An article anyone interested in politics should read.
A number of articles by some of Britain's most thoughtful journalists this weekend make grim reading for the government.
Doutless the dwindling band of labour loyalists will ignore what Matthew Parris had to say because he is a former Tory MP who has long been a sharp critic of Gordon Brown. Though in my opinion his criticisms both of the Prime Minister and of a cabinet which has failed to stand up to him ring true.
They will have much more difficulty in ignoring Polly Toynbee in the Guardian who was originally one of Gordon Brown's cheerleaders. Her piece this weekend flays the Prime Minister as having
"no ideas and no regrets," says that
"Under his leadership Labour has become a rotten, defeatist rabble"
and begins
"In free fall without a parachute, unassisted suicide, accelerating the wrong way down a motorway – the death metaphors are flowing in a dark torrent of despair from Labour MPs. What made Gordon Brown hurl himself on that row of Gurkha kukri knives? Drowning at 19% behind in the latest polls, few think the party will come up for air a third time."
But probably the most damning of the lot, especially as it comes from perhaps the most intelligent and honest of Britain's left wing media commentators, is a forensic dissection of the rottenness at the heart of Brown's leadership from Nick Cohen in Standpoint magazine, called
"Fear and Filth at Brown's number ten."
This article should be read by anyone interested in politics and especially anyone, whether they are on the right or left, who aspires to hold political office because it demonstrates one of the ways that the leadership of a political movement can fall into moral collapse.
The article lists evidence of how Gordon Brown descended from a conviction that he was in the right through the consequent belief that his opponents inside and outside the Labour party must be bad or mad, to the conclusion that "Any tactic is justified in the campaign against them" until you reach a point which
"makes Britain sound as if it is a police state. The servants of an unscrupulous leader concoct vile libels about opposition politicians and their wives. They plot against the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Foreign Secretary and Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, spreading smears about them almost for the hell it. Journalists on the left-wing press who speak out know that they may risk their careers."
He adds that Britain is not a police state, and the fact that so few people did speak out does not put the media in a good light.
I don't always agree with Nick Cohen, but he's usually interesting and often devastating, and this article could have been written to illustrate the famous saying by Edmund Burke:
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."
Doutless the dwindling band of labour loyalists will ignore what Matthew Parris had to say because he is a former Tory MP who has long been a sharp critic of Gordon Brown. Though in my opinion his criticisms both of the Prime Minister and of a cabinet which has failed to stand up to him ring true.
They will have much more difficulty in ignoring Polly Toynbee in the Guardian who was originally one of Gordon Brown's cheerleaders. Her piece this weekend flays the Prime Minister as having
"no ideas and no regrets," says that
"Under his leadership Labour has become a rotten, defeatist rabble"
and begins
"In free fall without a parachute, unassisted suicide, accelerating the wrong way down a motorway – the death metaphors are flowing in a dark torrent of despair from Labour MPs. What made Gordon Brown hurl himself on that row of Gurkha kukri knives? Drowning at 19% behind in the latest polls, few think the party will come up for air a third time."
But probably the most damning of the lot, especially as it comes from perhaps the most intelligent and honest of Britain's left wing media commentators, is a forensic dissection of the rottenness at the heart of Brown's leadership from Nick Cohen in Standpoint magazine, called
"Fear and Filth at Brown's number ten."
This article should be read by anyone interested in politics and especially anyone, whether they are on the right or left, who aspires to hold political office because it demonstrates one of the ways that the leadership of a political movement can fall into moral collapse.
The article lists evidence of how Gordon Brown descended from a conviction that he was in the right through the consequent belief that his opponents inside and outside the Labour party must be bad or mad, to the conclusion that "Any tactic is justified in the campaign against them" until you reach a point which
"makes Britain sound as if it is a police state. The servants of an unscrupulous leader concoct vile libels about opposition politicians and their wives. They plot against the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Foreign Secretary and Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, spreading smears about them almost for the hell it. Journalists on the left-wing press who speak out know that they may risk their careers."
He adds that Britain is not a police state, and the fact that so few people did speak out does not put the media in a good light.
I don't always agree with Nick Cohen, but he's usually interesting and often devastating, and this article could have been written to illustrate the famous saying by Edmund Burke:
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."
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