Wednesday 17 July 2013

I agree with Nick


Back in October 2008 Mr drew wrote a post about the possibility of a snap election by the beleaguered Brown Government. The wheels had already come off the Labour wagon. Northern Rock had been bailed and then nationalised. There had been full blown bank panic runs. The 10p trick tax IED, set by Brown as chancellor,  had just blown up in his Prime Ministerial face. By elections in the safest seats in the land were being lost and Labour MPs were openly calling for Gordon to resign.
The Tory party was polling with a 120+ seat majority. David Cameron was so dominant at PMQs that even red top papers were suggesting he might go a bit easier on the hapless Prime Minister to avoid looking like a bully.  It looked all over for Labour two years out from an election.

Except... 

As Mr Drew noted, they were down, but not out. 
Nick had spotted changes being made by the labour party. Cherished socialist policies were being abandoned. Even some that Gordon had invested every last drop of his limited credibility in were out.

A couple of weeks ago, amidst the storm, NuLab quietly dropped SATS testing and 42-day detention.

And
 in the last three days..

- prisoners are to have an altogether nastier time

- 'an end to bogus disability claimants' (again)
- 'equal opportunities for whites'
- hate preachers are to be banned (again)

- hints on a 'cap on immigrant numbers'

- a hint that the Heathrow 3rd runway is to be abandoned



Labour were up to something.

I added a piece about how in wartime it was necessary to dispense with anything that was not essential to the operation. That a clear focus was required and a ruthlessness was required. A him or me attitude.

Why I remember these pieces from almost 5 years ago was there was a growing unease amongst the blogosphere, if not the mainstream media, that the Tory leadership had not made the case of what it was actually standing for. These two and other warnings as evidenced in the comments were some of the first stirrings that the fall of the House of Crusher might not be the forgone conclusion everyone was supposing. The advice offered to Cameron was to get his A team on the bridge and to stop talking about hoodies and huskies and proceeds of growth and focus totally on establishing what his team would do differently that would quickly get us out out of the ongoing recession and restore some sanity to the nation's finances.

It was not clear that they ever did.

Below Mr Drew supposes that, at last, David Cameron has found a decent Chief of the Imperial General Staff.

Judging by the Miliband attack on Lynton at PMQs, he probably has. 

{Miliband still has better joke writers though. - Today's the prime minister for Bensons and Hedge funds was pretty good. The C@W staff are always available Dave. Good rates.}
 

5 comments:

Bantha said...

Brown made quite a comeback. But he had fallen so low here was talk of Labour being behind the Lib Dems.
In the end he managed to stop the rout but till lost heavily.

The Gillard/ Rudd coup will show us just what Labour could have managed had the slightly less odd Miliband not been too afraid to knife his liability leader.
Probably a very fragile labour/lib dem government would have formed, before a second election after about 18 months.

idle said...

I met Crosby at the theatre the other day and had a good long chat over a drink before supper (my, how some of us get looked after at the theatre!).

I was highly impressed. Absolutely no nonsense, and a great belief that common sense, clearly expressed, beats cynical spin every time. One day, he'll even talk Dave out of the climate change mumbo-jumbo that he is wedded to.

Blue Eyes said...

I think the next trick will be for the Tories to start playing the games that the Libs have been trying, i.e. to offer distinctive popular policies with the caveat "but we can't until we win the 2015 election".

Anonymous said...

@Bantha

"In the end he managed to stop the rout but till lost heavily."

Brown won!. His scorched earth policy crippled to tory heartland (UKIP) and ensured a return to the promised land by the chosen.

In government but not in power is the same as it always was.

Elby the Beserk said...

What Brown did was populate as many levels of government as he could with apparatchiks. The long march through the institutions. The irony is that we need a Stalinist style purge to rid us of these lice.

Idle - did you see Brill do Ed Davey (speaking of climate change)? The appalling thing is that the man responsible for the (destruction of our) energy policy still believes the "97% of scientists" survey that was discredited WAY back.

God help us. We are governed by fools and knaves.