Big heart, big teeth.

(By Matt Buck who did the cartoons for The Blog Digest.)

So why all the fuss about what former Cabinet Secretary Lord Turnbull has had to say about Gordon Brown? Brown, according to the man who worked closely with him for four years, has a ‘very cynical view of mankind and his colleagues’ and regards other cabinet members with ‘more or less complete contempt’.

I say that comes as a huge relief. Hell, I could name two or three dozen bloggers, off the top of my head, who have built their reputations on exactly that interpretation of the New Labour cabinet over the last few years. It’s just nice to see that Gordon’s been part of the real world all this time.

The make-up of the Cabinet over the last ten years merely reflects the dearth of talent, first class minds and imagination in British politics. In turn, Brown’s attitude toward his colleagues is merely the reflection - the admission - of that. Not that he’s the intellectual titan of popular myth. Where’s the evidence, you have to ask? He’s like the moody kid at school whose brooding silence at the back of the class is mistaken for depth. He’s Judd Nelson in ‘The Breakfast Club’.

Brown’s attitude to government is a collision of two well known aphorisms, idioms or, if you prefer, clichés. Namely, ‘if you want a job doing well, do it yourself’ (aka the ‘Stalinist ruthlessness’ label Turnbull gives to Brown) and ‘you can’t polish a turd’.

I ask you, how much Brasso would it take to make a Jowell, a Hoon, a Falconer, a Prescott, a Hewitt, a Beckett or any of the rest, shine as ministers?

Boy, am I looking forward to the next general election. Imagine it, the Clash of the Titans, Brown vs. Cameron!

It’s the political punch-up to end all punch-ups, the prize-fight for the championship, as these two heavyweights trade body-blows over the critical issues that will decide the destiny of the United Kingdom.

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It was reported on Wednesday that Gordon Brown had root canal work done without anaesthetic last week so he could give a speech afterwards - about citizenship training for immigrants - without a frozen mouth.

Keen a few months ago to parade his emotional pain over his baby daughter’s death in his bid for popularity, Gordon’s now keen to show us how much physical pain he’s willing to endure in order to make us like him.

‘Mr Brown did not flinch or grimace at any stage,’ said Mervyn Druian, the cosmetic dentist who did the drilling and who, according to his website, can help you create ‘your perfect smile’. No mention if he takes NHS patients though. Doubtless the famously financially prudent Chancellor of the Exchequer got a good deal.

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How does Gordon Brown plan to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in Britain? By reintroducing it.

Mr Brown said: “Being a British citizen is about more than a test, more than a ceremony. It’s a kind of contract between the citizen and the country involving rights but also involving responsibilities that will protect and enhance the British way of life.

“It’s also right to consider asking men and women seeking citizenship to undertake community work in our country, or something akin to that, that introduces them to a wider range of institutions and people.”

If this comes to pass I will eat an item of clothing nominated by a commenter. It’s crypto-racist, dog-whistle excrement. BNP-appeasing excrement at that. Yes, let’s get those shiftless freeloading foreigners to sing for their suppers. Never mind the contribution they could be making to the economy by doing paid work instead of indenturing them.

I can think of probably thousands of British people who could do with some community service in order to foster their integration into society - why isn’t he suggesting they get off their arses? Oh, because they’re voters.

I bet there are no plans to ask millionaire businessmen coming here to wipe arses in care homes for nothing either.

And you thought Blair was the master of here-today gone-tomorrow back of a fag packet cobblers. Brown’s supposed to be the brains of the duo, God help us.

Would Gordon Brown pass the ‘barbecue test’? Would we, ordinary British voters, invite him round for a burger and a beer?

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‘I could never compare myself to Gandhi or those other heroes of mine,’ the Prime-Minister-in-waiting said to his Indian audience and the British press pack, ‘but I do take inspiration from the way that they dealt with the challenges they faced when I think about how I will deal with the challenges the country and the world faces, including the security challenge.’

Gordon hitched up his white loincloth. Day three of his visit to India and he was starving. He’d been taking his inspiration from Gandhi for about 45 minutes now and the fasting part was getting a bit much. He’d forgotten his sunblock as well. His shoulders and belly had rapidly gone from pink to lobster red to Alex Ferguson in the relentless Delhi sun.

He was sweating, and not just with the heat. His audience shifted restlessly in their seats. Frantically, Gordon tried to dredge up an apposite quote of the Mahatma’s with which to impress them. How about, ‘non-violence is not a garment to be put on and off at will’? A bit like this bloody loincloth, he thought. He’d pulled it up too far and now his bottom was itchy. He’d forgotten to put his underpants on underneath.

How about, ‘Non-violence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind. It is mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction devised by the ingenuity of man’? No, not a great one in the face of the current ’security challenge’, that one, he thought. Won’t sell many fighter jets to India with that attitude.

Instead, he changed tack. ‘I think it was Churchill who said that you cannot meet the challenges of the future by simply building the present in the image of the past,’ he said. Brilliant. Gandhi and Churchill. What was it Churchill had called Gandhi? ‘A half naked fakir.’ Oh, dear. Er…

A reporter stood up. ‘The Times of India,’ he said. ‘Chancellor, how do you reconcile your taking inspiration from both the Mahatma and Sir Winston?’ Gordon’s mouth flapped. He suddenly couldn’t shake the mental image of Churchill in a loincloth, cigar in one hand and pint of brandy in the other. The Chancellor’s stomach growled. He could murder an Indian.

(First published in this week’s edition of The Friday Thing.)

Looking increasingly vacant in that ravaged, glassy-eyed way, the widow’s peak stretching the hair-thickening sprays more by the day, his recent statements of intent - sorting out the Middle East, revolutionising university funding, saving the planet from climate change while continuing to star in Carry On Turning Left At The Stewardess - have been so barmily self-contradictory or plain delusional as to suggest the sort of character for whom the first question, on being hurriedly admitted to a clinic, is “Now then, dear, do you know who the Prime Minister is?”

In a vaguely sane political system, with a vaguely coherent written constitution and a vaguely effective legislature, the answer “Tony Blair” would trigger the appearance of a syringe and the whispered request “Straitjacket, sister, quick as you can”. But thanks to this weird, unsettling stasis gripping Westminster, it still qualifies as that rarest of commodities to emit from Mr Blair’s mouth, the literal truth.

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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?’

(First published in this week’s The Friday Thing.)

We were pretty sure that the last vestiges of this country’s dignity and standing in the world departed, like the friends and courtiers deserting Glenn Close at the end of ‘Dangerous Liaisons’, after the Blairs gave this mind-scorching interview to The Sun on the eve of the last General Election:

Cherie: Oh come on Tony, strip off. Let’s see that fit body we’ve been talking about.

Tony: You can keep your hands to yourself, Cherie!

The Sun: So how fit are you Tony?

Cherie: Very!

The Sun: What, at least five times a night?

Tony: At least, I can do it more depending on how I feel.

The Sun: Are you always up to it?

Cherie: He always is!

Tony: Right that’s enough - interview over…Come on woman, time to cook my dinner!

(We didn’t make this up. Honest.)

You wonder, fleetingly, if their drinks had been spiked. Just why the public didn’t go on a rampage of disgust like they have in Hungary this week, we never quite fathomed. Perhaps there was something good on the telly that night.

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Come on, be honest. You’d have loved to see Tony Blair’s farewell tour, wouldn’t you? You’d have laughed yourself sick, bought the souvenir t-shirt, and had a big dumb grin on your face every time you had a cup of tea out of your ‘Never Apologise, Never Explain Tour 2007′ commemorative mug. Admit it, part of you is sad that the plans were leaked to the Daily Mirror this week because it’s now unlikely the event of the century will take place.

We’d urge you to read the Daily Mirror’s report on the leaking of Tony’s ‘Farewell Memo’ - you’ll smile for days. ‘He needs to go with the crowds wanting more. He should be the star who won’t even play that last encore,’ was a particularly nice sentiment. If only they’d made that rhyme work properly, it could have been put to a squealing rock soundtrack (we’re thinking the theme from Thundercats) to be played as he strides on stage at each of the carefully picked venues.

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Gordon Brown is planning a massive expansion of the ID cards project that would widen surveillance of everyday life by allowing high-street businesses to share confidential information with police databases.

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(see also here and here.)

As Chris points out, Gordon Brown’s looking to put some steam in his strides and the increasingly desperate Chancellor reckons a rocket in his pocket just might make people pleased to see him.

“In an insecure world we must and we will always have the strength to take all necessary long term decisions to ensure both stability and security,” said Gordon, leaving us in no doubt of the size of his manhood. But once Gordon’s got himself in the mood and it’s all systems go, who will be treated to his amorous attentions?

Difficult to say. This is from Parliamentary written answers, May 24 2006:

Norman Baker (Lewes, Liberal Democrat): To ask the Secretary of State for Defence against which countries the UK nuclear deterrent has been targeted since the demise of the Soviet Union.

Des Browne (Secretary of State, Ministry of Defence): Since May 1994, the UK’s nuclear missiles have not been targeted at any country.

Not having a regular squeeze maybe Gordon’ll just jump out and expose himself to random passers-by like a provincial town flasher.

It seems however, in this regard at least, the Government has remembered its manners: it’s rude to point.

His supporters say he’s ready. Not long now and he’ll take us all the way to glory, sweeping all before him. Those with cooler heads are sceptical. Does he really have what it takes, is he fit, can he - against the odds - fulfil the nation’s expectations, hopes and dreams? Yes, the big question on everybody’s lips is ‘Can Gordon Brown really become Prime Minister?’

This week former Tory MP turned pundit Matthew Parris joined the bandwagon set rolling by even more right-wing politicians (Tony Blair’s close New Labour colleagues reportedly running a Stop Brown campaign). ‘He is not a persuader, he is not a salesman, he is not a visionary. He is not a diplomat, he is not a deal-maker, he is not a peacekeeper and he does not soothe… Gordon Brown is not a thinker,’ was Parris’ don’t-beat-about-the-bush-speak-as-I-find verdict.

Left-wing pundits, politicians and voters should be pondering the same question. Particularly when opinion polls show that voters want to vote for David Cameron with Blair as PM but *really* want to vote for Cameron with Brown as PM. Or alternatively, in a week where the Chancellor of the Exchequer and odds-on next *Labour* Prime Minister stood before millionaire business leaders and told them low paid public sector workers could stick their hopes for better wages up their arses, they could be asking ‘What’s the point of Gordon Brown?’ Or the Labour Party (party of the working classes, as was) for that matter.

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Is it me or is the photograph of Gordon Brown accompanying his latest message to the Labour Party rather unfortunate?

Sorry to be tongue in cheek about it but who put this email together, Alan Milburn?

The Prime Minister is understood to feel that the security arrangements that would have to be put in place if he did attend would detract attention from the funeral itself.

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There were some funny goings on in and around Gordon Brown’s budget yesterday.

First up, persons unknown leaked major points of the budget to the Evening Standard.

And then there was chicanery in the Chancellor’s statement which Eddie Mair quizzed John Healey, Economic Secretary to the Treasury, about on Radio 4’s PM show last night.

In announcing the £200 council tax relief for pensioners, Brown forgot to mention that the payment is a one-off for this year - an election year - only.

What he also forgot to say when declaring that pensioners would get free bus travel was that the travel will be free in off-peak hours only.

Lastly, there was the announcement of the capital building project for primary schools - an announcement that has already been made. It looks like New Labour are going back to their old ways of making multiple announcements of the same money and leaving the impression that each announcement is a new injection of cash. The money for the capital building project isn’t available for another four years either.

Leaks to the press and lying by ommission? Tricks more worthy of the Chancellor’s next-door neighbour.

And Gordon Brown is supposed to be the saviour of the Labour Party. Good luck with that guys.