Cameron launches punchy attack on Brown

The Sunday Times carries an interview with David Cameron.  Mr Cameron uses the interview with David Cracknell to target Gordon Brown:

“He sweeps his hands across the dispatch box like he’s about to throttle somebody. I think he’s very much a 1980s politician. He’s a creature of the past to me, really, and by the next election he’ll have been in office for 12 years and parliament for 27. He’s a totally confrontational politician. He can never see any good in his opponent.

“I think Tony Blair understands much more than Gordon Brown the fact that people want a slightly different style of political discourse in this country. Gordon Brown is the old-style thump-thump-thump and I think that’s exactly what turns people off. I find (him) awful because it’s just like listening to a speak-your-weight machine on propaganda.”

Labour MP Harriet Harman reacted to the attack for MailOnline: "David Cameron's new style of politics seems to have lasted less than a month. He has woken the Tories from their slumber only to walk them up a blind alley of shallow personal abuse."

Mr Cameron's strong attack on Mr Brown is an echo of a still more personalised attack made by George Osborne at the beginning of December.

“It’s very difficult to have any kind of relationship with him as the shadow . . . Perhaps the prime minister’s people put it best when they said he had psychological flaws. In my dealings with him he’s just pretty unpleasant and brutal. That character may have suited him in the job he holds at the moment but it will not be what people want in a prime minister.”

In the year that Brown may well succeed an increasingly embattled Tony Blair, ConservativeHome begins the New Year with the first of own critiques of Gordon Brown.  Over on The Platform, Oberon Houston has dissected a recent speech by the Chancellor and compared the lofty ambitions with the sad record of  non-delivery.  Over coming months we'll be spending more and more time focusing on Labour's failures as well as promoting authentic conservative beliefs within the Tory Party.