Kettle think it's like Ibsen's A Doll's House, Sylvester prefers Romeo and Juliet. Toynbee seems to think it's more like Air France Flight 447. I've always gone for Macbeth (and used the same headline twice). That's Hazel Blears on the left. Meanwhile, we await Brown's new 'cabinet' - Balls, Cooper and, er, some blokes he met in a pub in 1983. A friend emailed me just after Purnell did the decent thing and killed his boss. He called me a 'genius' for forecasting all this in January. He's right, of course, but it wasn't my genius at work on this occasion, it was a heady combination of wishful thinking, clairvoyance and an absolute conviction that Brown wasn't up to the job. I've only met him once. I can't remember when, where and why, but I do remember him coming across the room bearing his cyborg smile and an extended hand which I took reluctantly. Many years later I did a lot of research for a piece on Brown - when he was Chancellor - that never materialised. Not being a Westminster hack I had not previously been exposed to the stuff that came out. I was shocked, very. Even then it was clear that the man had been an unremitting catastrophe for Labour, also that he was a very bad politician indeed - no, as it were, balls and none of Blair's instinctive grasp of the rhythm of events. Intellectually, I was voraciously unimpressed. He just reads stuff, he doesn't process it. This is not personal - he may, for all I know, be a nice bloke, though that seems improbable after the McBride affair - it's professional. He made the wrong career choice. I voted Tory yesterday, not out of conviction but because I think it essential that the anti-Brown landslide be as large as possible and marginal or tactical voting would not achieve that. Purnell's right, he must go for the good of the country and, as that sweet, misunderstood woman Lady Macbeth put it, 'If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done quickly.'
Friday, June 05, 2009
Lay On, Macduff 3
Kettle think it's like Ibsen's A Doll's House, Sylvester prefers Romeo and Juliet. Toynbee seems to think it's more like Air France Flight 447. I've always gone for Macbeth (and used the same headline twice). That's Hazel Blears on the left. Meanwhile, we await Brown's new 'cabinet' - Balls, Cooper and, er, some blokes he met in a pub in 1983. A friend emailed me just after Purnell did the decent thing and killed his boss. He called me a 'genius' for forecasting all this in January. He's right, of course, but it wasn't my genius at work on this occasion, it was a heady combination of wishful thinking, clairvoyance and an absolute conviction that Brown wasn't up to the job. I've only met him once. I can't remember when, where and why, but I do remember him coming across the room bearing his cyborg smile and an extended hand which I took reluctantly. Many years later I did a lot of research for a piece on Brown - when he was Chancellor - that never materialised. Not being a Westminster hack I had not previously been exposed to the stuff that came out. I was shocked, very. Even then it was clear that the man had been an unremitting catastrophe for Labour, also that he was a very bad politician indeed - no, as it were, balls and none of Blair's instinctive grasp of the rhythm of events. Intellectually, I was voraciously unimpressed. He just reads stuff, he doesn't process it. This is not personal - he may, for all I know, be a nice bloke, though that seems improbable after the McBride affair - it's professional. He made the wrong career choice. I voted Tory yesterday, not out of conviction but because I think it essential that the anti-Brown landslide be as large as possible and marginal or tactical voting would not achieve that. Purnell's right, he must go for the good of the country and, as that sweet, misunderstood woman Lady Macbeth put it, 'If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done quickly.'
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
Any chance of publishing your desk draw profile of Brown on the blog?
ReplyDelete(I thought Macbeth said t'were better done quickly etc?)
ReplyDeleteIt is pretty impressive that you predicted it would come to a head now. If he doesn't actually go in the next few weeks, it will only be because he is the stupidest, most stubborn bugger in the country.
They can't get rid of Brown because it will cause a general election, which they'll lose, and the longer he stays the worse it will be when there is an election. They're in a bit of a tight spot; do you think there's any way out of it for them?
ReplyDeleteWaht was so very shocking, Bryan?
ReplyDeleteIsn't that ''tactical voting'' then?
ReplyDeleteBryan
ReplyDeleteHow many signatures are needed to get you to tell us what you found so shocking about Brown?
To be honest, I can't find the damn piece. What I found - this was three or four years ago - was basically what we know now. Also I only then realised the horrific extent to which is bitterness towards Blair had crippled the government. If Blair asked for a paper from the Treasury it didn't arrive, a shocking state of affairs. Brown stopped Blair's pet schemes and, I think, drove him to expend his ambition on foreign policy. I think it perfectly possible that, but for Brown, Blair would not have gone into Iraq. He just needed something to do. Brown's cowardice and venom put us in political limbo for a decade.
ReplyDeleteWas Blair really in charge then? Why didn't Blair sack Brown? Is it not going a bit far to blame Brown for Blair's foreign policy hubris?
ReplyDeleteIt's like saying if you hadn't made me so mad I wouldn't have been driven to hit that innocent man who just happened to be passing by, and therefore you're to blame for his injuries.
Watch Mandelson!
ReplyDeleteWhen and how will the serpent strike?
There is a marked similarity between the dying convulsions of the Brown government and the light going out of Hitler's Nazi party's eyes, skulking in its bunker. Both are, were, beyond approach, both led by psychopaths (and what else can Brown be, dragging our country into the dark ages to further his own aims)
ReplyDeleteThe Nazi party's leader once 'elected' was immovable, the Labour party's structure also mitigates against the removal of it's (unelected) leader, in that sense new millennium Britain and Nazi Germany are, were, both led by dictators, one very definitely so the other by default.
The acolytes of both party's, cowed by years of thuggish bullying and intimidation, have had their will to resist surgically removed.
Today I watched as Mandelson once again did his Herr Doktor Goebbels impression, sliming his way through an interview with the labour party's man in the BBC, N Robinson.
It is the Berlin wall of denial, constructed by the prime ministers Brownshirts that is so breathtaking and always, the feeling it generates, "just how stupid do these people think we are"
Pretty stupid, the British public voted them in back in 1997.
Tonight I shall away to the hills and cast the runes, hopefully they will show Brown buried deep underground by the end of next week.
So, possibly Macbeth, very probably the little Corporal.
"He's right, of course, but it wasn't my genius at work on this occasion, it was a heady combination of wishful thinking, clairvoyance and an absolute conviction that Brown wasn't up to the job."
ReplyDeleteI'd be surprised if he was gone by July. The man has been dreaming of being PM since he was a boy(probably a sure sign of evil) they'll have to literally dynamite his arse out of Downing street.
"He's right, of course, but it wasn't my genius at work on this occasion, it was a heady combination of wishful thinking, clairvoyance and an absolute conviction that Brown wasn't up to the job."
ReplyDeleteI'd be surprised if he was gone by July. The man has been dreaming of being PM since he was a boy(probably a sure sign of evil) they'll have to literally dynamite his arse out of Downing street.