I've spoken to about 15 Labour delegates here since Gordon Brown's speech ended. Virtually every one of them them said "Really good speech ... but..." And they all had a different 'but'. "It was too long," said one. "Where were the jokes?" said another.
Not a resounding success by all accounts. Indeed, from the reaction of some journalists I have been very kind in my appraisal. I am obviously in too generous a mood today.
Maybe it was sunning myself on the seafront alongside Jacqui Smith, Caroline Flint and Margaret Hodge that did it...
61 comments:
Ye shall be judged by the company Ye keep matey....
I think we can safely assume Brown will be leading his party at the general election.
That has to be good news!
It had the feeling of someones last words!
Gordon Brown is a new type of Politician – He is the political suicide politician.
When everybody in the real world knows the economy is a mess from Gordon Browns policies- what are Gordon Browns solutions? Not just more of the same but a lurch to the lunatic left.
The only direction Brown will take this country is down – His whole strategy is about State Medalling from picking winners in a state run economic investment bureau to medalling further with the post office. Think about it, Gordon Brown who caused Tens of thousands of job losses through a failed shot gun marriage of Lloyds TSB and HBOS now wants to take Banking into communities via the post office. You could not make it up really could you – He cripples a viable Lloyds TSB through a merger with HBOS and destroys thousands of jobs needlessly and then says he is going to use the post office to take banking to the communities. Gordon Brown is barking mad!
Gordon Brown is a state Man – He is state centric and his solutions all involve state medalling in the individual’s lives. If this man and his party get in another time will the last person to leave this country please turn out the lights?
His speech was punctuated with insincerity from the crying businessman that was in tears because he missed two payments (Would anyone really cry about that? Maybe if the business went down but from missing payments!!!) . I smell big amounts of Bullshit wafting from Gordon’s mouth!
Even the bits of the speech that were suppose to be touching bombed – He said he went to work out in a Hospice but would you really want him around in your last days? Gordon Brown reputation goes before him in these matters and surely it was the kiss of death to the patients – No doubt he choose a hospice because nobody would be around to tell any stories because the patients usually die in a hospice and the staff would be sworn to secrecy! Gordon Brown is so cynical – why did he choose to try and take credit from such work? Surely it would have been a greater strength of character if he said nothing?
So, Gordon did his annual conference speech and the turkeys in the audience all dutifully clapped about ID Cards now not being compulsory when they clapped about them being compulsory previously. The Sops to the workers about the minimum wage and some benefits being increased this month also have interesting impacts on election timing and strategy as has the car scrappage scheme running only until February. The economy will likely soon enter a double dip and so this points to an autumn election in my opinion – when it will be announced it could be anytime in the next week. Election 22nd October 2009.
Gordon Brown has decided to take the Labour party with him as he pulls the Coffin Lid down on his premiership. Every vote counts and Gordon and his party of spineless fools needs elimanting after they installed him unelected on us. Brown and his party hate this country one can only conclude after the way he has perverted the economy and culture to benefit his party and not the people. Gordon Brown is the traitor within and the Labour party needs annihilating to stop this country ever being ruined so badly again. Gordon Brown has managed to indebt the country to such an extent only times of total war have experienced in the past.
http://tinyurl.com/ygo9bx3
but....HOW ARE YOU GONNA PAY FOR IT??????
A man is judged by the company he keeps...
They think it's all over? It is now.
A string of policies from brown - but are they funded? Are they in the red book? Will they be funded before the budget or will Brown cut and run before the budget?
Or is there now an even bigger black hole in the budget finances.
Maybe it's really your relief at the extent to which Gordon actually helped the Tory party along...After all, promise after promise implied "so why didn't we do any of this in the last thirteen years?" and/or "so why did I oppose this so strongly before?" and "if this is such a great idea, why does it have to be dependent on the highly unlikely contingency of me winning the next election?"
I did not know The Three Stoodges had reformed?
Seriously? Where were the jokes? If they want jokes they should go see a comedian. I want my prime minister to be a serious man who's concentrating fully on the job in hand. This obsession with the PM being popular gets right on my nerves. Where were the jokes? In the hall listening to the speech by the sound of it!
Flint well does look like a UEA bird.
Coming as the inquest in to the deaths of Fiona Pilkington and her daughter due to Labour-sponsored yobbery, nothing else than "I resign" would have satisfied me.
I've not seen all of it but what I have seen convinces me all the more that the sooner he goes the better. And as for an introduction by his wife again, I thought he wasn't going to use his family for political purposes.
Iain, can you give us guidance on Sarah Brown, is she political now and can we target her.
Is the promise of an A V referendum anything other than a blatant attempt to persuade Lib Dem voters to vote tactically for Labour to keep the Conservatives out?
PS - by how much did the deficit and the national debt increase during the course of Browns speech.
Amazed that he bottled out of the referendum on electoral reform on polling day. Would have left a huge "mandate" challenge to PM Cameron on day one, whereby if he refused to implement it (If it had been a Yes.) it would have destroyed his claim to giving power to the people.
Labour are now a bunch of quivering big girls blouses.
It's a Brown speciality - the make-and-break speech. He makes them, sits down, and in less time than it takes to acknowledge the compulsory standing ovation, the whole thing starts to break up into little bits...
Am I the only one to feel that the National Care Service, and to some extent the gulags for slags, sorry State Mother and Baby Homes notion, has more than a whiff of the workhouse about it?
My take here,
http://www.plenty2say.com
On the Guido blog he has the damning issue that the 'Gulags for slags' was in the BNP manifesto.
Will Labour be stealing any other BNP ideas?
Guido's discovery that the Mother and Baby homes idea appears to have been borrowed from the BNP could be very damaging for Labour. Surely someone should have done some more research on this notion before Brown was allowed to mention it? And it also appears that Operation Fightback is a BNP slogan.
Jokes don't work at funerals.
Only those made from love.
Gordon cannot express positives. His own world view is negative. His fears are greater than his hopes. His hates bigger than his loves. His belief in the power of money over people absolute.
A seafront full of Dames then!!
In his speech today Gordon Brown said:
"For there are only two options on tax and spending - and only one of them benefits Britain's hard-working majority.
One is reducing the deficit by cutting front line public services - the conservative approach.
The other is getting the deficit down while maintaining and indeed improving front line public services - the Labour approach."
This is the clearest signal yet that should Labour get a fourth term they will be a tax and spend Government. Taxes will have to rise massively. If there is a Fiscal Responsibility law, and the deficit must be reduced by half over 4 years, then the amount of tax to be raised will mean very large tax increases for everyone, not just high earners.
The Labour party is wedded to spending, and will increase taxes under the guise of the legislation, just as they used the recession to enable them to justify even more state spending.
They are foaming at the mouth to increase taxes and increase spending.
The next election will be fought against Old Labour.
You were there?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRlh_UYDMGA
Iain Dale, MP
Gordon didn't have that authentic-looking "smile" that wouldn't earn Mandy an Oscar.
the leader of a party that claps a corrupt lying member who had the temerity to say 'if I can come back'
These people are obscene.
If they manage to get into government again I will find some way of getting out of a country where on;y the corrupt and ignorant are admired. They make Amin and Mugabe look like reasonable alternatives
God please tell us they were not topless Iain?
Gordon browns wife refuses to testify against him - but that's the law isn't it?
Glad you got there in the end. If I a simple not very political person could see that it was bullshit why couldn't you?
To be fair both Sky and the BBC were both initialy taken in, perhaps all you political commentators should take a few steps backwards into the real world. Eddie Mair did on PM this evening, well done him, you should listen to the transcript or Iplayer.
Brown gave the game away. He promised to halve the deficit. But nearly half of it is cyclical anyway. And he made a list of spending promises. Amazingly, it is now clear Brown really does have no intention of making any cuts at all.
15 Labor delegates? bloody Hell Iain, you must have worked your socks off to find 15 of them....
"Maybe it was sunning myself on the seafront alongside Jacqui Smith, Caroline Flint and Margaret Hodge that did it..."
Why weren't they working?
Of course, they don't do they!
Revisiting the speech it appears he had nothing new to say. And why does nurse have to accompany him onto the stage?
Interestingly even the Guardian can't whip up any enthusiasm.
Posted at 4:05 ` where are the jokes`. 8:50 `where are the comments`? More interaction Iain or the voting public will put their X elsewhere,
Where were the jokes?
Well, the Labour leader is currently Gordon Brown. If they want someone who cracks unfunny jokes that go down like a lead balloon, they should have elected Bruce Forsyth as leader.
Alongside of Jacqui Smith was there any sunshine left?
IT is weired,m it is so odd, so strange, why doesn't the Labour party appoint a new leader?
Do they want to die, have they no will to live?
At least you all had something in common.....four redundant pricks!
watching brown and labour descend into utter madness is a blight on not just politics, but our entire democracy.
OK Iain, you want to be an MP
You want to represent the people of Bracknell. Not just the people like you who live in Bracknell. Here we go:-
1. Will you vote for proportional representation even if it means you have to share power with a communist?
2. Will you give up all other activities to serve the people who voted for you (as opposed to those who are paying you)?
3. Will you publish your diary and expenses? Every single day?
4. Can I meet you in a pub and tell you how unhappy I am?
5. Will you reject the whip if your constituents are not happy?
6. Killer Question: Your friend, Peter Tatchell, thinks 14 year old boys should be able to have anal sex with 11 year old boys. Do you agree?
I will hold you to it all. Loudly.
Is it me, or does Mandleson look like Stan Laurel when he smiles?
FLASH
"The Sun" abandons Labour on tommorrow's frobt page.
really good, but.... the SUN apparently switch their support to the Conservatives on tomorrows front page.
Rumours, rumours, don't you just love 'em?
Apparently, 'The Sun' believes that Brown is about to call a snap election for October, hence their decision to rain on his parade by backing the Conservatives tonight.
"Where were the Jokes? " The Joke was standing on the stage delivering the speech !
should have gone to facesavers
Sun newspaper endorsing Conservatives
http://conservative-vision.blogspot.com/
Would love it if people could just take a moment to check out my new blog; it's going to be updated daily, so keep an eye out.
Thanks in advance for giving me a platform, Iain.
All that speech was about was ensuring Labour doesn't go below 20%. Brown has done his deal with the unions and if it's going to be a choice between Tory toffs and th e 3-day week I'll pick the posh boys every time.
I just watched his 2008 conference speech on UTube they could have saved themselfs the cost by just showing that again. Nothing new move on to the election.
Labour loves the NHS, gushed Gordon Brown and he claimed that, unlike the Conservatives, Labour shows that love...by shovelling money into it.
Can this really be the man who invented deathly rationing and the health apartheid for England?
And why, when NHS funding has already increased by over £300 billion since 1997, does our NHS have some of the worse cancer and heart disease survival rates in the EU...and America? Why are our hospitals riddled with killer infections? Why too, are millions of elderly people, often those who are dying, treated so appallingly in so many NHS hospitals?
What 12 years of Labour mismanagement of the NHS has show all to clearly, is that no amount of money shovelled into our health service will cure its serious organisational ills: ills that Brown's party's ineptitude is totally responsible for.
spending and treatment apartheid between Scotland and England.
If money is the measure of love...
Health spending per capita:
England: £7660
Scotland: £9252
You don't love the people of England so much then, Mr Brown? In fact, from the look of that discriminatory spending differential, I'd say you detest England's NHS and people.
The deaths saved by Brown's faster breast cancer diagnosis and treatment; does anyone believe that he won't claw that money back elsewhere to the detriment of some other service? Brown has form for it.
30,000 preventable cancer and heart disease deaths occur in the NHS every year, mostly in England, thanks to Labour. Those deaths are a result of Labour's treatment rationing regime and target culture.
Another 10,000 or so are said to die in the NHS system from killer infections. It looks to me as though Brown is simply trying to bring the NHS into line with the rest of the EU; in all probability, at the behest of the EU itself.
OH, I am not inending to answer questions about Bracknell on here, but since I am feeling benevolent...
1. Will you vote for proportional representation even if it means you have to share power with a communist?
Bo. I do not support PR for Westminster elections.
2. Will you give up all other activities to serve the people who voted for you (as opposed to those who are paying you)?
I will not have any outside interests apart from my shareholding in Total Politics and Biteback Publishing.
3. Will you publish your diary and expenses? Every single day?
My diary and expenses will be published on a weekly basis.
4. Can I meet you in a pub and tell you how unhappy I am?
That's what you have a blog for.
5. Will you reject the whip if your constituents are not happy?
Badly framed question. MPs are representatives, not delegates.
6. Killer Question: Your friend, Peter Tatchell, thinks 14 year old boys should be able to have anal sex with 11 year old boys. Do you agree?
He is not a friend. He is an acquaintance. And no I don't agree.
Sarah Brown was on her way home one day when she came across a little boy selling puppies. She stopped and asked him "What kind of puppies are they?" Ever the good salesman, "They're Labour puppies, Ma'am." he says.
Later that day she mentions it to Gordon and he thinks this is a real opportunity for a photo-op to make him seem human so it’s all arranged. Next week at the Party Conference Gordon is pictured with the lad then, in front of the cameras, ‘spontaneously’ asks him , "What kind of puppies are they?" and he replies, "They're Conservative puppies, Sir."
"Conservative puppies?" says Gordon, completely aghast, "but last week you told Sarah they were Labour puppies." “Ah,” says the boy, “but since last week they have opened their eyes sir."
Flo
You ask some really good questions
"why, when NHS funding has already increased by over £300 billion since 1997, does our NHS have some of the worse cancer and heart disease survival rates in the EU...and America?"
Because a lot of the money went into higher staff costs to buy support from client groups.
The Doctors contracts were totally botched and productivity has fallen significantly because of the Working Time Directive. There is now a statistical jump in deaths when new Doctors join the NHS each year.
Making changes in other areas would involve change, This s fiercely resisted by unions whose members might have to change working practices. Not least of these groups is the Doctors.
There is also clear evidence that these critical conditions are best treated by specialists in major centralised units which deal with thousands of patients a year. For local political reasons we will not rationalise NHS hospitals. People want to be treated locally - and dont realise that it may mean they die rather than live.
"Why are our hospitals riddled with killer infections?"
Poor management and planning is a significant factor. Some Trusts are brilliant, others are awful.
Again it often comes down to willingness to challenege. How many lazy, slovenly, drunken nurses do you ever hear of being sacked? Cleaning staff can go sick for months without real question.
"Why too, are millions of elderly people, often those who are dying, treated so appallingly in so many NHS hospitals?"
We have 'professionalised' nursing and changed their job. They sometimes now see patients as items in treatment plans. I recently witnessed a scene in a hospital. The patient in the next bed to my daughter was about 70 and the Doctor had just told her her cancer was terminal. There was nothing they could do. She had about 2 months to live and they would try and find her a bed in a hospice. We know ths becasue we were sitting behind the screen at the next bed when he told her!
A kindly nurse then took her off to call her daughter and tell her. The very cheerful and efficient staff nurse then got a trainee and her file and started.
"Right its now terminal so write it up this way "She just received some VERY BAD NEWS on her prognosis. Use capitals so everyone will know what it means."
Now giver her an Anxiety Plan and a Pain Plan and ...."
It took them about 10 minutes just to RECORD that this lady had been told she was dying
I stress that the treatment my daughter received was brilliant.The staff were very helpful caring and friendly.
And undeneath it all you saw them continually fighting with this huge paper mountain of detailed written plans, processes that had to be followed with boxes ticked, assessments completed hour by hour and day by day. And all stored in a large trolley that was wheeled about the ward from patient to patient.
This was a system designed by Management Consultants whose skills were probably honed in pork pie factories rather than dealing with humans.
@trevorsden: based on £5000 per second and a 90-minute speech, the national debt increased by £27m
How much of Brown's speech trampled over EU law or objectives.
Some of the best bits of the occasion were when the cameras showed His Excellency Milord Mandy apparently trying not to look worried and working out how he was going to spin a way out of Brown's 'promises'.
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