not the end of the good news, as business secretary Peter Mandelson said:

“If you really want to know my true opinion, the amount of goodwill that has been generated by this will far, far exceed the value of the immediate agreements.”

The goodwill of floggers and beheaders is a great resource as we all know. Much better than cash. You can mash it up to make a nutritious broth, lag your loft with it, and it makes an excellent substitute for natural gas.

Yes, everything’s going to be all right.

I knew someone would eventually put the irrefutable case against ID cards and their attendant database in such simple and stark terms, I just can’t believe it’s the Prime Minister that’s done it…

Gordon Brown admitted yesterday that ministers can never guarantee the security of sensitive data…

Killer fact! Every time somebody argues in favour of ID cards, just quote Gordon Brown at them.

Just what that message might be though is uncertain. Here’s the Prime Minister on October 17:

The UK must reduce its dependency on oil as an energy source and move to nuclear and renewables, the PM has said. [...] Gordon Brown said the Government’s strategy was to move to a low carbon economy and escape the “dictatorship of oil”.

And here he is on November 2:

The Saudis and other countries in the Gulf States are very important, they are the countries with great revenues and oil wealth. What starts with negotiations in Saudi and elsewhere can end with great benefits for families in Britain.

So, the message seems to be that we’re going to end the ‘dictatorship of oil’ by going on our hands and knees to the plutocratic butchers that produce it. It that it? Sorted.

Would anyone like to guess what the word behind the Prime Minister’s head is in this photo?