Friday, June 05, 2009

The Missing Profile - Found It!

The unpublished Gordon Brown article to which I just referred has turned up. It was written in June 2006. It stands up pretty well.
Posted by Bryan Appleyard at 8:51 am

12 comments:

  1. Belsay BugleJune 05, 2009 9:06 am

    Reading it now Bryan. Thanks.

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  2. BritJune 05, 2009 9:08 am

    Bloody hell. Surely its time is now? The Independent could make it one of those horrible all-text front pages.

    From them, Brown has taken his belief in the markets with government playing the role of moral ringmaster. Blair is not a thinker, but he would share that view and express it through social tinkering like ASBOs and the Respect agenda. Brown, more subtly but also probably more damagingly, expresses it through meddling with the tax and benefit system and constantly trying to micro-manage the economy in the direction of virtue.

    New Labour in a nutshell.

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  3. maltyJune 05, 2009 9:17 am

    Seduce my ancient footwear Bryan, that is the finest, clinically accurate, assessment of a creep I have ever read, four packs of Budlite are winging their way to you as I type.

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  4. Belsay BugleJune 05, 2009 9:28 am

    Not quite right about the economy doing well on his watch, but otherwise catches the essence of the creep pretty well and not even you are perfect, Bryan.
    Wonderful how they couldn't live without each other, Blair and Brown, and that was the only way the Labour Party could get itself elected, with terrible consequences for the rest of us.

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  5. SpongebobJune 05, 2009 9:30 am

    Very good. Can you work on a profile for Cameron? He troubles me - a less charming Blair of '94-
    '97 vintage. Sleek, telegenic, full of passionate intensity, but really quite unscrupulous over this expenses scandal. I hanker after Bill Hague you know, there has to be something pretty unflashy about a Tory from Rotherham.

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  6. philip wallingJune 05, 2009 9:39 am

    Bryan, (largely from reading your profile of him) I'm not sure Brown will go in June.
    I'm willing to bet he'll hang on to the bitter end and it's going to be a very bitter end indeed.

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  7. RecusantJune 05, 2009 9:49 am

    That is bloody brilliant. Fat too good to have been written by a political correspondent, who are all.."and the runners and riders are".

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  8. Gareth WilliamsJune 05, 2009 1:53 pm

    If only all freedom of information requests were so promptly and revealingly fulfilled.

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  9. AnonymousJune 05, 2009 9:25 pm

    Very interesting Bryan. I was going around at the time putting in comments on various (mainly American) blogs when everyone was calling for Blair to go and to be replaced by Brown, that there is no way Brown would cut it, and that he'd be useless as PM. Of course, you say it much better, and my casual slew of late-night comments on long-since forgotten blogs are probably irretrievable (I can't be bothered, anyway).

    Unfortunately, what's the alternative? David Cameron and co - they are "the acceptable face of...." (fill in the dots, they don't care so long as "acceptable" is in there with the voters).

    Lib Dems? What are their policies these days? I despair.

    Who is going to take the lead on (1) the financial crisis and (2) MP's expenses abuse? I don't know, but making Alan Sugar a lord does not seem to be quite the answer I had in mind.

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  10. AnonymousJune 05, 2009 9:57 pm

    i wonder if Blair & Brown had an edgier version of Vladimir & Estragon's 'friendship' in 'Waiting for Godot' - stuck together in the middle of a weird wasteland. i sometimes get the feeling they were afraid of each other.

    i suspect that Brown's only having one eye expresses something of how his mind works - a Cyclops, monomaniac, no depth vision. You mention his deep reading but there seems something robotically narrow about him. It's a useless sort of depth of intelligence - it can go further than Blair but he can't see the wider picture - he has no peripheral vision, no sense of what's really going on around him. That's just the impression i get from blogs, mind you - i don't bother with the news.

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  11. SpongebobJune 05, 2009 11:22 pm

    Has anybody known as weird a political situation as this? Brown's press conference was just bizarre, on every level. I can't wait for Sunday night - I rather fancy the Euro elction results will take the wind out of Dave Cameron's fierce intensity. And we're going to run out of money pretty soon - then it'll get really interesting.

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  12. ChrisHJune 06, 2009 6:55 am

    Remarkable... terrific

    But I am beginning to think Brown is rather admirable - and your excellent analysis confirms my sense that he has been/is being misjudged.

    You are saying I think that he isn't very good at the stuff Blair...er... excelled at...

    Anyone but Cameron: believe me, a Cam Gov will be the end.

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