Miliband WRONG: Rumblings In The Jungle?
Comment at end
[Key: "ppm" = present prime minister]
16th December, 2007
Before we get to David Miliband & friends and their BIG mistake -
BREAKING NEWS!! …
TO ADD TO THE MISERY - DOUBLE (CONFIDENCE) TROUBLE
(And that’s not to mention more missing data … (lost 6 months ago!)
Rumours of a rift between the Governor of the Bank of England Mervyn King and the Treasury have been denied by the government. See Nick Robinson’s blog.
Plans by the chancellor/ppm to strip the governor of his power to intervene in future banking crises have also been denied. But the chancellor is admittedly reviewing the present triangular relationship, famously set up in Blair’s first few weeks in power, in 1997. Why, some are asking, has the ppm not yet re-appointed Mr King?
And, as if to pass the label of anti-libertarian over to Brown’s government, Lord Falconer has declared an about-turn and has said he is against the government’s proposals to increase the time for detention of terror suspects from 28 to 42 days. As Lord Chancellor in Blair’s government he backed Blair’s 90 days proposals, which was his first parliamentary loss - in 2005 - after 8 years in power. But Lord Falconer now says that he has changed his mind now that the CPS has relaxed procedures. (Lower threshold tests mean that suspects can now be charged at an earlier stage.)
YES, MR MILIBAND … YOU GOT IT HALF WRONG, ANYWAY
IT TOOK LESS THAN A YEAR! In fact less than six months! Keep praying, Mr M.
Watch David Miliband interview on Question Time on February 9th 2007, when he said people will say “wouldn’t it be great to have that Blair back because we can’t stand that Gordon Brown.”
OK, so I know Mr Miliband has denied all of this present “differences” talk and GB/PM didn’t tell him to tone down his EU speech in Lisbon (as if). When push comes to shove they’re on the same side … more or less. But it seems some Blairites believe the result of the next election has already been decreed, and it’s a no-no, so they reckon there’s not a lot of point in keeping TOO quiet, for too long. There’s bound to be SOME positioning going on.
And then there was John Hutton, who said:
As if he would!!!
Still, you can’t say you weren’t warned. Even Guido Fox reckoned you made a booboo ditching your “election winner”!
And according to the political betting site Brown was ALWAYS going to be a loser when opinion polls were studied in depth and BELIEVED. From December 2005 to June 2007, when asked about voting intentions, with Cameron/Brown/Kennedy/Campbell in mind, Brown was ALWAYS, CONSISTENTLY, EVERY TIME, trailing Cameron. For that whole year, at up to +10 points, Cameron was invariably ahead.
Did the Labour party choose to just IGNORE that information? If so, why? Did they believe the idiotic feral beastly press’s nonsense telling them that Blair was politically dead? He wasn’t then, and isn’t now.
From political betting:
- Did the controversial “named leader” question get it right all along?
The … table is reproduced from UK Polling Report’s record of the controversial “named leader” questions that several pollsters asked during the period between David Cameron’s election as Tory leader in December 2005 and Gordon’s arrival in June 2007.
These findings proved to be highly controversial and every time I featured them on the site they came under fierce attack. For what was being presented was dynamite. For on almost every occasion when compared with the standard voting intention findings Labour was shown to do considerably worse with Gordon in the job.
- The idea that the man the party was going to make leader was an electoral liability was just too hard to swallow and Team Brown put an enormous effort into discrediting the findings.
Just look at the table (…) and what do you see - a broadly similar picture of voting intention to that we are experiencing at the moment.
What these historical finding suggest, I contend, is that Brown was never going to be popular once the novelty of his honeymoon period had worn off. The PLP have elected unopposed someone who could lose a lot of MPs their jobs - and there was lots of data about to support this when they decided not to support a rival candidate.
Given that the pattern of big Tory leads over a Brown-led Labour now goes back for two years you have to question whether, indeed, we are going to see the pendulum swing back to Labour while the current leadership is in place.
- In my view there is a trend going back over a long enough period to suggest that a Brown-led Labour is almost doomed to failure. The big question is whether the Tories can do enough to win an overall majority.
Maybe this time I’ll stick with my Conservative seats buy spread position.
Mike Smithson
Brown Looking Down - VERY down:
Whether this picture is an accurate representation of the ppm’s present state of mind I’ve no idea. But, if it weren’t for the approaching jollities of Christmas, it might just be the country’s.
BROWN DEMORALISED?I feel almost sorry for the ppm if he does feel like this. It’s a sad and lonely place to be, at the top, when things are crumbling all around you - or people say they are. Ask your predecessor - he lived with it for years!
THANKS GUIDO
I owe the pictures above to the Guido Fawkes site, which although rabidly Tory right-wing - thus miles to the right of Dave, sometimes gets it right. These interesting little quotes from April, May & June of this year almost sound as though they admired Blair. They didn’t; they hated him too. They are mostly either anarchists, loopy liberals or right-wing Tories, if my perception from visits there are anything to go by. Anyway, for the pretty pics, thank you, Mr Fawkes. Got your gunpowder handy?
A link to Guido Fawkes’s site
Guido quotes himself here:
They are going to miss three times election winning Blair when he is gone. Wait and see … 26 June 2007
Labour have acted like lemmings, dispensing with their most successful leader of all time for a less popular, less likeable replacement. The more the voters see of Gordon, the worse it will get. May 13, 2007
You have to wonder if the Labour party is having a collective moment of Lemming-like lunacy. The Brown bounce will be a dead-Lemming bounce. April 27, 2007
Remind Guido why they are getting rid of three-times-winner Blair early? April 25, 2007
The Tories are on polling levels last seen at the height of Thatcher’s popularity during the national euphoria following the Falklands victory. Gordon Brown has been a f***ing disaster for the Labour party…
Oliver Kamm Regrets Blair’s Departure: Read entire article here: Excerpt:’But some PMs can withstand pressure. Mrs Thatcher was fortunate in her enemies - General Galtieri and Arthur Scargill - yet she weathered crises, notably the Westland affair, almost undaunted. Tony Blair incurred unpopularity over the Iraq War, yet remained the dominant figure not only in British politics but also in Europe. Brown is not a statesman of that type. The overwhelming impression is that, having pressed for the Labour succession for many years, he has no idea now what to do with it. Some of his decisions - making the Defence Secretary a part-time role, for example - scream incompetence regardless of external circumstances. He is a lame PM at the head of a weak parliamentary party. (It’s always graceless to claim foresight, but I never thought Brown was a plausible alternative or successor to Tony Blair, whose departure from Downing Street I intensely regret.)Brown has no route out of this from abandoning the “triangulation” of British politics, where Labour sweeps the centre ground and ensures it can’t be outflanked on defence or crime. But note what Martin says:
One former Blairite cabinet member, speaking from self-imposed purdah, told me: “It was always thought that Blair was the man of compromise and Gordon the man of principle, but it was really the other way around.”
The loyalist Blairites always believed Gordon Brown was essentially a man of straw. But the Left, even the hard Left of the party, reserved their judgment. Brown was mistaken, in my belief, not to return the compliment.’
And from William Rees-Mogg in The Times“Time is running out for Mr Brown”Some people in the Labour Party comfort themselves because public opinion is volatile, and hope it will soon recover. Yet it seems equally likely that the momentum against Labour is still gathering pace.
And, just in case you’d forgotten WHY the country still voted for Blair’s New Labour Party again in 2005, read this. Not a slavish piece of work by any means. Take a look at the first sentence. Sound familiar? ‘Aspiration … social compassion …’? ABrownism… Blairism?
Times Interview, by Robert Crampton, 30 April 05
‘I asked him (Blair) to define Blairism and he said: “It’s about combining individual ambition and aspiration with social compassion and a sense of duty towards others.” Few Conservatives, Bufton Tuftons or otherwise, would disagree with that. When he first entered Parliament, aged 30, journalists would go to the young Blair for a robust quote on the issue of the day and get instead “not quite” or “but on the other hand” when they wanted “stormed” or “raged”. He hasn’t changed. He’s a conciliator by nature (hence, as with John Major, another conciliator, Blair’s success in Ulster). Despite his reputation as a warmonger, he is much more comfortable with caution and consensus than conflict. As are most people. He’s more manager than visionary, and he simply isn’t interested in ideology. “I am absolutely from the progressive side of politics,” he said, sounding waffly yet making a telling point, “but I am essentially a moderniser.”But talk to people who don’t write columns in newspapers and you find that such voters are alive and well. If there is a silent majority, or at least a silent 40 per cent, in this country, maybe it’s not made up of foxhunters or xenophobes or those who think Blair is a lying Yankee-poodle sellout, maybe it’s made up of people who didn’t think he was superman in 1997 and don’t think that he’s a monster in 2005, who still think, on balance, that of what’s on offer, Tony Blair is the safe, middle-of-the-road, contemporary choice. We shall see.’
FOOTNOTE:
As I mention elsewhere on this site, Blair’s already done most if not all of what New Labour seems to have stood for.Brown, it seems, has nothing new or visionary to offer except more of the same, minus the charm, personality, communication skills, international perspective, and taking it on the chin when he should.Can’t remember an occasion when Blair did not speak out memorably on ANY big issue in the public’s mind. Brown? What has he said about the Lisbon business, Bali, or the missing data? Or the Iraq “withdrawal” or … well, I could be wrong here.Perhaps he has said something. But it’s just not been memorable. So I can’t remember. He just lacks the right word at the right time.Always. All the time.
We’re just not all made to be prime minister, Mr GB/PM, I’m afraid, no matter how much we’d like it.
The only thing that’s saving you, GB/PM, is that your B-Team is also lacking leadership qualities.
Excerpt, Telegraph:
Mr Brown’s position remains fragile, the poll for The Sunday Times showed. His personal approval has now slumped from a 48 per cent net positive reading in the early weeks of his premiership to 26 per cent net negative now.It came amid claims that Mr Brown is “too demoralised” to introduce new banking rules after the run on Northern Rock.One senior Bank of England official told Irwin Stelzer, the economist and writer, that senior ministers were “unable to focus because morale throughout the Government is so low”.
Labour’s support has been battered by the near-collapse of Northern Rock, the loss of 25 million child benefit records, a new police inquiry into the party’s finances and growing fears about an economic downturn next year.
Despite Mr Brown’s recent troubles, allies of Tony Blair, the former prime minister, have refused to criticise him publicly.
But a Labour backbencher has hinted that could change if the party does not recover ground before next year’s local council election.
“If we lose seats in the May elections, serious questions will be asked about the party leadership,” said Ian Gibson, a Labour Left-winger.
ENDS ARTICLE
Note: I remember this MP, Ian Gibson, after Blair’s last, moving and inspirational speech to conference. Mr Gibson, in sweet innocence extolled his then lleader, and full of praise, begged the weary question - “WHY is he going?”
Perhaps if you’d worked THAT out at the right time, Mr Gibson, your party wouldn’t be in the mess it’s in now.
Just perhaps.
And meanwhile, the LABOUR LEFT are revolting, quietly … Sshhh…
Tags: Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, John Hutton, David Miliband, Lord Falconer, Lord Chancellor, Mervyn King, Guido Fox, Bank of England
