Having been at Edinburgh University with Gordon Brown and watched his
antics across the years, I think the media wildly overestimates his intellectual
ability. Unlike genuinely brilliant political economists such as Peter Jay,
Brown has always had difficulty in seeing the big picture. This has resulted in
him constantly falling foul of the ‘law of unintended consequences’. He is also
a classic bully and has tormented the underlings around him but is nowhere to be
seen when courage is required. Will Brown take the big, tough decisions as Prime
Minister? Don’t make me laugh!
Posted by Rev Dr John Cameron on March 13, 2007 6:20 AM
Thursday, October 11, 2007
The Character of Gordon Brown
This was posted on the Telegraph website in March this year. Somehow it is so prescient...
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50 comments:
Rev Dr John Cameron - Any relation to Dave? :-)
The Reverend Dr John Cameron? Wouldn't be any relation would it?
A politician has to be at least passably smart to survive as Chancellor for ten years, especially when the PM would have loved to oust him given the slightest chance.
A politician also has to be pretty smart to survive as 'PM in waiting' for ten years and actually still become PM.
All of which makes his recent misjudgement about the election all the more surprising.
My theory is that a man's greatest strength often turns out to be his greatest weakness (it's a Shakespeare thing). Gordon Brown's greatest strength is his sheer cleverness as a political operator - but sometimes he gets too impressed by his own cleverness and gets himself into trouble. Big trouble, in this case.
But call him a fool at your peril.
24. At 07:08 PM on 02 Apr 2007, Rev Dr John Cameron wrote:
What it reveals is the immaturity of Gordon Brown. I remember him as an undergraduate at Edinburgh University where he was the first ‘student’ rector. He was just as slippery in those far off days, all gimmicks and wheezes and smart little tricks. It did not matter then since nothing was at stake and the only objective was to annoy Principal Swan, the universally disliked head of Edinburgh University in the early 1970’s. However these same childish tricks employed as Chancellor of the Exchequer have been extremely damaging to so many working people who trusted him. The thought of this petulant, middle aged, ‘teenager’ holding the office of Prime Minister is truly a matter of concern.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/evandavis/2007/04/that_pensions_raid.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/evandavis/2007/04/that_pensions_raid.html
anon what is your point exactly?
History has many examples of flawed men getting to the top of the greasy pole. Rev J Cameron is merely pointing out that Brown is a flawed character whose overblown intellect and dodgy character are not fully understood by most. However a cursory analysis of his 'results' will show that our economy owes less to him than to China and the actions of previous Chancellors. But I don't expect you can figure out why this is so.
Savronola: Magic.
New Ipsos Mori / Sun Poll
Con 41%
Lab 38%
LD 11%
Brown 45% Cameron 29% cut by 25%
10% Swing based on the Last Ipsos Observer Poll on 28th September?
Con 34% Lab 41% Libdem 16%
Poll of the 26th showed Lab 13% in front
It is now clear that Reverend Cameron was spot on in his assessment of the psychologically flawed creature that we now have the misfortune to call Prime Minister.
You only had to look at the grotesque expressions playing upon Brown's face during the pre-budget statement to see the serious failings of the wretch.
Fortunately his days as PM are now numbered though he still has more than enough time to inflict more damage on this country.
I think the main thing that will change is that the Conservatives will now hopefully be in rather less unjustified awe of him than they were, and will come after him with a lot more confidence.
As we have just seen, he unravels under the slightest pressure, and he appears to be cordially hated by most of his collagues, who all need him to fail so they can take over.
Brown's studiously created and much hyped image as a powerful intellect and political giant has been blown apart in recent days and we can now see him for the scheming, dishonest, bullying incompetent, cowardly, pygmy that he really is and as which he will go down (as a mere footnote) in history.
BTW Ipsos/Mori poll in tomorrow's Sun is being reported on Sky as Tories 41. Labour 34. A massive turnaround from the previous Mori 12 days ago when Labour had a 7% lead.
Kelvin McKenzie is in fine form on QT tonight. It's not "vision" he' worried about - it's his "neck"!
Brilliant stuff - but it is Cheltenham!
I know that you and other Tories, such as George Osborne, really don't like Gordon Brown as a person, let alone as a politician, but at least consider the simple fact that over the past ten years we have had a relatively stable economy and some of that credit must go to Gordon. Another thing to consider is that at least he can walk proudly among the streets of places like Liverpool and Scotland and is more loved than one particular tabloid bully who is on tonight's Question Time panel
Paul,
The economy is now going down the pan because Brown Borrowed and spent more than he had. Now we have a downturn in the economy with debt hanging over our heads.
"Stable economy"!!! Let's nail this myth once and for all. The WORLD economy has been benign and we have been lucky. The UK economy is built on debt and more debt (and PFI figures don't show up in the Treasury's figures). We have a Sub Prime Government.
There's two of Brown's stooges on the QT panel tonight, Harriet Harman and Tupa Umkupa from Brownite pressure group Compass.
Good to see they're getting a hard time from the audience.
"but at least consider the simple fact that over the past ten years we have had a relatively stable economy and some of that credit must go to Gordon."
Check the data...
You might notice that there was abit of stability around the 1992-1997 region.
So no, its not Gordons economic Genius that caused the stability, the Tories managed to do it as well.
Harman is as abysmal as usual. Lots of booing in the background.
Oh - jolly good to hear the real voice of the people!
Kelvin has now re-appraised his views on Cameron - he's not a dud, possibly - and Osborne is a good guy for the way he's handled the tax issues.
Will the Sun come down on the Conservative side?
"When in doubt cite the Southall election result and question what the Conservative's policies are."
Instructions for Harriet Harman when on the back foot on QT.
A member of the audience just used the words "honour-bound" and "Gordon Brown" in the same sentence about whether we should have a referendum on the treaty.
Shurely some mistake!
Anonymous 9:13 writes "call him [Brown] a fool at your peril". Oh, lah di dah!
Who called him a fool?
He's a pretentious boor who is a coward at heart. And deep down, he's really very shallow. (It's a Peter de Vries kind of thing.) He has promoted the over-estimation of his own abilities. He wants to be held in high regard yet displays neither talent nor charm. He's angry, resentful and lumbering on his feet mentally. He is a cariacature of political jiggery-pokery and his ambition over arches his ability. He has the personality and judgement of a garden toad, although not the agility. He carries with him an inexplicable air of entitlement. He looks like Rochester limned by Caliban.
We don't call him a fool at our peril. Someone who has spent 30 years overestimating himself with such grandiosity, and who collapses in public when challenged is not screwed together quite right.
derek draper looks like derek hattons successful drug gealer!
Did anyone cheer when Gordon Brown left his University?
He has behaved in the same way throughout his career from student politics, to the Labour party and now in government! Why is anyone surprised?!?!
"Dolly" Draper is such a tosser! He's doing his old spinning job on News 24 as if he was still up Brown's arse. I thought he'd done some course on psychoanalysis or psychology to get his head sorted out? It hasn't worked.
"Lower taxes means lower spending" says Dolly. He's being paid for this isn't he?
I've noticed he's re-emerged as a pundit more and more in the last few weeks.
Draper was sacked as a New Labour spin doctor for making a colossal gaffe and being found out. He then had a nervous breakdown and later took a psychology course saying he was finished with politics, it was a dirty business, and now he wanted to just help people.
However..... I see he's now crawled back to spinning lies for Brown. Trouble is, he looks like he's heading for another breakdown the poor shambling wretch.
congrats on dealing with that disgusting f(((((g lying, twofaced,sccum, left wing twat draper. how you keot your cool i do not know . i would have knocked the c**t out after 5 minutes.
Iain - you will be on QT proper very soon because you are a decent bloke with sensible views. i wish you all the best.
steve
If Dolly is all they have - spouting spin from the 90s - then Labour is a busted flush.
Well done Iain - I'd have decked the little toad!
Well done Iain, you came across as the honest one. I may be a Tory now but I've voted Labour all my life and I'm sick of their lies and spin. We have public opinion on our side and it's only going to grow. In 1997 I wanted big increases in spending on our services, but I didn't want it poured into Gordon's black holes.
Nice to see Brown getting another good kicking on the Andrew Neil show, even Diane Abbott is struggling to defend the useless oaf.
Brown really is a busted flush. He will never fully recover from these last ten days.
As for Draper: what a cretin, the stupid fellow couldn't stop ranting. It was all lies, spin, and tripe of course. He wants to calm down or he'll end up foaming at the mouth again and being taken away by the men in white coats like he was a couple of years ago.
Whilst watching Draper, I was reminded of a quote from Spinal Tap:
"Certainly, in the topsy-turvy world of [politics], having a good solid piece of wood in your hand is often useful."
I'd have used it, no question.....
By the way, has anyone seen that other toad - the famous Chris Paul blogger - on Iain's blog in the last couple of days?
I hear he's withdrawn from public life and is concentrating on getting the swings in his local park sorted out. Apparently they keep swinging more to the right than to the left.
But it's still a bit odd he didn't make any comments about PMQs on Wednesday, isn't it?
I'm sure he watched Iain on News 24's QT follow up programme. He must have been impressed by "Dolly" Draper's performance - just shows that Cognitive Behaviour Therapy can have an impact. Have a go Chris.
He's been exposed as the self-important, deceptive, Machiavellian bully he is. But the Tories should keep calm and kill him slowly. The kicking from Cameron on wednesday only worked because the public were in the same mood. We don't want people feeling sorry for him.
Well done for doing unto Dolly as David did unto Gordon Brown on Weds.
Now Polly Toynbee ,one of Gordon's most devout and ardent admirers weilds the knife quite mercilessly against him; Gordon she claims has in a short time "shipwrecked his party" , he is she says "shameless" and "dysfunctional" and suffers from "incompetence" and "vision void" "when Cameron threw "phoney" at him in Prime Minister's Questions, it stuck like napalm. He could duck the bottles thrown over his election funk, but "phoney" will stick because his comprehensive spending review smacked of panicky, comprehensive cowardice. "
Can this be the same Polly who a short few months ago wrote of the then Chancellor the following?
"Twice a year Grodon Brown fills his partys's sails with pride. His tordado of facts and figures magics up images of untold national wealth and success.
Standing at the dispatch box, the towering supriority of his brain makes intellectual pygmies of his opponents."
"Twice a year Grodon Brown fills his partys's sails with pride."
Not with pride in spelling.
And Grodon sounds like something out of 'Lord of The Rings'. Grodon sounds like something that would live underground for decades.
ldjsotdjBrown's character has been obvious for all to see right through, in my opinion. He was obviously no genius, and I've said as much on many blogs and my own for years.
What was hard to figure out was why did the media keep saying he was one, and why did the majority of British folk believe them. Was it Blair's power to mesmerise and deceive?
It was really Blair that allowed the 'Brown's a genius' lie to be propagated.
Blair finally tried to warn everyone about Brown's unsuitability, but by the time Blair became honest about Brown - the Clunking Fist etc - no one believed him.
Murdoch too was always going on about the genius of Gordon Brown.
The relevance of Brown's incompetence now is that the country urgently needs to get rid of him, as does the Labour Party.
But also when will people stop believing what the media is saying, and start making up their own minds. We are now in a pitiful state with an idiot running the country, and it's all down to media spin.
'Brown's a genius. It must be true. It's in all the papers.' It isn't any more.
We enjoyed the fruits of Thatcher's reforms under Blair. We are now enjoying the results of the falsity of Blair under Brown.
Ah, yes Dolly Draper. Chorley's most famous son.
Had a friend who went to Manchester Uni with him. Ever wondered why he is called Dolly?
Ever wondered why his mentor was 'Mandy' Mandelson? Ever wondered why Draper, Brown and Blair (Emily) all have femine nicknames.
Hmmm. So have I.....
Anonymous 2:37 - Didn't Blair have another nickname, other than the 'Emily' the boys at Fettes accorded him?
As a junior in his chambers, wasn't his nickname Miranda?
Paul Burgin: Let's kill this myth of a stable economy once and for all. The idea that it is/was stable derives from the fact that GDP has grown at a steady 3%. But this is not difficult when public spending is growing at 6-7%, even if the private sector is flat or declining. This growth has been possible through borrowing (a current budget deficit of £35 billion + perhaps £30 billion PFI per annum). Borrowing on this scale has only been possible because of the previous 18 years of relative parsimony. Not only do we have the largest budget deficit in the G7, we also have the worst balance of trade and the highest interest rates (a good sign of a weak economy). The balance of trade figures are hardly surprising because our manufacturing base has declined so much in the last 10 years. But don't try to come back with some tripe about high cost economies - Germany has a $288 billion annual trade surplus, we have a $185 billion annual deficit. Even France and Italy have surpluses.
On a broad range of measures we lie behind Greece and just ahead of India.
We'd have an even more stable economy if the genius hadn't sold our gold reserves at bargain basement prices.
14 years of growth and mortgaged (and taxed) to the hilt.
There is an interesting quote from a former senior aide of US President J F Kennedy, mentioned in today's Telegraph:
"Judgment is the single most important criterion for selecting a president. At the time of the [1962] Cuban missile crisis, Kennedy's powers of judgment were tested as no president has ever been tested."
Compare and contrast the above with Rev Cameron:
"Brown has always had difficulty in seeing the big picture. This has resulted in
him constantly falling foul of the ‘law of unintended consequences’"
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
I have never believed that any Labour government could be trusted with the economy and the euphoria that greeted Brown’s handing over the reins of the Bank of England, had nothing to do with cleverness, but had everything to do with shirking responsibility for something which could likely bring him down. Of course the City loved it as it virtually allowed them do their own thing without getting caught. That was, until Northern Rock! I remember thinking at that time that the political commentators were out of their skulls, believing that this man was prudent and clever. Almost immediately he began to borrow to finance his ill thought out visions and is still at it today. It is a fact that the last time the UK Balance of Payments was in surplus, was during 1997 under the last Conservative government. For every single month of this labour government since 1997 we have been in negative figures. The cumulative total is an unbelievable horror story from which we will not recover for generations. The Balance of Payments figures used to be published quarterly and the public informed via the press, but Brown somehow managed to keep this information out of the public eye and, sorry to say, Conservative MP’s have never attacked Brown over this scandalous management of our accounts. Can you imagine having a current account at your local bank, running an overdraft and having the limit breached every month for ten years? No, most of us wouldn’t, and we certainly wouldn’t be regarded as ‘prudent’ if we did.
Here are the yearly accounts from the Office of National Statistics. Don’t forget these are cumulative figures and should be added together. The full table including quarterly analysis can be accessed at http://www.statistics.gov.uk/statbase/TSDdownload2.asp
1997 +1,764
1998 -7,141
1999 -15,454
2000 -19,361
2001 -26,789
2002 -30,875
2003 -29,445
2004 -34,975
2005 -44,178
2006 -48,369
Go vicar!
He's made some very good points there... and I suppose really Brown's shortcomings have always been there for us to see. The man has fretted and agonised and obsessed over every miniscule daily event as Chancellor, mainly what Labour like to call the "process". Through this he caused the great chasm between himself and Blair. How can we be surprised when we discover that this twisted, self-consumed individual is so focussed on his Great Hairy Navel that he fails to notice anything else?
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: `Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear --
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.'
machiavelli - are you sure it's "vicar", rather than, "Minister"? (!)
Vienna, the "scandal" of the balance of payments clearly hasn't affected Labour's support yet. Is this entirely to do with the "New Labour" press coverage? If so, and the coverage changes to more "pro-Cameron", does that give the green light to more tax-cutting policies from Osborne? Please note, I don't agree with you, but I respect you, and would be grateful if you could see my question as a real enquiry, not a wind-up!
John T, I rather think that I am a lot older than you are and have experienced many governments and their shortcomings, both left and right. The Balance of Payments figures used to be the benchmark on how we stood in the world in comparison with other nations. It didn’t make any difference as to which party was in power, these quarterly results were revealed both for our visible and invisible trade, which gave the electorate an idea a fairly rough idea how the economy stood. Now, I know that these figures are constantly revised due to reporting delays, which is why I used the term “rough idea”, but it was at the very least, an accurate guide as to our performance.
These figures were always published until the last Conservative government left office. They’ve never been mentioned much since, because I assume the Blair/Brown partnership did not like broadcasting bad news and the Conservative party, until quite recently, couldn’t, or wouldn’t, concentrate on what New Labour was really doing with the economy.
At the start of Blair’s reign I was head of an international company doing business with central Europe and was invited to meet with some of his new team of economic advisors who wanted to help me push exports. Their ideas were naive and half baked and I chose to ignore them – my business prospered! My main competitor listened to them and damn near went bankrupt. (I suppose I should thank them for that at least, as I bought the competitor.)
By this time B & B were in full swing and the New Economy was being sold by Blair. The only thing that interested them was inward investment and exports were no longer flavour of the month. This resulted in our embassies abroad being stripped of their commercial staff, with just a handful of people left holding the fort. Exports to some of our EU partners fell by more than 60% and manufacturing in the UK was decimated.
The courtship of B & B with the banking sector was a clever one, but in the long run it was always going to fail. To support one square mile of London as a Milchküh and ignore what was happening to the rest of the UK was, in my mind, a criminal act.
Governments should keep people informed honestly, even if the news is bad. Honesty, unfortunately, has become rather rare in politics, which is why I suppose, I pack politicians in the same bag as meteorologists – neither get it right most of the time!
Paul Burgin said...
Another thing to consider is that at least he can walk proudly among the streets of places like Liverpool and Scotland
If he walks along my street I'll poke his other eye out... VISION...I'll give him VISION!
The one thing that Nulab is good at is that if they say it is...It is.
Hence Brown's 100 days. He said he was so popular because of his competent handling of the three crises..flooding,foot and mouth and terrorism.
Few even bother to question whta is patently standing the world on its head.
Brown says he is competant, so... he is competent.
Its an Emperor wearing no clothes thing. But Boy David showed him!
ooh! we got folks quoting Shelley. On this blog!
I really am impressed these days that there are a few people on here who actually had an education that went beyond teaching us how to pass exams.
Vienna Woods
Thank-you :
"This resulted in our embassies abroad being stripped of their commercial staff, with just a handful of people left holding the fort. Exports to some of our EU partners fell by more than 60% and manufacturing in the UK was decimated"
is what interests me most out of your piece because I hadn't thought of it before. I'm not going to research an argument against this, I trust there isn'tmuch of one, but you have increased my knowledge, which makes having to read vehement nonsense from others all worth while!
My point continues to be about public perception - will Osborne feel emboldened by the last few weeks to risk headlines from the BBC (biased, blinkered, corrupt in my centre-left opinion) along the lines of "lurch to the right"?
I'm probably older than my words suggest to you, but that doesn't matter!
wrinkled weasel -
apparently Shelley said about Keats what Polly just said about Brown!
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