Having dismissed the Paddy Ashdown rumour out of hand on Tuesday and therefore not written about it, I'm not about to make that same mistake again, so here's the latest In his seemingly never ending quest to prove that he has a distinct lack of talent among his own benches, Gordon Brown is, I can reveal, seriously considering offering Sir Alan Sugar a job in his government. He would be made a Peer and either join Brown's Cabinet or made Skills Czar.
Obviously this proves that Brown wants nothing to do with a culture of celebrity, doesn't it? Yup, no spin at all.
UPDATE: I have just re-read this and it does read a little bit like a spoof. It really isn't. I am assured this really is on the cards!
Must admit, Iain, I thought you were pulling our collective leg at first. However, nothing about the antics of this "dour, grim cove" (DC's description of Broon) would now surprise me.
ReplyDeletePerhaps he'll get SUgar in to do his dirty work for him ... "You're fired!"
I'm not sure what the problem with this would be? Sir Alan is a public-spirited Labour supporting, fascist fighting, aspirational role model.
ReplyDeleteIf he gives Lord Seb a job that may be harder for the wannabes but I'll take that too, though naturally having met them both I'm a Steve man.
Alan Sugar ? Not a university dropout, because he didn't go to uni.. whose main 'skill' is being a bully and talking complete unadulterated bollocks-on-stilts ??
ReplyDeleteA 'skills czar' ?? Crikey, things in this country are much, much worse than I thought.
Mary Portas I could handle - but Sugar ? Does this mean that Piers Moron, Amanda Holdups and Simon Cowell are going to be waiting for the phone to ring ? Simon Hoggart says he is loving this - I can now see why...
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ReplyDeleteBrown Sugar! Jagger and Co could play at his inauguration. Or Chris Davies.
ReplyDeleteThe only skills that Sir Alan Sugar is familiar with are cheap foreign skills and he demonstrates a cavalier disregard for the sort of corporate governance one expects in a quoted company.
ReplyDeleteHmmm...
Now I see why he would make a perfect fit in a Labour government.
I understand Simon Cowell is waiting for a call from DC to be offered the Conservative Candacy for Mayor of London!
ReplyDeleteBtw Anonymous 10:04 - you lot are just too easy to rile. Just count to ten before you post won't you?
ReplyDeleteI wonder how long Chris Paul would last in one of sirralan's companies?
ReplyDeleteThe picture of Yasmin = me not watching 18DS in the near future.
ReplyDeleteAnd do they have to keep using the word Tsar. It is so ridiculous.
I've just heard that Baroness Kim and Baroness Aggy are to be charged with cleaning up public life and that scrawny bogus-PhD shaman is to take charge of national nutrition. Meanwhile the Green Giant is standing by to take over from his cousin Green X Man as traffic czar. John Cooper Clarke is moving on from Sugar Puffs to boss Chris Davies' addict jabbing activity. And in breaking news Charlie from Casualty will take over at Health.
ReplyDeleteIs this the beginning of the rabbits out of the hat that we're supposed to be treated to in the first days of the Brown premiership? For the sense of the ridiculous this is up there with Tommy Cooper.
ReplyDeletehttp://politics.guardian.co.uk/gordonbrown/story/0,,2108861,00.html
ReplyDeleteAre you sure he is not just bringing in Sir Alan to remove Tony Blair's cabinet?
ReplyDeleteI've heard a murmur on the grapevine that the Queen's Speech in November might not actually include any promises on legislation at all.
ReplyDeleteInstead, a range of possible laws will be announced and then be whittled down to a manageable half-dozen or so over the run up to Christmas, with Saturday evening shows and premium-rate phone votes.
The whole thing will be hosted by Graham Norton, as the new Leader of the House. Provisional title “Strictly Primary Legislation”.
The follow-up is probably called “I’m a Constitutional Bloody Monarch, Get Me Out of Here”.
This is an obvious ploy by McBroon to set up his future. When he loses the next election he will get a job with Sir Alan either dismantling Amstrad keyboards or, alternatively, selling those C5 wheelie-bin things in the Portobello Road. Any tycoon in public life will think of his bottom line first and the public interest second.
ReplyDeleteYou seem a bit rattled Iain. Don't mind your man Dave talking about "new politics" but don't much care for the reality eh?!
ReplyDeleteHe'd do better with someone like Richard Branson, who can actually smile a lot too. Sir Alan would be another dire face.
ReplyDeleteHow exactly would I be rattled? I'd love this to happen as it would prove what I have been saying about Brown all along. Also, Sugar would be a crap Minister. The only people who are rattled are Labour MPs, who are being told they are not good enough to be ministers.
ReplyDeleteCorrection: dour face.
ReplyDeleteOoops!
Alan 'expletive' Sugar?
ReplyDeleteOh, no!, after all the fuss about fat cats in the Private Equity asset-stripping business, I would have thought that Broon would avoid such a gaffe.
Chris Paul "Btw Anonymous 10:04 - you lot are just too easy to rile. Just count to ten before you post won't you?
ReplyDeleteOh! Is that what you do then? One would never know.
I see Brown's attempt to recruit Ashdown and Sugar in more human terms. He's missing the big image of Tony to hide behind, and he needs others with that quality now.
ReplyDeleteLabour have run the media on a Blair/Brown narrative for so long that other Labour poliicians hardly exist.
Brown in his own right is Punch without Judy. He's looking for the next Judy. to hide behind the apron strings.
Iain, sorry but what does it matter if he brings in an "outsider." I take it your point is knocking Brown about celebrity. Well if he brings in Sugar as Skills Czar and appoints Irene (a nurse from Huddersfield) to advise on front line NHS matters. Is he cashing in on celebrity or appointing people who might know better than MPs.
ReplyDeleteI would rather have someone from the "frontline" that someone who has spent all their years in the unreal world that is politics, before becoming an MP, for say ten years, and completely departing any form of reality and then expected to run a department.
Before you start commenting that I am an upset brown supporter, I'm not. Just fed-up with politicans who think that only they (as in other politicans) can run the country and we (the mere electors who put a cross in a ballot box every fiveish years) are idiots.
Imagine if governments appointed the best possible people to run departments....
Iain - an aside.
ReplyDeleteYou have little so far on the EU summit.
Where can I do my 'swivel-eyed', 'foaming at the mouth' stuff then?
You know the patter: Blair selling us out for the prospect of being EU President etc, etc.
BTW, did you notice the piece in today's Daily Telegraph (on-line version) about road charging technology being sneaked in by the EU. - Devious aren't they?
The bloke in our market who sells three lighters for a pound is keeping his mobile switched on just in case.
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ReplyDeleteThe term "Tsar" always suggests to me that, like the Romanovs, it might all end in a bullet-riddled mess.
ReplyDeleteTo quote Commandant Yurovsky "We must shoot them all tonight...."
Sugar would probably have the good sense to turn it down anyway.
ReplyDeletemake him defence secretary...
ReplyDelete*points at cruise missile*
"you're fired"
Iain:
ReplyDeleteWhat's happened to your avatar?
I would love to think thi sis a wnd-up. But I fear I may be wrong. Perhaps Gordnb is having a laugh. Oh, sorry....
ReplyDeletePresumably his contribution will be as shit as the Amstrad products that he produces.
ReplyDeleteInteresting knockabout.
ReplyDeleteI say "Sugar for Queen".
Matt
http://tinyurl.com/2m7umn
Hmmmmmm.
ReplyDeleteSo the rumours that we will see Gordon Ramsay as minister for DEFRA, Pete Doherty as Minister for Culture, Kate Moss as Minister for Health and Jade Goody as Minister for International Development are untrue?
Brown is giving up the Celebrity Politics. Yeah Right!
Anyway did you hear that Cherie Blair will be fighting the smoking ban. She really doesn't like Gordon.
Check the BBC for details....
Looking ahead to when the shit hits the fan, Macavity is simply trying to spread the blame as widely as possible.
ReplyDeleteIdeal new labour material
ReplyDeletehe got lucky some time in the past and ever since everything he touches turns to ****
He is worth less in both real and relative terms than he was 20 years ago.
Unlike Branson who is consistently "lucky"
Are we sure Sugar will get the Skills portfolio. Surely he would be equally qualified to be Minister for Sport?
ReplyDeleteMethinks Iain doth protest too much! Your man may talk the 'new politics' talk but our man can walk the 'new politics' walk.
ReplyDeleteLooks like forty love to Brown so far and he's not even in the job yet...
This is very unlikely - but the Cabinet meeting would be fantastic !
ReplyDeleteIts spin - Brown doesn't want talent at all - he want mini-me's to do his bidding.
Is that as well as or instead of Lord Lester and Baroness Neuberger whose names were being bandied about yesterday.
ReplyDeleteWhy would Sir Alan make a "crap minister"? t the very least he has a record of very competent management. Ids it not usually the Tories who say that we need more people with experience in the real business world running things?
ReplyDeleteI think we can see why his cabinet "colleagues" were so keen to find somebody to stand against him.
Either he is going to crash & burn while annoying every interest & most voters or he is going to seriously improve British government (or he might improve government & still piss off everybody). God knows we need it & I don't really see Dave being likely to change anything.
Hook, line and sinker
ReplyDeleteObviously in the absence of bread Broon is planning to give us circuses...
ReplyDeleteAnonymous said...
ReplyDeletemake him defence secretary...
*points at cruise missile*
-"f@@@ I hope I didn't help to make any of the guts of that thing"
Can anyone see Alan Sugar wanting to be subordinate to anyone else?!
ReplyDeleteSkills Czar for Alan Sugar? Hmmm, rather unlikely! The UK already has a 'Skills Envoy', who is doing the (un-paid) job with lots of energy and enthusiasm: Sir Digby Jones. And, yes, we DO need someone to help encourage employers to raise their game in terms of investment in skills, given where we stand in the league tables and where, more importantly where Sandy Leitch (see 'Leitch Review of Skills' pub. Dec 2006) says we'll be by 2020 if we don't pull our collective fingers out. And last week GB announced that the Chair of the new UK Commission for Employment & Skills (up and running as of April 2008) is to be Sir Mike Rake, outgoing Chair of KPMG and from September Chair of BT. No, the UKCES is not just another quango. Its role - already joining up two NDPBs - is to simplify the skills system and to get it performing much better. Sorry to be a bit serious
ReplyDeleteharry - great comment !!
ReplyDeleteSo... Sir Alan splits the Cabinet into two teams, They're each given the task of organising a party in a brewery. Surprise, surprise, both teams fail the task...
ReplyDeleteD'you think he's got any vacancies for Alivia Kratke?
ReplyDeleteYou are being harsh Iain if not silly to say that Sugar would make a "crap minister". If anything the evidence points the other way. First, Sugar has built up a billon pound business from scratch. He had no connections. No one to get him a cushy job in central office after university etc. No network of chums from a secretive culinary sect like Cameron. He did it the hard way. That commands a certain amount of respect. (Just as you deserve respect for starting up an internet TV channel.) Second, The Apprentice is pure theatre. Sugar is media savvy and plays to the gallery on it. I bet off camera he is less of a showman. He might not "speak posh" like your colleagues but so what? Most of us don't. Third, he surrounds himself with good people whose judgments he respects. It could in fact be quite interesting if true. The sad thing for the Tories is that Sugar is just the sort of chap that should be in your party. Maggie's favourite minister was of course David Young who was given a peerage when he joined the government from business. I seem to remember he did a pretty reasonable job.
ReplyDeletethe druid - i have just two words to say to you..
ReplyDelete'Tottenham' and 'Hotspur'...
Typical of Brown's total ignorance of the world outside Westminster. He thought ace shagger, exchange control manipulator and offshore trust con artist, G Robinson, was a leading City businesman. Now he rates Alan Sugar a failed owner of Tot Hotspur, major shareholder of third rate electronics co whose wealth arises from property rather than his business acumen. Bet his company benefits from Govt contracts. On the putting green a nasty five footer is known as an Alan Sugar.
ReplyDeleteThat made me laugh out loud Mike. The use of "party" rather than "piss up" was dead on.
ReplyDelete