Here we go. Yet another generous dollop of ‘masochism strategy‘:

Prime Minister Gordon Brown is set to reassure the Labour Party he can lead them to victory despite disastrous results at local elections.

…

Mr Brown is giving media interviews on Sunday as newspapers speculate about various plans to oust him.

I don’t know about you but watching this defeated and defeated-looking, hang-dog, humiliated and hunched, inspiration-free ivory tower-dwelling fool beg for his job is not the way to spend a fresh Sunday morning.

The Prime Minister will once again be insisting that denial is a river in Africa. You get the feeling that he will be closing his interviews with ‘They couldn’t hit an elephant at this dist…’ (It’s certainly something they should consider carving on New Labour’s tombstone.)

It’ll be a miserable, miserable, miserable spectacle, demeaning to all. Platitudes are not a breakfast cereal. Go and find something far more wholesome and nourishing. We’re off car-booting to bring home more crap we don’t need to fill space we don’t have. A bit like New Labour law makers.

Politically, then, Gordon was wise to stop the pay rise, because the general British attitude to offenders is as brutal and vindictive as it is pig-headed and self-defeating. If a study were published tomorrow establishing beyond the tiniest doubt that awarding the extra £1.50 would reduce reoffending rates by 60 per cent, and save an annual £6bn for an outlay of £6m, the phone-ins and blogs would still resound to that ritual hunting cry of political correctness gone mad, from representatives of the vast majority of voters who favour the reintroduction of capital punishment, however incontrovertibly proven its worthlessness as a deterrent may be.

Read the rest

You have to say that Gordon’s a trier. The day before polling in the local and London mayoral elections and he’s spraying treats around for everybody.

It was a Blairite tactic to try and be all things to all people and, while it was all too transparent for those who could be bothered to look, there was at least a veneer of arrogant calm about it. Brown, while using the same methods, comes across as having an air of sweaty desperation.

(more…)

While he was on the GMTV sofa yesterday, Gordon Brown referred to skunk as ‘lethal’ three times. Journalists followed this up at the Number 10 press briefing later that day. Is cannabis ‘lethal’? The government will, of course, have copious evidence to back up the Prime Minister’s claims, yes?

Put repeatedly that the Prime Minister had used the word “lethal” to describe the use of cannabis and asked if there were examples of cannabis being lethal, the PMS said that nobody was disputing the potential dangerous impacts of cannabis and that that was why cannabis was an illegal drug.

That’s a ‘no’ then. Unless it’s some kind of patois in the vein of ‘Wow man, this stuff is lethal!’

Gordon Brown has finally done something right: This morning he’s declined to appear on Victoria Derbyshire’s racist and psycho magnet on Five Live.

Is this a sign of a turnaround in the Prime Minister’s fortunes? Does his refusal to pander to the forces of anti-intellectualism mark the emergence of a more thoughtful and considerate leader?

So, Gordon Brown makes a ‘keynote’ speech on foreign policy. Here are some numbers.

In a speech of 5,500 words, there were the following mentions…

…of Iraq: 0
…of Afghanistan: 0
…of Iran: 0
…of Darfur: 1
…of ‘human rights’: 1
…of China: 3
…of ‘capital’: 3
…of ‘globalisation’: 8
…of ‘terrorism’ or ‘terrorists’: 10

Just saying, is all.

So, parliamentary private secretary Angela Smith has retracted her threat to resign over the abolition of the 10p rate of tax after arm twisting from the egregious Geoff Hoon:

Smith’s change of heart came after Geoff Hoon, the chief whip, warned her that her departure would hand a gift to the Tories. A government source indicated that ministers thought Smith, MP for Sheffield Hillsborough, had been naive. “I don’t think Angela quite realised what she was doing. I don’t think she quite realised the severity of it,” the source said.

It’s clear now that somebody failed to have the same little chat with Gordon Brown - or so bravely speak anonymously to the press - when as Chancellor he decided he was abolishing the bottom rate. For want of a nail the kingdom was lost, and all that.

…Because I know you’ve been worried about it. After a period of uncertainty, a ‘portrait of former Prime Minister Tony Blair has been put in place on the Grand Staircase of Number 10′.

From now on, the last thing Gordon will see each night as he toddles off to bed will be his nemesis. You can see why he might have resisted it for so long.

Needless to say, in his picture, Tony is gazing wistfully off to the right.

Obviously I lack the mental capacity for high politics. That’s why I’m typing this in my pants and Gordon Brown gets to shake hands with dictators.

So, could somebody please explain to me the logic of this reply from Gordon Brown at Prime Minister’s Questions this week:

Mr. Wallace: Why do the people of Wales have a full-time Secretary of State, while our armed forces and the Scots must make do with a part-timer?

The Prime Minister: The new Secretary of State for Wales has responsibilities in addition to his responsibilities for Wales. He is overseeing the British-Irish Council, he is responsible for the joint ministerial committees on devolution, he is the Minister responsible for digital inclusion, and he is responsible for data security and information assurance. Those responsibilities are in addition to his responsibilities as Secretary of State for Wales.

Now, to my un-Machiavellian mind, the point Mr Wallace ((Lancaster and Wyre, Con) is making is that Scotland and the armed forces are getting a bum deal by having a part-time secretary of state. The Prime Minister parries by saying, by my reading, that actually your question is wrong clever-clogs, Wales are also getting a bum deal because they have a part time secretary of state as well. Nyah, nyah, nyah-nyah, nyah.

Now, why would Gordon Brown regard that as game, set and match to him? It’s trivial I suppose, it’s just I’m jealous that I’m incapable of such mental gymnastics. A man can clearly go places with those kinds of abilities. It’s bordering on a super-power. At the very least, when he retires, Gordon Brown should write batshit science fiction novels like Philip K Dick.

12:05 - The Prime Minister asks his first question.

12:13 - The Prime Minister asks his second question.

12:14 - The Prime Minister asks his third question.

12:30 - And that’s it. Three questions again from the Prime Minister. It’s a formula that seems to be working, but how long before his opponents get the measure of him?

There’s no denying that the Beijing National Stadium is an impressive building. Gordon Brown certainly seemed to enjoy his press conference there over the weekend.

The thing is, I can’t say I’m taken with the colour of the stadium as it is. It’s a sort of dirty grey. How did they get it like that? Was it Beijing’s smog (that Gordon mentioned it in passing during his photo opportunity)? Maybe the builders mixed into the concrete the ashes of their colleagues who’ve been killed (that Gordon didn’t mention in passing during his photo opportunity) during construction?

I don’t know about you, but dead builders seem quite a high price to pay for a bit of running and jumping about. The Chinese regime obviously think it’s a price worth paying to help rehabilitate its international reputation.

I suppose Peter Hain is too old to start digging up sports pitches again?

I’d like to suggest a small reform* to Prime Minister’s Questions in Parliament.

To wit: I think it should be renamed Prime Minister’s Answers. That way Gordon Brown would be in no doubt as to what he’s supposed to be supplying during these sessions.

Of late, and in a literal interpretation of the session’s title, the Prime Minister has taken to providing his own questions rather than answering the ones directed at him.

Here he is, last week:

I have to ask him: does he support identity cards for foreign nationals, which we are introducing this year?

I ask the right hon. Gentleman again: does he support ID cards for foreign nationals—yes or no? He says that he is against them; is he in favour of them for foreign nationals?

Why did the Conservatives have 18 years of not reducing the rate of capital gains tax?

And he was at it again this week:

The Leader of the Opposition wholeheartedly supported our action. He said that it was right to inject “liquidity to Northern Rock”. Is he changing his mind?

Perhaps the Leader of the Opposition will answer the question: does he still support our action?

Is the right hon. Gentleman now telling me that, from a position of wholeheartedly supporting that action, he is now against it—yes or no?

It really isn’t right. The Prime Minister is asking more questions each week than the leader of the Liberal Democrats. I’d say the Downing Street web team need to update the website or risk action for false advertising:

The PM answers questions every week that Parliament is in session…

If Gordon Brown wants to ask David Cameron questions across the Commons’ dispatch box, isn’t some kind of job swap in order?

To be fair though, this technique of evasion is harder than it looks. It’s obviously stolen from the old ‘Who’s Line Is It Anyway?‘ game where you have to respond to every question with another question. Try it on your next boring car journey. It’s like the ‘can’t say yes/no’ game - you have to have your wits about you. Gordon Brown must have a mind like a greased whippet.

That said, such lightning-fast thought processes clearly provide no impetus towards democratic accountability. I, for example, have a three-year old who can do jigsaws like they’re coming back into fashion but you try convincing her she’s in the minority in wanting to watch In the Night Garden AGAIN. All you get is plaintive, playing-for-time and misdirecting questions from her as well. She just does it with a little more dignity and panache.

*In it’s true sense, not as code for privatising it.

Gordon Brown is in the Observer today crapping on again about how ID cards are going to save us.

Alex Harrowell examines the Prime Minister’s argument with surgeon-like skill and efficiency. The patient does not survive. Great stuff.

I don’t have much to say on the whys and wherefores of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination. Sharper minds than mine can give you excellent theories on who might have done it and why, whether Bhutto’s hagiographers are right and what happens next.

What caught my ear was some of the language used by politicians who, we can very reasonably suspect, might see Bhutto’s death as something of an opportunity. Take Gordon Brown, for example:

This atrocity strengthens our resolve that terrorists will not win there, here or anywhere in the world.

Easy for a man standing behind bullet-proof glass to say. Whose resolve? Our resolve? Put another body on the fire, would you, said Gordon. You do have to admire his ‘me and you against the world, kid’ spirit, mind. Like in his New year message where he says:

Just as we withstood the Asia crisis, the American recession, the end of the IT bubble and the trebling of oil prices and continued to grow…

Who’s this ‘we‘? I know quite a few people still crawling from the wreckage of some of those disasters. And while none of them starved, certainly a few will never walk again without help and none of them feel like crowing about a retooled Spirit of the Blitz either.

Forget for a minute that Brown might come to regret that use of the word ‘terrorists‘ in his eulogy to Bhutto. Should anyone in the Musharraf regime be fingered in connection with the assassination expect the word to be replaced with something like ‘rogue elements‘. Such linguistic contortions are the smaller price paid for cosying up to dictators. Concentrate instead on the word ‘win‘.

Much has been said about the nature of The War Against Terror and whether it can be won, lost or - looking at nascent efforts to engage with the Taliban in Afghanistan - drawn. Does Brown mean anything by ‘win’ other than paying lip service to propaganda?

I suppose if he’s looking at T.W.A.T. as one big game, then yes, the terrorists mustn’t be allowed to win. After all, it’s not as if there isn’t an inexhaustible supply of substitutes to replace those players stretchered off. To some, however, the assassination of a moderate and female Pakistani voice looks like a pretty big victory in its own right. I imagine Benazir Bhutto’s family aren’t viewing her death as a bump in the road to victory.

To Gordon’s mind, it’s probably akin to conceding a goal just before half-time. Yes, it’s particularly demoralising but after the break we’ll just have to dust ourselves off and level the score before notching the winner. Not forgetting the own goals of a million Iraqi dead and a resurgent Taliban that we’ll have to scrape back as well.

The coaching staff might want to look at substituting over-rated defender Pervez Musharraf who seems to be flagging. He’s definitely leaving space for the opposition to exploit. He’s promised to ‘redouble‘ his efforts in fighting Islamic extremists which would suggest he hasn’t been giving the team his full 100% in what is, after all, a vital fixture.

For teachers, pupils and parents at five successful schools across the length of England, the news that Gordon Brown was to single them out by name in his first major education speech was a welcome recognition of their dedication and hard work.

Local newspaper headlines on the morning of the speech last Wednesday suggested that the Prime Minister was to praise these institutions as beacons of excellence whose initiatives and ideas should be replicated across the education world.

But today The Times can reveal that Mr Brown never praised the schools in the speech and that at least five local communities may have been the victims of a sophisticated government spin operation.

read the rest

(via Political Betting)

Still no word on when Gordon Brown is going to get Aung San Suu Kyi out of jail, him being so admiring of her courage and everything during his Labour Party leadership bid:

For me, Suu Kyi defines the meaning of courage. Once courage was seen chiefly as a battlefield virtue. In most accounts the emphasis is on the physical - physical risk, physical vulnerability or physical triumph. It has been seen as an almost exclusively male, physical attribute: courage as daring and bravado, even recklessness; indeed, in many languages, the word for courage is derived from the word for ‘man’. But Suu Kyi represents the power not of the powerful but of the powerless: a woman, a prisoner of conscience up against a state with one of the worst human-rights violation records in the world; a country of only 20 million people with 1,000 political prisoners, 500,000 political refugees, children as young as four in prison, and poets and journalists tortured just for speaking out.

So what, if anything is being done, by our doughty defender of human rights, bravely speaking out in print, and his government? According to the Burma Campaign UK (via Ten Per Cent), not an awful lot:

With tight restrictions inside the country, organisations and projects promoting human rights and democracy have to be based in exile, and work through underground networks in Burma. Despite the International Development Committee reccomending funding for these organisations, D[epartment] f[or] I[nternational] D[evelopment] is still refusing to fund such projects. Many of these organisations played a crucial role in getting news and images out of Burma during the recent protests and crackdown.

‘This is not joined up government,’ said Mark Farmaner. ‘The government isn’t putting its money where its mouth is. The Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary have been leading the international community in supporting Burma’s democrats, but DFID seems to be going in a different direction, only prepared to deliver aid to people and projects that the Burmese dictatorship agrees to.’

Still, look at it this way, Aung San Suu Kyi and Burma might be no closer to freedom after 120 days of her great admirer being in power, but at least they’re no further from it either. And isn’t that the very essence of our courageous Prime Minister? No boom, no bust, just steady-as-she-goes. Sometimes it takes courage to do absolutely sod all.

Gordon pipes up at last:

Mr Speaker, I would also like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the work of our civilian and locally employed staff in Iraq, many of whom have worked in extremely difficult circumstances exposing themselves and their families to danger.

And I am pleased therefore to announce today a new policy which more fully recognises the contribution made by our local Iraqi staff who work for our armed forces and civilian missions in uniquely difficult circumstances.

Existing staff who have been employed by us for more than twelve months and have completed their work will be able to apply for a package of financial payments to aid resettlement in Iraq or elsewhere in the region, or - in agreed circumstances - for admission to the UK. And professional staff — including interpreters and translators — with a similar length of service who have left our employ since the beginning of 2005 will also be able to apply for assistance.

We will make a further written statement on the detail of this scheme this week.

I’ll wait for the details until commenting further as I’m sure will most people. I have to say though that I really, really, really don’t like the look of that ’staff who have been employed by us for more than twelve months and have completed their work‘ proviso. Don’t put that champagne on ice yet.

See you tomorrow?

UPDATE: And this shouts out as well:

And professional staff — including interpreters and translators — with a similar length of service who have left our employ since the beginning of 2005 will also be able to apply for assistance.

I might be wrong but I’m guessing that excludes teenage laundry workers.

Brown: Hadaway an’ shite, y’friggaz!

British media: OK then.

What a pisspoor display from one and all.

(With apologies to Viz.)

* Praise be unto him

Picture the scene:

Gordon Brown and his advisers are hunkered down in their bunker on Saturday afternoon. They receive advance word of the News of The World’s poll. The Tories are ahead in the marginal seats. To call an election would mean destroying the Labour parties parliamentary majority and force it to slug it out in a hung parliament.

A heavy silence falls on the room. For several minutes nobody says a word. Finally, a shaky voice says,

‘We’re screwed. What do we do now?’

Everybody looks from one to the other. Slowly, Gordon’s broodling sulk starts to lift. As one, everybody says together,

‘Get Marr’.

And so it came to pass.

I don’t have much more to say about this charade. But I would like to ask eveybody who saw Andrew Marr interviewing Gordon Brown: please raise your hand if your intelligence wasn’t insulted by that interview. Please raise your hand if you think Andrew Marr wasn’t handpicked to give Brown the result he wanted. And please raise your hand if you believe any of Brown’s reasons - such as they were - about not holding the election.

How the Brown-Marr summit helped anyone, I’m not sure. Brown looks worse for fronting up to only soft questions. Marr’s reputation sinks further for delivering them. I mean, were Richard and Judy busy or something? Was Davina McCall washing her hair? Patrick Kielty must have had a hangover. It’s hard to imagine them being worse. Marr makes the latter-day David Frost look like a interrogator at Abu Ghraib.

David Cameron says he wants a general election because we’ve in effect had a change of government from the Blair years. On this showing, he couldn’t more wrong. It’s the same old, same old: caught in a lie, a soft interview and pretend none of it happened. It couldn’t have been more apparent if Brown had said he was ‘a pretty straight kinda guy’. And we’ve got another two years of it.

Onwards to Tehran!

It’s been 90 days since Gordon Brown became Prime Minister, and over 100 since he captured her in print and selflessly brought her plight to a wider audience.

But there’s still no word on how Gordon plans to spring Aung San Suu Kyi from her less metaphorical prison. Maybe it’s his October Surprise to woo the activists after he’s called the election.

I suppose I might do something on Gordon Brown’s speech to the Labour conference today - I did Tony’s last couple so it’s probably worth seeing if Gordon’s any improvement oratorically.

I’m not holding out any hopes, mind, and the bloody speech is 13 pages of A4. Including power naps, it may take some time to get through it. In the meantime, Matt Buck has created a tasty reduction.

I think I’m in love (probably just hungry)
Think I’m your friend (probably just lonely)
Think you got me in a spin now (probably just turning)
Think I’m a fool for you (probably just learning)
Think that I can rock and roll (probably just twisting)
Think I wanna tell the world (probably ain’t listening)

Come on…

Think I can fly (probably just falling)
Think I’m the life and soul (probably just snorting)
Think I can hit the mark (probably just aiming)
Think my name is on your lips (probably complaining)
Think that I have caught it bad (probably contagious)
Think that I’m a winner baby (probably Las Vegas)

Come on…

Think I’m alive (probably just breathing)
Think you stole my heart now baby (probably just thieving)
Think I’m on fire (probably just smoking)
Think that you’re my dream girl (probably just dreaming)
Think I’m the best, babe come on (probably like all the rest)
Think that I could be your man (oh, probably just think you can)

Come on…

I think I’m in love, I think I’m in love

(With apologies)

Adam Boulton:

Under Tony Blair Labour dramatically changed the way Westminster did business just by shifting around the parliamentary timetable.

…

The net effect was that the Prime Minister, and MPs needed to spend less time in Parliament.

Gordon Brown is carrying on with these reforms - perhaps surprisingly since he has said that he wants to place parliament at the centre of the national debate. Almost all fixed points in the diary have been moved to the beginning of the week.

…

Far from being held to account more frequently by parliament, the new timetable actually seems to free up the government to behave more like a Presidential administration.

Smooth. An orderly transition of power, I think you could call it. Bloodless, you might say.

So Gordon Brown’s appointed a new adviser to investigate the effects of the internet (specifically violent and sexual imagery) on children. It’s Dr Tanya Byron, erstwhile presenter of the jewels in the BBC’s crown, ‘The House Of Tiny Tearaways‘ and ‘Little Angels‘, where member of dysfunctional families air their problems for the edification of the wider public. You know, the kind of programmes that make you feel like your life’s not so shit after all.

There’s no doubt that Dr Byron has an impressive CV: 17 years as a clinical psychologist and a burgeoning media career that has branched into writing sitcoms. It’s just that, how many people do you think Downing Street looked at before they decided on Dr Byron? Or did they just say, ’sod it, get her off the telly’? Would she have even got the gig without her media profile and is it possible that there are more suitable candidates?

Anyway. I’m probably doing Dr Byron a disservice and she might surprise us all by reaching conclusions and recommendations that don’t mirror Brown’s puritanical instincts or suggest banning anything.

Of course, all of this follows on from Gordon’s love of gritty, gripping television. Or wish-fulfilment, as we in the reality-based community like to call it. We are, after all, talking about a man who once uttered this piece of classic mouth-droppings:

I like TV programmes like X Factor, Dragons’ Den and The Apprentice. They show the value of aspiration, how anyone can achieve things.

It makes you wonder what else might be in the works. I’d give my left plum to be working in the Number 10 policy unit right now. Just think of the possibilities of being able to get the public swallow even more contemptuous and contemptible grift. How about these:

• Noel Edmonds gathers together a bunch of prison officers who have to guess which box contains the best pay rise. All the boxes have next to bugger all in them.
• Gordon Brown sits in a big black chair under a spotlight and is asked questions on his specialist subject by John Humphreys. Brown fails to address a single question properly but is still declared the winner.
• Fifteen suspected terrorists are locked in a house. The ‘housemates’ are then watched all day. That’s it. Not sure, but they might have already thought of this one.
• To stem public outrage over fatcat city bonuses, Bratley K. Twatt and his colleagues will be presented with their cheques by the sebaceous Chris Tarrant, who chuckles ‘I don’t want to give you that’ before handing them even larger cheques.
• Cabinet Ministers appear on a special edition of ‘Just A Minute‘ where they have to speak for a minute on a given subject. Repetition, deviation and hesitation are mandatory. Again, this may have already been thought of.
• Evan Davis takes a group of nurses to a trendy warehouse apartment to watch Duncan Bannatyne counting his money.
• Jeremy Paxman presents a quiz show where two teams of four working class students attempt to make it through higher education.
• Robert Llewellyn asks two teams, red and blue, to build manifestos out of any old shit lying around and then get them to fart around the country without collapsing. The winner gets to bin their manifesto.
• Jim Bowen presents a sporting quiz where he ask members of the public to continue to prop up the British economy. ‘Keep out of the black, and in the red,’ he begs.
• Gordon Brown invites two teams of political journalists to ‘Call My Bluff’. None of them do. Ever.

Gordon, if you’re reading, you can have those for free. Call me, baby.

Why all the fuss about Gordon Brown’s £50 million cut to the Government’s drug rehabilitation scheme? ‘Hypocrite!’ screamed the Tories when the news leaked out straight after Brown declared he wants a review into reclassifying cannabis from Class C to Class B.

But is he a hypocrite? It’s makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? If, say, you’re a Daily Mail-fellating authoritarian, that is. Reclassifying the eeeeevil weed would mean more people being banged up for possession, so what would you need all the drug rehabilitation places for? Hence Gordon’s budget cut.

QED*, innit?

*Quite Evil Demagogue.