Tuesday, August 28, 2007

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
!

11 comments:

Old BE said...

I'm not as positive as you on Brown. He and Blair had the New Labour timetable planned from the start - it just took longer than expected for the Labour backbenchers to decide to kick Blair out. Blair and Brown (and many in all parties) thought the coup would happen in the first parliament which is why they were able to agree the Granita deal. It turned out that Labour MPs were more supine than expected so Red Gordon needn't be brought out till later.

The point is that while Blair was needed to reassure the electorate, New Labour was all along an image. Brown won't drop the policies because they are his policies. The Blair/Brown juggernaut is still in power.

The TBGBs were just spin and trickery to confuse the Labour party and the public, so that when Blair finally stood down Brown could present himself as "new". The Tories have been totally wrong-footed by this for ten years and counting.

It has truly been a masterstroke to have a party within a party so that when Blair started to wobble, people didn't look to the Opposition for the next PM, they looked in the governing party. It's almost Soviet.

Newmania said...

I'm not as positive as you on Brown.

When I was I positive on Brown ? I think i was happily digging his grave ....must try harder . I love your last para Ed...it is excatly like that isn`t it.


I used to go to Granitas a fair bit too. Its gone now .

Old BE said...

Exactly, you were positive that he is on his way out. I'm not so sure although if he doesn't have a snap election he may be found out in time. The EU referendum may stuff him because Europe actually is one of the things which stirs the apathetic (no matter what people say abut Hague's campaign - he was never going to win in 2001 even if he'd promised to milk and honey).

Isn't Granita now called Desperados?

Newmania said...

Oh I see ...no I think its going to be quite close but if i had to put my money onit i `d say brown with a reduced majority.

Still hope is not lost

Mountjoy said...

Of course the Brown Bounce is deflating. On his blog John Redwood gives some clear reasons why Brown’s poll rating is slipping and why he will not go for a snap poll. I agree with this analysis, and it does not bode well for the future of the Brown Government if it is entangled in so many messes already.

Newmania said...

Thanks Moutjoy I `ll have alook at that later... I `m afraid I `m at work at the moment

Anonymous said...

Ed said:

The TBGBs were just spin and trickery to confuse the Labour party and the public, so that when Blair finally stood down Brown could present himself as "new"...It has truly been a masterstroke to have a party within a party so that when Blair started to wobble, people didn't look to the Opposition for the next PM, they looked in the governing party. It's almost Soviet.


There's more than a grain of truth in what you're saying here, Ed. However, I don't believe it was planned. I think it was more of a cock up - born out of the deep hatred between Brown and Blair - that came good...for a time. Brown and Blair to me were more like an old married couple, bound together by the unfinished business of their mutual hatred and their mutual compulsion to get one over on each other.

Blair may have been a consummate actor, but the only thing Brown's good at acting is the fool.

Brown has the unfortunate habit of revealing what a lying, greed driven, loony megalomaniac he is with every minute nuance of everything he does and everything he says. Try as he might, he can't get this under control. Despite all of the excellent coaching Clinton arranged for him, he's completely beyond help.

Watch him getting his jollies off over his budget and 'leadership bid' speeches. When Brown speaks loftily of his moral compass, of wanting unity and social justice and of caring for the poor of the world, he forms and traps a world in his half eaten maulers, which he then avariciously crushes to his chest in one of the best sign language renditions of 'mine, all mine!' I've ever seen. When Brown speaks of sharing and giving he grabs an imaginary pot of gold and claws it to himself - the BSL sign for thief or theft :)

When he traps that globe as speaks of peace and reconciliation, the addled old bear then rips it apart with his horrible maulers - the sign for war and chaos.

Following his coaching by Clinton's people - much of which would have focussed on an attempt to keep those disastrous hands and contradictory hand signals, which belie everything Brown says, still and out of sight - he has learned to overcome his auto-erotic compulsion to pick his nose and j*rk off during speeches by stroking his precious papers and the precious sides of his rostrum like they're made of gold - or something even finer :)

A man as psychologically troubled as this one can only act out compulsions, not ten year plans for a dynasty, and every nuance of Brown's being for almost a decade has screamed that he detested Blair.

Auntie Flo'

Newmania said...

Flo Bill deedes consistently agreed with what Ed was saying ..I think tere is scope for both conspriracy and cock up ....but I `m off to bed

Electro-Kevin said...

If Brown were to win a snap election I still think he would win. Why ?

The economy still appears to be in good shape. I happen to believe that our economy is in a bad way, but it's not my point of view that counts.

Many voters are counting on the stability of the housing market to finance their pensions - those that aren't depend on their State employment or welfare courtesy of ... Gordon Brown !

I despair. At best I can hope that David Cameron is a faker fighting for middle-ground with a concealed right-wing agenda (which I think this country desperately needs)

So polls are notoriously unreliable. I guess I'll just have to be satisfied with Nu Lab holding the chicken that comes home to roost when the music stops, to mix up my metaphor.

(Thanks for blogrolling me BTW)

Electro-Kevin said...

If Brown were to win a snap election I think he would win.

It is 3am here, after all !

You all know what I meant.

Newmania said...

EK you have no idea how usekless I am at computers its only when they did the new easy way to add links I could do it ..up til then I had to ask Croydonian from time to time

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