UK News
Insights from the UK and beyond
from Matt Falloon:
Brown soldiers on
If a car slams into a bus stop just yards away as you launch a last-ditch election offensive, you might be forgiven for thinking that the gods are
not on your side.
But even after the nightmare week British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has had, such portents of doom have little visible effect on the self-proclaimed underdog in this, one of Britain's most closely fought parliamentary elections for 25 years.
Brown and his cabinet colleagues, unveiling campaign posters in a windswept car park on Friday when the sound of screeching brakes made everyone jump, ploughed on with their attack on the centre-right Conservatives, warning that a vote for the opposition would put British economy and families at risk.
"You have got to have this inner reservoir of resilience to fight back when anything happens to you," the Labour leader told students later in an athletics hall at Loughborough university.
"That's what I've got to do in the next few days anyway."
Opinion poll raises spectre of hung British parliament
The latest opinion poll in Britain showing the opposition Conservatives six points ahead of the ruling Labour party has raised the possibility of a hung parliament with no one party having an overall majority and a return to the kind of political uncertainty not seen since the 1970s.
Kenneth Clarke, the Conservatives’ business spokesman, said earlier this month that a hung parliament at this point in the economic cycle would be a disaster, an assertion his boss David Cameron was quick to try to play down after the latest survey.
Tories and Trotskyites
Chalk and organic cheese would be an understatement.
There is a surprising public perception that there wouldn’t be much difference between a Conservative or Labour government, but there couldn’t be fewer similarities between the supporters of both movements and the two party conferences.
It would be hard to imagine union activists sipping on cocktails from the Knightsbridge luxury store Harvey Nichols stand at the Labour party conference in Brighton, but in Manchester thirsty Conservatives can enjoy an HN gin ricky.
Is powerful Mandy talking up the euro?
When Prime Minister Gordon Brown reshuffled his cabinet last week, fending off a challenge to his authority, a significant outcome was the creation of one of the most powerful ministerial jobs Britain has seen in years.
Â
Peter Mandelson, a former European commissioner who has twice served in British governments in the past and twice been forced to resign, was reconfirmed as secretary of state for business, but also given greatly expanded authorities that make him a powerful if unofficial number two to Brown.
MPs Kirkbride and Moran fall on swords
The expenses scandal has claimed two more victims – one from each side of the House.
Labour MP for Luton South Margaret Moran has announced that she will stand down at the next election, while Conservative MP Julie Kirkbride will no longer represent her Bromsgrove constituency after the likely 2010 poll.
Playing the blame game
President Barack Obama had barely settled into in the White House before he was happy to admit he had “screwed up” over one of his choices for a cabinet job after Tom Daschle withdraw his nomination as health secretary over an income tax controversy.
Even Britain’s leading bankers were moved to apologise to parliament last month over the sector’s indiscretions in the boom years.
Labour: Your time is up. And not just in Crewe
If the message on the streets up here in northern England is anything to go by, Labour will be sent packing at the next election.
Yes, it was just a by-election. Yes, Labour is suffering from severe mid-term blues. But the swing was a massive 17.6 percent and it wasn’t the Liberal Democrats who gained from Labour’s troubles, as is traditional in by-elections.
Brown and out?
As much as stunned Labour MPs wander around like Corporal Jones telling each other not to panic after the dreadful result for them in Crewe, many of the newspapers believe Gordon Brown’s days are now numbered.
The Guardian, under the headline “Brown faces meltdown,” says he is facing the gravest crisis of his premiership in the run-up to the Autumn party conference. Like many other newspapers it says the decision to dress Labour activists in top hats and deride the Conservative candidate as a “toff” was a fundamental mistake, albeit one endorsed by Brown.
The Great Clunking Fist needs to say it better
Hearing Gordon Brown say he’d made mistakes yesterday almost made me jump. Could the Great Clunking Fist really be admitting he’d got something wrong?
I’ve been covering Brown for more than ten years — both at the Treasury and now at No 10. And in all the interviews, international trips and news conferences I have never heard him say sorry.
Brown’s tax U-turn: new beginning or beginning of end?
Gordon Brown on Wednesday made what the British media and opposition parties widely judged to be the most humiliating and embarrassing policy change of his short career as Prime Minister: a climbdown over concessions to those made worse off by his scrapping of the lowest, 10 pence income tax rate.
Conservative leader David Cameron, hoping to oust Brown and Labour in the next election, branded Brown a “pathetic” figure. Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg called him “increasingly pointless”.
-
The Wall
