If you can keep your head .....

But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity........


Listening Gordon ?. There is an Autumnal snap to my stride as Cameron remorselessly closes the gap to a mere 5% in the ICM Poll this weekend. Consider the old Scotty side kicks position . As David Cameron said , no-one was going to take a man who has managed to remove Blair after unprecedented electoral success , lightly ,but how do he do it . He did it by being immensely more powerful within the Labour Party .Blair’s power was in the country and when he sold that for Iraq he was finished . This was never an orderly take over it was a coup. Brown’s power does not come from being a charming and delightful, fellow though. Hardly he is a cold academic egomaniac whose position in the Labour Party is much akin to John Redwood to the Conservatives .He set himself up as the Soul of the Labour Party which means he is a indebted to the left of the Part especially the Unions .They put him there and they have trusted him with posturing as socially Conservative . These postures ,slavered over by the pathetic BBC have been meaningless anyway. His claim for example to support City academies is somewhat undermined by quietly dropping support. Now they expect some pay back.

Amongst the key issues for Brown is Europe .The Labour Party left is as intensely political as the Conservative right wing and they are enraged at the sheer effrontery of the treaty. Remember the opposition to the 1972 betrayal chiefly came from the left. It appears they will, play the lap dog no more. Ian David son has gathered 120 MPs who are prepared to semi publicly defy Brown and join the right in a demand for a referendum. Brown knows he cannot allow this because it would be to admit he has lied and that his government is founded on lies . We are back to WMDs and the culture of dishonesty to which he was supposed to be the antidote . Labour whips are therefore in a state of abject panic at the thought of this going public but the whiffs of smoke are already airborne ,they are chasing phantoms with butterfly nets . The translation is out ...they know the truth

The same constituency will be attacking brown over his agreement to cap Public sector pay deals at 2%. The Public and Commercial Services Union are calling ror coordinated strikes unless they get what they want as are others. This pie will be headed for a PM`s face we know, at the TUC conference next month . Brown will do what he always does , he will say yes and then hide . He has already signalled he will be caving in to the unions . Brown cannot have a “ Winter of Discontent “ but he has got to his position by raising expectations . Now he has to deliver ,,......

City Unslicker remarked on his recent, superb post about returning to the 1970s that we seem to have seen this all before and it is not coincidence . When Thatcher moved the political goal posts the labour party realised it has to change or it would disappear. However its name and image moved far quicker than the Party who have been working to regain control ever since . The coronation of Brown marks the end of a project going back to Kinnock to inoculate and then enact Socialist legislation. 10 points ahead the crowing in the New Statesman was unmistakeable. “We are entering a new era where comfort comes form the left”

Its hard to imagine so look at it through the mirror . The Conservative Party is full of people who think there are votes to the right. There may be actually but not seats . Similarly the Labour Party is full of people who think there are votes to the left. In forcing Gordon’s hand they will see themselves as doing him a favour . He knows , and we know , that the suggestion of Old Labour back in charge can lose him everything and the compromise and lies he will have to deal in will shackle him even if he does win. Ater the BBC fuelled belief that by standing around in wellies Gordon stopped the floods has subsided with the waters we are back to real politics .Who is standing stubbornly on the middle ground ...its that infuriatingly clever Cameron still articulating his evolved vision for a way forward for the country.


The tide is turning but we need loyalty discipline and indefatigable purpose .Shame on those who have panicked Cameron has proved himself steadfast wise and modest if a little inexperienced , understandably......... Rudyard Kipling was describing not just the proper man but the proper Conservatrive . Read this most loved poem again and see what it has to say about balance, leadership and seeing the job through.(May I remind those who sneer at Kipling that TS Elliot was awed by his mastery of verse form......)


If



If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!