They stand naked before the electorate & it ain't pretty
Not since Trivial Pursuit became an instant hit in the early 1980s has a parlour game so dominated the leisure hours of Britain's chattering classes. I'm referring, of course, to Where Did It All Go Wrong?, the pastime of choice for many who regarded Gordon Brown's expropriation of Number 10 as the precursor to a new phase of Labour hegemony. One year on, with the Prime Minister's authority in ruins, pollsters and psephologists are picking through the rubble to find out WDIAGW? They are joined by academics, party activists and pundits of every persuasion. The blogosphere is filled with theories of bewildered supporters. Channel 4 commissioned an entire documentary in search of an answer. What a hoot! How long before WDIAGW? is adapted by Endemol as a celebrity quiz show? Much conjecture centres on Mr Brown's personal and physical shortcomings. The Great Awkward is unable to take off when in danger. As was Pinguinus impennis, he is vulnerable to human hunters, especially those in the press and on opposition benches. Vicious types, such as Vince Cable, club him over the head with spiky humour, causing him to haemorrhage credibility. "The trouble is, the electorate doesn't know the real Gordon," squawks the diminishing band of Brown loyalists. "He is not properly understood." One columnist suggested a more prominent role for Mrs Brown, largely on the basis that she's not Cherie Blair. Others call for fresh ideas and vision. All of this misses the point about WDIAGW? The Great Awk has not suffered some sort of reverse evolution since moving next door. He was always clumsy and flightless. Yes, the hair is a bit greyer and the suits are smarter. But what you get is the same Gordon Brown who swept to power alongside Tony Blair in May 1997: a careerist with the charisma of an extinct species, whose idea of dialogue is to tell us what we think. The key difference between then and now, and therefore the correct answer to WDIAGW?, rests not inside Brown's Downing Street eyrie, but with those who put him there. It has nothing to do with image; it's all about substance. No amount of makeovers, re-launches or faked sincerity can change what has occurred. The public has worked out that just about everything Labour had promised on issues that really matter turned out to be untrue. Not even Dickinson & Morris, established at Melton Mowbray in 1851, can match its impressive range of pork pies. For Mr Brown and the entire New Labour project, that is where it has all gone wrong. It is the falsehoods that dumped the party's poll ratings in the gutter. Goebbels' comment on the efficacy of propaganda will be familiar to many: "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it." What is less well known is his qualifying observation: "The lie can be maintained only for such time as the state can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. Labour's big lies on budgetary prudence, educational standards, support for the Armed Forces, the economic benefits of immigration, a referendum on the European constitution (alias the Lisbon treaty), figures on violent crime, weapons of mass destruction, the abolition of quangos, British jobs for British workers and tackling welfare abuse have been exposed for what they were: cynical manipulation of credulous voters. The problem for Brown and his troupe of political pygmies is that they have exhausted the supply of veils behind which they once danced. They now stand stark naked before the electorate and it's not a pretty sight. snip http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/06/27/ccjeff127.xml
Not since Trivial Pursuit became an instant hit in the early 1980s has a parlour game so dominated the leisure hours of Britain's chattering classes. I'm referring, of course, to Where Did It All Go Wrong?, the pastime of choice for many who regarded Gordon Brown's expropriation of Number 10 as the precursor to a new phase of Labour hegemony. One year on, with the Prime Minister's authority in ruins, pollsters and psephologists are picking through the rubble to find out WDIAGW? They are joined by academics, party activists and pundits of every persuasion. The blogosphere is filled with theories of bewildered supporters. Channel 4 commissioned an entire documentary in search of an answer. What a hoot! How long before WDIAGW? is adapted by Endemol as a celebrity quiz show? Much conjecture centres on Mr Brown's personal and physical shortcomings. The Great Awkward is unable to take off when in danger. As was Pinguinus impennis, he is vulnerable to human hunters, especially those in the press and on opposition benches. Vicious types, such as Vince Cable, club him over the head with spiky humour, causing him to haemorrhage credibility. "The trouble is, the electorate doesn't know the real Gordon," squawks the diminishing band of Brown loyalists. "He is not properly understood." One columnist suggested a more prominent role for Mrs Brown, largely on the basis that she's not Cherie Blair. Others call for fresh ideas and vision. All of this misses the point about WDIAGW? The Great Awk has not suffered some sort of reverse evolution since moving next door. He was always clumsy and flightless. Yes, the hair is a bit greyer and the suits are smarter. But what you get is the same Gordon Brown who swept to power alongside Tony Blair in May 1997: a careerist with the charisma of an extinct species, whose idea of dialogue is to tell us what we think. The key difference between then and now, and therefore the correct answer to WDIAGW?, rests not inside Brown's Downing Street eyrie, but with those who put him there. It has nothing to do with image; it's all about substance. No amount of makeovers, re-launches or faked sincerity can change what has occurred. The public has worked out that just about everything Labour had promised on issues that really matter turned out to be untrue. Not even Dickinson & Morris, established at Melton Mowbray in 1851, can match its impressive range of pork pies. For Mr Brown and the entire New Labour project, that is where it has all gone wrong. It is the falsehoods that dumped the party's poll ratings in the gutter. Goebbels' comment on the efficacy of propaganda will be familiar to many: "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it." What is less well known is his qualifying observation: "The lie can be maintained only for such time as the state can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. Labour's big lies on budgetary prudence, educational standards, support for the Armed Forces, the economic benefits of immigration, a referendum on the European constitution (alias the Lisbon treaty), figures on violent crime, weapons of mass destruction, the abolition of quangos, British jobs for British workers and tackling welfare abuse have been exposed for what they were: cynical manipulation of credulous voters. The problem for Brown and his troupe of political pygmies is that they have exhausted the supply of veils behind which they once danced. They now stand stark naked before the electorate and it's not a pretty sight. snip http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/06/27/ccjeff127.xml