Millennium3

From today's Telegraph:

Gordon Brown's government fighting with itself
By Rachel Sylvester
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 08/04/2008

Political authority is like virginity. Once it is lost, you can't get it back. Gordon Brown is getting dangerously close to the point of no return. Slowly but surely his hold over his party and the Government is slipping away.

Last week, the Prime Minister had to endure what was described to me as a "low-level heckle" by his own backbenchers at a meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party. MPs are in open rebellion over the abolition of the 10p tax rate for the lowest paid workers and the proposal to lock up terrorist suspects, without charge, for 42 days. They are cross about post office closures; they are suspicious of plans for housing; they are concerned about ideas on welfare reform.

Their sense of detachment from their leader intensified this weekend when they saw pro-democracy protesters manhandled unceremoniously out of the way as Mr Brown received the Olympic torch at Number 10. There is a "sulphurous mood" on the Labour benches. Disillusioned Left-wingers, who campaigned for Mr Brown to become leader, are joining forces with triumphant Blairites who say: "I told you so." Even Tony Lloyd, the chairman of the PLP, warned yesterday that the Government needed to "clarify what it's there for".

Ministers are losing the habit of discipline too. Last week, Ivan Lewis, a health minister, warned that Labour was "losing touch" with hard-working families, then Gerry Sutcliffe, the licensing minister, attacked the tax rises on booze.

Behind the scenes, things are even worse. With no clear direction from above, Cabinet ministers are at each other's throats. I am reliably informed that, after one recent Cabinet meeting, Jack Straw threatened to punch Ed Balls during a row about who was responsible for youth crime. The Justice Secretary came back to his department fuming that he had never been spoken to so rudely by a colleague in public and that he was not going to put up with it.

He is not the only one with a grudge against Mr Brown's former right-hand man. James Purnell, the Work and Pensions Secretary, is cross with the Schools Secretary for claiming credit for getting money to deal with child poverty in the Budget, and Alan Johnson, the Health Secretary, was peeved to see a joint announcement on obesity hijacked by Mr Balls. There is even tension within the Department for Children, Schools and Families itself - I gather that Mr Balls tried before he took over to have the Blairite schools minister Lord Adonis removed. Mr Brown was persuaded not to sack him by Sir Michael Barber, the former permanent secretary at the department, but scars remain.

Meanwhile, Alistair Darling and John Hutton are at loggerheads over how to deal with the super-rich. Douglas Alexander is still nursing his wounds following the fallout from the election-that-never-was. The Treasury is engaged in a bitter stand off with the Department for Work and Pensions about the benefits system, the Foreign Office resents the amount of money going to the Department for International Development, the Ministry of Defence is angry about Budget cuts being imposed at a time when it is fighting two wars.

In the Lords, Lady Ashton, the leader of the Upper Chamber, is barely speaking to Lady Scotland, the Attorney-General. An impeccable liberal, she has not forgiven the black peeress for leaning over to an Asian lobbyist during a recent meeting to discuss forced marriages and saying words to the effect: "Don't worry, these white people don't really understand what we have to go through."

And, although the relationship between Number 10 and Number 11 is nowhere near as bad as it was during the TB/GB years, the Chancellor is already planning his memoirs, as an insurance policy against the Prime Minister.

There is not a single thing that has taken a sledgehammer to party unity - as the war in Iraq did during Mr Blair's time in charge - but there are lots of small pebbles popping on to the political windscreen and no over-arching message to prevent the glass shattering.

In private, ministers who were once in awe of Mr Brown have started complaining about their boss. "It's dither, dither, dither," sighs one. An aide claims, blithely: "It's like a Shakespearean tragedy. Gordon's not up to the job."



The Civil Service is starting to despair, with senior mandarins lamenting that they have no sense of where the Government is going. As if this were not bad enough, Mr Brown's advisers at Number 10 are not only fighting like ferrets in a sack, they are also briefing details to the press. Even those loyal to the Prime Minister admit things are not going as well as they could be. "It's terrible," says one, "The truth is, Gordon's got to change or we'll lose the next general election."

This, of course, is what it's all about. With the Conservatives enjoying a double-digit lead in the polls, Labour MPs are facing up to political mortality for the first time since 1997. And, they are discovering that personal survival is ultimately more important than loyalty. Even on the frontbench, fear of the formidable Brown machine has been replaced by fear of the electorate. "Labour MPs never really liked Tony but they admired him because he won," one minister told me. "They like Gordon more but they don't admire him."

There is a growing sense of disillusionment with the new regime. Many of the decisions that the Prime Minister made when he was Chancellor are coming back to haunt a Government coping with a credit crunch. Eight months into his leadership, there is little sign of the vision promised by Mr Brown in his party conference speech. As Rory Bremner, who used to be a fan, put it yesterday: "It's like having an uncle who's been building something in the shed at the bottom of the garden for 10 years… you look through the window and there's nothing there." A Cabinet minister was equally damning: "It's all about politics and not about making the country better." Next month's local and mayoral elections are focusing minds.

The danger for the Prime Minister is that his colleagues are starting to look beyond him. Already, the next general election has been all but written off by some, and the debate has shifted to who should take over as leader from Mr Brown. As this perception becomes increasingly pervasive, the Cabinet's collective responsibility is gradually being replaced by individual ambition.

Mr Balls is positioning himself, none too subtly as the "real Labour" candidate by waging war on the admissions policies of faith schools, Mr Purnell is trying to occupy the modernising ground by talking tough on welfare reform, David Miliband is making sure he does not end up in a foreign policy backwater, with speeches on the future direction of the centre-Left. It cannot be long before the Blairite street fighters, Charles Clarke and Alan Milburn, and the champion of the Left, Jon Cruddas, weigh in. This is not just about personality - it is about political direction. The battle is to define what Mr Brown did wrong and where Labour needs to go next.

It is, however, dangerous territory for any political party. Stephen Carter wants the Government to tell the voters it is "On Your Side" but the young pretenders are thinking about who is "On My Side". They have forgotten that they are (in theory at least) on the same side. And in the end, on polling day, they will live or die together.


Gordon Brown's government fighting with itself - Telegraph

youcanhandlethetruth

Brown's demise doesn't really matter becasue it'll be exactly the same when Cameron gets in, but at least the Labour backbenchers are spitting their disappoval intermittently.
More politicians need to do this, whatever party they are from....
Don't hold your breath too much though...

__________________
Before tyranny and television, "conspiracy theorists" never existed.

cointelpro/halfwits(in order of Porkpies) Clippo,Wowbanger TIP, Akria,Besoeker,Bear,Eurosceptic Antlantacist

Millennium3

I don't have any great hope that Cameron will solve many of our problems, but I do believe that in many ways Brown is a stunted character who is very unsuited to the post of PM - this creates numerous unnecessary problems. I don't think this will be the case with Cameron.

youcanhandlethetruth

Do you see him as another Tony ?

I am glad Brown is not a particularly good spin doctor - that the last thing we need.....

__________________
Before tyranny and television, "conspiracy theorists" never existed.

cointelpro/halfwits(in order of Porkpies) Clippo,Wowbanger TIP, Akria,Besoeker,Bear,Eurosceptic Antlantacist

Millennium3

I think Cameron is more substantial than Blair, also there are a lot of hard heads in the Tory background which would prevent him from doing anything too stupid.

Blair and Brown did not have this resource - previous leaders/heavyweights had either been discredited or had moved to the Lib/Dems. This was rather a pity given this startling book review in the business section of today's Telegraph!


When our devious ministers inhale their own exhaust
By Jeff Randall

Is business getting tougher? Are you feeling the pinch? Yes, I thought so. Most of us are. Taxes are up, energy bills are rising, likewise food costs. Travelling to work, whether by car or train, has never been more expensive. And for those planning a holiday in Europe, brace yourself for a shock: the pound's purchasing power is deflating like a punctured Lilo.

If you were hoping to ease over-stretched budgets by taking out a bigger mortgage, it's probably too late. House prices are suffering their steepest decline since the property market fell apart in September 1992. Not only is the value of your collateral shrinking, so is the willingness of banks to offer new deals. The days of 100pc mortgages are over.

Most lenders are asking for deposits of 5pc. Some, including Alliance & Leicester, Britannia and Cheltenham & Gloucester, insist on 10pc. A few are demanding 20pc. Much more of this and mortgage applicants will need to hand over their children as security.

If you thought the credit crunch was an arcane problem exclusive to derivatives dealers, it's time to set the alarm clock. All over the United Kingdom, households are waking up to a financial gale.

As the skies darken, it would be nice to think that the Government was doing its best to mitigate looming damage. It would be comforting to believe that the country's economic storm shelters were in good shape.

Unfortunately, those in charge have left the windows open and the shutters up. At a time when the country needs competent management, the Prime Minister is presiding over unimaginable state-sponsored profligacy.

The scale of lost resources is set out in impressive, albeit depressing, detail by David Craig in his latest book, Squandered - How Gordon Brown is wasting over one trillion pounds of our money*.

Craig is a former management consultant whose previous work, Plundering the Public Sector, lifted the lid on the way private-sector consultants get their teeth into publicly funded projects and suck out billions in fees. His thesis was that Blair's and Brown's New Labour had been "taken in" by greedy, self-serving consultants who bamboozle civil servants with techno-speak.

Though harsh on Labour's gullibility, Plundering, published in 2006, stopped short of accusing Downing Street's most senior residents of defrauding the country.

Their crime, as such, was to allow consultancy parasites to drain about £70bn from public services for precious little in return.

"The disaster is not the result of some kind of conspiracy," Craig concluded. "Behind closed doors, New Labour politicians are probably as uncomprehending and disappointed at what has happened as anyone else."

In Squandered, the author's analysis has moved on. There is no doubt over who's to blame for the mess we are in. Brown is not a victim; he is the culprit.

Not only has money been blown on an eye-popping scale, the Government operates a relentless programme of deception to cover up blunders.

Department by department, Craig unpicks Labour's hoopla to reveal what happens when devious ministers inhale their own exhaust. Readers with heart problems, high blood pressure or a susceptibility to violent headaches should think twice before dipping in to this book. The facts are infuriating.

In 10 years, Labour has spent about £1trillion - that's £1,000,000,000,000 - more than would have been the case, inflation adjusted, if government spending had been held at 1997-98 levels. That's about £50,000 for every household. Education has received an extra £185bn, health an additional £269bn and welfare, ie, social security benefits, £343bn more.

And what do we have to show for it? A state-school system that is so poor, there is a stampede into private education, and our best universities are being bullied by Ed Balls and his henchmen to abandon the quest for excellence in order to accommodate pupils from under-performing comprehensives.

Russell Group universities - Oxbridge, Bristol, Edinburgh, Nottingham, Warwick and 14 other elite institutions - spend fortunes trawling the country in search of state-educated youngsters and yet remain under intense pressure to debase standards in order to meet Government entry "targets".

In a 2007 poll of 3,000 doctors, more than 70pc did not believe the extra money for the NHS had been well spent and the same percentage felt there had been no meaningful improvement in care. The fact that 55pc of senior doctors have medical insurance tells us that even insiders want out.

Brown likes to boast about economic growth and rising employment, so why in 2007-08 is the Government doling out £156bn to 30m recipients in 40 types of social security payments and tax credits? That's nearly five times the defence budget. Benefits are gobbling up about 30pc of state spending. This is not an accident, it's how Labour has expensively purchased a client class.

Our Armed Forces are betrayed, private pensions are plundered, violent crimes are rising, quangos proliferate, immigration is out of control and Britain will receive less back per capita from the European Union's 2007-13 budget than any other member. Read this book and prepare to weep.

* Squandered - How Gordon Brown is wasting over one trillion pounds of our money, by David Craig. Publisher: Constable. Price: £8.99

When our devious ministers inhale their own exhaust - Telegraph

Gramboy2

Never mind how good or bad the next lot we need to remind these 'public servants' that the electorate do have a limited say.

Vote out all existing MP's of whatever colour and get them back into the squalid world that the rest of have to plough through every day.

Only a 'short sharp shock' such as that will bring some realism back to the House of Crooks.

Millennium3

Yes - but that is not going to be at the next GE - all of the parties that do have some idea of and concern for the real world are too busy fighting each other. So it is some comfort that the next government is likely to make improvements even if only superficial.

youcanhandlethetruth

I predict that by the time of the next GE, the pound will have collapsed (by design) and we will be forced into the Euro.

May not happen but it could do.

Millenium I am suprised you say:
"So it is some comfort that the next government is likely to make improvements even if only superficial."

Surely we want to see real improvements in our standard of living - not superficial ones ?

Thanks for posting details on that book - looks like a good read !

__________________
Before tyranny and television, "conspiracy theorists" never existed.

cointelpro/halfwits(in order of Porkpies) Clippo,Wowbanger TIP, Akria,Besoeker,Bear,Eurosceptic Antlantacist

Millennium3

My expectations are not high from the three main parties. They are not prepared to deal with root causes.

youcanhandlethetruth

Very true !

But ironically, most of the time, they are the ones creating the problems in the first place.....

Problem, reaction, solution.

__________________
Before tyranny and television, "conspiracy theorists" never existed.

cointelpro/halfwits(in order of Porkpies) Clippo,Wowbanger TIP, Akria,Besoeker,Bear,Eurosceptic Antlantacist