Sep 28 2009
Another day, another Gordon fight back
I wonder how many more times the media will buy the fight back headlines? I wonder how many Labour supporters really believe that if they just lie a bit more and a bit more often about the Tories they can win?
“It’s the eocnomy, stupid.” After twelve years in power the UK is lurching towards bankruptcy. After twelve years to abolish boom and bust we are at the bottom of the biggest bust since the 1930s. After twelve years to “invest” in the public services huge sums of money are being wasted on anything but better schools and hospitals. We have been sold out in the EU, demeaned in our relationship with the USA, and made to fight Middle Eastern wars without the proper military commitment and without credible war aims. More people are out of work and on low benefit based incomes. Yet many in Labour seem to think hiring a few more spin doctors and claiming the Tories want to wreck the place will see them through.
We are promised three new initiatives. Today we get (for the twentieth or is it thirtieth time of asking) control of bankers bonuses. In practise we don’t. Stephen Hester, the government’s own favourite and highest paid bank CEO, will still have his £9 million package after today, with taxpayers money supporting his bank. The government has come to realise there is no way to legislate to stop bankers being paid loads of money. The only way to stop excess remumeration is to make it clear government will not bail failed banks, and to ensure more competition in banking markets so banks are smaller.
Later this week we will have the Deficit Control Bill. They must think we were all born yesterday. If the governemnt wants to control the deficit all it has to do is spend less. Putting through a Bill to say sometime in the future they should get round to a lower deficit is absurd. I look forward to reading the sanctions that they intend to apply to Ministers who fail to do this. Also look carefully at the small print to see how the deficit will be calculated.
We willl be offered another NHS target, from a government which itself has concluded it has to move on from Health targets.
Meanwhile expect lots of red ink explaining the alleged wickedness of the Tory high command. Whilst most of the public worry about how any government is going to find enough items to cut out of the budget to get us back into good financial shape, the Labour government will claim that any million of reduction the Conservatives identify will threaten the life and strength of core public services. They will keep on telling people that Labour’s waste and borrowing are preventing a worse recession and will bring about recovery, when the evidence abounds that the current deficit and borrowing are starving the private sector of cash and credit and delaying and enfeebling the UK recovery compared with others around the world.
Conservatives want a recovery, and want good quality public services. The battle is about how you achieve this, not about the aims. The PM’s effort to equate Labour values with the nation’s values was false. Words under this government are expensive. They come with spin doctors and glossy brochures attached. This week is just more words. They’ve had twelve years to deliver. We can all see the results.
37 Responses to “Another day, another Gordon fight back”
John Redwood has been the Member of Parliament for Wokingham since 1987. First attending Kent College, Canterbury, he graduated from Magdalen College...
So Gordon isn’t taking “painkiller” “pills”.
Well … Andrew Marr either has absolutely no self-respect or the question was pre-negotiated. Even so Marr shouldn’t have asked the question as it was so narrow and clearly not what is being speculated.
Any self-respecting journalist would have asked if Brown was taking “anti-depressant medicine” – as we have all been speculating. Some medicines impair cognitive function. We have a right to know if Gordon’s judgement is being clouded by a drugs haze.
Stuart Fairney Reply:
September 28th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
“We have a right to know if Gordon’s judgement is being clouded by a drugs haze”
Well said indeed, we would not allow the commander of a Trident submarine to remain in post if he were taking mood altering drugs, nor an airline pilot to fly were he drunk. Consequently we absolutely have the right to know if the Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is having his judgement impaired by drugs.
The fact that there has been no denial*, only a complete smokescreen of attacking the question (the last resort as any politician will tell you). I can for example, tell you I have never taken anti-depressant medicine and am not taking it now. You have to wonder why someone cannot issue a very simple statement and end the issue.
Also, can a body language expert tell me what it means when someone touches his mouth when he speaks as the PM does when answering this question
*Start from 47 minutes to avoid all the self-justifying ‘tractor production statistics’ stuff
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/The_andrew_marr_show
THE ESSEX BOYS Reply:
September 28th, 2009 at 5:31 pm
We agree entirely and have blogged on the subject, here and elsewhere, til we’re blue in the face! The Prime Minister shows disturbing indications that the MAOI story first circulated 3 weeks ago on Not Born Yesterday is indeed accurate and we have a right to know. Denials have been half-hearted in our view.
Similarly we’ve blogged extensively on Baroness Scotland and the security system that allows somebody in her position to engage an unknown illegal immigrant to have the run of her home after a 10 minute interview…BREATHTAKING INCOMPETENCE (yet again)!
However both pale into insignificance against this further ‘pee-taking’ by Labour! ‘Fightback’, ‘underdog’, ‘best when we’re bold’ etc – all the old cliches, lies and lack of substance we have come to expect.
And when – given the enormity of the task at hand – a £100m scrappage scheme is the jewel in Mandelson’s crown – we must all despair! Who says they get it?
Comfortingly our own researchers tell us that the public will not stand for another re-launch and will not give Mr Brown and his team a further benefit of the doubt.
Andrew Neil on the Daily Politics seemed similarly cynical today.
Stuart Fairney Reply:
September 30th, 2009 at 10:21 am
The scrappage scheme makes me laugh because they are effectively admiting, reduce taxes, boost commerce which is absolutely a tory mantra yet their whole political life is the opposite of this
One thing that really puizzles me is the spell which the utterly uncharismatic and, yes, charmless Mr Brown has cast on otherwise very sensible politicians.
Once they out of the spell is broken – Charles Clarke and Caroline Flint, then common sense returns.
Is the truth that these people are lost in the net of their ambition? Are they really that stupid?
Or are they frightened of the lies and spin which labour Central Office will throw at any “naughty” people?
The result, as you so clearly say, is disaster where NOBODY can tell the truth.
Gordon Brown is going to storm the Labour Party conference ostensibly attacking us, but what he’ll really be fighting is the Blairite tendency within his own ranks. Their neoconservatism and his ild-style socialism is incompatible, and a divorce is impending.
Javelin, I think Gordon’s just learnt of what will happen if doctors are ordered to override their patients’ wishes as regards confidentiality, and it’s a lesson I think we all need to observe.
John,
Have you seen the leaked copy of the Handover Report on schools -the waste is breathtaking – a couple of examples – one school paid £35,000 for a photo copier which should have cost about £5,000 – another school paid £50,000 to have 3 toilets fitted which should have cost about £5,000.
I am sure we can assume the waste extends to most departments.
Irene Reply:
September 28th, 2009 at 11:17 am
error – the phot copier should have cost about £10,000
Adam Collyer Reply:
September 28th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
Irene, the report actually said, astonishingly, that it should have cost £1,000. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8276991.stm
Mick Anderson Reply:
September 28th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
So the poor beleagured taxpayer was only …. deprived of £25000 rather then £30000. Whoopee….
Whatever the price of the equipment, and whatever support service is supplied as part of the package, I want the price charged to be the value of what is received. That’s what generally happens in the privately-funded world.
Mick Anderson Reply:
September 28th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
Apologies, Irene. I’ve only just noticed that you were correcting yourself.
Yes, I’ve seen the MOD procurement service in “action”. I was unofficially told that because a supplier down the chain was determined to save face, work that I had quoted to do (as part of a project upgrade) for £10k in two months had to be put through a separate procurement process. This would take at least two years and cost around £100k extra!
Too many organisations see that something is publicly funded and see that as a casino jackpot.
Operation Fightback – another stolen BNP slogan – you would have thought that New Labour would have learnt their lesson after “British Workers for British Jobs”.
Yes, but as long as David Cameron’s Conservatives have yet to “seal the deal with the electorate”, the zombie remnant of the labour party can convince themeselves that they can still win. All they need to do is get Mandelson to parrot these silly phrases like “flibberty gibberty” and pretend not to hear the interviewer at crucial moments of questioning. They just need to remind us how”we have paid down debt during the good times” while keeping a straight face. Call 70% of the populace delusional for wanting a referendum, and of course stick Mrs Balls on the podium to warn us of the evil that might befall us from a return to “Tory boom and bust” in gravely serious tones usually reserved for vicars conducting a funeral. The hall might behalf empty, but they still have a chance, allegedly.
THE ESSEX BOYS Reply:
September 28th, 2009 at 5:59 pm
Clearly interviewers need to have a retort to Mandy’s latest wheeze of going onto the attack.
We suggest something on the lines of
“But Mr Mandelson, are you denying your goverment is to borrow 200 thousand million pounds this year to stay afloat”
Interviewers paid £100,000 plus (far more with the Marrs of this world of course) should have the savvy and fleetness of foot not to be traduced by a serial obfuscator!
APL Reply:
September 29th, 2009 at 7:02 am
The Essex Boys: “by a serial obfuscator!”
I think you mean (strong word! ed). Come on, it’s time we started to call a spade a spade.
Yes, he may be a very intelligent man, but we are all at liberty to put our talents to good or ill. Mandleson has chosen (to be economical with the truth -ed), even if his ultimate aim is honorable, to attempt to achieve it by such methods, in my opinion demeans and devalues the goals.
Beautifully, put, John.
They are desperately trying to blame other people – bankers, the Tories, anyone – to try and deflect blame from themselves.
Gordon Brown is a disgrace. His worst comment ‘British Jobs For British Workers’ appealed to the worst side of human nature. He probably knows that such an approach would undermine UK jobs. His comments made to sound British, when the press were talking of his ‘Scottishness’ were made in pure self interest. That sums up Gordon Brown. The sooner he is gone, the better. And soon after,
public service broadcasting needs to be reshaped. The BBC had become an instrument of government propaganda.
All this is demonstrating what I have long feared, a very long, very bad election campaign, while chaos grows all around us. For those of us with an interest in chaos, the situation is that given the instability and weakness in so many sectors, it will not take much to result in serious consequences, whatever it is. At the moment I’m worrying about where interest rates could go, but it could be anything.
We have had this for 10 years. Its like Balls telling us he is going to cu t£2 Billion from education and all I have heard since is what he is not going to cut..
Labour are lost they dont know what to do or where to go next.
When you think what Labour set out to acheive when it was started by the unions all those years ago. Most of what they wanted and more besides is now included in the law of the land.
So all they do is waste more money pass stupid laws that make things worse not better.
So its time for them to go and not come back.
I certainly hope that we shall hear something much more realistic and substantive from the Conservatives next week!
While you keep blogging the down and out headlines I guess it will be necessary for the billionaire press and their acolytes to headline the opposite, John, so that the perceived situation doesn’t remain too far from the truth for long enough for you all to become totally disbelieved by your punters.
The desperation with which the tory party, its owners and the wanna be nihilists who follow similar lines online seek to maintain a bandwagon effect in the hope of avoiding a fourth election defeat in a row evinces tenacity, but little sense, and less honesty.
As Lord Mandelson was saying, the election will not be today, or tomorrow. Calm down, or you’ll find yourselves the objects of Michael Winner’s attentions . . .
Reply: Glad you care about us!
Quietzapple Reply:
September 28th, 2009 at 5:17 pm
Yep, a healthyish Cons Party is useful, orienting. Just collected “The Plan” from local library. Wonder wether it will deviate much from”Capitalsm & Freedom” via localism. I was a Friedmanite for 6 months in 1968, before Mrs Thatcher or some of her followers.
THE ESSEX BOYS Reply:
September 28th, 2009 at 6:09 pm
Dear Quietzapple
If you’re thinking forward just give a thought to the biographies that will appear 12 months from now revealing the true despair, chaos and panic inside No 10 and the party as a whole.
Our information is that diaries are being filled and publishers contacted as we blog!
This time next year it will be perfectly clear as to the extent that our government lost control and how much Mr Brown is reviled from within as well as from where we all sit…and your caring defence of the indefensible will be shown in its misguided, pathetic reality sir!
You might also have mentioned that New Labour has also dishonoured Parliament, debauched public life, demoralised the citizenry, brutalised the Constitution and gone three-fourths of the way to wrecking the Union. Perhaps you’re saving these for another day.
John.
Do you know what really is sad.
The fact that about 25% of the voting population will still vote Labour, no matter what the state of the Country.
You will never convince these people, “that any other Party” let alone the Conservatives, are even worth a try.
Some people have such closed minds, that no matter what you said or did, it would never shake their faith in Good ole Labour.
There are probably some Conservatives supports of a similar mindset.
yay – come on you Tories – inspire us with your clear-sighted vision for the country, backed up by costed proposals.
Just slagging off Gordon is getting boring… its too easy.
Please explain how” ensuring more competition in the banking market will make banks smaller”. You cannot keep units of production& distribution small ,with no policy on predatory take overs.
In fact, if you look at British High Streets,there are likely to be three or four different banks but only one Boots and one each of the other other chains.The Conservatives have done nothing to preserve small retail business.The destruction of Resale Price Maintenance shewd where their loyalties lay.The American Supreme Court has relegalised it.
BillyB Reply:
September 28th, 2009 at 10:08 pm
Is dismantling the big banks now Tory policy then? could be a vote-winner !
BillyB Reply:
September 28th, 2009 at 10:14 pm
In fact – whatever happened to the nation of shopkeepers? Its all faceless multinational/global corporations and brand-names. DBCReed is right…. Tories and Labour have both sold out the little guys. Who is the party of “small is beautiful”? Capitalism makes a lot more sense on a small scale.
alan jutson Reply:
September 29th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
The supermarkets killed a lot of them off on price.
The government has killed them off with more and more regulation.
Local Councils helped kill them off with increasing business rates and parking charges
The Utility companies helped them along with huge increases.
The general public cast the last stone by putting low cost (price)above service.
The pound is crashing and burning and all this doom and gloom is doing is help the speculators short the pound. Damn the “bankers bonuses” : Maginot Line, guns facing the past not the present. -The pound is being hammered – it has hit its lowest rate against the euro I have seen – its not the bonuses its the currency speculators direct profits that are the problem. The Eurozone countries must be laughing themselves silly – where we once had booze-cruises to France, the Primark Cruises now come here
BillyB Reply:
September 28th, 2009 at 10:07 pm
The all-time (?) Pound-Euro low was January 09 – see http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=GBPEUR=X&t=5y&l=on&z=m&q=l&c=
I fear your tendentiousnesses are just other examples of wanna be bandwagon effect, indeed one might have said affect given the sporadic civility hereabouts.
Wether and how far people, including Labour insiders are misled, isn’t original. I suspect 1970 was as uncertain as 2010 will prove to be. 1964 looked like a shoe in, as did 1991 (to many).
Part of the tory troll problem is on this: (have other stuff to do, so I shall not be pursuing this)
http://conservativehome.blogs.com/thetorydiary/2009/06/44-of-voters-want-cameron-to-lead-the-country-and-just-22-want-brown.html
‘The only serious caution for David Cameron comes with a question that forces voters to choose between Labour or the Conservatives: “44 per cent would still prefer a Labour government and 42 per cent a Conservative one. This is despite 72 per cent dissatisfaction with Labour.”‘ JUNE 2009, ResCom.
The other poll to which I referred there, showing satisfaction with various public services is significant too.
You may count our turkeys, but you have already counted too many chickens, as Mandy has pointed out today.
People may yet realise that we have never been governed so well, we shall see.
How right you are. We live in a Country totally ruined by this labour government. We read of the poor woman who burned herself and her daughter to death, after being tormented for years by thugs who enjoy complete anonimity and are free to carry on terrorising others. They probably have charge lists as long as both arms; no doubt the reason the police weren’t interested is they are fully well aware of the futility of arresting these sorts who enjoy complete protection from any real punishment, thanks to the EEC and its troxyist human rights legislation. When they do get taken to court, the courts have no real powers to deal with these vermin.
We then learn that G20 protesttors, some of whom were enjoying throwing missiles at police, have succeeded in getting a policeman charged.
The Country is completely out of control thanks to socialism and liberalism. God help us, in Scotland we have a loony left governement even worse than labour!
I see the Tories have stopped counting the string of Nu Lab stealth taxes that have crept in, does anyone know the current figure? I bet the tally will be some 250 or more.
There were over 100 at the last election.
Why can’t the BBC be clear about the ONS figures released (worst figures since the 30’s) on 29/9:
Q1 2009 revised down by 0.6% from -1.9% to -2.5% (massive and why so big an adjustment, Nixon it is the cover up that gets you ? is it a good day to release bad news? Jo Moore)
Q2 2009 revised up by 0.1% from -0.7% to -0.6% and they are getting very excited about this, given that both sets of figures were released on the same day should there not be a bit more analysis?
Most voters know things are a cr*p and are not going to listen to the “moving on up ” cr*p music.
I know some people are saying that Cam should not want to win the next election as it is an inheritance of a whole pile of awful stuff that will need to be cleaned up (a bit like 1979)
and liebour will then say we told you so
however if liebour win there is every chance that they will repeat the winter of disc and IMF trick of 76.
The conservatives, to stay in power, will need to characterise liebour as the cause of all/most the sh1t.
Keep up the good work John.
Cheers
Mike
Some British Army Generals may not like New Labour war strategy but New Labour likes the strategy of one British Army General: -
“If nothing else works, a total pig-headed unwillingness to look facts in the face will see us through.”
General Anthony Cecil Hogmanny Melchett