Gordon Brown's first month: the small print

Following our post this morning Chris Grayling has been in touch and sent us a new document called Gordon Brown's first month: the small print. It looks at Brown's spin and then at the small print. It covers:

• Flood Defences
• Support for Flood Hit Areas
• Border Police
• ‘New’ Legislative Programme
• Aircraft Carriers
• Drug Strategy Consultation
• Limiting the Prime Minister’s Power
• Supporting Sport
• Cuts in the NHS
• Servants of the People
• Welfare Reforms
• New Crime Strategy
• Building Homes; Protecting the Green Belt
• Reforms in the NHS

Chris Grayling wants this document circulated widely in the Party. It is reminder that despite his honeymoon Gordon Brown is carrying on just he and Tony Blair have done since 1997; constant spinning masking the lasting damage Labour are doing to our country.

Let's hope this is a sign of what we can expect over the summer!

Comments

[Annabel Herriott]

I think Chris Grayling is amazing. He has this uncanny ability to get under the radar and reveal the unseen. Ok I know thats an oxymoron Lads!

[GS]

Grayling's work should be a template for the entire parliamentary party over summer - some hard work please!

[Alan S]

This man should have been Party Chairman.

[601]

Thank-you vera. You dirty thing!

[Matthew Scott]

This is excellent stuff, exactly what we should be doing. Long may it continue!

His comments in the Telegraph on pensions today were also good.

[601]

Well done to Chris. Cameron is not the only one who does any opposing after all.

[Rod Sellers]

Chris Grayling has been digging away like this for some time (he was good shadowing Health)

This is exactly the kind of 'forensic' evidence that even our lefty/liberal media cannot ignore.

Good research and well presented.

[Tony Makara]

I get the feeling that Gordon Brown's rash of re-vamped policies is a sure indication that he plans to got to the polls early. Even as early as october. However Labour ill-conceived ideas also leave them exposed to criticism. We must expose Labour in newspapers, radio phone-ins etc. In whatever way that we, the ordinary people of Britain, can make a difference. This isn't just about ousting a failed and lying government. This is about defending the future of our country.

[leon]

Small piece advice to those that created this document, in future use Adobe PDF creator, its a web standard and means far greater accessibility. MS word docs means having to have MS Office on your machine to view...

[John Leonard]

I think this it is important to focus on this. There seems very little new from Gordon Brown except U-Turns and Conservative policies.

Gordon Brown has always been a pretender.

He pretended to support Blair
He pretended to give tax cuts when he didn't
He's pretending to listen when he doesn't on the EU or the WLQ and so forth.

Perhaps if a pseudonym such as "Gordon The Great Pretender" was coined it might assist in getting the point across?

[Edison Smith]

Chris Grayling is a legend.

It's a great document and bloggers should be spreading it everywhere.

[Miss Tooty]

My b/f loved the link Vera

[The Huntsman]

No sooner said than done. We need a document like this every month.

Let slip this dog of war!

[Paul Seery]

The document that has been done Chris Grayling is fantastic and should be used to great use against Brown by not only our Mps but also our PPCs in the marginals. If it can be allied to hard campaigning on the ground from our activists then Brown has got a fight on his hands to keep the failing Labour government in.

[John Travis]

Excellent work from Grayling, we need to start fighting back. The Brown government has been given a far too easy time.

[Cllr Adam Tugwell]

There is plenty here that I could rattle on about, all in support of highlighting what Chris has revealed - good stuff Chris.

I will however save comment for the flood damge issues which are 'day-to-day' for me at the moment, along with many fellow Conservative Councillors in Tewkesbury, Gloucester City and Gloucestershire County Councils.

We desperately need the truths flagged up and emphasised at Government/national level so that the many people who have experienced the floods first hand, and in many cases, the disadvantage that they have sewn, are no longer misled by hollow promises spread by two visits and a lot of talk.

Real lives are effected when these stories fail to deliver and this is precisely where Conservatives have the opportunity to distinguish themselves against this horrid political culture which has become rampant.

If any of my fellow posters are interested in what we have been up to, here in Tewkesbury, please take a quick peak at my Platform piece from last Wednesday; Brown popped up in there too...

http://conservativehome.blogs.com/platform/2007/08/adam-tugwell-th.html#comments

[David Sergeant]

I don't want to be a wet blanket but, as it stands, I doubt if this will have much effect. The BBC is hardly likely to publicise it and if it does it will give copious time to Ministers to produce new spin. Also, at the other end, the Telegraph won't make much of it because, since grammar schools, it has got its anti-Cameron bit between its teeth.

Compare Labour's remarks about the "changing landscape of crime" to Chris Grayling's businesslike use of English. To make a point there was an item from Grayling in the Telegraph about pensions, he should have referred to Brown's "obscene steeling of private pensions". (His £5 billion raid on pensions is now regarded generally as stealing. "Obscene" describes his raid, is a word people notice and is a word we should, in all reasonablness, be regularly applying to Brown.)

[David Sergeant]

Oh yes, floods. Remember in 1997 Brown's raids on utilities. The reasoning was quite dishonest and was merely a way of raising money for his shambolic youth emploment scam. But, as an example, Welsh Water was taken for over £500 million, it then decided it hadn't enough money for capital projects and put itself up for sale and was valued, by a Japanses bank, for less than £600 million. The overall cost of the floods has been estimated at £2 billion which I would guess is less than what Brown took from water companies. If Brown hadn't taken the money how many more flood defences and drainage projects could have gone ahead?

[Paul Kennedy]

15:08

Microsoft do offer Office Viewers as free downloads:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/Browse.aspx?displaylang=en&productID=4289AE77-4CBA-4A75-86F3-9FF96F68E491

[Patsy Sergeant]

Anybody who believes that we should NOT 'ATTACK, ATTACK, ATTACK, having read this report on all the small print, and can imagine what this country will be in for, if we don't achieve at least a 'hung parliament' at the next election, needs their heads banging against something very hard!!!

[Cllr Adam Tugwell]

Interesting point Patsy, but a hung parliament? Now that could be a very easy way in for the yellow peril and then what... Now that doesn't bear thinking about!

[Cllr Adam Tugwell]

'If Brown hadn't taken the money how many more flood defences and drainage projects could have gone ahead?'

Probably none David. Do you believe that these quango's really are working that effectively? Somebody told me the other day that the computer system they were using to predict weather systems and subsequent flooding actually crashed when they entered the real data from the July 20th downpour. If correct, what does that suggest?

[David Sergeant]

"Do you believe that these quango's really are working that effectively?"

Water companies, not quangos, are responsible for drainage and many flood defences.

However, even if your analysis is correct someone flooded out would see the possibility of Brown's money being used for defending his house. To take your attitude would ignore the way most voters think and forego an oportunity to have a poke at Brown. Labour would never let this oportunity go, or the Lib/Dems in a by-election. And we wonder why we lost three elections.

[Cllr Adam Tugwell]

'Water companies, not quangos, are responsible for drainage and many flood defences.'

They obviously do things differently in your area then?

'To take your attitude would ignore the way most voters think and forego an oportunity to have a poke at Brown.'

Ummmm, not sure about that one. Had he left the money alone (which as I'm sure we will agree is about as likely as the Thames freezing tomorrow - as it would be with any 'spare cash' he identifies) I'm pretty sure it would have been squandered, just like in so many more of the bureaucratic monsters that this Government has either created or enlarged since it's arrival.

I'm completely on board with a poke at Brown and hope we will - as suggested - have a brilliant summer as we continue doing just that!

[Mike A]

Perspective, please. As a former CCHQer, let me say:

First, the document is recycled.

Second, I assume the Political Section at CCHQ produced it and they're using Grayling as their spokesman. I doubt he saw it until it was ready to go. Credit where it is due.

Grayling and Davis are alike. Reasonable opposition politicians, but the kind of people you want nowhere near a department.

[Annabel Herriott]

Why so Mike A? Are they mavericks? Perhaps that is what is needed.

[Matt Wright]

Well I know one thing Chris is being noticed and is getting out there and fighting. Lets have more of that,

Matt

[Mike A]

Matt - as I said, they're good opposition politicians.

However, the briefing is actually marked as being a CRD (Central Office) production. I would assume that the political section put it together and then asked Grayling to ring it round.

This is not meant to be sneery, but credit where it's due - CCHQ, rather than Chris Grayling.

Annabel - they're the kind of people you have to explain things to twice before they get it. Once you have briefed or discussed things with the super-bright people in the party, you realise the gulf between them (the difference between the Willetts/Cameron tier and the Davis/Grayling tier of politicians is pretty staggering).

I don't know about how open-minded Grayling is - he was only a mediocre-if-publicity-hungry shadow minister in my day - but Davis hasn't even considered a new idea in the past ten years - at least not knowingly.

I would imagine that Davis wouldn't make a non-shadow-cabinet. He was a terrible Chairman and he has enormous trouble running his own office.

[Mike A]

Again, not meant to be sneery. We need Davis and Grayling in the ShadCab.

However, people don't really realise what the politicos do and what the CRD and CCHQ does. [I notice that Ainsworth got a lot of stick over flooding. I saw a few stories which Is supect his office planted with no fingerprints (someone synpathetic to us did).]

[Scotty]

"Once you have briefed or discussed things with the super-bright people in the party, you realise the gulf between them (the difference between the Willetts/Cameron tier and the Davis/Grayling tier of politicians is pretty staggering)."
Interesting comments MikeA, but I would disagree with your conclusion. I think you need both the experience of the group that went through the CRD and CCHQ combined with politicians like Davis who came to prominence through Parliamentary experience like the Whips office.
Cameron, Osborne, Willets & Co came up through CRD and I would rate their skills in policy and strategy, but equally we need a platform for that message and to be fair Grayling and Davis get themselves and the message into the media extremely well.

"However, people don't really realise what the politicos do and what the CRD and CCHQ does"
Agree with that comment and also the fact that many underestimate Cameron and Osborne's previous experience gained through the CRD and in government before 97'.
Both groups in their own way bring a broader field of experience and expertise to the shadow cabinet. We just need to get the rest of the team, and that includes the leadership right down to the grass roots working together in a disciplined manner towards the same goal.