Paint Brown as The Great Waster

So, who is Gordon Brown?

The weak Clucking Fist of Chicken Saturday?

The 'Stalinist' control freak who surrounds himself with yes men?

The scheming sulker who plotted constantly against Tony Blair?

The political calculator who nicks Tory ideas and does everything for political advantage?

The untrustworthy guy who broke his promise on the EU Constitution?

The Scot who is denying the English a fair share of the UK's taxes?

The party leader who gets his bills paid by the unions?

Yesterday's man who cannot escape the shadow of Tony Blair and who does not understand today's challenges?

He's probably all of these things but I would suggest that - more than anything else - he's an incompetent waster.

This is the man (building on what I wrote yesterday) who sold gold at the wrong price... crafted the tax credit system that is so riddled with fraud and complexity... is responsible for the £14bn cost over-runs for the NHS supercomputer... has overseen the weakest-growing economy in the English-speaking world and the slippage of Britain down the global competitiveness league table... had to admit that his Government's statistics on immigrant workers were out by 300,000... so underfunded the prison service that hundreds of foreign prisoners were released wrongly...

You get the idea.  If we get a 'Brown Is The Great Waster' campaign right - and it needs to be a campaign with creative YouTube videos and a bank of facts constantly fed to journalists - it won't matter if he continues to steal our best ideas.  Noone will believe that he is capable of doing anything half-properly.

The US Democrats recently ran this Halloween video which asked American voters to say which Republican scared them the most.  CCHQ could run a competition as to which Brown failure appals them most...

Related link: This Government couldn't organise a booze-up in a brewery

Idea 5: Promising nationally, acting locally now

Comments

[Winchester whisperer]

Good idea. He's also the man who split banking supervision between the Bank of England and the FSA causing the Northern Rock run.

[Malcolm Dunn]

I'd be a bit careful here.We attacked Brown relentlessly earlier in the summer and look what happened!
Everything you write is obviously true and when the ocassion demands worth pointing out,but we need to able to show what we would do better.
If we go over the top in our attacks people might feel sorry for Brown as hard as that would be to imagine for most Connhome readers!

[Scotty]

"The Scot who is denying the English a fair share of the UK's taxes?"

Tim, with negative counter productive comments like that, you don't add to the debate, you lower it!!!! Is that the kind of language that will send out a positive message for the Conservative?
It comes across in much the same way as Browns "British jobs for British workers".
It stinks!

[Editor]

I used reasonable language to describe a real problem, Scotty.

Ignoring the issue will only add to what is a real problem.

[Scotty]

"I used reasonable language to describe a real problem, Scotty.

Ignoring the issue will only add to what is a real problem."

I would suggest that my post did not ignore a problem, instead it highlighted the negative language you used. You can and should make your point about the Barnett formula or the WLQ without the need to highlight in a negative tone the fact that the PM is a Scot.

[No-To-Scottish-PM]

Scotty: That the PM is a Scot is a central ingredient of the problem

Brown is opposed to resolving the WLQ because he fears it would undermine his status as PM for England

[christina]

Brown's summer crisis reviewed

Janet Daley in the Telegraph yesterday followed the fashionable media myth that Gordon Brown handled the summer crises well. Apart from some well-staged photo opportunities, what did he actually do? He was in fact the man who, as Chancellor, was largely responsible for the disasters he then exploited.

When the EU fined us for failing to pay our farmers their due, it was his petulant response to pay the fine from Defra's budget.

The resulting cuts then fell on flood defences and on urgent repairs to the Pirbright research station.

He succeeded in penalising the farmers whom the fine was designed to protect.

The media, however, were determined to allow him a "honeymoon" period until they were all so "bored" with the Labour conference that they saw the feet of clay they had hitherto ignored.

We now have a Government in which there is not a single major department of state that is "fit for purpose" and where great swaths of our affairs are out of control. Police, immigration, prisons, agriculture and the European constitution are all in a state of crisis.

Why we should be expected to treat our prime minister as a serious and competent politician I do not know.

[Jake]

"The Scot who is denying the English a fair share of the UK's taxes?"

Better phrased as :

"the Scot who is denying the English their own parliament with the same rights and competencies as that of Scotland "

gets to the point straight away and avoids dircetly dwelling on the money issue

[Tony Makara]

Gordon Brown is the man who has wasted 3.6 Billion pounds on the NewDeal and yet unemployment is now higher than when Labour came to office and youth unemployment is up an astonishing 20%. So in effect Gordon Brown has spent 3.6 Billion pounds of taxpayers money with absolutely zero results. Now what else could have been done with that 3.6 Billion?

[Annabel Herriott]

Brown is the man described by "a civil servant" as having "sheer Stalinist ruthlessness" which surely means he will do absolutely anything, trample on as many people as he thinks he can get away with, and draft legislation aimed only at his own continuation in power. We should all watch our conservative backs very very carefully.
Think on Adolph Hitler. He bemused the German people who could see no wrong in him, due to the same quality that Brown has, and we ended up with WW2 and his demise, but not before he had caused a lot of destruction to more than one country. A current example is Pakistan. Do we really want a repeat?
I'm afraid that for a first step, all our loose cannons will have to go! So far, there has been Flight, Quentin , and Hastilow. Everyone has to consider any remark of theirs through the lens of the media. Be sure that they will pick up any comment of theirs that has not been thought through, and run with it. This seems to apply more so to the left wing media.

[Moral minority]

"The 'Stalinist' control freak who surrounds himself with yes men?

"The untrustworthy guy who broke his promise on leaving the EPP?

"The party leader who gets his bills paid by Lord Ashcroft

The heir of Tony Blair who does not understand today's challenges."

That is Cameron!

[Ken Stevens]

Annabel Herriott | November 06, 12:31 T
"...Think on Adolph Hitler. He bemused the German people who could see no wrong in him, due to the same quality that Brown has,..."

My mother worked in Germany for several years between the wars. Her take on Hitler was that he brought economic order out of chaos and revived a sense of national pride and that is why the populace followed him so enthusiastically. He was also a magical orator.

Brown is diametrically the opposite, and his belated and weak efforts at ersatz British pride are inconsistent with his involvement in the fragmentation of Britain.

The only similarity was that Hitler was an Austrian who was head of a larger neighbouring country with which it was in Union for a while. Spot the Brownian analogy!

[Tony Makara]

Annabel Herriott, yes, I think that anyone who wants to see a Conservative government has to be very watchful over throwaway comments. The media prowl like ravenous wolves waiting to pounce and twist any flippant remark. The problem with Nigel Hastilow's comments is that they could have been perceived as being reflective Conservative policy rather than his own personal views. The fact that Mr Hastilow had a platform as a Conservative candidate made it imperative that he chose his words carefully. We, as ordinary members of the public, can express our views on immigration and other issues but if a person is standing on a Conservative ticket its only fair that he/she is guarded against making any comments that could be misinterpreted and damage the partys standing.

[Oberon Houston]

Good idea, but beware of having the whole campaign de-railed by using refutable allegations. For instance, the gold sale was at prevailing market conditions at the time, so be sure to aim at where the incompetence was - eg. at the amounts and timings of the sale. I would do it like this, a) level the accusation b) find the reply on record and c) find the end of the trail and build the case at this point.

In short, we have been to block-headed or insensitive in out personal attacks in the past, okay too strong, but you get the idea. We need to be more subtle and intelligent about placing the knife for it to go home. The big posters and blunt messages work only after the sucess of the detail campaigns - i.e. at GE time. Lets lay the foundations now.

ps- have you noticed the increased leaks from Whitehall (similar to the increase that dogged the final years of the Major administration). Lets hope this is the tip of the iceberg.

[David]

"The Scot who is denying the English a fair share of the UK's taxes?"

Can we stop this please? It's rather unedifying; this is the UK, it really doesn't matter whether he is Scottish, English, Welsh or From Northern Ireland. Besides:

http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/news/display.var.1804171.0.0.php

"Scotland, with pockets of deprivation, one-third of the UK's land-mass and far-flung communities, does indeed receive substantial state spending, but its average of £9631 public money per head is still less than London's at £9748 or Northern Ireland's £10,271"

[Jake]

"For instance, the gold sale was at prevailing market conditions at the time,--"

yes and and it was at exactly the wrong time to sell as the copious advice readily at hand from the London gold market , which he ignored , told him .

They also advised him how , if he felt he had to do anything so stupid , to do it with the maximal market efficiency
- he ignored that too .

In fact , his idiotic gold sales created a new market low .

The price has gone steadily up since then .

[Alan S]

If we are to complain about Scottish MPs voting for English laws it is legitimate to complain about a Scottish PM deciding English laws.

[David]

"If we are to complain about Scottish MPs voting for English laws it is legitimate to complain about a Scottish PM deciding English laws."

Only if you can't tell the difference between the legislature and the executive. Montesquieu had a point, you know.

[George Hinton]

Gordon Brown - "A Legend in his own Mind", How the Great Pretender has committed the ultimate Fraud on the people of Great Britain.

A working title for a pamphlet, booklet, book or even a mighty tome on the broken promises and flawed ideas of the "Great Gordo".

Never mind about fancy sound-bite titles, whether perjorative or not, just list the points.
The elctorate in the UK is becoming thoroughly disenchanted with the political machine. The politicoes are becoming detached from the people and everyone is disengaging.
Perhaps like the East Germans (re quote by B. Brecht) we have failed our political classes and should change countries, or perhaps the politicoes should be expatriated to their beloved Brussels, whilst we get on with the business of recovering our country.
Peter Oborne's The Triumph of the Political Class rather sums things up.

[passing leftie]

Alienate the whole of Scotland, why don't you. You are throwing "Scot" around an insult. Talk about damaging the Union with lopsided devolution if you want.

Plus, avoid the pot calling the kettle black,

"The party leader who gets his bills paid by the unions?"

In contrast, the Tory party is owned single millionaire who flies Tory MPs around in his private jet. Which is worse?

"Stealing our ideas" sounds petulant. No one cares, as long as they are good ideas.

The waste issue hits home, but "great waster" sounds rubbish.

[Michael McGowan]

David, how does the fact that Northern Ireland receives egregious levels of public subsidy justify Scotland's subsidy levels? IF London receives slightly higher levels of subsidy than Scotland, they are more than offset by the much higher costs of the capital. There has never been a proper evaluation of Scotland's needs relative to those of say, Cumbria and Yorkshire, which are also large, sparsely populated land masses with pockets of deprivation. Instead both parties have attempted to buy Scottish votes with large dollops of taxpayers' money.

[Matthew]

This idea is a crap one.

"The Scot who is denying the English a fair share of the UK's taxes?".

Painting him as "the Scot" suggests being a Scot is inherently a bad thing. I know we don't have many Scottish MPs but following this Editor's advice, at least in terms of tone, would surely leave us with none. Awful. These Scots aren't just any old people, they are part of our country. So using them as a political tool for 'us' the English ignores the fact that 'they' all have a vote in 'our' Parliament.

[David Sergeant]

As I came down the blogs I did not pick up any reference to Brown's raid on pensions. Dishonest in his lie to Parliament about Civil Sevants advice, cowardly in not telling Parliament exactly what he was doing, a start on his creation of a debtor nation from a saving nation. Typical of so many things Brown has done.

The man is uttly dispicable. That he has become our Prime Minister is a devatating indicment on us all. That includes the Conservative party which didn't have the guts or the sense of decency to take on New Labour from the start. But, of course, it also includes the media who cringeingly go along with New Labour's spin and regard blatant lies and undemocratic tricks with sycophantic amusement. Of course, the same media will queue to bitch and nit pick at the smallest Tory hickup. (And that includes media such as the Telegraph whose acceptance of Labour spin to keep in with Brown and co borders on sickening.)

I go along with the suggestion that East Germany is a good example of Brown's Britain. Let us not kid ourselves getting rid of Brown and returning the country to decency and success will be one hell of a fight. Be prepared.

[John]

I think we've got to start making the Scottish point very carefully. It's not because he's a Scot that he's a problem, it's because he represents a Scottish constituency. An important distinction.

Scottish born MPs who sit for English seats are not a problem (Malcolm Rifkind, for example, who has drawn up Tory proposals on the WLQ). Equally, an Englishman who sits for a Scottish seat does have a legitimacy problem on English legislation.

[Jomo]

Laugh at him and his cabinet. He has created a unique blend of authoritarianism and incompetence and called it a vision.

The schools are education free zones and he wants to fine young people who try to escape them.

The NHS hospitals are trying to guarantee you an early death and he wants to waste even more money on them.

There are 2000 plus terrorists on the loose, the borders remain open, but the Major of London, the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister think some Policemen are wonderful.

Northern Rock eats up billions and they want to sack the Governor of the Bank of England for being honest.

He has sold out the Army and the Atlantic Alliance. He has cheated on the referendum.

He has surrounded himself with a bunch of acolytes who are even more of a joke than he is.

It’s the Tartan Taliban and its only going to get worse!

Laugh at him!