political commentator * author * publisher * bookseller * radio presenter * blogger * Conservative candidate * former lobbyist * Jack Russell owner * West Ham United fanatic * Email iain AT iaindale DOT com
Sunday, April 15, 2007
Gordon Gets Above Himself
So Gordon met Dubya in the White House on Friday. According to BBC News Online the meeting was not planned. Gordon told the BBC...
"...the President "happened to be available to come and see me".
Talk about full of his own self importance! Still, I'm sure the meeting will have gone down well with the Comrades.
Brown certainly has been out of the country a lot recently. What's the betting that he's already booked his summer holidays for the first two weeks in May somewhere far, far away.
The President was sitting around, maybe sorting through his photo album, and "happened to be available" to see Gordon Brown?
Liar.
Are you telling me this man went to the United States, Washington,DC, to be exact, on the off-chance that the President of the United States would, by coincidence, be sitting around gazing out the window and would agree to see him?
He was on his way to the IMF, wasn't he? But surely he wasn't in the White House by accident. I guess he didn't want the meeting to be announced in advance so it couldn't upset the lefties too much.
Why is the BBC saying Bush and Brown had never met before? Bush has been to the UK several times whilst President, been here on State visits, been here for the G8 at Gleneages - it beggars belief that on all these visits he was never introduced to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He was also entertained by HM The Queen at a State Banquet - doesn't the Chancellor get asked to things like that - surely he must be.
This sounds like more spinning to me, trying to raise his profile by pretending the President of the United States had put himself out to meet Gordon Brown - is that remotely likely?
Iain, I think you have got hold of the wrong end of the stick here. I am sure Gordon would have arranged to see Bush to see 'the lie of the land' - but he wanted to keep it a secret.
First, so that he wouldn't look like a brown-noser [pardon the pun] and second, so that he wouldn't look as though he was taking the leadership role for granted. Pride comes before a fall, and all that. Of course, now that he has been rumbled..
Not big enough news to be on the White House Site - perhaps Dubya though Brown was one of the parochial Education Leaders or there about his Tax return? http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/
Eeek! I've just clocked this from Iain's original post:
The President ""happened to be available to come and see me".
WHAT???????
President Bush cried to an aide, "Order up the car for me, Kilroy! We're going to go and see Gordon Brown!!! Tell the CIA and my protection units and all the White House aides not to worry! Don't know when I'll be back! Wheeeeeeeeee!"
Is this the definitive proof that Gordon Brown is as daft as he looks?
Hasn't that nice Mr Cameron seen Bush? What are you lot on about? Unplanned meeting is much better copy and more defensible than planned one. This comrade has no problem with it. If he'd run from the room to avoid Dubya like some rude, shy, revolutionary fraction THAT would be a problem. Now he can contact Bush and tell him what's what and Bush will know GB's no longer a lightweight.
Just goes to show that nothing Labour do this year is turning out right for them. I'm beginning to doubt Brown will make it to number 10 at all. Remembering how Major seemed to appear out of nowhere at the last moment to succeed Thatcher...who could do a "Major" on Brown?
Sanddef - Please! We don't want a sane or appealing person in No 10. We want someone gruesome, like Gordon, so, come the election he'll be out like the ratbag he is.
A US president, or a British Prime Minister for that matter, has a very busy, minutely detailed diary. They do not have a spare hour at random. The fiction of a 'drop in' is used to save embarrassment to some party, in this case probably Gordon Brown himself given GWB's popularity on the Labour back benches.
Steve Horgan - I almost agree with you, but the fiction that Brown would not come to see the President, and that the President would go to see him is absurd.
I think we're all aware of how many hours it takes the President's security to sweep wherever he is going to be that day. He doesn't go places at random. This whole lie is so provincial and small. Ugh! All Labour lies are equally inept and made up from the eye view of a mouse. They have such tiny imaginations.
The meeting was actually in the White House so there would have been no need for a special security sweep.
Here is a report from the Washington Post.
"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President George Bush met Britain's leader-in-waiting Gordon Brown for the first time on Friday just months before the finance minister is expected to succeed Prime Minister Tony Blair.
With Blair expected to step down in late June and Brown the overwhelming favorite to succeed him, the relationship between Bush and the chancellor of the exchequer will be crucial for Britain, a close U.S. ally.
An aide to the finance minister described it as a "good meeting," which took place as Brown was calling on U.S. National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley while on a trip to Washington for the International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings.
The president happened to pop in just when Brown and Hadley were talking about trade and they chatted for about 30 minutes, the aide said."
It was Gordo's job interview. There's a question mark here and I guess there is one there too. The BIG issue for Bush and the neos is Iran. They have to act this year and it will be messy. I don't think they expect (or need) the UK to be on-side, but they won't want Gordo getting in the way either. For what it's worth, I think he will have flunked it.
Brown said, "the President "happened to be available to come and see me". He lied. I have spent this entire thread trying to prove that he is a pretentious,ignorant moron.
The President of the United States did not "come and see [him]". He went to see the President.
That was the point of every word I posted. I was trying to demonstrate how ignorant and pretentious (and lying) was his statement that the President came to see him when it was he, in fact, who was the supplicant.
mens sana, me thinks you might be on to something there. Gordimmo recognises that the poodle is setting him up for the fall guy. What better way to get his own back on the poodle by leaving him to face the music. Whilst MaCavity declines the Labor leadership to go onto be chairman of the World Bank.
I think that most people simply accept at face value the report that George Bush heard that the probable next Prime Minister of the UK was in the building for a meeting and decided that he would look in on the meeting. He probably wanted to check for himself that the Gordon Brown was as inadequate as had been reported.
Aardvark - Oh, yes, like he thought he would just "pop in" as he wasn't doing anything else anyway.
Brown was lying.
Bush did not "hear that the next prime minister of Britain was in the building" and let me share a secret with you, if he had heard it, he wouldn't have given a rat's arse. He hates socialists. He is much more in tune with John Howard.
Iain - Let an actual insider explain how this works.
Diplomatic protocol means ministers and opposition politicians are not allowed to book time with heads of State or Government. The way these meetings happen is through a 'drop-in' - they arrange a meeting with a deputy and the senior person 'comes by' by accident.
When Osbourne met Bernanke et al, he'd not have been allowed to book time with them, he'd have been forced to book time with their juniors and 'hoped' they'd bump into the right people.
Brown was sticking to the rules in his description of the meeting.
However the meeting happened, Brown's choice of words is undiplomatic and conceited, a classic case of narcissism - as if we didn't already know. He didn't say 'Bush popped into Hadley's office by coincidence, and we had a very useful chat' (plausible but unlikely) or 'Bush happened to be available to see me' ('happened' is unbelievable, but at least that claim is not immodest), but "The President happened to be available to come and see me" (grossly immodest). As in 'Hold the front page Condi, I have a few minutes spare, let me go and check out this lefty Limey who can't count.'
Bush is almost certainly laughing himself silly at Brown's foot-in-mouth, but it will have confirmed his view of Brown's character.
So what this 'BBC News Story' tells us (apart from the fact that our Chancellor of the Exchequer holds talks with the US National Security Advisor on foreign and terrorist policy without telling us the electors or Parliament what he talked about, but drops hints to Al Beeb) is that he's so worried the dinosaur OldLab left could turn on him, he's prepared to say anything, anything at all, to conceal his wish to hold a meeting with Bush.
Well that certainly augurs well for his future as PM, doesn't it.
Of course Skinner and all the other OldLab peaceniks would probably prefer him to ally himself with Iran against the US. He will, Oscar, he will.
And in a further echo of 1960s Harold Wilson eunuch pomposity, Brown announces that he and the IMF had agreed that "resolving imbalances in the global economy, in a way that is compatible with sustained growth, is a shared responsibility".
Gosh, I'm so relieved - instead of such a clear and ringing statement of intent, it could all have gone so terribly wrong and ended with outright disagreement, as these massively well-paid expenses-free boondoggles so often do.
Not.
"Resolving imbalances in the global economy is Brownian Theory code for: 'I told 'em I'm going to give vast amounts of the Brit taxpayers' money to corrupt governments in Nigeria and elsewhere in the Curiously-Never-Never-Developing World, and they said they hoped I'd have a nice day for it.'
Oh, and Chris Paul - you so obviously genuinely don't get it. I don't know why you even bother to open your mouth. Have a nice day.
Let's first get Chris Paul out of the way (please!) Paul notes: "Now he can contact Bush and tell him what's what and Bush will know GB's no longer a lightweight."
In what level of Dreamworld?
Says Anonymous: "However the meeting happened, Brown's choice of words is undiplomatic and conceited, a classic case of narcissism -"
"Too right. How could any person with a presence in an allied government make such a stupid statement?"
Brown's autistic and he's not playing with a full deck.
I would only take issue with you, clever Anonymous, when you write that Mr Bush is probably laughing himself silly.
One only laughs oneself silly when one has triumphed in a battle of wills. The President of the United States doesn't lose a battle of wills - even with a strong, intelligent, non-psychologically impaired person, never mind nervous, crappy Gordon Brown.
There is no battle of wills. That's for equals.
Here, in a wonderful post, were your two best paragraphs:
"And in a further echo of 1960s Harold Wilson eunuch pomposity, Brown announces that he and the IMF had agreed that "resolving imbalances in the global economy, in a way that is compatible with sustained growth, is a shared responsibility".
"Gosh", you add, "I'm so relieved - instead of such a clear and ringing statement of intent, it could all have gone so terribly wrong and ended with outright disagreement, as these massively well-paid expenses-free boondoggles so often do."
Oh,God, that was a wonderful post. I am still laughing.
Brown has been to the US many times before but always to meet Treasury officials 7 bankers so this is a change. I'm sure it was diplomacy on both sides to say they "happened" to meet but it is of some importance that Brown did not go to the White House as seeking approval as some sort of plenipotentiary ruler. I suspect we are not going to see any "Yo, Brown" nonsense.
"Forgive me, but wasn't he in the President's house? Surely he went to see the President, not the other way around."
Several hundred people work in the White House. Officially, Gordon Brown went there to call on the National Security Adviser and George Bush dropped in to the meeting.
"The White House includes: Six stories and 55,000 ft² (5,100 m²) of floor space, 132 rooms and 35 bathrooms ..... It receives about 5,000 visitors a day." (from Wikipedia).
Dubya probably does opportunist dropping by people when some visiting leader has been overthrown instead of given safe passage by CIA people: "I can't be overthrown this week, after all I have an appointment with Bush only next week ..." "Last wish? Can I have one of Mr Castro's finest please?Not one of Clinton's cast offs, NO THANK YOU."
"“In the UK, we do not use the phrase ‘War on Terror’ because we can’t win by military means alone, and because this isn’t us against one organised enemy with a clear identity and a coherent set of objectives,” Mr Benn will say, according to excerpts of his speech released in advance."
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1660976.ece In which he is quite correct but it still shows how much of what these people, on both sides of the Atlantic, is image rather than substance.
Brown certainly has been out of the country a lot recently. What's the betting that he's already booked his summer holidays for the first two weeks in May somewhere far, far away.
ReplyDeleteThe President was sitting around, maybe sorting through his photo album, and "happened to be available" to see Gordon Brown?
ReplyDeleteLiar.
Are you telling me this man went to the United States, Washington,DC, to be exact, on the off-chance that the President of the United States would, by coincidence, be sitting around gazing out the window and would agree to see him?
Liar, liar, pants on fire.
Gordon Broon for Prime Minister!...
ReplyDelete...of Scotland!.
No mandate in England!
Indeed verity , just what was the purpose of his visit if he didnt have an appointment with Dubya?
ReplyDeleteHe was on his way to the IMF, wasn't he? But surely he wasn't in the White House by accident. I guess he didn't want the meeting to be announced in advance so it couldn't upset the lefties too much.
ReplyDeleteScheduled meeting with the world bank.
ReplyDeleteWhy is the BBC saying Bush and Brown had never met before? Bush has been to the UK several times whilst President, been here on State visits, been here for the G8 at Gleneages - it beggars belief that on all these visits he was never introduced to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He was also entertained by HM The Queen at a State Banquet - doesn't the Chancellor get asked to things like that - surely he must be.
ReplyDeleteThis sounds like more spinning to me, trying to raise his profile by pretending the President of the United States had put himself out to meet Gordon Brown - is that remotely likely?
Iain, I think you have got hold of the wrong end of the stick here. I am sure Gordon would have arranged to see Bush to see 'the lie of the land' - but he wanted to keep it a secret.
ReplyDeleteFirst, so that he wouldn't look like a brown-noser [pardon the pun] and second, so that he wouldn't look as though he was taking the leadership role for granted. Pride comes before a fall, and all that. Of course, now that he has been rumbled..
Bush:'D'ya mind if I don't shake hands buddy?'
ReplyDeleteNot big enough news to be on the White House Site - perhaps Dubya though Brown was one of the parochial Education Leaders or there about his Tax return?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.whitehouse.gov/news/
Eeek! I've just clocked this from Iain's original post:
ReplyDeleteThe President ""happened to be available to come and see me".
WHAT???????
President Bush cried to an aide, "Order up the car for me, Kilroy! We're going to go and see Gordon Brown!!! Tell the CIA and my protection units and all the White House aides not to worry! Don't know when I'll be back! Wheeeeeeeeee!"
Is this the definitive proof that Gordon Brown is as daft as he looks?
...the pair of them are crooks and should be locked up.
ReplyDeleteHasn't that nice Mr Cameron seen Bush? What are you lot on about? Unplanned meeting is much better copy and more defensible than planned one. This comrade has no problem with it. If he'd run from the room to avoid Dubya like some rude, shy, revolutionary fraction THAT would be a problem. Now he can contact Bush and tell him what's what and Bush will know GB's no longer a lightweight.
ReplyDeleteRemember the last election when Karl Rove got one of his people to telephone Howard and say he would 'never meet the presdident'?
ReplyDeleteThe Tory leader cried for a week.
Just goes to show that nothing Labour do this year is turning out right for them. I'm beginning to doubt Brown will make it to number 10 at all. Remembering how Major seemed to appear out of nowhere at the last moment to succeed Thatcher...who could do a "Major" on Brown?
ReplyDeleteSanddef - Please! We don't want a sane or appealing person in No 10. We want someone gruesome, like Gordon, so, come the election he'll be out like the ratbag he is.
ReplyDeleteWe don't want anyone electable!
Any bets that they discussed the position of Paul Wolfowitz? Maybe that was why GWB was so keen to make himself available
ReplyDeleteA US president, or a British Prime Minister for that matter, has a very busy, minutely detailed diary. They do not have a spare hour at random. The fiction of a 'drop in' is used to save embarrassment to some party, in this case probably Gordon Brown himself given GWB's popularity on the Labour back benches.
ReplyDeleteIt's all true, Iain.
ReplyDeleteApparently, Dubya nipped in to see if what Blair had told him was true.
Steve Horgan - I almost agree with you, but the fiction that Brown would not come to see the President, and that the President would go to see him is absurd.
ReplyDeleteI think we're all aware of how many hours it takes the President's security to sweep wherever he is going to be that day. He doesn't go places at random. This whole lie is so provincial and small. Ugh! All Labour lies are equally inept and made up from the eye view of a mouse. They have such tiny imaginations.
VERITY 8.06 p.m. et al
ReplyDeleteThe meeting was actually in the White House so there would have been no need for a special security sweep.
Here is a report from the Washington Post.
"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President George Bush met Britain's leader-in-waiting Gordon Brown for the first time on Friday just months before the finance minister is expected to succeed Prime Minister Tony Blair.
With Blair expected to step down in late June and Brown the overwhelming favorite to succeed him, the relationship between Bush and the chancellor of the exchequer will be crucial for Britain, a close U.S. ally.
An aide to the finance minister described it as a "good meeting," which took place as Brown was calling on U.S. National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley while on a trip to Washington for the International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings.
The president happened to pop in just when Brown and Hadley were talking about trade and they chatted for about 30 minutes, the aide said."
It was Gordo's job interview. There's a question mark here and I guess there is one there too. The BIG issue for Bush and the neos is Iran. They have to act this year and it will be messy. I don't think they expect (or need) the UK to be on-side, but they won't want Gordo getting in the way either. For what it's worth, I think he will have flunked it.
ReplyDeleteAardvark - Okaaaaaay.... See, that was my point.
ReplyDeleteBrown said, "the President "happened to be available to come and see me". He lied. I have spent this entire thread trying to prove that he is a pretentious,ignorant moron.
The President of the United States did not "come and see [him]". He went to see the President.
That was the point of every word I posted. I was trying to demonstrate how ignorant and pretentious (and lying) was his statement that the President came to see him when it was he, in fact, who was the supplicant.
Why did no one else pick up on this point?
mens sana, me thinks you might be on to something there.
ReplyDeleteGordimmo recognises that the poodle is setting him up for the fall guy.
What better way to get his own back on the poodle by leaving him to face the music. Whilst MaCavity declines the Labor leadership to go onto be chairman of the World Bank.
Verity 9.37 PM.
ReplyDeleteI think that most people simply accept at face value the report that George Bush heard that the probable next Prime Minister of the UK was in the building for a meeting and decided that he would look in on the meeting. He probably wanted to check for himself that the Gordon Brown was as inadequate as had been reported.
Aardvark - Oh, yes, like he thought he would just "pop in" as he wasn't doing anything else anyway.
ReplyDeleteBrown was lying.
Bush did not "hear that the next prime minister of Britain was in the building" and let me share a secret with you, if he had heard it, he wouldn't have given a rat's arse. He hates socialists. He is much more in tune with John Howard.
Bush - "Gordy, lay the scupper charges before you exit."
ReplyDeleteGordo - "Yes Sir, and I'll take 300 MPs down with me."
Iain - Let an actual insider explain how this works.
ReplyDeleteDiplomatic protocol means ministers and opposition politicians are not allowed to book time with heads of State or Government. The way these meetings happen is through a 'drop-in' - they arrange a meeting with a deputy and the senior person 'comes by' by accident.
When Osbourne met Bernanke et al, he'd not have been allowed to book time with them, he'd have been forced to book time with their juniors and 'hoped' they'd bump into the right people.
Brown was sticking to the rules in his description of the meeting.
Brown tried to give the impression that George Bush was so interested in him (gag-o-rama) that he "came to see him".
ReplyDeleteBrown is a self-aggrandising nonentity. He will sink without trace. Or maybe slink without trace, a la McCavity.
However the meeting happened, Brown's choice of words is undiplomatic and conceited, a classic case of narcissism - as if we didn't already know. He didn't say 'Bush popped into Hadley's office by coincidence, and we had a very useful chat' (plausible but unlikely) or 'Bush happened to be available to see me' ('happened' is unbelievable, but at least that claim is not immodest), but "The President happened to be available to come and see me" (grossly immodest). As in 'Hold the front page Condi, I have a few minutes spare, let me go and check out this lefty Limey who can't count.'
ReplyDeleteBush is almost certainly laughing himself silly at Brown's foot-in-mouth, but it will have confirmed his view of Brown's character.
So what this 'BBC News Story' tells us (apart from the fact that our Chancellor of the Exchequer holds talks with the US National Security Advisor on foreign and terrorist policy without telling us the electors or Parliament what he talked about, but drops hints to Al Beeb) is that he's so worried the dinosaur OldLab left could turn on him, he's prepared to say anything, anything at all, to conceal his wish to hold a meeting with Bush.
Well that certainly augurs well for his future as PM, doesn't it.
Of course Skinner and all the other OldLab peaceniks would probably prefer him to ally himself with Iran against the US. He will, Oscar, he will.
And in a further echo of 1960s Harold Wilson eunuch pomposity, Brown announces that he and the IMF had agreed that "resolving imbalances in the global economy, in a way that is compatible with sustained growth, is a shared responsibility".
Gosh, I'm so relieved - instead of such a clear and ringing statement of intent, it could all have gone so terribly wrong and ended with outright disagreement, as these massively well-paid expenses-free boondoggles so often do.
Not.
"Resolving imbalances in the global economy is Brownian Theory code for:
'I told 'em I'm going to give vast amounts of the Brit taxpayers' money to corrupt governments in Nigeria and elsewhere in the Curiously-Never-Never-Developing World, and they said they hoped I'd have a nice day for it.'
Oh, and Chris Paul - you so obviously genuinely don't get it.
I don't know why you even bother to open your mouth. Have a nice day.
Anonymous 12:41, thank you! Somebody gets it.
ReplyDeleteLet's first get Chris Paul out of the way (please!) Paul notes:
"Now he can contact Bush and tell him what's what and Bush will know GB's no longer a lightweight."
In what level of Dreamworld?
Says Anonymous: "However the meeting happened, Brown's choice of words is undiplomatic and conceited, a classic case of narcissism -"
"Too right. How could any person with a presence in an allied government make such a stupid statement?"
Brown's autistic and he's not playing with a full deck.
I would only take issue with you, clever Anonymous, when you write that Mr Bush is probably laughing himself silly.
One only laughs oneself silly when one has triumphed in a battle of wills. The President of the United States doesn't lose a battle of wills - even with a strong, intelligent, non-psychologically impaired person, never mind nervous, crappy Gordon Brown.
There is no battle of wills. That's for equals.
Here, in a wonderful post, were your two best paragraphs:
"And in a further echo of 1960s Harold Wilson eunuch pomposity, Brown announces that he and the IMF had agreed that "resolving imbalances in the global economy, in a way that is compatible with sustained growth, is a shared responsibility".
"Gosh", you add, "I'm so relieved - instead of such a clear and ringing statement of intent, it could all have gone so terribly wrong and ended with outright disagreement, as these massively well-paid expenses-free boondoggles so often do."
Oh,God, that was a wonderful post. I am still laughing.
Brown has been to the US many times before but always to meet Treasury officials 7 bankers so this is a change. I'm sure it was diplomacy on both sides to say they "happened" to meet but it is of some importance that Brown did not go to the White House as seeking approval as some sort of plenipotentiary ruler. I suspect we are not going to see any "Yo, Brown" nonsense.
ReplyDeleteForgive me, but wasn't he in the President's house? Surely he went to see the President, not the other way around.
ReplyDeletemachiavelli 11.12 AM said...
ReplyDelete"Forgive me, but wasn't he in the President's house? Surely he went to see the President, not the other way around."
Several hundred people work in the White House. Officially, Gordon Brown went there to call on the National Security Adviser and George Bush dropped in to the meeting.
"The White House includes: Six stories and 55,000 ft² (5,100 m²) of floor space, 132 rooms and 35 bathrooms ..... It receives about 5,000 visitors a day." (from Wikipedia).
Dubya probably does opportunist dropping by people when some visiting leader has been overthrown instead of given safe passage by CIA people: "I can't be overthrown this week, after all I have an appointment with Bush only next week ..."
ReplyDelete"Last wish? Can I have one of Mr Castro's finest please?Not one of Clinton's cast offs, NO THANK YOU."
PS Verity. Oh you know GB and GB little ironic play on words/initials and all that.
ReplyDeleteI reckon Bush will have just been taking the opportunity to tell him what the crack is with the War on Terror.
ReplyDeleteI say, you do, or it's bye bye economy.
It isn't the war on terror anymore
ReplyDelete"“In the UK, we do not use the phrase ‘War on Terror’ because we can’t win by military means alone, and because this isn’t us against one organised enemy with a clear identity and a coherent set of objectives,” Mr Benn will say, according to excerpts of his speech released in advance."
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1660976.ece
In which he is quite correct but it still shows how much of what these people, on both sides of the Atlantic, is image rather than substance.