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September 24, 2008
Wednesday
 
 
Gordon Brown is not a good man
Brian Micklethwait (London)  UK affairs

I realise that I keep going on about it, and I realise that I dissent from the view often expressed here that the next British government (Cameron's) will probably be no better than this government now, but if I were allowed just one more thing to say about Gordon Brown and his government, it would be that I wish people would stop saying or writing this:

Mr Brown is a good, decent man but ...

Mr Brown is not a good, decent man. He is an utter shit, and his utter shitness is inseparable from the difficulties he now faces in continuing to be Prime Minister despite his obvious unsuitability, and to the miseries he is still inflicting upon the rest of us.

I will not expand at length about Brown's shititude. Suffice it to say that Gordon Brown is the living embodiment of the phrase "he won't be told". When he is told, he shouts like a spoilt but thwarted seven year old, until whoever it is just gives up or goes home and pretends to be ill. And all his henchmen are like this too. All who care have heard the stories. All who can bear to think about them now know of the blunders, and of the refusal to do anything about them except increase the doses of poison. Brown himself is beyond hope, and he will be subjected in due course to the modern, humane version of hanging, drawing and quartering (which is a whole hell of a lot more humane than he deserves), either by his underlings or by the voters. I will merely content myself now with explaining why otherwise sane-seeming journalists like Alice Miles (the one linked to above) keep repeating this obvious tosh about Brown's goodness and decency, despite all of them knowing perfectly well that it is tosh. It is just possible that if the explanation – the one you are about to read - of this strange phenomenon were to get around commentators might be persuaded to stop talking this particular brand of tosh.

The explanation, briefly, is that when you are denouncing someone as a complete waste of space and begging the earth to open up and swallow him, you find yourself wanting to say something nice about him, anything nice, to prove that you are being fair, that you are willing to give him credit for his virtues, such as they are. And this is where this absurdly false cliché about Brown's goodness and decency has come from. Brown is a good and decent man (and I am a kind and fair-minded and good-hearted person for saying so), but blah blah blah. But he is a crap Prime Minister, his decisions have all been disastrous, he has wrecked the economy, he is an unreconstructed state centralist despot despite decades of evidence proving the evilness of such despotic centralism, his speeches are intolerable, he must go, he will not go, they must dump him, they will not dump him, the country cannot take much more of this, blah blah blah. But the truth is simpler. Prime Minister Brown has no virtues. None. He is a bad and nasty man. And blah blah blah. It may not serve the argumentative purposes of commentators to find no nice things to say about Mr Brown at all, but it would serve the truth far better.

Comments

Apologies, but in the first draft of this, the first sentence included something that was the opposite of what I meant. It's now corrected.


Posted by Brian Micklethwait at September 24, 2008 05:10 PM

But, but,...but he loves his family and his pets, does he not?


Posted by Alisa at September 24, 2008 05:43 PM

Probably he does. Doesn't stop him butt-fucking everybody else's family, though, does it?


Posted by Brian at September 24, 2008 05:47 PM

Brian, I wish you'd get off the fence and tell us how you really feel.

PS I agree, although I'd use much stronger language.


Posted by Obnoxio The Clown at September 24, 2008 06:03 PM

Whilst I'd have to agree that Alice Miles is seemingly sane, her (and journalists like her) have been parroting the New Labour line for so long they are far worse morally than any prostitute. At least with the latter all is open and up front, Miles and her ilk pretend to be respectable and that they actually hold these views.


Posted by hovis at September 24, 2008 06:28 PM

Dear Brian. I have been contacted by lawyers representing several steaming piles-of-shit.

They wish to discuss a possible defamation lawsuit against you for having likened their esteemed clients to one Gordon Brown.


Posted by TanukiA at September 24, 2008 06:42 PM

The overwhelming moral failing of Brown is his hubris. But we all know nemesis follows, and so it will be with Brown.

As an aside, it is desirable that he lead the Labour Party into the next election. For one thing, drawing out his agony is pleasant to contemplate. But also with his defeat comes the death of New Labour, and it is important that the Parliamentary Labour Party is so thoroughly extirpated as an electoral force that there is no vacuum for the old dinosaur paleosocialists to fill. A successor might merely lose in a landslide. Brown can deliver a catastrophe.


Posted by David Gillies at September 24, 2008 06:57 PM

Got to agree with your sentiments, but you are too mild, and miss a big bloody target for chicken wire and lampposts.

I switched from the BEEB news to shy a while ago as I have given up on getting anything but brown is superman from them, but all w have had for whats seems an age (may only be a week or 2) is brownite propaganda, meet mr brown and get his viewsm, lets challenge brown with nice easy questions

Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh


Posted by steves at September 24, 2008 07:26 PM

"But, but,...but he loves his family and his pets, does he not?"

So did Hitler and he was loopy too.

Brown has already delivered a catastrophe.At the very moment in history we need decisive policies on the economy and energy security the nutter has given all our decision making powers to Brussels.All the booby can do is witter about getting on with the job,nursery places for the pre-natal and a free laptop to flog down the boozer.
Meanwhile,the decision on how billions of our money is spent is being made elsewhere.
Give Brown another two years and we are finished.


Posted by Ron Brick at September 24, 2008 07:57 PM

Yup.

Shit is brown and Brown is shit.

And the Tory gummint will not be quite as shit. They can't possibly be. Surely?


Posted by Mark Wadsworth at September 24, 2008 09:16 PM

Oh, they will be. Same policies, same paternalism, same nebula of fuckwit advisers, slightly different labels for things. Nanny becomes Nudge, Quangoisation becomes Post-Bureaucracy, Tax Increases become Sharing The Proceeds Of Growth. Same shit, with an immense forehead.

Let's look at Gordon. Yes, he's a shit. They all are. But what did he do? What changed him from being Man Of The Moment who saved the country from flooding by calling a committee meeting to Yesterday's News? He dithered over whether to call an election, but they all try to judge when to call them for maximal gain.

All that changed was that the media, over lunch one day, decided to back The Other Horse, or at least turn on this one. That's all. The court gossips withdrew their support and began to chatter about blood on the purple.

We need to remember that, as we watch Broon destroyed, it wasn't democracy that destroyed him. We, the people, have no more role in politics now than to stand outside, thronging against the palace railings, throwing the occasional stale bun.


Posted by Ian B at September 24, 2008 09:43 PM

Ron: bingo. I was actually thinking about a documentary on Eva Braun I watched a week or so ago.


Posted by Alisa at September 24, 2008 09:53 PM

Brown is an overgrown 70s fascist student activist. It still shows.
The same cliches still come out.
He will not, and cannot, ever be anything else. Many of the other biggish ones are his friends and associates.
I met or knew more of these buggers (mercifully only very very minor ones) than I care to admit.

Now, they are all old enough to pretend to not be what they were all along, which is to say, "middle class". They have also got into the woodwork in a big and destructive way.

It is hard to see how they can be got out without major demolition.

And yes Brian, I agree with Obnoxio that you are sort of mincing your words a bit....


Posted by David Davis at September 24, 2008 10:03 PM

@ Ian B, when I say they won't be as bad, I mean this in the quite literal sense, much as if I had said that "a bullet wound to the thigh is not as bad as a bullet wound to the chest."


Posted by Mark Wadsworth at September 24, 2008 10:51 PM

Actually, if I remember correctly, there is a major artery going along the thigh. What that says about Brown vs Cameron I don't know:-)


Posted by Alisa at September 24, 2008 10:59 PM

I'd go further than saying Brown is not a good man, I'd suggest he is evil.


Posted by joe at September 25, 2008 07:51 AM

Alisa,
There is. And if iDave is a bullet through the femoral artery and Brown is a bullet through the descending aorta, occasionally you can apply a tourniquet or QuikClot to the leg.

Not to abuse an analogy beyond all recognition or anything like that...


Posted by Sunfish at September 25, 2008 07:54 AM

"But also with his defeat comes the death of New Labour, and it is important that the Parliamentary Labour Party is so thoroughly extirpated as an electoral force that there is no vacuum for the old dinosaur paleosocialists to fill."

So do you think that a hypothetical destruction of the Labour Party would leave no 'vacuum', or merely no vacuum which could be filled by the socialists? Which is it? I'm guessing the latter is what you meant, but I just want to check...

"We need to remember that, as we watch Broon destroyed, it wasn't democracy that destroyed him. We, the people, have no more role in politics now than to stand outside, thronging against the palace railings, throwing the occasional stale bun."

That's almost exactly correct.

Aside from flinging stale buns about, each one of us, in addition, gives our own ethical sanction to our current political arrangements, for example by slowing down for the speed cameras, by paying taxes and by registering to vote. To choose otherwise would be to sacrifice everything else we value such as families and jobs.


Posted by mike at September 25, 2008 08:15 AM

It is possible to be a waste of space in a position and yet be a nice and decent man.

For example, I believe President Bush to be utterly unfitted for his high position - indeed I have called him a "moron".

However, I also believe George Walker Bush to be a nice and decent man.

For example, if he lived near me (and there are some grand houses not far away) I am sure he would be friendly if we met at some local club or society (and many such clubs and societies have poor as well as rich members - I am member of some).

Indeed I can even see him saying "your garden is a bit overgrown, I will help you sort it out if that is what you would like".

Whereas Mr Brown would never offer to help me (or anyone else) with his own hands.

He would just look down his nose - or bark orders.


Posted by Paul Marks at September 25, 2008 01:53 PM

Paul: It seems to me that what you are describing is pleasantness rather than actual decency. The traits you describe, (affability, and neighborliness) while clearly desirable don't preclude evil in the slightest.


Posted by Jerome Thomas at September 26, 2008 05:08 AM

At last people are realizing. Brown wrecked the economy to keep Zanulabour in power - twice. The best he should be able to look forward to is oblivion. I hope we put his statue in Trafalgar Square so that we can pull it down just to show him where he exactly resides in the ranks of world scum.


Posted by Steve at March 10, 2009 01:16 PM

Just remember Mark Antony's speech over the corpse of Caesar: "and Brutus is an honourable man". The aim of such ironic statements, followed by a list of crimes or deficiencies, is simply to allow the audience time to realise that the target is precisely *not what the speaker suggests. Much the same applies to the Alice Miles stuff.


Posted by Onan the Rotarian at May 7, 2009 12:58 PM

British culture and multicultual society should work together


Posted by samuel welsh at September 14, 2009 02:06 AM

Gordan brown is a more fucking bastard who needs to be put against a wall and shot


Posted by Ihategordan at December 15, 2009 03:02 PM

Hes an overtaxing, stupid, two faced, treacherous, lying, useless bag of SHITE!!


Posted by Gordon Brownarse at January 10, 2010 03:24 PM

Hes totally fucked this country, he really should be tried for treason the useless bag of shite!!!
my friend asked if I had a picture of a pair of tits, so I handed him one of Bliar and Brown.


Posted by GordonCuntBrown at April 29, 2010 03:31 PM
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