No. Don’t imagine. We’re there. If this is what it takes to ease the path for a Prime Minister with an audience of his own party, how will the election campaign work? And the televised debate between party leaders to which Gordon Brown has now agreed? Will Gordon be able to do anything without looking over his shoulder to see if she’s there, smiling approvingly?
Will the Twittering Sarah Brown keep on doing the honours? She may, of course, in the rough and tumble of the forthcoming election , do what she did in Glenrothes at the by-election. There she was sent out as a human shield for her husband and an unpopular party because people are loath to be rude to a woman and one who is not a politician.
In our book, once you act politically, as she did in Glenrothes and at last and this year’s Laour Party Conferences, she’s there to be challenged like any other. Gloves off.
But what sort of man – never mind a national leader – needs and lets his wife lead him to safety? The UK is not a Primary School where Mothers conduct nervous children through the volatile masses to the sanctuary of the classrom.
Time for an electoral SOS.
I suppose that the Labour spin machine thinks that if it worked twice -they did it at their last conference and they also did it at Glenrothes – by pushing out Sarah Brown in front of her far less charismatic husband, they assume that it will keep on working. As you fairly state the time is about to come when Mrs Brown will have to get into the debate rather than being used as a front.
I wonder how long she will last in that environment?
I suppose that Gordon could get her a peerage?
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Toe-curling, cringing banality. Is this what the Labour party has come to?
This has been a truly dreadful conference for Labour. First we had Lord Mandy, consorter on yachts with Riviera multi-millionaires, virtually assuming the leadership. Was that the real Labour Party actually applauding him to the rafters? And then a cameo from Jim Murphy beaten only to the bottom of the barrel by a speech (is that the right word?) from Ian Gray that plumbed the depths of crassness and banality and was genuinely objectionable in content.
And finally from Gordon Brown a rambling collection of unaffordable promises, reheats of several manifesto committments not delivered over the past twelve years and meaningless aspirational hahoo almost obscuring two really damning suggestions – that the people of Scotland will not be allowed independence even if they vote for it and, nicked from the BNP manifesto, a proposal than unmarried teenage mothers should be forced into supervised accommodation. READ THAT AGAIN.
“Gulags for slags” is how this has been seized upon by other blogsters.
I am genuinely gobsmacked.
” New Labour ” – a secret child of Maggie Thatcher – has finally killed the Labour party.
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snp supporters are very foolish if they right off the labour party . remember the glenrothes by-election ?
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Yes. I was there. We remember the Glenrothes by-election very well. The SNP increased its vote in by over 50%.
But the notion that the SNP were likely to win Glenrothes was ramped up by the Labour party and its media friends so that Labour managing to hold onto a very safe Labour seat with a hugely reduced majority would be seen somehow as a huge defeat for the SNP.
That said nobody has explained how the Labour Party in the face of sliding polls in every election preceding Glenrothes and in every published opinion poll managed to actually increase its vote. Unless of course you wonder where the reported 9000 plus postal votes came from (normally expected to number around 2,500 in that seat).
But of course we can’t check on that. The equivalent of a transit van full of bagged voting papers, marked up voting registers and postal voting forms were carried the same night to Kirkcaldy Sheriff Court for storing and being made accessible for public scrutiny for the legally required year AND GOT LOST. From the Sheriff Court office! Half a ton of carefully bagged records. Nobody knows where they went. Within a few days of being delivered by the Electoral Returning Officer nobody could say where they were or what had happened to them. You don’t believe it, I hear you say. Neither do I. Neither does a huge team that worked at the by-election. Neither does anybody with any sense.
The present postal voting arragements have been described as “a licence for electoral fraud”
There have been a number of prosecutions in England in recent years against the Labour Party for electoral fraud through postal ballots. It was actually touch and go at a Govan election a decade ago as well. Is this what happened at Glenrothes? Unless someone speaks up we will never know. The evidence has been destroyed.
What I do know is that Lindsay Who?, the Labour voctor at Glenrothes, will not survive the next election in Glenrothes which will be taken by the SNP and that if we think ballot box fiddling is the worst thing the SNP will face as it drags Scotland to Independence we will have to think again.
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it was salmond who said the snp would win glenrothes not the labour party and their media friends as you put it
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Salmond did in fact two days before the election on the basis of collected information but the media had installed the SNP as favourite long before that which was a nonsense in a very safe Labour seat.
Did you actually read and understand what I said above.
Many observers believe the SNP DID win Glenrothes.
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“But what sort of man – never mind a national leader – needs and lets his wife lead him to safety? The UK is not a Primary School where Mothers conduct nervous children through the volatile masses to the sanctuary of the classrom.”
In my opinion the above statement is wholly sexist – a man who needs his wife obivously understands equality. Both mothers and fathers support their children at school. Also, I do not believe there is any “sanctuary” in the classroom – especially as the SNP are unable to deliver on their manifesto promises of class size.
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At least the SNP doesn’t drag spouses up onto the stage to deliver cringe inducing paeans which have nothing whatever to do with actual politics.
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Yes indeed. Absolutely scraping the barrel.
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whatever political differences exist , most fair minded people consider gordon brown a political giant
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I agree. It’s also pleasing no-one seems to disagree that the SNP hasn’t kept its manifesto promise on class sizes.
In addition I’m still waiting for free prescriptions!
Perhaps Alex should bring out his wife to tell us what a wonderful man he is and why she loves him. Perhaps she’s got nothing to say!
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Wille
You mean “scraping the bottom of the barrell”
Absolutely.
I’m sure Fred West’s wife loved him.
Sarah Broiwn’s performance on the platfrom of what was supposed to be a serious political event was toe-curling.
I have never thought of Brown as a political giant, no more than I would think of John Major or Neil Kinnock in these terms. I am sure history will be no more kind to Brown than it has been to Neville Chamberlain. Brown will be remebered as the man who destroyed the UK’s public finances for a generation and who took the Labour Party to its worst defeat in its history. I suspect this might be the last UK Labour Government.
In UK terms there have been two UK political giants in the last century – Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher. Winston was fortunate to be the right man at the right time though many Scots never forgave him the tanks in the streets of Glasgow when he was Lib Home Secretary. Margaret Thatcher’s grasp of power was so sure and complete that she set in train the politcal movements that produced Tony Blair and have now destroyed the Labour movement and replaced it with an imposter called New Labour which may find itself replaced soon by the LibDems as the natural party of opposition in England.
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