You know. That one. The one championed all over the right-wing internet and even alluded to at yesterday’s PMQs by a Tory backbencher who pointed out that more people want Brown to resign than voted for him. It’s a neat point, since Brown’s only mandate is the one his constituents gave him, and any comeback referring to the size of his constituency vis-a-vis the internet-going public will just invite restatement of that fact.
The terms of The Petition must make it one of the most brusque documents ever submitted to the Number 10 website:
“We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to resign.”
Now, at the risk of raising the shadowy velvet curtain on our backstage dealings here at the Voice, I can reveal that an email was circulated last week to the effect of, “Hey, Iain and Guido and others are mentioning this thing. Should we mention it too?” And I think we all thought, “Hm, maybe. Yeah. Not sure.” and then did nothing about it, because nothing has yet been done.
Speaking for mysef, I’m in two minds about it. On the one hand I am tickled to bits at the poetry and brutality of it – a petition on his own website. And there’s no denying that if it gets much beyond a hundred thousand signatures it will be News, so we would be only be optimistically following an early trend in exhorting our readers to sign it.
And, yes, it’s true, I just cannot stand Gordon Brown any more – a harsh judgement, you may think, but you don’t have to play back PMQs a dozen times for a write-up every Wednesday. How did we ever fall for the intellectual thing? This man simply cannot construct a sentence, his thoughts are like huge ice shelves ponderously crashing into each other over thousands of years. I had become a bit immunised to his curious dreadfulness at the despatch box, and was brought down to earth by a gentleman of my close acquaintance, who doesn’t usually watch PMQs, watching the Gurkhas session with me last week.
“Is he always like this?” he asked, aghast, as Gordon entered incoherent double-negative-sub-demi-clause forty-four in minute fifteen of his answer. Well, pretty much, yeah.
But. Do I want him to resign? No, I don’t think I do. I don’t want a resignation and a round of backstabbing at the top of the Labour party, and I’ll tell you why – it won’t destroy the NuLab project, as some hopeful commentators are suggesting. It’ll provide an excuse for a “new broom” narrative – a new head on the same old snake. The concentration of power in the executive that has been the key political crime of this government will be undiminished – even given a breathing space in the inevitable “honeymoon” period that will follow in certain credulous sections of the press.
It’s for related reasons that I don’t want Jacqui Smith to resign over her expenses. I want her to resign because she’s a diabolical home secretary who lies about ID card uptake, invokes the rhetoric of fear and suspicion in support of her policies, lives on another planet where no-one walks around London at night, and is generally not fit to hold an office that involves protection of the public.
Yeah, I know. Boring, aren’t I. I don’t want this lot to be beaten by a stunt like that petition, fun and popular though it may prove to be. This has been the government of spin. I don’t want anti-spin to upstage the real, deadly, serious reasons why they must go. I don’t want Gordon Brown to resign, I want him to get what’s coming to him. Apparently, he is “hating being Prime Minister“. Good. I want him, and the trilling, amoral lackwits around him, to carry on hating it, and carry on looking ever more stupid, corrupt, smug, venal, stubborn and visionless until the day we get to fire the lot of them into political outer space.
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33 Comments
I have been championing it on my blog and I hope it garners many more signatures.
If Brown stays in power, the Tories are almost certain to get a huge landslide at the next election which would mean they would be in for at least a decade. I would like to avoid this if possible hence why I am keen for him to go.
“I want him, and the trilling, amoral lackwits around him, to carry on hating it, and carry on looking ever more stupid, corrupt, smug, venal, stubborn and visionless until the day we get to fire the lot of them into political outer space.”
Blimey Alix, I hope you’ve had a sit down and a cut of tea since you wrote that…!
Seriously though you make a good point, in that now is not the time for another re-birth of NuLab, now is the time for their follies to be exposed in time for next year’s election.
To you list of reason why he shouldn’t go, I’d add this. At a time when Brown’s so called masterful stewardship of UK’s economy has lead to an unprecedented slump, at a time when our environment is being abused in the name of continued growth and our civil liberties are being trashed, it is arrogance of the most supreme kind to fill the news pages with internal politics of the Labour party – in fact cynics (moi…?) would argue that the latest Brown-baiting from Clarke, Blears et al is a neat distraction from the dire consuquences of their own party being asleep at the wheel these last twelve years…
Dear Alix. I normally visit this site to give my blood pressure a good workout. For once, I am 100% in agreement with the sentiments of an LDV posting. Whatever the disagreements between Con. and LibDem, and we’ll fight like wildcats in Jun, I hope to see more of the co-operation between Dave and Cleggy that we saw on last Wed’s PMQs, as long as Labour remain in office but not in power. Once we’ve kicked them out, of course the game’s on again.
I agree Alix and very well written as ever. Even if it reaches a Million what does it prove. Well over 10 million people won’t have voted Labour in the First place.
Your comments are welcome, and a link to them is now on http://10.kalvis.com — the petition HQ.
If you email a phone number to [email protected], I would love to talk to you.
As a mathematician, I like new ideas, even if I do not totally share them.
Best wishes,
Kalvis Jansons
There are two parallels you can take to the position that Gordon Brown is in currently. Those being Callaghan in 1979 and Major in 1997.
I’m not old enough to comment on 1979 but in 1997 I knew a lot of people that didn’t like the tories but a sizable minority that would think Major himself was a good person dealing with a vanishing majority and a divided party. Any change of the leader in the run up to 1997 would have had no effect because it was the party people didn’t like not their leader.
As far as gordon brown is concerned I can not make up my mind if the voters have turned against him or the party. If it is the party people don’t like anymore then it makes no difference who is in charge of them. If it is just him then a change of leadership could help the labour party regain some of the ground they have lost. As the tories showed in the 97-05 period they could keep picking the same candidates that no-one likes.
As a LibDem I don’t want a tory or labour majority but as a democrat I am prepared to put up with what the system throws at us (until it can be changed). I just hope it isn’t a thumping tory majority with a media love-in like labour had in 1997. That would be bad for the country.
So Gordon can go if he wants or stay but I get the feeling that if it really came to it he’d call the election early rather than give up being PM because of his party.
While it calls for Brown to resign, the petition is, presumably, fully aware that it won’t induce this* – therefore its purpose is less to provoke a resignation, and more to highlight that we think he’s an incompetent, destructive, egotistical moron.
Hence I signed it.
* while he might resign, it won’t be because of an internet petition that a tiny fraction of the population have signed
Wasn’t it set up by a Labour Party supporter?
Ha, that would figure. Still, I am now rather taken with Mark’s devious argument for signing.
Aren’t we overanalysing here? If you think Brown is a walking disaster, sign it. If you think another labour suit would make a marginally better PM for a year, sign it. For the country. Save the scheming for when scheming will really make a difference.
It makes no difference ultimately. What happens next PM if this one is taken any notice of? Say Cameron gets in, someone can just start a petition and I can guarantee he’ll get as many people signing from more left wing types. It’s pointless, but it’s also fun.
Ha, that would figure. Still, I am now rather taken with Mark’s devious argument for signing.
To be honest, I signed the petition because I thought it would be good for the country for Mr Brown to resign. It would probably not be very helpful to the Lib Dems, though it wouldn’t be very harmful either.
The point is he’s an awful Prime Minister as well as being the representative of an authoritarian party. His resignation would solve the first problem and cause a general election, which would solve the second problem by sweeping the Labour party out of power. The election is a foregone conclusion – the only debate now is how large the defeat will be and whether the Conservatives will get an overall majority on their own.
The aim of this petition is to give the impression that what has gone wrong with the economy in Britain right now is all the fault of Gordon Brown.
Which is nonsense.
It’s the long-term effect of the governments this country has had for years. Governments which have played along with the trickery that we can all make a living by selling imported goods to each other, with rising house prices being the source of wealth which enables us to buy them.
The mess has come along now, it would have come along had anyone else been PM. Maybe Blair really was clever enough to see what was happening and get out before he got the blame.
But most definitely and surely it would be EXACTLY THE SAME had the Conservatives won the 2005 general election and a Conservative PM was sitting in Number 10 now.
The Tories don’t want people to start thinking in this way, which is why they’re keen in this personal blame Brown line.
We should not fall for it.
Our line should be firm and consistent – the next election is between us and them,
between Liberal Democrats and between the Labour/Conservative establishment.
“But most definitely and surely it would be EXACTLY THE SAME had the Conservatives won the 2005 general election and a Conservative PM was sitting in Number 10 now.”
Utter. Unsubstantiated. Cock.
You can say that possibly the Tories would have done it exactly the same, but that doesn’t absolve people like Brown (given his very prevalent hand in the whole issue of the economy) of blame either. There were ways to limit the impact of this, there were people warning YEARS ago of the strategies and mentalities of the banks being headed for disaster. They were ignored by the banks and, most tellingly, by the treasury while Brown was the chief of that particular palace.
@Lee,
No – it’s spot on – look at the Shadow Finance ministers in the Conservative Front Bench – not one raised any of the issues behind the current situation – and the Conservatives have always supported laisez-faire “hands off” regulation of the City – they can’t even bring themselves to back a Glass-Stegal type seperation of retail and investment banking now that the horse has already bolted!
It seems strange that my earlier comment did not appear, when my comment was positive and the article is about my petition.
Sorry, Kalvin – you got caught in spam because of the link. Now released.
The point for me, in signing the petition, was that it gave me a more direct opportunity to express my frustration and dissatisfaction with Brown and all this government’s multitudinous nonsense!
I’m fed up and I don’ want to take it anymore… and I’ve said so on my blog!!
Like many other posters here, I also don’t think the petition will have any real impact, but if it attract a few headlines and blog posts such as this one, all to the good. It also does perhaps show him how many of us feel. Trouble is he just isn’t listening to anyone!
A Tory win at the next election (whenever that is), unfortunately, seems to me to be inevitable barring a highly unlikely result for my much hoped for LibDem victory… which, I’m afraid, is as unlikely as Chelsea being awarded a penalty last night! 🙂
Saludos!
Lee, in reply to my “But most definitely and surely it would be EXACTLY THE SAME had the Conservatives won the 2005 general election and a Conservative PM was sitting in Number 10 now”:
Utter. Unsubstantiated. Cock.
You can say that possibly the Tories would have done it exactly the same, but that doesn’t absolve people like Brown (given his very prevalent hand in the whole issue of the economy) of blame either. There were ways to limit the impact of this, there were people warning YEARS ago of the strategies and mentalities of the banks being headed for disaster.
The people warning of disaster and suggesting strategies to avoid it were not in the Conservative Party. Brown was simply continuing with the economic strategy that his three predecessors as PM had set. If anything, the Conservative Party was urging more of it. Those who warned of disaster were generally dismissed as dangerous people who were against entrepeneurialism, wealth-creation and home ownership, and who wanted to turn the clock back to the bad old days of the 1970s.
I am not absolving Brown of blame, I am simply saying he isn’t the sole cause of it. For the Conservatives to say he is the cause of it and to promote a “resign” strategy is hypocrisy because there is nothing they can point to where they can say they warned of the problems and were ignored or where they would have done anything differently.
I blame also the stupid, stupid left in British politics, who were far too bothered with fringe issues like the Iraq war to come up with an alternative narrative and convincing criticism which would attract any support from ordinary people and would now be paying off handsomely. The only ones speaking out were a few fringe voices, Vince Cable maybe, but he was too quiet and it wasn’t made the key element of the Liberal Democrat identity. Who was willing to say in the long boom, for example, “rising house prices unsupported by real wealth production are a bad thing”? No-one – to have said that would have been to have slapped in the face all those British people who had been trained since the days of Margaret Thatcher to suppose that owning a house was one of a number of ways one could earn money while doing nothing productive. Raising concern about it meant one would get dismissed as a “communist”, as someone who delighted in the idea of people living in state controlled council housing because that meant ordering people around. I have been there, I have done that, I have had the Tory abuse poured on my head for doing it. So don’t tell me the Tories aren’t as deeply to blame for the mess we are in now as Brown.
The Iraq War was a “fringe issue”? Hundreds of thousands of people dead and continuing unrest after a crazy neo-Con adventure into the least secure region of the world. Fringe issue?
Er, what Julian said.
How anyone can think that the worst foreign policy disaster of the last 40 years is a fringe issue is beyond me.
Let’s ignore Matthew’s final paragraph about Iraq being a fringe issue, which is silly. Let’s concentrate on what he said before all that, which is true and important.
The Tories are conning the voters! It is unbridled Thatcherism and free-market mania which caused the credit crunch. It was the Tories who dismantled regulation, promoted greed-is-good, let debt rip, and enriched their millionaire supporters. All Blair and Brown did wrong was to recruit a different bunch of millionaire supporters to look after, and carry on with the neocon policies.
(I’m sorry all this sounds like Dave Spart. Once upon a time under Heath and Wilson, Private Eye created Dave Spart as a blatant Marxist loony, whose wild exaggerations about the evils of capitalism were a joke. Now, they have largely become true.)
So if the Tories are deeply to blame for all our problems, and have no solution for any of them, how come they are riding high? Simple answer, it’s because they have successfully implanted two mythical ideas into the minds of the voters.
Myth 1: Because Gordon is a jerk, therefore it’s all his fault, and things will magically look up once Dave C gets a go.
Faulty logic. Yes, Gordon is indeed a jerk, but Dave C will not do better.
Myth 2: It’s the high taxing and spending, which is of course specifically Labour’s policy, that has caused all the problems.
Rubbish. Whether you agree with high tax and spend, or you don’t agree, is beside the point. The point is that it didn’t actually cause the crunch. The Tories want to pretend that it did, because it makes it look plausible that they might do better.
How can we dispel these myths?
Take on board Charles Kennedy’s famous dictum that there is no room for three conservative parties in British politics. Get rid of the lingering fundamentalist belief that an untrammelled free market economy is a viable way to run national affairs safely. Boast that we are not in thrall to millionaires and powerful vested interests. Listen to Obama’s message of hope and change, of a government that will act on the side of individuals, of a counterweight to the rich and corrupt, of a vital Green New Deal. Then act on it.
Brown’s management of the ciuntry and our economy is and has been utterly disastrous. Labour is leaving this country in much worse shape than they found it and Brown cannot go to soon.
Only a Lib Dem would sit on the fence on this issue. How pathetic.
Oh fuck off.
(Seriously, I tried to think of a more constructive response, but I mean, really, give me summat to work with).
Successive Conservative governments (this lot are utterly unworthy of the name Labour) have brainwashed the working class into passively accepting the very arrangements that allow the rich to s#!t on them from such a height.
The awkward question nobody is daring to answer is this: How are the poor ever going to get any richer, unless the rich get a little poorer?
Julian
The Iraq War was a “fringe issue”? Hundreds of thousands of people dead and continuing unrest after a crazy neo-Con adventure into the least secure region of the world. Fringe issue?
Yes.
It isn’t something that immediately affects the lives of most ordinary people in this country, and so to them it’s a fringe issue. If you really want to win votes, you have to understand that. Sure, it’s an important issue if you’re a high-minded political type, living an untroubled comfortable life, so you’ve got time to think about foreign affairs, it’s important. If you’re worried about your home and your job and how you’re going to pay the bills, politicians waffling on about Iraq are politicians who neither know nor care about you.
Why in this time of economic crisis, are the far left not riding high in popular opinion, able to say “See, we told you this capitalism lark would let you down?” Because the stupid idiots would march on Gaza and Iraq but not on people being conned into taking on huge debts just to live in suitable homes, then let down as the Ponzi-trick profiteers sell up and leave for the tax havens.
Dave Spart? I cut my political teeth fighting with Dave Spart types, and it as they who convinced me I was a liberal not a socialist.
The Dave Sparts had simplistic little theories which sounded clever when you spouted them out complete with all the jargon words. These were the answers to everything, and when you pointed out their theories hadn’t worked in practice the answer was always that all that was needed was their application in a more extreme manner. What was most irritating about the Dave Sparts was their superior manner, they made out they were so enlightened and those of us who were more pragmatic about these things were fools who just couldn’t understand the higher level of theory they were into. However, what often caught them out was a startling lack of connection with the real world – if the real world didn’t fit into their theories, they just changed the real world.
Dave Spart is old hat. The modern equivalent, equally caught up in simplistic theorising which has the answer to everything and which makes its adherents look so clever might perhaps be called “Jules Mart”.
Jules Mart is quite clear that more free market policies are the answer to everything. Any problems with the free market are just because it isn’t really free enough. There is no problem at all in the world which couldn’t be solved by selling everything at a price and making people bid for it. Anyone who argues against is just a fool who hasn’t reached the higher stage of enlightenment of Jules Mart. And there are 19th century philosophers who can be brought in and quoted to support it, so that’s final, isn’t it?
I have made a poster for the petition, which you can download here:
http://kalvis.com?PleaseGo.pdf
Help spread the word.
Matthew, are you quite ok?
Maybe I should buy you a pint of nice summer lager to cool things down a tad.
Yes, I am fine. I think I have made two perfectly sensible points:
1) Us political types tend to get very worked up about Iraq – we need to realise that as it doesn’t have a direct impact on the lives of most ordinary people they are turned off when we talk about it, it suggests to them we aren’t interested in what affects them directly.
2) When I debate with “libertarians” I find the experience spookily similar to prevous experiences debating with Trotskyists. The policies may be very different, the mentality is much the same.
Julian H,
Thank you for explaining that you are a role model for Matthew’s “Jules Mart” character. I think Jules Mart makes a worthy successor to Dave Spart, as an emblem of some of the worst political follies of the present day. Long live Jules Mart!
Ah Matthew, David, my old muckers, thank you so much for bringing me in on this most delightfully amusing whimsy – and, gosh, toasting my health, too! Long live me indeed!
Needless to say I look forward to future internet threads in which I post two short, polite comments relating to policy, and you two retort with angst-ridden ad hominem attacks. Good work! Terribly fun, what?!
Out of interest, do you behave like this in real life, or just when behind a computer screen?
As uual this wesite is all waffle! I want to sign the petition, nothing else KEEP IT SIMPLE