shuggy's blog
Now everyone loathes Brown. But I only despise him; loathing I reserve for Blair. Better the window dresser than the widow maker.
"an obvious contradiction to contain within the one political personality"
I believe those fella's in white coats who tend to go in for beards and playing with yo-yos whilst they ask you daft questions about your mother would suggest something like 'severe psychosis'. Me? I'd just say he's mad as a hatter!
As for the political context, 'DM' above has it dead right.
"One could add that Brown demanding loyalty rather grates, given the egregious disloyalty he showed towards Blair."
Indeed, I don't wonder if old Tony isn't sitting somewhere pissing himself at Gordo's predicament. Although old B. Liar was such an economically illiterate PM that he was incapable of reigning in the Gordmeister when he really ought to have done so.
I think you have correctly identified why Brown thought he had the right to be PM, but what puzzles me is that with Brown being such an obviously psychologically flawed loon, why were the Labour Party so meekly acquiescent in his crowning? Thur aff thur heids! Pure bams.
When Brown was pestering Blair about when he was handing over power to him, Blair should have looked him square in the eye (well he did only have the one) and asked him "and how many elections have you won, cunt?". That would have shut Gordo up alright!
It hardly matters who follows him. It will be the one following that one, or in a particularly bad case (cf the recent history of the Tories) who follows the one that follows the one that follows.
He really hasn't been very good at this, has he? Every speech, every interview, every change of mind, every rictus of a grin, every sag in that bomb-blasted wreck of a face tells you it's over, and has been over from almost as soon as it started. They'll have to tear that face down and rebuild it, like Warsaw.
Shame, because I credit him (for no completely rational reason) with some vestige of integrity and intelligence. Or I would if I saw much of it.
What concerns me is not so much what becomes of the Labour party, but what becomes of the ideas that it could be thinking of putting into practice, those Old Labour sort of thingamajigs that can't actually be carried through now for lack of - well, everything. But the notion that there was some value in those ideas, something above pragmatics and strategy that was actually worth having a Party for.
The future may well be Greenish.
He seems to have a complete inability to empathise with people, and read political situations. I think the voters listen to him and conclude that there is no way this man is one of us.
No-one even buys into his own much vaunted economic expertise anymore. It turn out his greatest achievements in the past 12 years havis week have been giving our money away, wasting it, crashing the economy, and driving a healthy bank onto skid row.
I can't help wondering whether he is borderline autistic.
This weekend has been awful, and a lot of it was entirely predictable.
He has known for ages that the D-Day commemoration was in the offing, and that it would be significant to most of the veterans who have little or no expectation of coming back. And he knew we would be going to the EU polling stations, bearing in mind the referendum he wouldn't let us have. You would have thought that at least he would have had the Queen front and centre, if only to hide behind.
This obsession with Obama, and being seen standing next to him, is embarassing. No wonder they jeered at him.
They got a bit of a gubbing, your mob, Shuggy. Well deserved I'd say, though many years too late. Warmongering bastards.
Forgive me, Shuggy but I've not been around and so the question is not meant to be insulting but aren't you left wing and therefore pro-Labour? Or are they mutually exclusive terms?
This history left the Labour party dominated by a generation of politicians who were both used to power and unaccustomed to competitive elections.
I'm sorry, but that's complete bollocks. Nobody who was a Labour MP in the 1980s can be described as having been "used to power" or unaccustomed to competitive elections. If anything, the big problem with Blair and Brown is that the losses of the 1980s made them ridiculous fearful, afraid to do anything today that might cost them the 1983 general election. And you might as well say any Tory MP hailing from south of Birmingham is similarly sheltered from democratic normality. Or any Labour MP from any city, or any Tory from any suburb. And given that Scotland's elected representtives did not rule it, in any meaningful sense whatsoever, until devolution, your agument makes no sense to me whatsoever.
If you want to find the psychological root of Brown's democratic aversion, I suspect it lies in his grammar-style hot-house schooling, which saw him isolated in some kind of "super-stream" and encouraged to become what we would now view as an over-achiever dangerously on course for early burnout. It's a technocratic imprimature, implanated on someone who was told, during their early teens, that they were intellectually superior and would be finely honed into a perfect managing machine by an education system carefully constructed to realise the best from their god-given talents and dedicated hard work.
He was a clever laddie so that he'd have known by his early teens that he was intellectually superior whatever he was told. Stop being silly, Gregg.
Nobody who was a Labour MP in the 1980s can be described as having been "used to power" or unaccustomed to competitive elections.
And I'm afraid that's complete bollocks. I was, I think, reasonably clear that I was talking about Scotland...
If you want to find the psychological root of Brown's democratic aversion, I suspect it lies in his grammar-style hot-house schooling, which saw him isolated in some kind of "super-stream" and encouraged to become what we would now view as an over-achiever dangerously on course for early burnout.
Brown's personal psychology isn't that interesting to me. He strikes me, as again I thought I'd made reasonaby clear, as the epitome of Scottish Labour.
The complete failure of commentators to pay even the slightest attention to what goes on north of the border is an interesting phenomenon. Why should we listen to the opinions of journos and bloggers on the Middle East and Latin America when they clearly aren't even that interested in what goes on in the UK?
the question is not meant to be insulting but aren't you left wing and therefore pro-Labour?
It's not insulting but I'm wondering why you're asking it? An assessment of the state we're in doesn't exclude the conclusion that the other lot are much worse - which they undoubtedly are.
Chap walks into a room with a huge bottle of whisky. "Ask not for whom the tall Bells."
"This history left the Labour party dominated by a generation of politicians who were both used to power and unaccustomed to competitive elections."
OHG! You are not suggesting that there is a place for competition in politics?
George S: "The future may well be Greenish."
Oh dear, jump from a sinking ship to another that is holed below the waterline. Greens won't do well during a depression.
Care for the 'environment' is only something wealthy folk can afford. Oddly enough making people wealthy, is not a Labour nor Greenoid ambition.
Gregg: "It's a technocratic imprimature, implanated on someone who was told, during their early teens, that they were intellectually superior .."
God what a stupid thing to say. But if true, it obviously explains why Stalin was such an autocratic murdering despot. Clearly he had been educated in a grammer school somewhere in the Home counties.
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