Brown struggles to be heard
Hold up!
See that little date above?
This post was published years ago.
My opinions have changed over time: I think it's quite fun to keep old posts online so that you can see how that has happened. The downside is that there are posts on this site that express views that I now find offensive, or use language in ways I'd never dream of using it today.
I don't believe in airbrushing history, but I do believe that it's important to acknowledge the obvious: some of what I've written in the past has been crap. Some of it was offensive. Some of it was offensively bad. And there's may be some brass among the muck (you can make up your own mind on that).
Some of what I've presented as my own views has been me—wittingly or unwittingly—posturing without having considered all the facts. In a few years, I'll probably think the same about what I'm writing today, and I'm fine with that. Things change. People grow. Society moves forward.
The internet moves on too, which means there might be broken links or embedded content that fails to load. If you're unlucky, that might mean that this post makes no sense at all.
So please consider yourself duly warned: this post is an historical artefact. It's not an exposition of my current views nor a piece of 'content' than necessarily 'works'.
You may now read on... and in most cases, the post you're about to read is considerably shorter than this warning box, so brace for disappointment.
It’s been an extraordinarily bad few weeks for Mr Brown. I can’t actually remember the last bit of positive press, or even of genuine policy, that he managed to get out.
Even today, his government’s faintly ridiculous announcement about introducing a ‘skills check’ for single parents has been buried by news of more Labour sleaze, leading to the resignation of the impossibly young-looking ex-nurse Peter Watt, who was the party’s general secretary.
With the infamous lost discs, the floods, bluetongue, the ongoing saga with H5N1, the high price of petrol, the Northern Rock scandal, and so much more all obscuring the message, he’s in a bit of a pickle.
Yet, before he came to power, commentators may well have suggested that it was exactly this sort of baptism of fire that would give him a boost – after all, he’s always seemed to be excellent in a crisis. But it now appears that he’s pretty crap when he’s in the middle of the crisis himself.
If he continues to crash his way through crisis after crisis, announcing ridiculous policy after ridiculous policy, then the next government of this country will be Conservative.
Given Mr Brown’s lacklustre performance, I foresee a winter of discontent – amongst the Labour Party, at the very least – and Mr Brown’s position as PM may not seem such a given by the time it’s over.
This post was filed under: News and Comment, Politics.