brown

poor old gordon. you have to feel sorry for him. it is not good enough that he has been one of the most successful chancellors in british history, it is not good enough that he was one of the key architect of new labour, nor does the fact he has been one of the key players in making sure that new labour has been re-elected.
none of that seems to count.
we are seeing a mirror image of the john major years. honest john took over the leadership of the conservative party, after they decided to ditch the bitch. from the moment he took control of the party and the country he was beset by elements of his party just trying to destabilise the running of the party. although he won an election, he was thoroughly defeated by blair (one of the happiest nights of my life that didn’t involve pizza, coffee and naked women).

sadly it is looking like brown may get to be the leader of the party and prime minister, but thanks to recent occurrences from various members of the labour party the conservative party has a ready made arsenal of quotes to hole the labour party’s future election hopes.

we have had charles clarke, john reid, claire short and (possibly) cherie blair all managing to drop clangers, all of which will get to be played in future conservative political broadcasts, and we all know there are going to more to come.
we have a situation where blairites and brownists are going to the mattresses in order to fight an internecine war over who will be the leader of the party. the blairites are busy spinning against brown.

even peter mandelson is dropping hints to the unions that they shouldn’t try to influence the outcome of the leadership debate, because decision shouldn’t be made in smoked filled rooms. of course mandy (he of the dark arts) forgets to mention that one of the real problems of new labour is the fact that they have (and mandy was one of the culprits) decided to move out of the smoke filled rooms of the unions and into the chrome and leather feng shuied rooms of big business.

the distressing part of it all is that while for most of us it is obvious that we don’t want to have a tory government, for some in the labour party they would rather have cameron in power than not have their man leading the labour party. instead of the politicians being in parliament because they see it as a vocation more and more it seems to be an ego filled playground.

if the speeches that have taken place at the labour conference were to be believed the party knows what needs to be done, but i can’t help feeling that come monday we will be back to square one and various members of the party will spend their time ensuring that country will just want to vote labour out.