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NO GURU CAN TURN THE TIDE FOR BROWN

Gordon Brown simply does not appeal

Friday March 28,2008

By Frederick Forsyth

Comment Speech Bubble Have your say(5)

REPORT after report, unconfirmed, denied but relentlessly persistent, leaks out of Downing Street to describe internecine feuding of precisely the type that preceded the collapse and electoral defeat of the Major regime.

Or indeed any regime, going back to the Berlin bunker. Officially, all is hunky-dory. Gordon Brown has simply appointed a new super-guru from Civvy Street called Stephen Carter.

Who he? Who cares? All the Old Guard in Downing Street, it seems.

Two more outsiders have joined Mr Carter and two of the old stalwarts have quit and walked. End of story? Not quite, for the feuding goes on.

It seems to be between the Labour “tribal attack dogs”, old-style socialists who have been able for years under Blair to get away with posing as social democrats, and new-style image polishers with no creed beyond themselves.

The theory is that Brown can see his support ebbing away among the very voting bloc that brought Blair to power and kept him there – the English middle classes.

The image polishers are there to make them love Brown as well. Try running up Mount Everest. It can’t be done.

Gordon Brown simply does not appeal. Maybe it’s the rictus leer that is supposed to be a cheery smile; the plodding delivery; the nodding boredom the man provokes. Or maybe it is the final realisation by millions that all he could ever do was tax, tax and tax us into oblivion and deliver nothing in exchange.

Insisting on micro-managing every tiny detail of every department means that when things go firmly south, there is no one else to blame. So the word spreads throughout the party: he is going to lose it all at the next election and bang goes my cushy billet. And there is nothing as nasty as a frightened MP.

Let me propose two words from our infinitely rich language: “perception” and “mood”. All governments are held in some form of perception by the people. True, as we seldom have real, ongoing contact with our politicians, that perception is mainly created via the media and, more recently, by the new instrument of the internet.

The perception leads to a strange and quite indefinable phenomenon called the mood of the people. Perceptions change and when they do the mood changes. When it does change then, like the tide of the sea, it is virtually impossible to change back – as King Canute discovered. You cannot see it but an old dog can smell it.

Nine months ago King Gordon came to the political throne and both perception and mood were supportive: rather curious but mainly benign. Since he bottled out of the chance to hold an election and thus establish his own personal mandate to govern us, and then fell to pieces as he faced self-made disaster after disaster, the percept and the dependent mood have changed radically. And they will not change back.

As they say on death row in America – Dead Man Walking.

BRITAIN, A COUNTRY FREE OF LABOUR

03.04.08, 8:03pm

I have long and hard stated a case for a new form of government, not one or the other party, but people, real people sellected from the best brains in Britain, the best at the job gets the job!
Run Britain as a buisness, if it works keep it, if it doesn't get rid of it, same applies to the head of that perticular depatment, "and without a golden handshake".
I agree, the Queen should step in and save her country, she should have a say.
Labour and its Stalenist way of dictating to us its policies, forcing upon us changes that they considour to be in our best interest is hogwash.
Labour is pure and simply a cluster of corrupt, self oppinionated, self indulging money pinching clowns
I say, bring back democracy, and vote non confidance in the Labour Government

• Posted by: soldierblue • Report Comment

GORDON MUGABE

02.04.08, 12:13pm

Why dosesn't the Queen desolve this moronic government before she no longer has a Country to rule over.

• Posted by: kennyoldgit • Report Comment

WAKE UP BRITAIN BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE

30.03.08, 12:58pm

I cant understand why the Queen has sat back and allowed HER Government to give HER Country and HER people to the United States of Europe

• Posted by: Disgruntled • Report Comment

NO GURU CAN TURN THE TIDE FOR BROWN

29.03.08, 10:39am

I can't understand why the Queen doesn't dismiss him. It would provoke a general election. It worked in Australia.

• Posted by: JohnnyB • Report Comment

STEP FORWARD FREDERICK

28.03.08, 5:01pm

Noel coward said someone will say "this is not right" some of us have been saying this for a long time bu what 'england' needs now is less talk and more action, so we formed the Free England Party would you care to check us out and perhaps step forward and lead us Frederick.
www.thefreeenglandparty.org

• Posted by: daveb06 • Report Comment