Dear Mrs Duffy

This is a letter that I had to write, one that I will never send and one that you are unlikely ever to read. It's an open letter because I think that some other people might be interested in what I have to say.

Anyway, I saw you on Wednesday evening on the news talking with Gordon Brown, and I read about you yesterday morning in the newspapers. I was particularly moved by the picture of you on the front cover of the Daily Telegraph, the one that was taken after you had been told that the Prime Minister had referred to you as a 'bigot' when he thought only his staff were listening. Like you I could not quite take things in at first, could not quite believe what was happening.

The wounded disbelief on your face almost made me cry; it certainly made me feel very emotional, feel something of the depth of your own sense of disbelief at the ugly callousness of this remark. I could feel your sense of betrayal, your bewilderment that you had been dismissed in such a fashion by an 'educated man', as you put it, who heads a party with whom you have identified all of your life.

You may very well think it presumptuous of me to write to you like this. We come from such different worlds. We have so little in common. You might think me arrogant, someone from a very privileged background who has an opinion on everything and is never reluctant to express her opinion. You are a life-long Labour supporter, and presumably have voted for the party many times. I have been a member of the Conservative Party since I was a teenager and so far have only voted once, in the general election of 2005. I come from a family with a long tradition of Conservative support, one with associations with some important people in the history of the party. I'm young, I'm arrogant, I do not understand why people, ordinary people like you, have ever voted Labour, a party which serves you so ill, a party which has served this country so ill. But, please let that pass; there are other things I want to talk about.

For me the look on your face will forever be the defining moment of this election campaign, not the television debates. It says so much, not just about how hurt you felt but about the man who hurt you, more, if anything, about him than about you. I've long believed that he has contempt for people like you, for the powerless, for the people on whom he depends. I read a book some weeks ago which detailed how he bullies his staff, the least powerful people around him. He is the kind of man who, when in difficulty, always blames others, never himself, always looks for scapegoats. He is the kind of man who, by repute, cannot make 'small talk', which I take to mean that he cannot converse in a normal way or relate to people with sympathy and understanding.

His meeting with you, by any reasonable definition, was unremarkable, one that left you feeling good. But not him. That you dared question him on the great issues of the day, on the deficit and on immigration; that you dared give expression to the fears of so many little people, unimportant people, made you a terrible woman, a 'bigot' in his eyes. You are not at fault; he is. He is the product of a political system that pretends to sympathise with little people but secretly despises them. He is a product of a system that pretends to represent people like you but consistently ignores them.

The worst part, the worst part of all, was when he came to your door to offer a hypocritical 'apology'. He had been found out, the enormity of his words had been played back to him; he could do no else. In your position I would have refused to see him, refused to allow him over the doorstep. But you are clearly a much more generous and forgiving person than I. I only feel anger and contempt, deepened when I saw him speaking to the media after he left your home, saying that he was a 'penitent sinner' with an altogether inappropriate and silly grin on his face. I think he is sorry alright, sorry that he was ever found out. There was no sincerity at all in his bogus and inadequate words.

Personally I would like people like you to vote Conservative, a party that has consistently raised prosperity just as Labour has lowered it. But this is not about politics; it’s not a plea for your vote. It's just to let you know that, for a brief moment, you became the voice of England, speaking for so many, no matter if Labour or Conservative. If you are a bigot then I am a bigot, we are all bigots, all the people of this land who share your concern. From across the generations, from across all social divides, from across all political divisions I sincerely wish you well.

With much respect,

Anastasia F-B

Comrades, read this

I like Private Eye, the satirical magazine edited by Ian Hislop and owned by Lord Gnome, a good friend and hunting companion of mine (it’s a joke; it’s a joke!), though I’m not a subscriber, merely an occasional reader.

Recently I’ve taken to buying it more consistently as issues appear. I do this for one reason and one reason only: I simply can’t get enough of the Prime Ministerial Decrees, those bolts of Zeus coming from the office of Comrade Gordon Brown, the Supreme Leader. They are wonderful, enlightening, inspiring, motivational…and jolly funny!

Recently the dear man has been telling us just how wonderful Comrade Darling was in delivering his budget, and promising that he will remain in post after the successful ‘General Plebiscite.’ This particular decree was accompanied with a picture of the dear comrades in uniform. It also comes with the Supreme Leader’s Five-Year Pledges, which I feel sure you are all very anxious to know about. Well here they are;

I solemnly pledge a better Britain for all our communities.

I solemnly pledge a fairer community for all our Britains.

I solemnly pledge a better community for all our Broadband British users.

I solemnly Broadband a fairer pledge for all our British furniture

I solemnly furniture a fairer Broadband for all our better British pledges.

Now, what more could you possibly want to affirm the Dear Leader in the coming General Plebiscite?

The latest decree, Number 68, carries a warning against the forces of Neo-Cameronite Reaction and Bullingdonian-Borisite-Feudalism. The Supreme Leader points us instead to bright horizons, sun-lit promised lands and futures fair for all. There is also a message appended to the decree by Comrade Lord Madelson. I think it worth drawing this to the attention of all comrades;

In my capacity as Supreme Commissar for Trade and Everything Else, I urge all comrades to rally to the support of the party in the forthcoming plebiscite. Whatever our feelings about the desirability of Comrade Brown continuing as Supreme Leader, it is vital that we all vote for him. No one has worked so hard for so long in the service of this great community.

It is not to be wondered that he looks so knackered and washed-up. And I would be the last to blame should he wish to step down shortly after his sensational victory and, rather than serve five years, chose to serve, say, five or six weeks. He could then hand on the baton to a worthy successor whom you might find much more attractive – someone, for example, whose address book contains the names of you all. (Not to mention your recent medical history and the increased statistical odds of you dying if you don’t vote for the Supreme Leader.)

So, comrades, consider yourself warned, and do not be seduced by counter-revolutionary blonde Tory bloggers, blond mayors and the general forces of Neo-Cameronite Bullingdon reaction. :-)

Bread without the Circuses- the Mad Economics of Labour

The mantra goes out from Gordon Brown, don’t rock the boat, don’t do anything to endanger our fragile economic recovery, don’t cut public expenditure, well, not too fast, at any rate. Recovery, I have to ask, what recovery? His administration has drowned this country in levels of unsupportable debt, debt that will undercut any sustained economic recovery. We are on the road to Athens or Dublin, it really does not matter; for the end result will be the same.

The supposed recovery is as much of a fraud as the debt-fuelled boom that he encouraged when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, the most irresponsible ever to hold that high office. In a sane world this man would now be facing a major public inquiry into his conduct of affairs, instead of putting himself forward for a further period of office.

I would urge all of you, especially people who are considering voting Labour, to look behind Gordon Brown’s words; for nothing he says can be taken at face value. Just as he tried to mislead people on the realities of the immigration swamp, he has been deceitful or stupid, I honestly can’t tell which, when he talks about the economy. Last month, as The Spectator points out, he was boasting of the 2.5 million extra jobs that have been created since Labour came to power. Actually that point dovetails quite nicely with the great immigration deception; for these jobs have not been ‘created’, no; they’ve been imported.

The Spectator has obtained figures showing that an amazing 92% of new jobs since 1997 are accounted for by immigration. Remember that figure, 92%; Polish plumbers and Bulgarian window cleaners, as well as gangs of professional Roma beggars. Well, it’s a kind of job, I suppose!

Here we touch upon another socialist cancer, a New Labour cancer. This party has given us a kind of modern version of the Roman economy, an economy where the proles subsist on public doles while the work is done by foreigners. In other words we pay our people not to work. It’s the bread without the circus, just the view of life that one has from hopeless places like Tower Hamlets.

Of course there are political benefits here in that people living in Tower Hamlets, the slaves of a corrupt and degrading welfare system, vote Labour if they vote at all. These Labour rotten boroughs, to be found throughout the land, from London to Glasgow, are one of the chief supports of this rotten government. There is no real incentive for them to introduce serious welfare reforms when that is likely to have what is, from their point of view, an adverse political consequence.

Labour is not the party of the oppressed and the underprivileged; Labour is the party that needs people to be repressed and underprivileged. There is a natural lethargy in politics, something that keeps people in a kind of rut, something that turns them into voting fodder. No matter how hard I try I simply cannot understand Labour voters, I cannot understand people voting for the outlook from Tower Hamlets. The old Roman Empire was destroyed in part by its wasteful economic contradictions; the New Labour Empire will be destroyed by similar contradictions, taking us all down with it.

The Descent of New Labour

I have to admire the courage of Andrew Rawnsley, admire the courage of anyone who takes on the Labour spin machine, as vicious and as ugly as anything that flowed from the mouth of Joseph Goebbels. His revelations about Mad Gordon Brown brought forth the venom. There was lots of anonymous briefing about ‘malicious falsehoods,’ amongst other things. I suppose he can at least be grateful that his family wasn’t attacked, grateful that the vile Damian McBride is no longer part of the character-assassination team.

No, instead he had fat John Prescott, two jags himself, weighing in with “gutter journalism”. Rawnsley seems to me to be far above that but he is not beyond throwing a punch;

…John Prescott, a man whose infidelities include having sex with a junior civil servant in a hotel room while his long-suffering wife, Pauline, waited downstairs to have dinner with the treacherous and hypocritical toad. Her recent memoir describes how he slunk back to their home in Hull to confess to his adultery before it became public. His security staff preceded him to the house to dump a bag of his smalls for Pauline to wash. I know which of us is better acquainted with the gutter.
Ouch!

Rawnsley’s book The End of the Party: the Rise and Fall of New Labour, from which the Observer extracts were drawn, has now been published. At some eight hundred pages it’s a hefty read, though well worth the effort. If you are only interested in the revelations about the carpet-chewing madman who now lives in Downing Street you already know almost all there is to know, but there is so much more in this book about the way the country has been governed since Labour’s second election victory in 2001.

The sub text might very well be the descent of Tony Blair; about a man who visibly decayed in office, from the fresh-faced vision of 1997 to the grey-haired gloom of 2007. Margaret Thatcher seems to have flourished in power, notwithstanding all of the challenges she faced. Blair, in contrast, withered, demoralised by the consequences, amongst other things, of the invasion of Iraq.

Having this horror on his conscience he also had Mad Gordon muttering and plotting in the background, punctuated occasionally by hot flushes, shouts of “You’ve ruined my life.” This was an impossible relationship; a friendship soured by frustrated ambition, by the childish fury of a man who wanted to be at the top of the greasy pole, yet so obviously lacked the capacity, the judgement and the intellect for the position.

There are points, I suppose, when almost feels sorry for Blair, with Mad Gordon bursting in, like Mrs Rochester out of the attic, with the delightful forms of language much favoured by Labour- “You’ve stolen my fuckingg budget” or “When are you going to fuckingg go?” The Queen makes a late appearance, putting up with the insufferable Silvio Berlusconi at the G8. As another reviewer wrote, one almost expects her to burst into the room with a heartfelt “Give us a fucking break” :-))


Rawnsley also confirms something that I have long suspected: Blair, for all his persuasive ability, was essentially a weak man. Just as he could not control Mad Gordon he could not stand up to George Bush. Our intervention in Iraq is best seen in the context of a wider strategy in the Middle-East; it was intended to buy influence with America and commit Bush to a solution of the Palestinian problem. But the more Blair gave the more Bush took, offering next to nothing in return.


The book is a splendid insight into Labour, into a high-grade tragedy or a low-grade farce, I can’t really decide which. It’s all there, the lies, the plots, the betrayals and the back-stabbing, from things can only get better to could they conceivably get much worse.

If’t chance some cursed example poison’s near the head, Death and diseases through the whole land spread

The Worst Man for the Job

The internet guerrillas got it right; my, how they got it right: the use of the movie Downfall as an amusing comment on the decline of the Brown Reich was just so appropriate. There he is, the carpet-chewing, bullying, ranting Fuehrer, terrorising his staff with his unpredictable outbursts; paranoid, fearful, in a state of constant denial.

I don’t think I’ve ever read The Observer so thoroughly; there was just so much meat, so much to feast on. I’m really looking forward to reading Andrew Rawnsley’s The End of the Party, extracts from which, explosive extracts, appeared on Sunday. And explosive really is the operative word.

Yes, it is a personalisation of politics; it is an intense scrutiny on Brown’s capacity, incapacity, rather, for the leadership of this country. Did he not invite this scrutiny himself? I am the best man for the job, he said, this is no time for a novice; this is the time for me.

I suppose some of you read the extracts published yesterday, or picked up on the gist of them here, or from television reports. For those who have not they are altogether stunning. Our Prime Minister’s abusive conduct towards staff at all levels, including quite junior staff like typists, was so bad that he was effectively ‘reprimanded’ by Sir Gus O’Donnell, the cabinet secretary, who told him this was no way to get things done. I saw Brown with that mad misplaced grin being interviewed on television news last night, trying to deny the story, a story of missiles and moods, of effing and blinding and things that go bump in the night.

I’m not going to give a blow by blow account; a few examples will suffice. People were frightened of him because he was always shouting, constantly blaming others when things went wrong. Objects were thrown at people, anything from mobile phones to coke cans. One civil servant applying for a position in Number 10 was asked at the interview if he could cope with “extreme verbal abuse”. The poor man was so scared by the description of what working with Dismal Gordon was like that he simply withdrew his application.

While travelling in his official car Brown was told news that made in clench his fist and swing it back, The aid beside him cowered, fearing he was about to be hit in the face. Instead the fist crashed into the passenger seat in front. He hit the upholstery so regularly that sitting in front of him was considered one of the worst duties among the accompanying protection squad.

Add to this the kind of language favoured by the man then one begins to get a more fully rounded picture. In advance of a meeting of the European Council, Stewart Wood, a senior advisor and a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, arranged a lunchtime reception for the ambassadors, to be held in Downing Street. When Wood tried to brief him Brown yelled, “Why have I got to meet these fucking people? Why are you making me meet these fucking people? I don’t want to meet these fucking people”. He then shoved the shaken Wood aside.

It goes on like this. There are also tales of plots and intrigues, including one involving Jack Straw, which would not have been out of place in the Byzantine court. Oh, they could plot and intrigue alright but not one of them had the courage to act in a way that might have saved themselves, their party and this benighted government.

Rawnsley has based his book on extensive research, on thousands of interviews with some of the principle figures of New Labour over the years. Some five hundred people contributed specifically to the book itself. But he has been careful not to let animosity and hatred-and there is so much of that- speak for itself. He only included incidents of abusive behaviour, he says in an accompanying article, once he had attained confirmation from impeccable sources. Some episodes, though carrying a high degree of verisimilitude, were excluded because the proof was not cast iron –“Only once I was satisfied by the veracity of the story did it go into the book. The sources are 24 carat.”

I’m not going to say that this is a shocking story because I am no longer shocked by anything that happens in British politics. Even so, it’s sad to see the senior political office in the land degenerate in such a way; for power to devolve on a man such as this, a man who has neither the capacity nor the temperament for leadership; a individual who is so clearly the worst man for the job.

How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle! O Jonathan, thou wast slain in thine high places

The January Plot

In thinking about last week’s ‘coup that never was’, or Dismal Gordon’s storm in a tea cup, I’m brought back yet again to the You Tube parodies of this government based on the German movie Der Untergang-Downfall-depicting the last days of Hitler. Some of you, I’m sure, have seen these, but for those who have not I’ve posted an example below.

Yes, this started as a joke but once again life, political life, really is imitating art. This government, in a state of irreversible decline, is beginning to demonstrate some of the features, some of the byzantine manoeuvres that accompanied the fall of the Third Reich. There is Adolf Brown with his ‘bunker mentality’, surrounded by cronies like Martin Bormann, sorry, Ed Balls Bormann, continually reassuring the desperate Fuehrer.

Meanwhile, somewhere off stage, Hermann Miliband and Heinrich Harperson have their own agendas, looking to their own futures, the future beyond the Reich. Yes, they came to the support of Adolf after those patsies Hoon and Hewitt made such a dreadful mess of the January Plot, but with levels of enthusiasm slightly less than underwhelming.

The wonderful thing about the January Plot was the insight it gave to the mentality, the treachery and the self-serving hypocrisy of the members of this present cabinet. It revealed, as one Labour MP wrote, incompetence, on one hand, and self-delusion, on the other. It also revealed, I would add, preening ambition only held in check by practical cowardice.

Look at David Miliband, the last best hope of the Blairite vision. He clearly understands that the government is walking to a lemming-like fate with Brown in charge, he is clearly desperate for the job…and he is just as clearly a man with no backbone, not a Heseltine, to use his own words. Did you see that picture of him Friday’s Daily Telegraph, the one where he is waving a banana? A perfect image, I thought, the one that seemed to sum up his fatuous character best. As Philip Johnston said in the accompanying article (What a way to run a coup) he and his brother, Ed, are convinced that they are ‘towering figures’ in the Labour Cabinet, when they appear to outsiders as decidedly second-rate compared with the figures of the past. At the Labour Conference in 2007, his first as Foreign Secretary, he announced that “The world can be a scary place”, this from a man who stands in an office once occupied by the likes of Palmerston. Indeed, a party lacking in both talent and ambition

Gordon Brown, ‘the best man for the job’, survived, his grin survived, looking weaker and sillier than ever, promising to ‘run a more inclusive and harmonious cabinet’ in future. I thought we had heard this before. Never mind; ‘inclusive’ and ‘harmonious’ are not words that immediately come to mind here. Divided, mendacious, scared and hopeless would fit so much better, have a greater approximation to the truth, a truth that we who are not deluded can clearly see.

Hitler gathers his leading satraps in the Bunker. It’s April 1945. “Goering, Himmler, Bormann, Speer, Goebbels”, he announces “in future I shall lead a more harmonious Reich.” Meanwhile, the muffled thuds of the Russian shells can be heard in the distance.

Brown Days, a new Gotterdammerung

We are witnessing an interesting process of degeneration at the present, or a reverse metamorphosis: New Labour, the Blair Project, is dying by rapid degrees. In its place the Old Labour Adam is re-emerging, blinking in to the light, full of ancient class resentments, full of old war cries. Yes, the Blair Project is dead; the Brown Project arises.

What we have before us is the manifesto of the grudge trawled up from the past. Tories are to be attacked and pilloried as public school toffs, one element of a two-pronged strategy, the other being an attack on the rich and the successful, first outlined in last year’s pre-budget report (PBR), when a new top rate of income tax was conjured into existence. The attack on bankers and banker’s bonuses, a popular target just at the present, also falls within this general rubric.

The assumption with both is that Britain, the British people, are full of the same cringing sense of inferiority and resentment that is such a part Gloomy Gordon’s repressive Presbyerian personality. I rather suspect that his resentment of Tony Blair was as deeply rooted in personal jealousy as anything else. After all, Blair went to a public school and he did not. He is just, to use that frightful phrase, a ‘son of the manse.’ So the attack on Cameron and the Etonians proceeds from the assumption that they are weird and different and he is not!

The strategy is so narrowly conceived that all but a one-eyed and blinkered man could see. Yes, it will buy votes among those who hate toffs and bankers but these are the kind of people who would vote Labour anyway. Labour for them is no more than the political expression of resentment. Class for Brown, as The Economist rightly says, is a bit like immigration for the Tories: the people who are pleased to hear him talk about it were already listening anyway.

Meanwhile, the bankers, those dreaded bankers, have become another of Gloomy Gordon’s scapegoats. Let’s all focus on those bonuses while the country slips steadily into the worst debt crisis in its history. Darling Darling’s latest PBR had absolutely nothing to do with the country’s finances and everything to do with this wretched government’s desperate attempts to cling on to power. Even Charles Clarke has said that Brown was frightened of allowing the Chancellor to present the full picture because he is frightened of the voters’ reactions. Instead even more spending was promised while the Bank of England, the OECD and the IMF and credit-rating agencies have all warned that the continuing growth in borrowing is unsustainable. If-God help us all-Labour win the election we will all soon find out exactly how unsustainable it is, especially the voting fodder in the ‘public’ services.

Let us look towards spring. There is the Leader in his bunker, doing his best to ignore the distant echoes of enemy artillery while he plays with his models and pours over his maps, planning a future that will never come, a victory that will never come. There he is spilling venom, blaming everyone but himself for the disaster that has descended on the country. There he is a sad, wretched little man, permanently unfulfilled, permanently resentful, now on the down sweep of history. There he is, the son of the manse.

Candyfloss and Sunshine

Of all the criticisms of the recent Queen’s Speech the most obvious appears to have been missed: the complete failure of imagination. In Gordon Brown’s position I would have been so much more creative. I would have promised, say, candyfloss and sunshine. Yes, everyday would be the first day of spring; every heart would have a new song to sing. It’s too ambitious, I can feel you think. Is it any more ambitious than that ridiculous note Her Majesty was obliged to deliver last week? It wasn’t a statement of intent. No; it was two odd things juxtaposed: a declaration of war and a declaration of incompetence.

Now, let me begin with the declaration of war. This Parliament, the Expenses Parliament, has only a few short months to live. It will have to be dissolved around Easter at the latest. So there is no time for the government’s legislative programme to be implemented, even if the opposition played clever dog. The whole thing is just so threadbare that one would have to be stupid to see it not as a realistic agenda but an attempt trip up David Cameron and the Tories, trip up their resistance to candyfloss and sunshine.

I don’t want to dwell on this dismal programme overmuch. Let me just take the case of free personal care for the elderly. Why, one has to ask, does this come at this late stage, after twelve dismal years of the Noo Labour Reich? Why? That’s easy: because such a measure was dismissed as too impractical and too expensive in the past. A second question immediately arises here. How does this commitment to additional expenditure dovetail with the laughably named Fiscal Responsibility Bill? The simple answer is that it doesn’t. This naturally leads me into the declaration of incompetence.

Here we have a government that after twelve years has discovered the need for fiscal responsibility. The corollary to this is, of course, that what went before was fiscal irresponsibility. Yes, I know that’s the truth but I never expected to hear such an open admission. The best comment on the proposal to legislate against the deficit came, I thought, from Corporal Clegg of the Liberal Democrats. It’s like passing a law promising to get up in the morning, he said. One does not need the guidance of law; one just does it.

Ah, but the real incompetence, the true measure of Brown’s utter stupidity, comes in the obvious thing omitted from the Queen’s Speech: the need to clean up Parliament; the need to act on the Kelly Report. On the one great issue that has dominated Brown’s ministry, the Expenses Scandal, the one issue that demanded to be addressed, he had not a word to say. Sir Christopher Kelly himself expressed his ‘disappointment’ at this decision to ignore the elephant in the room. This and similar criticisms have forced dismal Brown into another humiliating climb-down, something we should be used to by now. Harriet Harperson, in her capacity as Leader of the Commons, has said that the government will add new laws to deal with MPs allowances and pay. Really? On top of the existing agenda? Oh why, oh why, did you not just promise candyfloss and sunshine? :-))