…Gordie’s a bit of a ditherer. Now we have it. As if we had not suspected.
But the detail is fascinating as the raw guts of Labour are trailed across the media with the Daily Mail serialisation of Peter Watt’s book: Inside Out: My Story Of Betrayal And Cowardice At The Heart Of New Labour.[i]
Watt, as General Secretary of the Labour Party from 2005 to 2007, was the one who put in place the organization needed to get the Labour campaign off the blocks when the date was announced. Watt warned about the perilous state of the Party’s finances – £30M in debt with years of spending above income.
But he did what was required arranging a £500,000 facility from the Co-operative Bank. Aren’t they the ones with an ethical investment policy?
HQ staff worked round the clock, poster sites booked, cars for Ministers to take them on the nationwide tours as soon as the keys to the Ministerial limos were whipped away. Labour Party volunteers stuffed envelopes – 1.5million of them to key targets in marginal constituencies and sent them off to the Post Office. Douglas Alexander assured Watt that the preparations must carry on but nothing should leak out. Watt was clearly nervous and knew that the secret was barely a secret anymore.
Finally Gordie sauntered off to talk to Andrew Marr. No. He had given the possibility of an election a brief passing thought but he was going to get on with being Prime Minister for a while yet.
Watt, left with £1.2M of expenditure and union cheques he could not now bank, despaired. Gordon had inflicted real damage on his party and sent activists into hair-tearing incomprehension.
When we look back to the Blair/Brown years when the Tories were replacing leaders on a constant cycle and getting nowhere, the body politic was in reasonable health because Labour were providing both government and effective opposition.
It was bound to end in tears but what was worse Brown had no Master Plan. Drained by the years of scheming, he thought being leader and PM was enough. He had nothing but blanks to fire and worse no armoury waiting to be wheeled out onto the political battlefield.
It is not an edifying sight watching the UK party of government implode. Whatever our own political persuasions are, it is unhealthy that dithering and paralysis are at the heart of government at a time when the nation needs some reassurance that competence might be forthcoming.
Perhaps the heat will melt some of the snow.
Russell Bruce, Books Editor
[i] Inside Out: My Story Of Betrayal And Cowardice At The Heart Of New Labour, by Peter Watt, is published by Biteback (interesting name for the publisher of this title) at £16.99 on 25th January. (The Daily Mail ran 6 pages of extracts in their 10th January edition.)
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The upper ranks of the Labour party must be in stitches or tears every time the term “a pair of safe hands” is used to describe the bungling Brown.
2010 Here We Are, broke, unemployed and bloody freezing, time for a self governing Scotland that is already more than qualified to fend and govern for itself. What are you waiting for Scotland? The fear of the unknown or the certainty of a crooked, double talking, Westminster government.
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This is not altogether surprising is it?
He runs the party in much the same way as he runs the country.
He has never had a real job in his life.
Far from being prudent he is fiscally irresponsible and the UK is carrying the mother of all deficits.
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Indeed, Ken,we have the biggest per capita deficit in the world (though Scotland’s per capita deficit is lower than the UK’s). We are shamefully below Iceland and Ireland in this respect and have national debt that is increasing at the rate of £500million PER DAY and is unsustainable.
My only surprise is that about 30% of the electorate still seem to be inclined to support the incompetwntsa and political nonentities that make up the Labour leadership.
However it looks like they will loose the elction and in Scotland we muct make sure we do not elect the equivalent of the infamous “Feeble Fifty” – the herd of utterely useless Labour and LibDem MPS who did nothing to protect Scotland from the excesses of Thatcherism.
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I see today that the Prime Minister, who only a couple of weeks ago was threatening to revive the Class War, is now suggesting that New Labour is in truth the party of the Middle Class -whatever that is.
I am wholly unsure, and care even less, where I am classified in Gordon Brown’s carefully graduated Class War and I feel sure that feeling is shared by many Scots. I see a lot of supposedly superior people in government at present and many of them bear titles bestowed by a grateful Labour Party. Are they better or worse than those who are to the Manner/Manor born?
I wonder if Charlie Faulkener and Peter Mandelson are just simple honest middle class lads who have made it like Baroness Scotland and Lord Foulkes and the ever generous Lord Sainsbury. Could it be that this is the only way to promote the unelectable? How about Lord Adonis? Now there is a name to live up to!
Where does Billy Connoly,one of Tony’s cronies and the scourge of the Nats, fit in? He can certainly act like a gold plated Laird when he struts his stuff on Don side. He should not have too long to wait for a gong
And, as a final thought ,surely nobody thinks that Harriet Harman is only middle class?
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It is ‘nice’ to see that Labour have become the ‘friends’ of the Middle Class, strange thought that it has only happen has we are moving towards an election.
Make no mistake, Labour and none more so than Queen Bee, Harriet Harman, have never been friends of the middle classes. Like a cheap car salesman, they will pedal any lie and use any trick in the book to keep to stay in power.
Gorden Brown will have to be dragged kicking and screaming out of No 10.
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