Louise Bagshawe: Save the Gordon!

Merry Christmas to all, especially fellow Conservatives. It’s easy to live the season to be jolly when you’re hitting a steady 40% in most polls. And this time of year, we feel a particular need to be kind to the weak and helpless. Can we please prevail on cchq to mount a festive campaign to Save the Gordon?

Just think. Weak polls from Ming Campbell, following his many love-ins with Gordon Brown, and we harried him in office. He’s gone and the LibDems have Calamity Clegg. They have soared from eleven points to a mighty 14! Beware the new leader bounce!

Confession is good for the soul, so here goes; I felt a little stupid back in August. Months of polls showing a widening of our lead with Mr. Bean in charge, which I believed were accurate, were replaced with very different non-hypothetical numbers once he had actually kissed hands; Cameron down for the first time since his election. So what happened? Well, it seems those named leader polls, as PoliticalBetting pointed out this week, were accurate – but only after the new leader honeymoon had gone. Following wild highs and lows, they have settled for Gordon as predicted. But if there is any iron law in politics, I’ve learned the hard way it’s that a new leader, no matter who, will get a bounce. Do we want Gordon Brown out? I’m certain we could get him out. But why do it? The man should be up for one of Tim’s Conservative Politicians of the Year awards. No, no. Save the Gordon! True, people are heartily sick of the whole Labour government. Miliband, with his smirk, signing away our rights in Brussels. Jack Straw hectoring. Darling’s lack of shame. Even Gwyneth Dunwoody, Labour stalwart, is calling this Government of No Talents cynical and shameless. But Gordon Brown is the icing on the Labour disaster. We must not repeat the Ming episode. I take back all the cruel things I have said about Gordon in this column. He is a one-man Tory vote getting machine!

A few months ago I was asked to speak at an Oxford Union debate ‘That no modern woman would ever vote Conservative.’ It was especially exciting since Hazel Blears, a Cabinet minister, was billed to propose the motion. But the Tories were leading then with women (as we are now – 20 points in the latest poll). Well, it was the deputy leadership election, and understandably she cancelled. A good time to abandon my prepared notes and just ask questions. If the government were to be described in politically correct terms, I’d call it omni-challenged. Instead of reciting a laundry list of Labour failures, perhaps we could play a game. I’d just name the department, and the House would think of the corresponding Labour disaster. Agriculture. Defence. Immigration (by this time there was nervous laughter). The NHS. Education. In fact, to save time, could anybody think of an area where Labour had succeeded? One brave lad stuck his hand up. "The economy?" he said.

Ah yes, the economy. Gordon’s great card trick – to ride a wave of global growth and spin it at home as a domestic triumph. But as Fraser Nelson has written recently, Brown has been a simply dreadful Chancellor. PFI – our NHS deeply in hock, perhaps for decades. Northern Rock – Bank of England independence negated, one firm bailed out, a buyout stopped, a run on a British bank. Pensions ruined. Our gold reserves flogged at a bargain price, many times more expensive than Black Wednesday, and advertised to the market in advance. 100 tax rises. I could go on, but it’s too depressing. I like to dwell on Father Christmas, not Scrooge!

Anthony Seldon’s blockbusting biography of Blair levels plenty of character charges against Brown, some resulting in front page stories when the book was released. Weakened, demoralised, "found out" as Cameron said, Gordon has become a figure of fun. Hre reminds me of a character from another film popular at Christmas time – he’s the Wizard of Oz, revealed to be nothing more than a hunched little figure behind the curtain, a cheap card trick. But all this is Tory gold. Do not let us move to kill the man who actually, risibly, claimed polling did not influence his decision to bottle the election. The man who presided over Labour fundraising lawbreaking on a gigantic scale, who will nationalise Northern Rock, who has allowed illegal immigrants to guard his own car! To use a seasonal cliché, he is the gift that keeps on giving. I urge that Tory arrows should aim only to wound. Brown is the leader we must get behind for Labour in the next GE. Save the Gordon!

Comments

[Praguetory]

I was a proud member of Tories for Gordon, but what I really want is a chance to kick out this shower.

[Tony Makara]

Gordon Brown, a man who for years in opposition held himself up as a paragon champion of the poor, yet when in office said "Idleness is not an option" for the unemployed. A man who made great political capital out of the pensioners, yet when in office ransacked their pensions. A man who in opposition made great plat of Tory failures in the NHS and yet now presides over a government where the poor cannot find a dentist and hospitals spread more disease than public toilets. This is a man of double-standards, a man who deserves the worst type of political fate.

Labour would be foolish to continue with Brown as their leader. Like penguins on the south pole, Labour MPs under Brown will leap together into mass political suicide if they go into the next election with Gordon Brown. The economic trump card, of which Brown is so proud, is merely slight-of-hand. He has played the nation false. Gordon Brown's credit led growth will grind to a halt now that the credit has dried up. Labour simply have to organize some sort of coup d'parti against Brown, if he stays he will be the equivalent of general Custers last stand at Little Big Horn, brave, but foolhardy and futile.

[Annabel Herriott]

Nooo Tony!!! He has to stay right where he is, then we will take over for the next 16? years. He is a real vote winner for us.
Look -if Britain can regroup after World War Two, we can regroup after Gordon!
There will be more to come though, so hold on to your hat! Gordon is attracting all sorts of calamities to himself, and there is nowhere for him to run anymore, even if he does resort to various human shields.
2008 will be awful!

[Moral moronity]

I am actually beginning to feel a bit sorry for him now. All that time waiting and he's a triumph of ambition over ability.

Plus that smug air of entitlement as well.

[David Belchamber]

As you rightly point out, Louise:

"Ah yes, the economy. Gordon’s great card trick – to ride a wave of global growth and spin it at home as a domestic triumph. But as Fraser Nelson has written recently, Brown has been a simply dreadful Chancellor".

I am not quite sure about "dreadful" but he certainly turned out to be a typical socialist "tax and spend" chancellor.

We must get the main story about Brown as Chancellor and repeat it and repeat it until the electors know it: he did not inherit an economic mess from the tories. Quite the reverse: he has managed to turn Ken Clarke's balance of payments' surplus (of £35bn???) into a balance of payments' deficit of something similar AND hiked our taxes over 100 times in the meanwhile. The nation as a whole owes more than our total GDP, quite apart from our PFI liabilities.

How can the man brag about that performance? Only because he has not been contradicted enough.

[David Sergeant]

I was going to write, "good thinking Louise, but you failed to say where to send contributions to the Save the Gordon campaign."

However.

I was appalled by Gordon from the first. I do not understand how he was allowed to get away with what he has done. (E.g. when he said it, most of Gordon's "decade of continuous growth" was down to the Tory government!) On second thoughts therefore, this man is such a disgrace, to have him as our country's leader is so embarrasing he has to go as soon as possible even if it costs Tory votes. Sorry Louise.

[Joe James Broughton]

This is an interesting article by Louise Bagshawe with some important points - I think the Tories should hammer the ruined pensions message again.

The time is ripe, because the party has rebuilt more credibility on financial matters this year.

Earlier in the year, the Tories did score some hits in the polls against Brown (before the local elections) on pensions, but people were still cagey and willing to give Brown the benefit of the doubt because at that point he was seen as competent. I don't think he is now - so time to raise it again.

David Belchamber's analysis is good too.

[David Sergeant]

"How can the man brag about that performance? Only because he has not been contradicted enough."

Absolutely. But, also, no one keeps (note, "keeps") pointing out the "golden legasy" the Tories left him either. We are told people are still dubious of giving their financial affections to the Tories. The above is one big reason why.

[Louise Bagshawe]

David Sergeant,

"I was going to write, "good thinking Louise, but you failed to say where to send contributions to the Save the Gordon campaign."

Excellent point! All contributions to the Save the Gordon Campaign should be made out to CENCA and sent to: Fighting Fund, Corby & East Northants Conservative Association, Conservative Club, Cottingham Road, Corby, Northants, NN17 1SZ :)