Brown's Downfall

This is a fitting way to close off Brown-out... closing because its basic idea is no longer novel and is widely accepted - namely that Labour's problem is above all Brown, that Brown's problem is his personality, and that Brown's personality is in a state of psychological tension driven by his belief about his moral convictions and the ever-present image of his father, and the reality which is that he a dithering coward, a manipulative bully, and obsessed with short term advantage. Which he seems to always get wrong.

So here is Brown's Downfall (Parental Advisory!) - as he comes to terms with Glasgow East.

Sneering Brown fails to grasp public mood on Davis

Ha ha... but they're not laughing now... (Peter Brookes / Times)

David Davis resigns from parliament to much scoffing from the political cognoscenti and Westminster village. And it is an odd manoeuvre... what is he resigning from given his own party and he were agreed, he has the support of his constituency and that they won the argument if not the vote? All of this has prompted scorn from Westminster circles and its media sirens (eg. this) and raised jaundiced eyebrows at the BBC - see Nick Robinson here and here.

So duly emboldened with air cover from the Westminster scribblers, Brown decides this is one for him, and declares:

"everyone now recognises that this is a stunt that has become a farce and has revealed the deep divisions of the party."

Oh dear... it turns out that smug and out-of-touch Brown misread the public mood, which doesn't at all dislike what Davis has done, however bizarre it may seem in Westminster terms. Brown's confidence in the media buzz was misplaced. So today the Guardian says, Suddenly Labour is not laughing at David Davis,

Gordon Brown thought his luck had changed when the shadow home secretary said he was resigning over 42-day detention. Conservatives, by contrast, thought he had gone mad. Yet to judge from the emails sent by Tory activists, Labour voters and people who had never given a thought to politics, the MP for Haltemprice and Howden may be on to something

Matthew Parris says Davis may strike a chord, and Nick Robinson has to lecture his readers on why they are wrong to register their support for Davis, A divisive Davis in which he gives ten reasons why this will be bad for him and his party, but also admits:

The BBC has been inundated with calls, texts, e-mails and blog comments praising David Davis' decision yesterday and some have questioned why I have suggested it may be a nightmare for the Conservative Party.

Actually, real people don't think like the political class - they are much more instinctive and far less calculating. A man has resigned from something vague on a point of principle and put his job on the line after participating a squalid battle of bribery, manipulation and skulduggery in which things that matter were traded like Cup Final tickets by a bunch of greedy ticket touts. Davis appears like a man emerging from this grotesque orgy on the losing side intending to purge himself and take a cold shower.

Cameron would be better to get behind Davis: show admiration for his courage and conviction , even if he is a little headstrong and join in with the Davis accuses Brown of supreme political cowardice line about Labour's refusal to fight. He can worry about what Davis is really up to later.

Brown of course jumped in when he thought he had the media behind him and could sneer and jeer at David along with the rest of them with impunity. But he overlooked the public disdain in which he is held, and how that can be channelled through a man acting on principle (at least apparently).

EU treaty - errors, lies and conceit

Cowering, lying and contemptuous

With Ireland giving the EU treaty the boot, the British government is now in a very stupid place of its own making... and Brown's lying and obfuscation is a big part of the reason why.

The error... was to have ever to have agreed to put the constitution or treaty to a referendum in the first place. At least to a referendum where the choice is: "agree with the changes in the treaty or carry on as we are?". Compared to what we have now the treaty is mostly tidying up, better accountability to national parliaments and some pooling of sovereignty that will make the EU more effective and mean that Britain can more easily get its way. It's technical, it's dense, it's dull and it is the proper role of parliament to settle such things. Much greater issues than this are dealt with by parliament and without bothering people with a referendum on a question which has implications that are barely possible to comprehend.

The lie... having made the error of promising the public a referendum on something so obtuse (and knowing it would lose), Labour then tried to wriggle off its own hook by pretending that the 'amending treaty' and the constitution rejected by the Dutch and French were totally different, so that the referendum promise no longer applied. Brown was the most barefaced liar of all in this, closely followed by Miliband. The treaty and constitution are very different in form: the treaty is dreadful to read or use because all it does is amend other treaties, whereas the constitution was a clean rewrite. But in substance and effect they are almost the same, save from a few ludicrous symbols of European nationhood (any doubt, see here).

The conceit... is to ignore how strongly people feel about the EU, and to manoeuvre them out of having any say -believing they can't understand such lofty matters of state. The mandate for EU membership was settled in 1975 with a referendum on the Common Market. Things have changed so much now, that mandate has run out. The EU operates as an elite project that simply doesn't comprehend or care what its 450 million public thinks. Just look at the reactions to 'no' votes: Barroso says to ignore it and Brown says Britain to go ahead with ratification . The beauty of a referendum is that ministers and Eurocrats have to get out and make the case and set out a vision for how it will change in the future. But in doing this, they have to present people with a meaningful choice at a referendum, not some impossible-to-understand adjustment to the machinery of government. But Brown has never stood up and made a case for the EU, and his embarrassing late showing at the Lisbon signing shows he has no stomach to make a case one way or the other.

The answer is to have a referendum. But to have it on whether or not to continue with EU membership on the terms of the new treaty (subject to parliamentary approval), or to move to a looser relationship with the EU - like Norway has. People really do need a say, and politicians need to make the case for membership. I think that would be a bold and right move by the government now, which is why it won't happen with the current worn-out, has-been in charge. The right question is 'in or out?' not 'EU with changes or without changes?' The Lib-Dems have been trying to go for something like this, but are so inept they have completely failed to explain themselves to an incredulous public.

Disclosure: I'm a sceptical supporter of the EU. This is not the place for a discussion about what the EU does well, does badly and shouldn't do at all. But I think Blair's European Parliament speech in 2005 was a fair effort at a grown up approach to the EU in a globalising world.

Labour MP in truth-telling shocker

Normally, I'd just put anything from Dianne Abbott in the box marked 'annoying' and ignore it. But she made a splendid, passionate speech (part 1 / part 2) on the 42 day thing. She put the grubby little favour-seeking lobby drones in her own party absolutely to shame. And she told the truth about her leader's motivation:

It is the purest politics. It is about the polls and about positioning. It is about putting the Conservative party in the wrong place on terrorism. I put it to colleagues that we should not play ducks and drakes with our civil liberties in order to get a few months' advantage in the opinion polls.

Worth watching on video:

If Brown's father was alive he would disown him

42 day detention: a dog's breakfast

It does take a special talent to win a vote in parliament and for most commentators to declare it a failure and symptomatic of your weakness. Fancy winning a vote and getting this:

It's not just Gordon Brown who looks like a dead man walking, Labour now looks like a party of zombies.

And that's from Polly Toynbee! (In an excellent rant about the dumb passivity of Labour MPs and their completely groundless auto-reassurance about a turn-around and sticking with Brown). If Polly is saying that about Labour, then they really are deep in the doggie do.

Let's just remind ourselves what Brown says about himself (conference speech 2007)

I believe in British values. My father and my mother taught me about family and the great virtues of hard work, doing your duty and always trying to do the right thing. And I have never forgotten my father telling me to “treat everyone equally with respect”.

I wish Brown Senior was still alive so he could fix his errant son with an austere glare of a Church of Scotland minister and tell him to stop misusing his name. Like in the film Terminator, where robot Arnie comes back from the future and tries to kill the mother of his future enemy before he is born, I wonder if something similar couldn't be achieved by Gordon Brown's father? Only instead of being a brutal cyborg killing machine, he would punish Brown Junior for lying all the time and send him off to train as an accountant instead of going into politics. Then we would have been spared all this.

And then Brown says this about himself in the speech..

Put something back. And by doing so make a difference. And this is my moral compass. This is who I am. I am a conviction politician.

Actually Gordon, most people allow others to decide what sort of a person they are. And most people are deciding you are a useless politician utterly lacking in conviction and a dithering coward guided only by narrow calculations of short-term advantage (which you usually get wrong).

Brown has been completely disgusting on this 42 day thing... here's how I see it.

1. It was pure dog-whistle stuff. Not an ounce of principle, just another ruse to wrong foot Cameron in an unprincipled authoritarian gesture so he could look tough. Not 90 days, but let's just say 42 - a made-up number lacking evidence of need or unequivocal backing from the security services, who almost always err on the side of authoritarianism. It was another of Brown's silly little playground games.

2. It is incredibly inept legislation. A botched together package of constraints and compromises designed only to quell a rebellion, and little to do with designing well-functioning machinery of justice. So the Home Secretary has to approve and say there is expectational terrorist threat, the DPP and police have to prepare a report, and then both houses of parliament must approve. What business is it of parliament and how on earth would it work? Then, when even that wasn't enough, £3,000/day compensation would be available for each day of wrongful detention (undefined) over 28 days. At PMQs Cameron correctly called it:

"draconian and incompetent at the same time" and "ineffective authoritarianism".

Some Labour MPs even managed to take comfort in the incompetence - reasoning that they could support the Bill and save Gordon's neck without compromising civil liberties because it would never work or would be eviscerated in the Lords (not a bad definition of a Toynbee 'zombie' and another reason why parliament should have no say in judicial matters). See this ramble by Austin Mitchell for an example of the 'thinking' of Labour MPs.

3. Sleazy deals have been done to get it through. As usual when in a corner, Brown has opened up the public purse and incinerated political capital in an orgy of pork. The religio-fascist DUP were brought in (aka bought out) to save the day - probably with some deal on abortion, military bases, water rates and positions on select committees. Anne Widdecombe has became a bedfellow (park that vile thought right now!), and dozens of creepy Labour MPs were given mirrors and trinkets in order to sell off civil liberties (knighthoods, safe seats for the son and heir, sanctions against Cuba to be lifted, miners' compensation scheme have all been mentioned)

4. Then lying about it. No Gordon Brown story would be complete without a bout of dishonesty. Conservative blogger Iain Dale points out (Brown's mendacity knows no bounds) the slippery language Brown used to deny a deal with the DUP...

Brown responded by quoting two DUP MPs saying there was no deal. He also said he personally had not done a deal.

To summarise, the Guardian leader was scathing and right (A shaming victory):

The prime minister did not win last night because he convinced parliament of his case, but thanks to backroom deals. It was a forced victory in the worst of circumstances, a law no one wants imposed by a government that wanted to look strong but ended up too weak to accept the obvious.

Fire, flood and plague revisited

Fire, flood, plague: did Brown actually do anything useful?

One mystery is why people ever thought Brown was any good as PM, even during that brief honeymoon. It is widely arguedthat he handled terrorism, floods and foot and mouth well just after taking over... Andrew Rawnsley says.

He had been in Number 10 less than 48 hours when he was faced by a terror attack which was closely followed by floods and an outbreak of foot and mouth. Jon Cruddas, a critic of Mr Brown in other respects, speaks admiringly of how brilliant he was at positioning himself as a sort of 'father of the nation'..

Allow me to take a less charitable view.

1. Terror. We were lucky that the comedy terrorists that had a go at Glasgow Airport were so amateurish that they failed to do any harm, except to themselves. But they did get to the scene loaded with the means to do harm and mounted an attack. Nothing Brown did stopped this or assisted in apprehending them.

2. Flood. Did a single person get less wet because of Gordon Brown? It's hard to show he did anything useful at all, because all these floods are shrouded in a kind of fog of war and dealt with locally. What is much clearer however is the role played by Brown in the long-term underinvestment in flood defences, which as Chancellor he should have known save more in than six times as much in flood damage as they cost to build.

3. Disease. Lucky escape follows unfortunate escape. In this case of foot and mouth virus. Shoddy management at a public sector lab allows the virus into the Surrey countryside. DEFRA had learned some lessons from the multi-billion pound cock-up the last time it happened and swung quickly into action. But we were bloody lucky and the lab went unpunished.

All that happened was that the uncritical media allowed their rhetoric about Brown's stability and solidness to infect their writing about these incidents. All he actually did was look serious and busy, come back early from his holidays and call endless meetings of COBRA - where others could be allowed to take decisions for him. In each case, the response is down to a professional cadre - police, fire brigade, Environment Agency, local government, DEFRA, State Veterinary Service. You can bet that if he had ever had to take a serious decision during any of these three episodes, he'd still be making it now.

The really appalling thing is that the political media, which should know better, bought into this idea that he was a tower of strength and refreshing antidote to Tony Blair and presented this false prospectus back to the public. Now they are saying the opposite.

Right strategy, wrong leader

Andrew Rawnsley says that Gordon Brown's best - and only - bet now is to be bold. That is probably true, given that the 'vacillating coward' strategy doesn't seem to be working too well.

Rawnsley points to two things that don't work - short-termism:

it would mean abandoning the pursuit of short-term advantage, a course that has so consistently and spectacularly backfired on this Prime Minister. Chasing crowd-pleasing headlines got him into terrible trouble over tax. He abolished the 10p band to finance a cut in the basic rate of income tax. This was supposed to stuff the Tories and seduce Middle Britain. For 24 hours of applause, he ended up shooting himself in both feet.

And trying to please everyone:

self-defeating habit of trying to resolve tricky choices and difficult dilemmas by splitting the difference between opposing points of view. He knew that the Eurosceptics didn't like the Lisbon Treaty; he knew other European leaders would be offended if he didn't turn up for the signing ceremony. His attempt to square that circle - flying to Lisbon, but deliberately arriving late - simply irritated the other leaders while provoking the scorn of the anti-Europeans

Same with the Olympic torch and Dalai Lama visit. He just looked feeble and rightly the nation poured a bucket of steaming disdain over him. And now it looks like the same again as Gordon Brown blows a hole in ban on cluster bombs. Try to appease everyone. Please no-one.

Rawnsley's thesis is that Brown can bring about near-total change in his personality by adopting the assumption held by everyone else that he will lose the next election. Thus freed of the imperative to fight (incompetently) for every vote, he would be liberated to be bold and get a few things right.

My thesis is that he simply cannot do this. His weird father-complex drives manic approval-seeking - the tactical calculation, the short-termism and doomed attempts to please everyone are just what he is like. If you want someone with the confidence to accept that Labour will lose and to act accordingly, then get someone else. Rawnsley's ideas are the right strategy for Labour, but Brown is the wrong person to deliver it.

Forget Brown, concentrate on his successor

Jack Straw says Brown leadership speculation is 'nonsense':

"Speculation about the leadership, frankly, is nonsense. He is the best leader that we could possibly have and he will see us through these difficulties,"

If this was right, they really would be in the deepest possible do. In fact, they do have far better leaders to take them into opposition and with less collateral damage in terms of seats. And the leadership candidates don't have to be exceptional to be far better than Brown, so there is a good potential field.

In my view, David Miliband is the man for the longer term. The main question for the Labour party is what is the optimum route and timing for getting Miliband as leader, rather than the best way to dump Brown. Once you see the Brown problem as a detail in succession planning, it all becomes more straightforward.

Danger: coma risk

Bodice-ripping, pot-boiling, page-turner... ?

A comment by 'truth will out' draws attention to a fabulously enjoyable and splenetic review of a book Gordon Brown's speeches. The review by Dominic Hilton for the Social Affairs Unit is here.

Gordon Brown thinks he is doing us a favour. Hence all this stuff at the moment about him being "the right man to lead this country". Who says that about themselves? A man who spends his days involved in "activist politics" and using terms like "mediating structures" when talking about your family.

Characteristics of Brown speeches in my view...

• Long
• Dull
• Hectoring
• Misleading stats
• Re-announcements
• Long on soaring rhetoric
• Usually mentions his father or some other device to suggest he has integrity
  
• Constructed to win applause from his audience and therefore rarely a clear statement of what he believes, if anything
• And most importantly... a very considerable gulf between what he says in speeches and how he acts in practice...

It's a shame Nelson Mandela offered an endorsement for the cover of this tome.
What Mandela says is a reliable guide to what he thinks and how he acts. Brown's speeches are not.

Who are the people that really want Gordon Brown to continue as Labour leader? Matthew Parris thinks it is the Conservative leadership.

To those Labour sympathisers who call for the party to regain its composure and carry its sickly leader through two more years of power, I reply that this is exactly what David Cameron hopes for too.

This is of course right... and it would give the Conservatives the easiest run in to power. They have the upper hand now and labour needs to be a more effective 'opposition'.

Brown cannot recover, because the problem isn't fuel prices, food, credit or whatever he is blaming his misfortunes on this week. It is him and his woeful leadership, and that isn't going to change by much and is as likely to worsen as to improve.

Dalai Lama visit - the results are in...

Did the cunning evasive action of meeting the Dalai Lama at Lambeth Palace rather than Downing Street eliminate criticism by the Chinese...? Er, no... China rebukes Brown for meeting with Dalai Lama. The Foreign Ministry spokesman offered the usual condemnation:

This is interference in China's internal affairs and also seriously hurts the feelings of the Chinese people

Did the Dalai Lama act graciously and with dignity in the face of Brown's insults and hand wringing? Of course.... (BBC)

For me - no differences. So long as meeting and talk - that is important. I always meet on the level we are human beings

Did Brown look vile and cowardly, and further damage his already hopeless reputation? Indeed... and the stunningly good Peter Brookes, political cartoonist for the Times skewers him absolutely correctly, noting Brown's tendency to talk up the courage of others in his books....

End of New Labour?

Odd man out: which one doesn't understand New Labour's centrist consensus?

Though I am trying to stick to Brown's personality, a brief political comment in the aftermath of his crucifixion in Crewe...

David Cameron correctly says (as reported in The Guardian):

Labour ran the most negative, the most backward-looking, the most xenophobic, the most class-war sort of campaign they could have done and it completely backfired.

For Labour it was the end of being the party of aspiration. It was the end of being the party of opportunity.

But I'm not so sure about this...

It was the end of New Labour here on the streets of Crewe and Nantwich.

It's an audacious claim perhaps too easily made, but I believe the genius of Tony Blair was to create a centrist consensus around aspiration and opportunity, addressing structural causes of inequality, public service reform based on choice and competition between providers, a tougher welfare settlement to encourage self-help, embracing globalisation but tackling its dark side, and a foreign policy based on new alliances and liberal intervention.

That consensus includes Cameron, Blair and Clegg. It just doesn't include Brown, and now Brown's Labour party. Perhaps it now goes by the name of the Third Way or The Progressives or even The Conservatives - but the thing that New Labour created is alive and well, and in safer hands than Gordon Brown's. Cameron, Blair and Clegg are more similar to each other than they are to large swathes of their own core supporters and MPs. They understand that winning is about creating a coalition that goes well beyond your core - a winning leader will occupy the centre of political gravity in the country, not their own party.

Brown doesn't get that. Cameron has just shown he does and is able to win with it. It's not the end of New Labour, it's the beginning of the end for Old Labour, which no longer has the services of Tony Blair to keep them relevant.

And the result is... PANIC!!!

A Conservative majority of 7,860 with a 17.6% swing (BBC). Worse for Labour than its worst expectations, worse than the betting and polls suggested, and some way beyond the 'panic' threshold of 5,624 implied by expert opinion in the PoliticsHome poll (see entry below).

The result is rejection of the puerile local campaigning that insults the intelligence of voters, deep weariness with Labour - but, above all, a great clunking fist banging the table and demanding the dumping of Gordon Brown: failed leader and flawed man.

Panic, relief or joy?

What would be a good, reasonable or terrible result for Labour in the C&N by-election? My reinterpretation of the polling data from PoliticsHome panel of 100 wise people is as follows...

Panic threshold: = defeat by 5,264 or more
Relief threshold: = defeat by no more than 1,224
Joy threshold: = victory by 1,203 or more

The panel data and original questions are here... I took weighted average of the opinions expressed as illustrated in the chart...

Brown: nothing left to offer

Jenni Russell in the Guardian captures the Zeitgeist rather well in the following:

Brown has nothing left to offer as prime minister. He never had any ability to inspire or charm or communicate. His management skills have always been legendary for their absence. His reluctance to trust people outside a tiny circle, or to delegate, has been a continual handicap. His paralysing indecisiveness has become notorious.

To counter so many disadvantages, Brown made great play of having the three most important qualities needed for the job: principle, vision and competence. It's now horribly apparent that he doesn't have enough of any of them.

I can't really see how a leader ever recovers from people thinking these things about him, especially in the case where it is true.

Cowardly equivocator insults him and embarasses us

Listen sunshine, don't get all temporal with us - this is strictly spiritual

More 'Britishness' on display by the Prime Minister as he ducks and slides around the visit of the Dalai Lama attempting appease everyone, but of course pleasing no-one. So the Dalai Lama is to meet the PM but not at Downing Street. The meeting is to be defined as 'spiritual' in character and held at Lambeth Palace.

Erm... isn't this man the leader of a nation under occupation and in exile, with a vibrant world wide campaign showcasing of China's Tibet policy against the backdrop of the world's greatest sporting event? Okay, so let's have a chat about the universal truth and best route to an afterlife in paradise...

This is Brown at his worst - like the moment where he allowed the Olympic torch into Downing Street but refused to hold it. A message of support for all sides, which of course is no message at all - except that the Great Ditherer can't decide. What would the Chinese do? Invade? Stop selling us cheap shoes? As The Telegraph puts it:

Mr Brown has now sought to mitigate any "offence" by holding the meeting not in Downing Street but at Lambeth Palace, on the less than convincing pretext that the Dalai Lama is a "spiritual" leader. Such diplomatic contortions denote an unhealthily subservient relationship with Beijing.

What else do you expect from a man who writes books about courage? He's insulting the Dalai Lama, embarrassing Britain and demonstrating again that he is a coward, and not the courageous moral leader he believes himself to be.

Spot the loser

Which leader has the look of a winner about him?

This guy (right) campaigning in Crewe for a critical by-election

Or the gloomy looking bloke (bottom centre) spending his time in the comforting embrace of the Scottish church and going nowhere near any troublesome by-election?

Stalking horse talk

Danger! Assassins at work - dirty job, but worthwhile

Rumours that Alan Milburn (here) or Charles Clarke (here) are ready to unseat Brown after humiliation at Crewe and Nantwich... The usual response to this is to suggest that turning over the leader and replacing him with someone else unwilling to fight an election would be bad politics and cause an even bigger defeat in 2010. There are a few reasons to reject this argument:

• These guys will do it because it's personal - Clarke and Milburn hate Brown. If they are seeding rumours about a challenge, it is to hurt and humiliate him as much as to stake a claim.
• This is the last roll of the dice for Clarke and Milburn - neither would beat Miliband in 2010 following a Labour defeat.
• It could hardly get any worse than it will continue to be for Brown. It isn't just bad luck - it's the man himself. His economic credentials are destroyed; the relaunch attempts are flat-lining; he faces ridicule and derision; and the path ahead is strewn with elephant traps.
• A period of humility and preparing for opposition with a new leader would limit rather than aggravate the damage.

A couple of weeks ago it was inconceivable, but now the commentariat is debating pros and cons. I would say it is now more likely than not - it depends on the scale of the defeat in Crewe. And the odds on that are shortening with each passing day of the relaunch...

Preaching and smearing

Official Labour by-election campaign material

The vile smearing 'Tory-boy toff' campaign that Labour is using for the Crewe and Nantwich by-election - due on Thursday has attracted harsh criticism from friends an foe alike. John Harris of The Guardian says: The tactics of Crewe expose a truly nasty party: Labour and Bruce 'the brute' Anderson says: Mr Brown will do anything to stay in power.

But I thought it worth contrasting the extraordinary juvenile and loutish tactics (well described in the articles above), with Gordon Brown's supposed moral universe, as set out in his speech to the Church of Scotland.

Brown's makes the usual references to his father, who brought him up ...

.... to believe that the size of your wealth mattered less than the strength of your character; that a life of joy and fulfilment could be lived in the service of others; and that to be tested by adversity is not a fate to be feared but a challenge to be overcome.

Hmm... but doesn't the Tory toff in question come from a family that were self-made through hard work in the shoes business? And didn't they, by adopting dozens of children, live a life of service to others...? But in any case, according to Brown, that isn't what matters...

for me, a life is best measured not by what office or title you hold but by what difference you can make by seeking to do what you judge the right thing, however difficult, and by the causes to which you dedicate your efforts.

So we would judge someone seeking elected office by what they do, not by their status in society?

And so it goes on... a torrent of pious cant, reaching extraordinarily pompous heights...

But in the next fifty years think how much more can be achieved with this new great power at work in our world: the power of people united by conscience, armed with unprecedented means to communicate and mobilise, determined to turn moral values into common action and shared vision into a global reality: to 'undo the heavy burdens and let the oppressed go free'.

(I think he may be talking about the internet at this point...! Main uses: pornography, gambling, copyright theft, organising jihad, exposing him).

This is Brown method acting someone his father would have been proud off. When he is saying all this, I fear he believes it - he is not merely lying, but delusional (see post). The problem is when it comes to the clash with the real world, the party he leads is mounting a vicious, thuggish, dishonest, patronising campaign on anything but the big issues that matter. The contrast is the same contrast that split's Brown's image of himself from the person he really is.

The election that really matters

Belatedly, the results of the Madame Tussauds poll on whether to immortalise Brown in wax... "nah".

Merely lying or scarily delusional?

Matthew Parris produces another sublime offering: Help! Gordon Brown may not be a liar. Parris observes that when Brown has to face up to consequences, he just cannot do it properly. He identifies two major character failings...

What Brown really, really, won’t say is that he has been pressured by anyone else into doing anything he did not want to do in the first place; or that on any central question it is his own judgement that has been wrong.

Pressed, he will allow that circumstances have changed and decisions varied or revisited in light of the new situation. Pressed further he will admit that mistakes “were made” or that “we” made mistakes. Pressed even harder he will even use the “I” word and admit to failures of diplomacy, tact, consultation or explanation. But what he cannot allow is either that he has been pushed around, or that a big decision was wrong at the time he took it.

This gets to the heart of Brown's cognitive dissonance (I commented on how this may end in a mental health emergency in Cracking up?) and Parris draws the similar conclusion that Brown may not be a mere liar, but something far worse (in a PM)... and that is delusional...

I’ll tell you what scares me, and scares (I believe) a wider public who may not always be consciously aware why. It’s not the thought that the Prime Minister may be lying. It’s a more disturbing thought: that he may not. That under the terrible internal pressure created in his own head by a refusal to accept either that his will may be thwarted or his judgement questioned, the PM is having to warp the external world to make it fit.

Brown had tried to make the £2.7 billion tax bribe to get of the 10p tax hook sound as though it was all a good move to stimulate the economy. The trouble is, he may have adjusted the world to believe this and maintain the cognition that he is a sound economic manager and responsible leader. He is fighting with reality, not facing up to it.

Teletubby Brown adopts La-La economics

What a difference 3 months makes!

Liam Halligan points out that Gordon Brown faces economic tragedy as public loses faith. He highlights the racing inflation, astronomical and rising borrowing and an obese state, and wonders why Brown has, or at least had, a reputation for "sound" economic management...

Those of us who follow the public finances closely have known for years that this reputation was built on spin. But as the UK slumps, the whole electorate can now see Brown for what he is - an economic incompetent who has splattered the Government's books with disgraceful amounts of red ink.

This is true - as Chancellor, Brown always wanted to do the easy and applause-grabbing job of increasing spending on things that won him acclaim and assisted his manoeuvring for the top job. But he never liked the Mr Hyde of public spending, which is the tough and alienating business of reforming public services, clamping down on rent-seekers and eye-balling public sector unions. Halligan is both scathing and right...

That's entirely because of Brown - and his indulgent, six-year campaign of public largesse. As Chancellor, he tried to spend his way to Number 10 after 2001, attempting to buy popularity. Brown borrowed, and borrowed big, in a desperate bid to bribe us with our own money.

So Mr Halligan, what do you think of Mr Brown as a leader?

Political leadership is about making decisions which favour some, but annoy others. Brown spends his life avoiding such choices - spending willy-nilly instead, trying to please everyone.

This is la-la land economics - sustained only by borrowing. Such leadership is not only expensive and counter-productive, but also cowardly.

And what do reckon the public might make of all this...

The public feels Brown lacks the guts to make tough decisions. And that - above all else - explains why this Government now has the lowest opinion poll ratings since the 1930s.

But this was the week when the scales fell off - and the electorate lost patience with Brown and his claims to sound economic management.

Quite!

Lead balloon inflated with hot air

Moreland understands the limits of a relaunch when no-one cares what you think any more

Let us consider the shape and effectiveness of the relaunch of Gordon Brown's premiership.... I think there have been five main elements...

Element 1: have a go at 'human'. The ever more awkward Brown sent out to tour TV and radio studios. The problem here is the false belief among his advisers that this will help. But to no-one's surprise it hasn't. The simple reason is that it increases the exposure of Brown to the public, and they do not like what they see - patronising, boring, petulant, evasive etc. Anything but honest, straightforward, likeable, humble or... well, human.

Element 2: free beer for the workers. A quite incredible buy-off of the 10p tax rebellion un-making of a budget with a tax give-away of £2.7 billion financed by borrowing, offered with a lot of transparently fake justification about the economic cycle and stimulus. A budget is supposed to draw together tax, spending, investment, borrowing and be conceived as a whole... but not when you are in a hole, it seems. No-one should trust Labour with the public finances after this - and it's effect will be short term gain in advance of a by-election but longer-term pain as confidence in Brown and his government's reputation for economic competence erodes still further. So in no time he was on the back foot claiming: Tax move a necessity not a political ploy. An argument that leaves us only to debate whether he is Merely lying or scarily delusional.

Element 3: produce the vision. With little interest and even less acclaim, the legislative agenda is set out in a draft Queen's speech. But this is no more than a bunch of bills produced by civil servants, some worthwhile most tinkering, with a top coat of gloss in the form of four themes. But how is 'economic stability' reconciled with the 10p tax bribe and raging inflation? How does 'handing back power to the people' square with the row over the Scottish referendum? And what a shock to find that Gordon Brown favours people achieving their potential and better and more personalised public services (through unstated and ambiguous means).

Element 4: blame and claim. This means blaming everything else other than Gordon Brown for the current mess and claiming that no-one else other than Gordon Brown can see us through it. So Gordon Brown insists I am the right leader to see us through difficult times. Following the absurd ploy of borrowing to pay for a tax cut Simon Heffer is rightly excoriating about this element: This is no time for a spendthrift in No 10.

Mr Brown is as fit to preside over economic recovery as Harold Shipman would be to chair a conference on medical ethics.

Element 5: strut and fret. Brown has continued the approach of making costless and essentially vacuous statements of concern about far-off things he can do nothing about... for example, on Burma: Brown condemns inhuman junta - but proposes nowt to fix it, because it's their responsibility. But some people like this sort of thing, so he does it.

I don't think any of this is working at all.... perhaps for a moment it has impact, and then it can be picked over and comes apart with any analysis or cross-referencing with reality Brown is now like a patient flat-lining with ever larger doses of adrenaline injected into the neck and electric shocks to the heart... Despite the relaunch, he remains on the most-critical list.

Is Gordon Brown hated for honourable reasons?

Former Blair spin-doctor Lance Price writing in the Telegraph informs us that: Gordon Brown doesn't deserve this. Then he spends 1,000 words telling us why he does deserve it...

He argues that the crop of biographies pull their punches:

When Prescott calls Brown ''frustrating, annoying, bewildering and prickly" that's not the half of it, but he's not telling us anything new.

He's made a lot of enemies:

Gordon Brown has a very long past indeed and it's littered with the bloodied but breathing bodies of those he crossed on his way to the job he wanted rather too much. [...] Many, many others who will probably never write books just recall him being hurtfully rude or dismissive for no good reason. As a result he has very little loyalty in the bank and at times he must wish he'd retained a bit more of it. It would have earned some useful interest.

But isn't that the art of politics? That is, to create a winning alliance or movement, not to run roughshod over your colleagues when you think you have the upper hand. Brown is paying for the way he does politics...

But are there mitigating circumstances?

So we are left with the impression of a man whose bullying and tantrums and sulks and scheming were all designed to secure him a job in which he's now floundering. To be fair once more, he often had good reasons as Chancellor to say no and he made enemies in the interests of the Labour Party as well as his own.

Actually the 'good reasons to be unpopular' theory is incorrect. Had he behaved honourably, and been merely firm and fair, he would have been feared and respected. But he just didn't... because it was all about Gordon. About Gordon's agenda, Gordon's war with Tony, Gordon's war with Tony's cronies, Gordon's publicity stunts and burnishing Gordon's image in the public mind of the supreme politician. That's why he has no friends, not because he ran the economy and public finances rigourously.

Faint hearted friends

Health Secretary Alan Johnson rushes to the aid of his Prime Minister.

"I'm not a great Brown Fan Club leader but I respect him as a really, really decent, good, able politician," he told BBC radio. "Is he perfect? no he's not, nor is anyone else in the world.

"Some people see an opportunity to just put the knife into somebody they dislike."

Translation: I don't like him much and nor does anyone else, so I'm hedging any sign of support or loyalty for now. No-one's perfect, but not everyone expects to be Prime Minister, and he make a good councillor in somewhere like Scotland. If it carries on like this, I'll be wielding the knife at some point soon.

Frank Field reminds us why Brown is so widely loathed... he had endured Brown's

"tempers of indescribable nature. Shouts, rage"

Brown spent much of his 10 years alienating colleagues by his domineering abusive attitude, tinkering and control freakery. One of the reasons for his present struggles is that he has relied so much on his clique - Balls, Alexander etc and these guys are also loathed first by association, but also because they are cut from the same cloth.

Quotes from AFP

Spinning and smearing

It has become clear what listening and learning (TM) will mean in practice...

With Brown incapacitated by fear and panic, the Prince Regent, Ed Balls, has been lowered over the ramparts to speak to the press. And what does he do? He immediately starts spinning, bullying and scheming... having a go at Frank Field for his principled and dogged stance on the 10p tax fiasco.

"I think people took his views [about the 10p tax row] at face value. They thought that to negotiate with him was the right thing to do.

"I think people could look at what he was saying a few weeks ago and believe at that time that his intentions were honourable. As for what he said this morning, I think I leave you to draw your own conclusions from that."

So he isn't honourable and his views can't be taken at face value. Furthermore, he's a loner...

"We have all known Frank for many years, and I think he used to work on his own when he was in opposition. He used to work on his own on the backbenches. I think he used to work on his own when he was a minister as well."

Whatever you think of his ideas, I think it is hard to doubt Frank Field's motives and integrity. What you have here is a prima facie case of the Brown-ite MO. Personal, bullying, vindictive, pompous... Listening, learning, humble, connecting... oh no, they haven't learnt a bloody thing from the Mayday Massacre. This is some sort of Balls regression in which he revisits his halcyon days as sleazy spinner-in-chief for Brown.

With friends like these...

ICM poll for Mail on Sunday

Labour voters in Crewe would rather have Cameron

Brown's personality is a liability

Manoeuvring and positioning - Byers

Former minister and self-styled 'Blair outrider' Stephen Byers point at the contrast between what Brown says and what he is...

To be a party of government requires courage and conviction, not tactical manoeuvring and political positioning. Now is the time for the Labour party to demonstrate that the days of easy options and avoiding difficult decisions are over.

Er, when were the days of easy options and how long has Labour been avoiding difficult decisions?

Found out

Astonishing brutality in the news today... For example, Andrew Rawnsley says Gordon Brown's reputation has collapsed on every front.

The power of Brand Brown during his successful early months in Downing Street was to be seen as competent, straightforward and decisive. [...]

This was essential to Labour's hopes of winning the next general election - the idea that Mr Brown was perceived as a tough and capable leader who could be relied on to see Britain through difficult times. That was the core of the Brown leadership offer. And it is here that he has suffered the most catastrophic implosion of his public reputation. If you are a Labour MP, you have to be frightened by the high number of voters who now pick indecisive, ineffective and weak as the words to describe the Prime Minister.

This all comes from a 5000-person poll at politicshome suggesting Brown's personal; ratings are about the lowest ever. The poll shows that 'utter failure' of the relaunch and shows that Brown's popularity has declined since he toured TV studios...

...Attempting to do human, he has told voters that he 'feels your pain'. The public are not responding with empathy for his plight, but with an even bigger urge to inflict pain on their Prime Minister. His personal ratings have actually turned for the worse since he attempted the relaunch of his premiership.

It is not just the depth of this collapse that is stunning. It is the sheer width of it, the comprehensive shattering of his reputation in all the areas that matter to the public.

Rawnsley sums up...

The brutal but inescapable truth revealed by this survey is that the voters do not want to change anything about Gordon Brown. They want to change absolutely everything.

This is the intriguing idea... that Brown's effort to restore his standing only serve to expose his more of his weaknesses to more searching scrutiny, all leading to a pleasing downward spiral of decline and rising tide of contempt. This isn't a change in Brown, it is the process of revealing what has always been there... Gordon Brown has been found out.