Articles with the Tag Gordon Brown

Gordo To Go

Gordon Brown, UK elections, UK politics, Video
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The price for Clegg’s cooperation; the voluntary dethronement of Gordon Brown.

Dethroned

Gordon Brown says he is to step down and that a new leadership election is to be called by the Labour party.

5.06pm: Here are the main points.

• Gordon Brown is going to resign. He wants to stand down as Labour leader before the next Labour conference in the autumn. But he intends to remain as prime minister until then (if he can).

• Nick Clegg has formally opened talks with Labour. Brown said that Clegg rang him recently (presumably after the Lib Dem meeting) to say he would like to have formal talks with a Labour team.

• Brown is proposing a “progressive” government, comprising Labour, the Lib Dems, and presumably the SNP, Plaid Cymru, the SDLP and the Alliance. Electoral reform would be a priority.

5.04pm: Brown says he will “facilitate” the discussions with the Lib Dems.

5.03pm: Brown says he has “no desire” to stay in his position longer than is needed. He would be willing to stay in office until the a new government is formed. But the election was a judgment on him. He is going to ask Labour to organise a leadership election, so that a new leader can be in place by the time of the conference. He will play no part in that contest.

5.02pm: He says he has had conversations with people like the head of the IMF about the eurozone crisis.

So we’ll have yet another unelected PM. Cheers then, Cleggy.

It had better not be a Milliband. (My money’s on Alan Johnson, but you knew that.)

Mind you the whole thing makes Cameron look like the over-confident, entitled tosser he is, and that can’t be a bad thing.

My Prescience- Fu Remains As Strong As Ever

UK politics
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I’m listening to Any Questions on Radio 4 (click for podcast) atm and someone’s just asked the panel who they think the next Labour leader will be. Several panel members suggested Alan Johnson….

Remember, you heard it here first.

Do Keep Up, Pundits

Me, April 2008:

I predict, right here and now, that Alan Johnson will be the next leader of the Labour party. I’m even willing to put a fiver on it, as I did on John Major, and I was right about him too…

….who would this likely new leader be? Harriet Harman? Dawn Primarolo? Cooper herself ? Those cooing martinets of incompetence offend women and men alike. Straw? Iraq – enough said. Hillary Benn? Not unless technocracy gets sexy all of a sudden. One of the Millibands? Surely they can’t’ve finished their work experience already….

You see what I mean. Who’s left that hasn’t pissed everyone off, but Alan Johnson?

Jackie Ashley, recently-turned former Brownite, in The Guardian this morning:

… If the party gets the kind of historic shredding the polls suggest then all bets are off.

…Stopping that kind of meltdown is focusing many minds and explains why Alan Johnson has become such a fashionable figure. He is genuine, genial, moderate and working class. He has spoken loyally without sounding greasy – and without closing the door on his own emergence as a unity candidate leader. Yesterday, defending Hazel Blears, he emphasised her roots as a working-class woman. “Blokes and blokettes, keeping calm and carrying on” would be the message.

What did I tell you? Sometimes even I’m shocked at my own prescience. Anyone willing to stake a fiver against Johnson now?

If At First You Don’t Succeed, Freep Like F*ckery

Election Skullduggery, Gordon Brown, Manufacturing consent, UK elections, UK politics
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Has a desperate Gordon Brown activated his last-chance strategy of freeping the election?

votessack.jpg

I hate to say I told you so (not that it ever stopped me) but… from this evenings Guardian front page:

The result of the general election may not be confirmed until late on Friday because the electoral system is struggling to process verification checks on a record number of postal votes, officers have warned.

Councils have reported applications for postal votes up by 60% in some areas, and with a new system of checking signatures and dates of birth against applications – and only 11 days between the deadline for applications and polling day – administrators say there could be delays.

[…]

The surge in postal votes has also raised concerns about electoral fraud, although the 50 allegations currently being investigated are mainly confined to the local elections are also being held in some areas tomorrow.

John Turner, the chief executive of the Association of Electoral Administrators, said: “If returning officers receive sackfuls of postal votes tomorrow, it’s going to put serious delays in the system because they will have to focus on verification before they start counting votes.

Me last week:

Poll Fraud 2010 – Let The Vote Rigging Begin!

Never mind, Gordon, even when the election looks well and truly lost, there’s always voting fraud…

[…]

The 2005 election, and specifically Birmingham 2005, was described by election observers as the dirtiest UK election ever, and that was down to Labour:

Vote-riggers exploited weaknesses in the postal voting system to steal thousands of ballot papers and mark them for Labour, helping the party to take first place in elections to Birmingham City Council.

They believed that their cheating would be hidden for ever in the secrecy of the strong boxes where counted votes are stored, never suspecting that a judge would take the rare step of smashing the seals and tracing the ballots back to the voters.

[…]

They coldly exploited communities where many cannot speak English or write their names. They forced what the judge called “dishonest or frightened” postmen into handing over sacks of postal ballots. They seem to have infiltrated the mail service: several voters gave evidence that their ballot papers were altered to support Labour after they put them in the post.

That’s not to say the Tories haven’t also been up to electoral shenanigans:

5 June 2006 The Times reported that the police in Coventry were investigating allegations that there had been personation offences in the ward of Foleshill at the local elections in May 2006 and that there had also been postal voting fraud. An election petition was lodged at the High Court by the defeated Labour councillor in the ward giving the names and addresses of ten voters whose identities were apparently stolen:

The Times has seen passports of three voters, a veteran Labour Party member and a young couple, which indicate that they were out of the country on election day, May 4. Documents also seen by the newspaper show that staff in polling stations in Coventry that day clearly marked the three down as having turned up and voted. The Conservatives won the ward, Foleshill, by six votes after a recount, one of two gainsthat turned a deadlocked council into one with a slender Tory lead.

Labour has conveniently left most of the loopholes that have allowed it to manipulate the vote firmly in place, despite numerous reports from such august bodies as the Joseph Rowntree Trust, fromACPO & the Electoral Commission, and most recently from Parliament itself, all pointing out the ease and prevalence of vote rigging. From the parliamentry report:

• Experienced election observers have raised serious concerns about how well UK election procedures measure up to international standards.

• There have been at least 42 convictions for electoral fraud in the UK in the period 2000–2007.

• Greater use of postal voting has made UK elections far more vulnerable to fraud and resulted in several instances of large-scale fraud.

• There is widespread, and justifiable, concern about both the comprehensiveness and the accuracy of the UK’s electoral registers – the poor state of the registers potentially compromises the integrity of the ballot.

• There is a genuine risk of electoral integrity being threatened by previously robust systems of electoral administration having reached ‘breaking point’ as a result of pressures imposed in recent years.

• Public confidence in the electoral process in the UK was the lowest in Western Europe in 1997, and has almost certainly declined further as a result of the extension of postal voting.

• The benefits of postal and electronic voting have been exaggerated, particularly in relation to claims about increased turnout and social inclusion.

• There is substantial evidence to suggest that money can have a powerful impact on the outcome of general elections, particularly where targeted at marginal constituencies over sustained periods of time.

• Outside of ministerial circles, there is a widespread view that a fundamental overhaul of UK electoral law, administration and policy is urgently required.

The Labour government may have made a show of reform with these postal vote verification procedures, but that’s all it is, a show, a bit of window dressing. Why change a voting system whose lack of integrity they’re exploiting to the full? And do we really think they’re not exploiting that lack of integrity today in 2010? A reported 60% surge in postal votes says to me they are.

Comment of The Day: Brown’s Coming Portillo Moment

Comment of the Day, Gordon Brown, UK elections, UK politics
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I can’t wait for Friday. Why? Because I predict on Friday we’ll all be saying ‘Where were you when Gordon Brown realised he’d lost the election for Labour?”

Because lose it he will, and if you want to know why, read this comment by princesschipchops, in response to Brown’s last-ditch yet futile attempt to recover the Guardianista vote:

Mr. Brown – I voted for you in 1997. I cried when Labour won and finally 18 years of horrendous Tory rule were over. I was not alone. At the time I worked in the private sector in Finance and earned good money but I always believed in fair and progressive taxation – even if it hit me personally in the pocket. I believed in a fairer society and re-distribution. My euphoria did not last long.

Many things soured my view of your party. Firstly when you reneged upon your promise to reform the voting system and instead clung onto FPTP for the sake of staying in power. Then smaller things such as the lack of enforcing employer contributions in the supposed fantastic new Stakeholder pensions. Introducing torturous tax credits instead of just upping the tax free amount to something decent. And then spreading those tax credits to the middle classes who did not need them.

Of course there was Iraq. I marched with millions – yes millions – all of whom were ignored. And so hundreds of thousands have died. So Labour lost my vote.

However if you had taken over and shown a change in direction towards something remotely like socialist or even liberal and progressive policies then I would have given you my vote again.

But you did not. You have continued to court the ground just a smidgen to the left of the Tories – which puts your party pretty to the right in my book. You talk of aspiration and you demonise the poorest and most vulnerable.

Instead of tackling the wholesale destruction of communities blighted by Thatcher you ignored them. And then, in a breathtaking display of inhumanity by your party – blamed them. Suddenly those living in areas suffering long term unemployment were to blame – you spoke in the language of the Daily Mail and other right wing rags.

Worse, you then started to target the sick and disabled, bringing in the most sweeping and destructive welfare reforms ever seen.

I know of people who are ill and vulnerable and who are living in daily fear of the letter from the DWP telling them they are finally up for the ESA medical. People with chronic illnesses who are very sick being told they can work. People on dialysis being told they can work the four days a week they do not recieve it. These are the things that are going on. And Atos staff are being pushed by incentives to do this dirty work for your government.

Mr. Brown people are dying. A woman died in Camden recently because she did not have the help she needed to live even a basic existence. The young girl who recently killed herself over her failure to find a job. The poor mother who saw no way out and took her life and the life of her child.

I am terrified of what the Conservatives will mean for me and for this country but I cannot and will not vote for a party that when it had the chance chose to stick with the Ultra Blairite agenda, neo liberalism and demonizing of the poor.

You turned your back on your base, you betrayed us.

Thursday is going to be an electoral bloodbath – vote fraud permitting – but Brown’s still hanging on like grim death. He has said he’ll resign – but only when when he feels ‘he can’t be an effective leader of the Labour Party any more’.

When’s that then?

When one of his own candidates calls him the worst leader in parliamentary history?

“The loss of social values is the basic problem and this is not what the Labour Party is about,” Manish Sood, the Labour candidate for Norfolk Northwest told the local Lynn News. “I believe Gordon Brown has been the worst Prime Minister we have had in this country. It is a disgrace and he owes an apology to the people and the Queen.”

Election 2010’s going to make that 1997 Portillo moment look like a celebration.

As another Guardian commenter put it, “Go back to your constituencies and prepare for obscurity.”

Oh Sugar, Sugar.

Gordon Brown, New Labour, UK elections, UK politics
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I thought Sirallun famously abhorred bullshitters but he seems to be pretty good at it himself.

One minute I’m listening to The Apprentice’s Alan Sugar telling us BBC listeners how utterly fantastic and in control Gordon Brown is (but only after Gordo promised to ennoble him in pursuit of temporary glory while The Apprentice is still on air. He didn’t come out and say it before that). Then I turned to the Guardian’s politics liveblog to find this post:

1.09pm: A Tory press officer has just been round with a photocopy of a letter Alan Sugar (as he then was) wrote to the Financial Times in March 1992. This is how it starts:

Sir, I have noted with disgust the comments of a certain Mr Gordon Brown who has accused me of doing well out of the recession after reading the letter published in the Times from 40 top industrialists.

I do not know who Mr Gordon Brown is. Excuse my ignorance, but I don’t. Whoever he is [shadow trade and industry secretary], he has not done his homework properly. The man doesn’t know what he’s talking about. How he has the audacity to say that Amstrad or Alan Sugar has flourished in recession is a complete mystery to me.

Hahaha. Poor old Gordo, he really is a disaster area.

UPDATE

1 Apparently that quote was broadcast on last night’s Newsnight, so I’m well behindhand with it. But I didn’t watch Newsnight, it’s on the same time as Question Time so again maybe I’m not.

2 Shuffling continues apace – the latest is that Hoon’s resigned and Tom Watson, self-described digital MP, has Twittered his goodbye; it reads like something addressed to Kim Jong Il:

However spitefully your character is traduced and your triumphs degraded by Labour’s enemies, they can never erase these towering achievements to your name. To have had the opportunity to serve the public as one of your Ministers has been an honour, for which I thank you.

Pass the sickbag, Mother.

3 And another one gone, another one gone, another one bites the dust…. Margaret Beckett’s going too, to spend more time with her hanging baskets.

4: I was right: next goes Caroline “I am staying in the Government. I am very proud to be in the Labour Government, I am very proud to be part of Gordon Brown’s Government” Flint, who actually spoke in support of Brown this morning. Now going, she’s saying he treated her like so much “Female window dressing’. This from the woman who recently appeared glammed up in a flame coloured frock and killer heels, posing coyly on a chaise longue for one of the Sunday papers.

5 Ha! One of my most loathed Labour MPs, Employment Minister Tony McNulty, is off too. The trickle’s becoming a flood. The brass-necked, greedy dishonesty and sheer hard-faced gall of Employment Minister Tony McNulty, who’s been highly visible in the Guardian’s pages and elsewhere demonising non-existent cheats and scroungers with his hateful ‘no ifs or buts’ anti benefit fraud campaign, beggars belief. Talk about rubbing the faces of the 2 million unemployed in it. What an asswipe. His constituents think so too – someone graffitied “that’s £60,000 you owe me Tony” on his constituency office door.