Gordon Brown for Britain

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Cameron's quiet today: "Tory leader David Cameron was unusually coy about his views of Gordon Brown as he visited a green waste recycling plant in his constituency."

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PA is reporting a good Newsnight poll:

"Prime Minister-in-waiting Gordon Brown is seen as more arrogant and less in touch with voters then Tony Blair and Conservative leader David Cameron, according to a Newsnight poll. The Chancellor is expected to become the next premier, but appears to have an image problem with some of the electorate, the poll commissioned by the BBC current affairs programme suggests."

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George Osborne's official statement on the launch:

"Was that it?  After ten years of waiting, all Gordon Brown has given us is re-heated slogans and a promise to listen – when all the evidence shows he’s incapable of acknowledging his mistakes. The last ten years were the Blair/Brown years, so he cannot be the change Britain needs.  It’s same old Labour, same old spin.  That has become crystal clear today."

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Peter Franklin has an interesting take on the speech, and urges Cameron to also chase the "striver vote":

"I've heard this somewhere before, I kept thinking. On one level this was hardly surprising. The speech was composed of bog standard political platitudes that could have come from any mainstream British politician. However, there was something about the precise choice and framing of the platitudes that was distinctive, and yet far from original. And then it came to me, another speech, delivered four years ago by none other than Iain Duncan Smith."

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Open Europe's response to the speech:

"He’s also right to be very cautious about signing up to any new treaty. Many other EU leaders have failed to listen to the no votes in France and Holland, and they now plan to push ahead regardless and transfer significant new powers to the EU.  Brown should certainly go to the key EU summit on 22 June to make sure Tony Blair doesn’t lock him into something which the voters don’t want."

and the European Foundation's:

"Following Tony Blair’s announcement to leave office by 27 June 2007, but noting his promised attendance at a major European Council Summit on 21-22 June, The European Foundation demands that Gordon Brown must pressure Blair not to commit to the Constitutional Treaty before his departure or leave the UK position open to further EU obligations."

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Dizzy Thinks points out that GordonBrownForBritain.com has just gone live. It includes a voting facility on what policy areas he should be focusing on and a Google map of where he takes his campaign (rather similar to Where'sGordon?).

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Gordon Brown has just finished his launch speech and long Q&A session in the Imagination Gallery (the rest of his itinerary was revealed on ToryDiary yesterday).

The room was crammed with journalists and Brownites and chaired by Jack Straw. The event didn't go smoothly - one of the autocue screens blocked Brown's face from the camera for his whole speech. He twice muttered to Straw that he could take every question rather than just a few and was being extra nice to the journalists, it all seemed very false.

To make it worse, Tony Blair competed for attention on the BBC's split screen by speaking at the simultaneous launch of a Sir Bobby Moore statue at Wembley.

Before the speech George Osborne articulated on BBC News 24 what is probably the strongest line of attack on Brown:

"When you look at the things people are really fed up with, like the collapse of the pension system, like the failure to get money to the frontline of the health service, Gordon Brown is more responsible for that than any other politician including Tony Blair."

This post will be updated with news and commentary throughout the afternoon.

Deputy Editor

Comments

[J.Johns]

I don't think he did all that bad especially as things around him went wrong.(Can't think why these things happened.)
Anyway,we need to make sure that from now on he is perhaps known as "Gorgon" Brown, because, if he ends up being known as Labours "Golden" Brown we can expect a fight on our hands again.

[David Cooper]

Given that Golden Brown is said to be slang for heroin (remember the Stranglers' song of that title?), I doubt that this is going to catch on in socialist circles. Perhaps we ought to have a poll - to my mind The Clunking Fist (Jeff Randall) beats The Man Who Stole Your Old Age (Richard Littlejohn) but there are no doubt many more.

[Kevin Connors]

Join the group "Friends don't let friends support Gordon Brown" on Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2329293629

[J.Johns]

David Cooper,I'm gobsmacked as I had no idea at all that "Golden Brown" was once slang for Heroin.Thanks.

[Toby Harlon]

Why did the Beeb let him give his whole speech with his face covered by that autoreader?!

[George Hinton]

All these photo-opportunities with Gordo hanging around children, are they not a breach of the rules?. Doesn't each parent have to give written permission for their child to be so exposed and a photograph taken and used.
Is this not a blatant bit of illegal propaganda, rather like the cult of personality so beloved of tyrants and dictators the world over.

[David Cooper]

J.Johns, there's another interesting thought here. Perhaps we should label him Golden Gordon, partly to remind everyone what he did to our gold reserves, and partly as an echo of the Ripping Yarns episode in which "Golden" Gordon Ottershaw is oblivious to the entire outside world in his obsessive support for a lost cause, namely Barnstoneworth United Football Club.

[Peter Harrison]

George - short answer, no. The parents do not have to give written permission for their child to be so exposed and a photograph taken and used. Some schools behave as if permission is required (hence the ridiculous stuff about parents not being allowed to film nativity plays) but the law does not have any such provision.

Propaganda, yes (but we do that too). Illegal, no.

[Rob]

The autocue thing was very sloppy but the launch was OK I thought. He came across well in the questions from journalists. I actually felt like he was answering the questions put to him, which seems like a new approach following the Blair years.

I have a feeling that despite all that has been said before, and the points that we can rightly make against his record, there will be a large body of opinion in this country that simply says "give him a chance". I already spoke with two people who are natually conservative who thought he should be given a chance and were sympathetic towards him after seeing overly negative coverage him.

There will surely come a time to hold him to account for the actions of the government he's been a part of but I hope we won't be too hostile too quickly because I'm not sure it will chime with the British sense of fair play. I saw George Osborne's interview on News 24 following the launch and he seemed quite churlish and the vitriol towards him in parts of the blogosphere (thankfully not quite so much in these parts) is often highly distasteful.

[Matt Wright]

A few thoughts. Firstly the views about Gordon Brown on the doorstep are truly bad for Labour, even amongst their own supporters. Secondly, some of the crude negative attacks on him are a mistake in my view and are more likely to help him. We should point out calmly just what he has done wrong and then concentrate on what we will positively do. In terms of taking him on directly though a third point is that their is an unreal feel to his campaign/handover - it is very false. He claims in his speech today that "the people come first" but the people have no say and he is being crowned like some tin-pot dictator.

Matt Wright

[Scotty]

Watching today's events unfold was hilarious because as a tory I could have done a better job of launching Gordon's campaign than the highly paid team he has employed!
Did he really say "my time has come" or something similar at one point? Truely bizarre.
Bagpipe playing guy was a mistake and very distasteful, couldn't anyone come up with a few tories brandishing pithy and pertinent reminders of some of Brown's more costly mistakes?