When I watched Gordon Brown's Andrew Marr interview, I was struck by one thing. Looking into his eyes, I saw Anthony Eden staring back at me. Brown is in a hole, he's flailing around and hasn't got a clue where he's going. He was totally exposed by Marr asking him, if things have changed, what one policy is different now from what it was a week ago. Brown had no answer. All he could do was drone on about understanding people's concerns without actually saying how they could be addressed. He then attributed the government's problems to bad presentation without seeming to realise that you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. I laughed out loud when he came out with the equivalent of Bill Clinton's "I feel your pain".By the end of the interview Brown was just rambling. Marr was far more searching in his questions than he has been in the past with Brown and Brown didn't know how to deal with it. I suspect Adam Boulton will be even more aggressive in his interview after 10am on Sky.
The fact that MacAvity has been forced to undertake two consecutive live interviews on the same day says it all. Can anyone remember a Prime Minister doing such a thing in the past?
Andrew Marr left me open mouthed when he asked Brown if he was physically up to it. He followed it up by telling Brown that people felt he was a bit weird - not like them. Brown dealt with it reasonably well, but it was a crushing moment for him. To be asked a question like that must have been deeply insulting. Marr then followed it up by asking him if he was really up to the job. Instead of a passionate or angry response, he just listed all the things he was doing for the country and then compared himself with John McCain.
Clarissa Eden once said she felt as if the Suez Canal was running through the Number Ten living room. Sarah Brown must be fed up with all those 10p tax bills dropping through the Number Ten letterbox.
47 comments:
Andy Marr has found a pair, good on him. Shame you didn't have your live blogging thingamajig running.
Sould be interesting to see how he does on Adam Bolton.
Iain, it's good that Andrew Marr's getting tough with New Labour, not before time !
Let's hope the BBC pull their socks up and stop giving them an easy ride.
I thought it very telling that Gordon deflected Marr's question on the Crewe-Nantwich by-election by bringing up the 42 days detention debacle.
Got to be bad when you openly opt for the lesser of 2 Evils.
He sounded more broken and weak than I expected and looks quite frankly, completely worn out. Time for Sarah to start looking after HER MAN.
It was just the Same Old, Same Old as usual and not one decent idea to share with us.He keeps saying inflation is low when we in the real world know it is not!!
He keeps repeating the same thing but its obvious he hasnt got a clue, but is just going through the motions. And what was that about Northern Rock?
Was he blaming the Conservatives?
I see Boris's sister in doing the paper review with that committed socialist Dianne 'my nipper goes private' Abbot. Should be good fun.
Curmy
No, it is too late for the BBC to change their ways and expect forgiveness. Even a full apology and public repentance should not stop their dissolution.
Their day has been and gone. Restoring the state brewery in Carlisle would be more relevant than keeping the BBC.
Dianne Abbott is not happy - and is predicting that the Tory Party is going to be 'Emborissed"!
I really hate the way Labour are still trying so hard to paint Boris as a racist. They don;t like him because of his class.
Actually I think that is what people like about him. He is refreshing, not a controlling type, has a sense of humour.....blah blah blah!
Boris - racist, Ken -anti-semite?
I do wish that his sister didn't begin every sentence with "well, I mean...."
He kept saying 'when the Conservatives are tested...when the Conservatives are tested..' The answer should be:'When the Conservatives are tested,people LIKE us'! or 'When the Conservatives are tested,we get 44%,a PASS.Labour FAIL.
He also said 'the economic problems are not of our making.They STEAL 5 BILLION£ a YEAR from people's pension pots.IN a CYNICAL attempt to pull a tax-cutting Rabbit out of last year's budget They pulled a t*rd out of a nappy.Then flung it in the face of the poor.
Of course he couldn't answer what would change. The "listen" mantra is PR he knows he has to do, but fundamentally (and honestly) he believes - he KNOWS - he's in the right, he knows what he's doing, and it's the voters that cocked up on Thursday.
There's tons of leftist commentators agreeing, saying it's a bad day for democracy and the like. See Steve Richards pompously explaining that voters need to pass some stupid test by voting Livingstone, or Vivienne Westwood saying it shows democracy's a sham.
The voters think Brown's wrong, and in a democracy that's all that matters.
In the vid which one is Tamsin Lightwater?
I don't feel sorry for Brown at all. Most of the 'financial uncertainty/fear' in the country is down to him. The tax-payer is ripped off by stealth and council/income taxes- which show no real benefit to the actual payer- where does the money go? Those on low incomes are forced into more hardship by the 'tax credit' system- which no-one-let alone those working for the call centres- seems to know HOW it operates. Many people-myself included- have asked to be taken off the bloody thing. People cannot afford housing in their own communities, cannot get council housing in their own communities- but there always seems to be housing availiable for the 2 million+ immigrants. Petrol becoming increasingly unaffordable due to GB stealing money from the car owner with 'legal' rates of tax! He has not got a clue at all: a bit like Polly Toynbee and her concern for global warming when she flies first-class to her villa in Italia.
The boy Marr done good.
Go Adam Bolton - kick this man when he is clearly down.
Oh - the weird jaw thing is back.
Oh - and so is blaming the wider global circumstances. I remember back in 1992 when Black Monday happened, and the Tories rightly said that global forces were working, Labour laughed and scoffed. Now they are using exactly the same line.
How the tables have turned.
So is the 'I feel your pain' line - clearly a new line to take.
Where Brown is failing in communication terms is that (a) he is in denial and (b) he is splitting hairs over the 10p tax thing, asking people to focus on the details, when what people want is for him to address the underlying pool of anger which he has whipped up!
I suspect the media people at Labour HQ are not so much interested in this interview, but in the rushes which will be used for the rolling reports throughout the day.
The more I watch him, the more of a complex personality he seems to have. He is clearly as mad as a pot plant. He lives in his own world - PLanet Gordo!
Brown was dire. He was grasping at straws. The peach was when he announced that the Tories were against education til 18 and against the school building programme. To which anyone with more than two brain cells to rub together said 'Great@ we'll vote for them tomorrow
The penny dropped with Marr that he would be ridiculed from here to Kingdom Come if he gave Brown the usual sycophantic easy ride.
My favourite moment was when Marr told Brown that Labour MPs thought he spent a lot of time writing notes in the middle of the night (cue smile) and not enough attention to detail (cue jaw-dropping glare). And all within the space of a nano-second. Wonderful.
you should have the live blog switched on for this Iain!
On Sky Gordon has openly admitted that only two groups will be compensated for the 10p tax con.
Low paid Childless: Single, divorced, young and widowed people are stuffed
Gordon is apparently a 'private person' who spends his time trying to help the British people, not building a personality cult.
Perhaps he should stop trying to help - and things will improve for everyone.
Brown's a lame duck. He'd better go back to being a salesman, undertaker, merchant and grocer like generations of his mother's Souter family before him as he clearly isn't fit for anything else.
Though who would buy cheese from a man with a nasty smile like Brown's and his track record of deceit?
Remind me, what was Broon and nulab's latest, desperate, attempted slur on Cameron?
Mud slinging the jibe 'salesman' at him?
Unbelievable, the failed snake oil salesman, Broon, incompetent to his core, attempts to win votes by slurring the most capable politician of our age.
You couldn't make Broon up, could you?
"Living room"?!
Credit to Marr for starting to do his job at last. This morning's interview with Brown made a refreshing change from Marr's earlier apparent role as Number 10's media attache.
Ha! Sky News just cut to an Everest Windows advert - cutting off Brown.
Wonderful. It was as if the producers just said "enough already - I can't take this man anymore - cut to adverts"!
Did Sky News just cut the PM off mid speech... LOL.
Bloody Hell
Sky just cut off the British PM to show a double glazing ad. Something tells me Gordon is done for.
Spot on Iain. I have thought for some while that Brown resembles Eden in many ways. He was awful on Marr and Boulton and said nothing new. The relaunch is over already!
Also I have detected much sour grapes in Labour cirles. Rentoul in The Indy is a prime example as was Abbott's awful performances on Boulton.
1851 Scotland Census
Gordon Brown's maternal great great grandparents' (salesmen) and family
Name: Will Souter
Age: 76
Estimated Birth Year: abt 1775
Where born: Insch, Aberdeen
Parish Number: 212
Civil Parish: Kinnethmont
County: Aberdeenshire
Address: Piper Will
Occupation: **Merchant Grocer**
Household schedule number: 1
Line: 1
Roll: CSSCT1851_47
Household Members:
Name Age
David Souter 13
Will Souter 76
Will Souter 44
Will Innis 24 (family's servant)
Isabel Guthrie 36 (family's 'servant')
It seems I am not alone in imagining images of Brown and toilets today!
Does he do all of his thinking in the throne room these days?
Gordon Brown's saleman and country gentry ancestors
1851 Scotland Census
Name: Will Souter
[Son of Will the Merchant Grocer]
Age: 44
Estimated Birth Year: abt 1807
Where born: Kinnethmont, Aberdeen
Parish Number: 212
Civil Parish: Kinnethmont
County: Aberdeenshire
Address: Piper Will
Occupation: Farming 40 Acres, Employing 3 Labourers
ED: 5
Page: 1 (Household schedule number: 1
Line: 2
Roll: CSSCT1851_47
This "jaw thing" is peculiar, a sort of horizontal wobble at the lower end of travel. I've also notice it gets worse the more he gets rattled. It may be his restrained version of grinding his teeth before dispatching another mobile at the wall!
Blair used to have a lower lip problem which quivered in a vertical plane when he became upset (a bit like Sue Ellen aka Dallas) but he was a much better actor than clueless Brown.
I've also noticed that when Brown is confronted about his personal decisions, he always uses "We" instead of "I" for the simple reason he cannot admit his own failures and accept responsibility like a normal man.
Or perhaps Broon could stand for Mayor of Insch?
That was the position his Tory uncle Gordon Souter (mother's brother) held when Gordon Mk 1 wasn't messing about dib dobbing with the Free Masons.
Broon's uncle Gordon's job?
Salesman/ owner of an ironmongers.
Seems in your family, wee Broonie, it's as RS Thomas said, 'We are all salemen'.
"we‘re only unpopular because we‘ve failed to get our message across" is the cliché invariably spouted by politicians in the final stages of delusion and on the way out. They think the fault lies with the electorate for failing to perceive how wonderful they are.
It‘s difficult to take the idea of Brown changing his behaviour seriously. He is stubborn, mistrustful of others and fond of cliques. Worse still, he is also 57 years old and male. Not a good recipe for change.
Cabinet Minsters should be careful with talk of setting out Gordon Brown‘s vision. It has a freudian hint of the monocular. Like Michael Howard, there‘s an innate creepiness about Brown which most people sense but has yet to be pinned down accurately. Good old Spitting Image would have latched onto a 'something of the night' and finished him off in no time.
Things are bound to pick up for Labour, if only because of regression to the mean, but the unpleasant side of his nature will ensure Brown remains unpopular.
There‘s a mistake in your picture. The seat isn‘t up when flushing away a Brown. As many have said:
Gordon‘s more a number two than a leader.
Wonder who in nulab's upper enchelons persuaded (bribed? Bullied? Ordered?) the BBC to give Broon such a hard time?
I don't suppose for one moment tit had anything to do with she whose face freezes over as she subconciously flicks imaginary specks of dirt from her pure white jacket almost every time Broon speaks at PMQs...
@Adrian Yalland
"Perhaps he should stop trying to help - and things will improve for everyone."
There was a peachy story in the Independent on the impact of a decade of New Labour on schools, which contained the priceless line:
"It would have been better, concludes the Cambridge University-based Primary Review – an ongoing inquiry into primary education in England – if the Government had done nothing at all."
I'm sure Gordon asked for them to cut to the advert to help combat global warming.
Does this snippet from Marr's interview count as a Brownie? "I have been very free and open in admitting we made mistakes over the 10p tax rate ..."
(NB Any such admissions were only made after they held his head down the lavatory and pulled the chain for 30 minutes.)
I actually , genuinely fell asleep.
I really wanted to watch him on Marr, in a gloaty kind of way, to be sure.
Woke up, watched the end of motorcycles, saw Platell and maguire and Lionel blair was it? my, he's changed.
Then I remember Marr saying 'Welcome Prime Minster' and the next thing I know its 10.35 and someone's asking me to think about giving my liver away.
The man is walking Rohipnal. Thank god I only caught that first sight of him.. I might have been out for days.
I have just steeled myself to watch the Marr interview from beginning to end. I was forcibly reminded of Neil Kinnock; Brown suffers from the same verbal diarrhoea. Like Kinnock, he simply can't stop talking, and for the same reason: gaining time for fear of the next question.
In the Marr interview, Mr Brown said he was going to be travelling around the country more, I feel this creates an economic opportunity for a mobile tomato shop van.
Hahahahaha watching the Politics Show Jon Sopel asked Harriet Harman if people where tax too highly. She didn't say no.
If you missed it, track it down on iplayer. It's classic.
Ian you wrote:
"Andrew Marr left me open mouthed when he asked Brown if he was physically up to it. He followed it up by telling Brown that people felt he was a bit weird - not like them."
There is, as yet, a publically unraiseable issue behind this question.
Marr went as far as he felt he could.
Remember this particular part of the Brown-Marr exchange for the future.
Brown has become embarrassing to watch. He makes people cringe rather as Ricky Gervais's character David Brent did in The Office - but without the laughs (Hmm, now there's an idea for a satirical sketch...).
Actually, I thought GB was mildly impressive as an individual given the circs, though he did veer towards 'tractor production figure' mode near the end. Of course, the real issues for Labour go way beyond the economy.
If you really wanted a laugh you should have watched Hermione Fatperson on the Politics Show.
Brown says he's listening. Does he not realise he's just been told?
Brown is certainly looking very tired these days. He's rapidly turning grey, and I don't just mean his hair.
anonymous at 4 May 1:48 - are you suggesting that Brown has some serious health problem that is being kept from the public? If so, tell us. We have a right to know.
Anon @ 1:48pm - care to elucidate?
Some phrase, date, event to google perhaps?
I've read somewhere not so long ago that there are rumours about Brown's eyesight. Remember that as a result of a rugby injury he lost one eye and most of the sight in the other, that's why all of his notes at the despatch box are written so big. The rumour was that he is starting to lose his remaining sight. I don't see why that should force him out of office, David Blunkett was able to perform as a minister despite being blind.
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