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.â€
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.”