Top 10 things Brown should expect

Gordon Brown is not John Major.

Major had a great deal more public appeal and ability to communicate with voters. He won a mandate of his own, after all, with a massive Tory vote.

But I can see why the comparisons are made - because of the political position. Labour in 2008 resembles the Tories in 1995 - in a hole and still digging.

Here, from someone who worked inside the Major government between late 1995 and 1997, is a top ten list of what Brown can expect:

1. Every MP will think they know better than you how to win the General Election and explain their strategy on television and in person.

2. Every MP in a seat that is in danger will believe that they can help themselves by becoming more independent. This doesn't help any of them but makes the party look split.

3. Your party activists will be convinced that a shift to the left is just what is needed, as Matthew D'Ancona explains.

4. You can't raise money.

5. For the same reason, it is difficult to keep your friends. Pressure groups and public figures with an interest in politics are all building their relationships with David Cameron and George Osborne. If they have to make you look silly in order to help themselves with the Opposition, they will.

6. The Civil Service will be no different from this. You will find that they are suddenly a great deal stricter about their independence and a great deal more resistant to anything which might seem like using them for political purposes.

7. Things that you did before that were hailed as masterstrokes will now be covered as the final proof that you are an idiot. The 10p tax issue is an early illustration of this. There will be more.

8. Even friendly newspapers will cease to give you the benefit of the doubt and even friendly columnists will distance themselves from you.

9. The degree to which your opponents are allowed to get away with mood music will drive you crazy.

10. You will become convinced that things will get better if only given time. But time makes things get worse.

Comments

[Jez W]

7. Things that you did before that were hailed as masterstrokes will now be covered as the final proof that you are an idiot. The 10p tax issue is an early illustration of this. There will be more.

Like when he sold our Gold reserves for about about 50p? -(or something like that)

Martin Samual, The Times- March 2008.

"Brown got away with murder because he was Chancellor in the days when chimps could make money.. In May 1999, he sold half the country's gold reserves during a 20-year low in the market at an average price of $275 an ounce. Yesterday morning the price of gold was approximately $946 an ounce.. so the cost to the nation of this mistake is measured in billions.. "

What a guy.

[Howard]

Agreed but Brown resembles Eden rather than Major. The comparison is uncanny, personality, previous record, ambition for top job, etc. Only difference is health at present. Perhaps you would like to discuss this.

[Alec Burrett]

11. He will sleep with Edwina Currie.

[Sophy]

Number one thing Gordon Brown can expect - P45 in the post!

[ACT]

Still, at least he has relatively few, multiple election losing washed-up ex-SDPers working for him. Which must be a consolation.

[W Hutchison]

Let us praise the Great MacBroon of Dunfermline.

His party are now gubbed both North and South of the border and he spins that it's all because of the 10 pence tax band abolition.

Well Gordon, think again, but we know you won't listen

1. Cut tax.
2. Cut corruption / friends of the party
3. Stop bailing out bankrupt banks.
4. Stop bailing out your cronies.
5. Tell us why we have the highest levels of debt ever!
6. Get out of an illegal and ill conceived war in Iraq.
7. Stop uncontrolled immigration.
8. Cancel HIP's
9. Go for an election - give the people a choice.

Yes, the die is cast the people will choose. An Independent Scotland and a Free England are now clearly on the horizon.

Time to go!

[Roberto Maietta]

1. Reduce tax. Make England competetive against Ireland, and in fact the rest of the world.
2 Reduce petrol tax. The current pricing is nothing short of criminal.
3 Abolish council tax, and raise money centrally. Sending pensioners who cant pay to prison is just plain wrong.
4 Abolish the big brother CCTV regime - it is pointless, and alienating. I dont like being filmed 300 times a day when going about a normal day. It wont actually stop crimes, but will only, maybe, assist in solving them. And even THAT is up for debate apparently.
5 Did I mention taxes???

[Ted]

Students of politics (rather than poltical history) will know that this it is not all over for Brown. Sieze the high moral ground and ignore the "flash in the pan" history. 10p tax is not the Poll Tax, make sure it is a dead issue - move the agenda away. Attack on who got us into the last recession. Create a vision - use the Olympics or what ever prop to get on the international stage and then drop an election when you choose.

[Andy]

If only we had Hutchinson as Prime Minister! He just produced a 10-point plan to rectify all of the country's problems!

"1. Cut tax." Firstly, Brown did cut tax last year. Secondly, to do it again In this economic climate would be suicide.

"3. Stop bailing out bankrupt banks." And let one of the biggest banks in country collapse? Most people were criticizing him for not nationalizing it sooner.

"5. Tell us why we have the highest levels of debt ever!" We don't.

I'm just glad you don't, and never will, have any influence on politics. If you were, there'd be people like yourself, with no idea of what they're talking about, making 10-point lists about how to cure every problem, ever!

[Malcolm Redfellow]

"Make England competetive against Ireland" [sic]

Including a 21% VAT rate?

[David Moss]

11. All the laughter you could hear from outside the room will stop when you walk in and the other members of the G7 will all be looking at their shoes and trying more or less successfully to suppress the giggles.

12. You will experience a surprising amount of trouble getting through UK Immigration as the officials on duty decide to test all the security measures you have introduced on you, personally, all of them.

[W Hutchison]

Roberto @16.14.

You have it. You have it indeed!

McBroon is at heart nothing more than a Stalinist where the state has control with the Iron Fist.

Anyone who has seen Labour in Scotland over the last 50 years will know!

But no longer. McBroon and his predecessor have been found out. The SNP have swept Labour from power in Scotland, and now the Tories in England will do the same.

For the time being pay your taxes, cower in anticipation of compulsorary ID cards and the ever increasing control of the state.

Gordon Brown, Des Browne, Douglas Alexander, Alisdair Darling - they are all the same.

[Steve Phillips]

11. I know we won't be better off under the Tories but as Bjork said 'Theres More To Life Than This'....

God help GB!

[Sheila Jones]

I would like to know how much the PFIs - now carefully kept off-balance sheet by Brown - are indebted for. Must be £billions and not included in the UK balance of payments b/sheet.

Any ideas anyone?
Sheila Jones

[shak]

CCTV and the likes of it being used to extort more money out of the hard pressed. Try & report a crime to the police the first question they will ask is was there a CCTV. If the answer is no, they will just ignore your reporting of the crime. Sherlock Holmes eat your heart out.

[anthony williams]

What Gordon Brown should do next? audition for mr bean the sequa. rally his troops or just stop dithering and start laying out policies that matter not what u want. he is the equivelent to john major in 1995 gord let us have e.u referendum and lets have election in 2009.

[T Fox]

As house prices continue to fall so will his poll ratings. While Gordon Brown may have thought pernicious stamp duty and HIPS were something the housing market could withstand when things seemed to be going ok, these are now compounding problems arising from the credit crisis.

GB can't get away with simply blaming his woes on "the economic difficulties", as if they have nothing to do with him.... They have EVERYTHING to do with him. The raids on pension funds, windfall taxes, sale of gold bullion etc etc.. the list is endless. What we are left with is a heavily indebted country that cannot respond to the global economic downturn by cutting taxes, as America has just done.

So stop blaming everyone else Gordon! You're the architect of the mess you (we) are in....

[james]

tax is simply too high. High tax does not necessarily mean better public services. Gordon Brown has wasted a lot of tax payer's hard earned money and does not produce a proportionate increase in quality of public services.

[Dave C]

...but he can always console himself that he has put a big smile on Mrs Blair's face

[Stephen Yates]

To Andy:
1. Northern Rock was a Private Company that messed up big time. Why on earth should the people of this country bail them out. This sets a dangerous precedent for any other large scale business that gets itself in a mess. The decision was political and nothing else.
2. Tax does not just mean income tax. In ten years of his tenure as Chancellor, Gordon Brown has created a hugely onerous tax regime that has a huge impact on people of all walks of life, levvying and raising taxes on almost every aspect of life yet nothing gets any better because the money is being squandered by quango after quango. So cutting taxes can be an option if they ensure that most of the taxes we pay get to where it matters and not the myriad of red tape that it goes through before it reaches its final destination.
3. In ten years of economic boom, Gordon Brown did nothing to plan ahead for lean years. Not only that, he got his sums wrong year after year and has created a huge national debt. Add this to the sweeteners he is likely to throw at the electorate to improve his popularity and the national debt will keep on getting worse. Add this to the huge levels of personal debts that many normal people are experiencing, then things are pretty bleak, and if debt is not at record highs (and I dont have the stats to prove it) we are not far off it.

[Benjamin]

Brown's credentials were built around his supposed financial ability. This was a media myth perpetuated by financially illiterate journalists who dozed off during his speeches. His worst critics have always been the accountancy press speaking for those who have had to deal with his incompotence and cack-handedness for years. It took the mainstream press almost a decade to join the cry of foul over the decimation of pension funds and charities that was the result of his tinkering with ACT - not a sexy headline but boy did it hurt. The strength of his inheritence and the rise of China have carried him through so far. It is a shame this bluff has carried him to even higher office. Let us hope it is short lived.

[John]

I imagine it will be an unpleasant experience for Gordon Brown to lose all the advantages of power. Suddenly everyone stands up to you and they don't massage your ego anymore. I get the impression Brown will implode and it will be poetic justice to watch the man broken and lost - good riddens, I can't wait!

[Lee Andrews]

Give us our lives back, so that we may go about our business as free people with at least some money in our own pocket and without feeling that we are characters from a lost episode of Orwell's 1984.
Also Roberto @ 16:14 the 'politics' student, I really hope you don't end up one day as an 'advisor' to government; as your naivety is remarkable and borders on agnorance (As an English graduate, I've facetiously conjoined two words. Roberto can you guess which ones?).

[David Moss]

13. When the writ is moved, the Prime Minister must expect to campaign personally, door to door, in Henley.

[Tom Sykes]

Brown is NOT another Eden. Eden couragesly (sp) risked his political future to support Churchill when he was in the wilderness. McAvity Brown was always somewhere else when the going got tough and it is now payback time for all of the colleagues he undermined or failed to support.

[Trevor Mayes]

The decision by the Charity Commissioners that unlike their English counterparts they will regulate Welsh universities, will lead to revelations of corruption that will make Terry Grange the disgraced Welsh Chief Constable look like a saint. Gordon has claimed that a strong university base is part of the reasons for our 'successful' economy, bringing in foreign investment to compensate for the highest balance of payments deficit in Europe.

Once Welsh universities collapse, they will take the economy with it and as the Welsh Assembly Government has by law banned any form of complaint by the taxpayers he can only intervene by direct rule from Westminster. We need a referendum on the future of the Welsh Assembly with the option to get rid of it; Neil Kinnocks warning of a black hole causing an economic and political disaster is about to come true. So cheer up Gordon things are going to get a whole lot worse!

[PAUL]

No need to cut tax which would take time to filter benefits to the economy, increase available money now by reducing tax on fuel. People are quick to talk about the profits of BP/Shell but they only take about 25% of the pump price the rest goes to Brown who has no rigs or oil fields as I am aware. Economic suicide would be to continue on course.

[Harry]

Has anyone else noticed that the thing Gordon does with his jaw whilst he's speaking makes him sound like Darth Vader?

Feel The Farce, Luke.

[David Moss]

14. You will start to ban things. Parents teaching their children to drive? Alcohol companies sponsirung sport? That's all an otherwise impotent government can do, ban things.

[findogask]

Go now Gordon there is nothing left for you. Nobody wants you any more. so do the decent thing and just go

[Raj]

Last 10 years of labour was presumed redistribution of money to socially backward. As we all agree there is no absolute poverty in this country and so paying millions with job seeker allowances, millions more for false disability benefit is ripping the tax payer for political purpose only. Labour worked for big industries and banks mainly hence huge migration and lending money to Northern Rock. What are the incentives to go for work for people who are on benefit the culture nurtured by labour for last 10 years? Mr Brown is unlucky to have got into the mess created systematically for such a long period. He is responsible for some but we must not forget collective responsibilities of labour as a whole. Mr Brown says prosperity for last 10 years but for whom. It was a stable economy all across the world. The test is now and the false feeling of wellbeing has fallen on its face. The real state of economic stability is showing the true face. Unfortunately Tories will not be different.

[Potter]

Perhaps he could start by spending some of the 1.6 billion pounds that he has got from offshore dredging on the East coast on shoring up Britains sea defences so that we don't lose homes and much needed agricultural land to the sea.

[clive]

Sheila - the (currently off-balance sheet) potential hit to the taxpayer if all the PFI's go belly-up is pounds 351 billion, I believe.

[David Moss]

You should expect to provide a backstop to political unpopularity, even among heads of government with whom you previously had a fomidable entente:

"In an angry lecture to 262 MPs from his Union for a Popular Movement, or UMP, yesterday, [President Sarkozy] told them they should count themselves lucky.

While the UMP lost municipal elections in March by 2.5 percentage points, Gordon Brown’s Labour party was massacred by 20 points in the local elections on 1 May."