A Brown Week - “We’re Doomed, Captain Mainwaring”
Comment at end
UPDATE:
5th May, 2008
WE’RE DOOMED … AGAIN, CAP’N!
And after the drastic local elections and Boris shifting Ken from the London mayoralty - things, as they used to say, can only get … er … better?
Well, the captain is doing his best to steer the ship away from the rocks. His “changes” this week MIGHT just make a difference, but then there’s the 42 days’ detention furore and the various coups going on around the skipper. (Now, how does it feel, Mr Brown? Ask ‘The Previous’, why don’t you?)
1st December, 2007
A WEEK’S A LONG TIME …
And it certainly shows on the present PM’s face.
As Gordon Brown promises his full co-operation with the latest Police Funding Inquiry into Labour - on an issue the PM admitted was unlawful - he must be wondering what has hit him and his premiership.
“AH, BUT HE WAS GOOD IN A CRISIS”!
WHAT?
So, according to some such as Geoff Hoon tonight on BBC’s ‘Any Questions’, the present PM managed the summer’s terrorist attacks, the floods and the foot and mouth outbreak well. REALLY?! Weren’t the structures already in place by then? Put in place under his predecessor? Making it oh-so-easy to cope? For ANY PM?
Wasn’t that thanks to Blair who kept Home Office and Defence responsibilities under his own auspices, and thus away from Brown’s dark and heavy hand?
The problems of the last few weeks - Northern Rock, the missing CDs with information on 25 million of us, the CGI furore and now the donor-by-proxy scandal and Brown’s handling of it - have overshadowed ALL of the (undeserved imho) praise heaped on Brown in the summer.
He was built up by the feral press, relieved, in their ‘wisdom’, to see the back of Blair.
And what the press giveth, the press can taketh away.
NO-ONE SHOULD KNOW THAT BETTER THAN A BRITISH PM
So, without passing judgement yet on the Labour party’s funding by proxy concerns, the other two big issues were in the realm of Brown, the former chancellor. HE, it was who as PM, with his tame chancellor, fumbled around trying to work out what to do with Northern Rock. HE, it was who merged HMRC, and held the purse strings which may well have limited freedom to perform basic security. And, HE insisted on running HIS departments, of which HMRC was one. So it was up to HIM to ensure that security issues were in place.
But his biggest mistake was getting the frights about calling a general election when the Tories were only a few points ahead. That way, he’d have given himself four/five years from now and not the two/three he now has. HE had the power to call a general election, not his cabinet or his party.
THE COURAGE TO LEAD?
Now, I don’t know about you - but I’d prefer to have a PM with the courage to lead, even if in the end his choice is not popular and leads, arguably, to his demise. We had one like that once. Quite recently. Why does it now seem such a time ago?
Most of us are not really interested in the inner workings of political parties. But my interest over the last year or so has led me to devour books on Labour’s recent past. And one fact that stands out is that more than ANY chancellor in recent years, this particular one, Gordon Brown - ten years as chancellor - was allowed greater leeway than any of his predecessors. This by his colleague and erstwhile friend, the then PM, Tony Blair. Whether this showed weakness in Blair, insufficient choice in the talent of his colleagues, too much faith in Brown and in his being on the same page politically, or a combination of the above, is all arguable. But Brown was given great long lengths of rope, and in the end these are now tangled around his neck.
[Pic: Peter Watt & David Abrahams]
ANOTHER DAY - ANOTHER CRISIS!
On Monday, Labour sacrificed … er … sacked their General Secretary, Peter Watt, who admitted that he DID know about David Abrahams’s donations by proxy.
On Tuesday, Harriet Harman, the party Chairman, admitted taking moneys - £5,000 - in this way, from Mr Abrahams.
On Wednesday, Labour’s chief fundraiser Jon Mendelsohn, who was appointed in September, admitted that he had known about the secret donations for two months. He said he had raised concerns about the arrangement with Watt but the general secretary told him it was lawful.
[Pic: Brown & Mendelsohn]
Mr Abrahams, the donor-by-proxy, has released details of a letter he received from Mendelsohn six weeks ago requesting a meeting, which the property developer interpreted as an attempt to solicit more funds. But Mendelsohn claimed he wanted to meet Abrahams to tell him that his method of contribution was unacceptable.
On Thursday, aides to Harriet Harman revealed that Mr Leslie passed on Mrs Kidd’s details as a potential donor.
Several MPs protested to Ms Harman’s office about what was seen as an attempt to draw Mr Brown deeper into the controversy. The Harman campaign team in Labour’s deputy leadership election revealed that it accepted £5,000 from Janet Kidd, one of Mr Abrahams’ proxy donors, after being given Ms Kidd’s name by Chris Leslie, who was Mr Brown’s leadership campaign manager.
And on Friday 30th November, Jon Mendelson dismissed Mr Abraham’s allegations that he, Mr Mendelsohn knew that Mr Abrahams had been donating in this fashion. Mr Abrahams says he has letters of thanks for his many donations from the Labour party.
HARMAN & DROMEY STILL PLEADING IGNORANCE
On top of that, it transpires that Ms Harman had failed to register with the electoral commission that she had taken out a second mortgage for £40,000 on the home she shares with the party Treasurer, husband Jack Dromey, to help with her Deputy Leadership Election expenses. She was heavily involved with setting up the regulations, and as a QC should surely have understood about this sort of transparency. He is the Party Treasurer! Dromey is the one who
In this report, 16th March, 2006, as Blair’s “Nightmare on Downing Street” got started, Jack Dromey was described thus at the BBC website:
‘Jack Dromey, the Labour Party treasurer investigating secret loans to the party, has previously complained that “rich men are too influential at Downing Street”. Treasurer since 2004, Mr Dromey has said he knew nothing about loans totalling millions of pounds made to the party in the run-up to the 2005 general election.’
Seems he knows nothing much about anything!
And anyway, if such as Diane Abbott think he’s all right, you know there’s something dodgy going on. She’s the one who confirms Michael Portillo as Common Sense Embodied and the sole reason I no longer watch Andrew Neil’s Politics show.
And … wait … there’s even more!
The Leader of the Scottish Labour party, Wendy Alexander, has admitted receiving money form a donor registered in Jersey and so not listed as a UK voter (clearly not eligible to donate).
Ms Alexander is the sister of Douglas Alexander, International Development Secretary, and one of Mr Brown’s trusted lieutenants on the front bench.
Wait, wait … again. There’s even more ….
The very same Douglas Alexander is being investigated as regards planning applications concerning Mr Abrahams for development of land in the north east of England, while Mr Alexander was Transport Secretary.
STRAW BLAMING BLAIR?
And just to make matters worse, Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, has piled in:
Straw has raised the possibility that there were more revelations to come, saying that only “one or two people” other than Watt knew about the arrangement with Abrahams. He tried to push responsibility on to figures in the Blair administration, by saying: “It’s absolutely true that this seems to go back for about four years.”
One of Tony Blair’s most senior former aides, however, insisted the former prime minister did not know about the arrangement. He only knew about much LARGER donations.
And YOUR point is NOT the point, Mr Straw. Mr Brown was the “clean sweep”. Mr Blair was NEVER investigated for this kind of “illegality”. And the investigation on HIS colleagues was dismissed.
Are you surprised if a touch of schadenfreude courses through Blairite veins today?
BLAIR MUST BE THINKING - ‘THIS IS PIDDLING STUFF - AND YOU LOT CAN’T COPE’.
And that’s only half of it. I’m losing the will to type.
PHEW!
TOO LATE NOW, COMRADES!
You have to wonder if over the last year and the fiasco of the first Police Inquiry, when NOTHING illegal was actually done, these people were SO transfixed by what the future held for them once Tony Blair was safely behind bars, that they didn’t even consider it worthwhile checking that their own hands were clean. The utter arrogance, ineptitude and incompetence is staggering.
And using this language I am being generous to a fault!
THE POLLS
The opinion polls are not looking too good for PM Brown, and these polls are inevitably several days behind the latest revelations, so they might even be worse if he had to call an election in the near future.
Luckily for him, he doesn’t.
The recent YouGov poll in the Telegraph is already out-of-date. The figures were with changes on the previous survey from the pollster - CON 43% (+2): LAB 32% (-2): LD 14% (nc)
There’s no doubt that Labour has had a terrible week in the media - but it has been a week that has got incrementally worse almost with each news bulletin.
And then there’s Peter Hain - who “forgot” to declare a donation to his leadership campaign.
A lesser sin, most likely, but careless from another senior Labour politician.
Unbelievable stuff.
So, if the polls drop through the floor, what will the Labour party in its collective wisdom do?
I am sure that many are calling for steady nerves. The last thing they want is a split in their party.
But, in case they hadn’t realised it, their party is already split. That happened when the ambitious and over-inflated present PM allowed the plotters to go for the throat of Tony Blair.
The foolish 2005 intake, whose jobs were actually due to Blair, were persuaded that back to the future time had arrived.
There were always splits, issues, and groups within groups, sharing little. Blair managed, through his rare political and personal skills, to keep the cracks papered over.
Why do I get this feeling that so many innocent/ignorant/naive MPs have been used by the purveyors of sharp practice?
Is it all Balls?
[Pic: Mainwaring - "Let's not have any of that sort of talk here"]
There’s something satisfying watching this Ed Balls character, and other nonentities who famously thought little of Blair, standing helplessly by as their boss, the present PM, comes apart at the seams.
Whatever, I can hear the voice of the Dad’s Army character, Private Frazer, in my ear as I write - “we’re doomed, Captain Mainwaring, DOOMED!”
[Pictures: Left, Captain Mainwaring; Right, Private Frazer - "We're doomed"]
- Police Inquiry “Confident of Quick Results”
- The Mirror’s Take
- The Guardian’s Thoughts 1st December
- A view from the “Libertarian Right”
Tags: Tony Blair, police, Balls, Gordon Brown, hain, straw, harmon, dromey, electoral commission, abrahams, alexander, David Miliband, local elections may 2008, coup leadership
