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[Silent Hunter]

Darling's statements "I can't re-write the budget" are hugely embarrassing.

Well, he can't really for this one- it's already come into effect.

[afleitch]

Darling's statements "I can't re-write the budget" are hugely embarrassing.

Well, he can't really for this one- it's already come into effect.

True. But his choice of words are regrettable and offer little comfort.

Darling - 'I can't re-write the budget'
Voter - 'Well I have to re-write mine'

[Peter]

True. But his choice of words are regrettable and offer little comfort.

Darling - 'I can't re-write the budget'
Voter - 'Well I have to re-write mine'

Whilst his words may offer little comfort, the effects of his budget have been seen coming some way off - I for one did budget on Darling's budget - a reversion to the old budget would inconvenience me.

[afleitch]

True. But his choice of words are regrettable and offer little comfort.

Darling - 'I can't re-write the budget'
Voter - 'Well I have to re-write mine'

Whilst his words may offer little comfort, the effects of his budget have been seen coming some way off - I for one did budget on Darling's budget - a reversion to the old budget would inconvenience me.

For the record Peter, Is Brown still the social democrat 'wunderkind' who made you go weak at the knees a year ago?

EDIT: I admit thats quite a catty remark, but there has been some soul searching in the political world over exactly what makes Brown tick and if, he may, just may be an 'empty vessel'

[Peter]

I doubt I ever used the word(?) 'wunderkind'.

I don't think Gordon Brown ever made me go "weak at the knees" (certainly my dislike of the tax credits goes back years), though I most certainly maintained and maintain a respect for him after he presided over a stretch of a period of unprecedented growth.

Regarding his present performance as Prime Minister - neither satisfied, nor dissatisfied. I was a net gainer from the budget, though the amount is so neglible as to be barely worth mentioning, and there have been signs of positive intent, though he does ultimately suffer from the inability to make decisions which he is often accused of. He needs to stake out what this government believes in and then push for it.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

That's not what I'm saying.

I was exaggerating, of course, but there still seems to be an element of it there (and it's easier to see with you than most because it sits ill with most of the rest of your approach to politics).

The fact is that the main reasons why people vote Labour are still in place and they are as legitimate now as they've always been (and the same goes for the other mainstream parties as well). It's rather telling that most of the arguments that can be made against the current government could be (and often were!) used against the Labour governments in the '60's and '70's. And a lot of the other ones could be used for the same purpose if a few little details were changed around here and there (so that, for example, "scrapping of 10p rate" changes to "strict incomes policy"). The more things change, the more they stay the same (or something like that).

One of the more unfortunate changes to politics in recent decades has been the replacement of the language of ideology with various forms managerspeak and all the culture that's sprung up around that; no longer can you oppose something on ideological grounds (because "principled grounds" may now only refer to non-political beliefs or to when you oppose something that you might be expected, based on your ideological views and partisan position, to support), you must instead either oppose it on actual technical grounds or oppose it on non-existent technical grounds. And because of this there is no room for genuine disageement, those that hold different views to you on a given issue must be simply "wrong" and in a way that it is not acceptable to be "wrong". I'm exaggerating here as well, but by an uncomfortably small amount (the "you" throughout is an impersonal "you", just to be clear).

On your latter point, I'd argue that being drunk with power is the normal state of affairs with powerful politicians (and with powerful people in general). We just tend to notice more when they've been around long enough to irritate us.

[afleitch]

I doubt I ever used the word(?) 'wunderkind'.

I don't think Gordon Brown ever made me go "weak at the knees" (certainly my dislike of the tax credits goes back years), though I most certainly maintained and maintain a respect for him after he presided over a stretch of a period of unprecedented growth.

Regarding his present performance as Prime Minister - neither satisfied, nor dissatisfied. I was a net gainer from the budget, though the amount is so neglible as to be barely worth mentioning, and there have been signs of positive intent, though he does ultimately suffer from the inability to make decisions which he is often accused of. He needs to stake out what this government believes in and then push for it.

I was paraphrasing and I should have pointed that out so apologies. I simply asked it because you seemed pretty keen on the man and what he could have heralded.

Ultimately alot of Brown apologists (i'm not referring to you here) are beginning to realise there may be 'nothing there'; no vision, no plan, no Attlee or LBJ, no post-Blair intellectualism or integrity. They kept pushing for him to unleash a pent up social democratic agenda and have been found wanting. It all rests on the belief that Brown had a vision to begin with.

Matthew Parris sums up my own views on it very well and I'm only posting them here because of that;

No, for all I care, Mr Brown can be a bean-counting, flak-ducking, procrastinating, tunnel-visioned, trainspotting monster. These are human qualities. I like human qualities. It's vacuums I despise. What is unforgivable is the empty space in Mr Brown's head where an idea ought to be.

I just didn't see it. I had been watching him for years. I saw a serious-minded, thorough and quite scholarly man - a capable swot - but had never heard him say anything remotely courageous, interesting or new. From his table-banging, shapeless speeches not the ghost of an outline of a distinctive political philosophy could be discerned. In interview he was defensive. On the rostrum he was blustering. In print he was opaque. And time and again the claims he did make didn't stack up: there was niggling, small-scale dishonesty in the way he used facts and figures. Watchful, prickly, aggressive, yet in some strange subterranean way (I guessed) scared, I saw in him a paralysing failure of intellectual confidence: a yawning absence of creativity

Now I admit, I used to bash Brown the man rather than Brown the idea though I was never really concerned or worried about him as PM. But this idea of the 'clunking fist' (though in retrospect I can't of a past example of where he demonstarted the attributes of a clunking fist) caught on, even amongst Tories (apart from, publically, George Osborne)

If Gordon Brown leads the Labour party and the country, without any genuine challenge then David Cameron will be a cert to become PM after an election is called. People say they want substance over style when history tells us the direct opposite is true. What's odd is that Labour, I believe, don't really want Gordon as leader, and the people don't really want him as PM but they have no other choice.

Now theres a grasping, almost pleading from the intellectual left for 'something', for whatever is locked up in Gordon Brown to out. But there may indeed be nothing in there, 'courageous, interesting or new.' Which doesn't make for a poor PM. It just doesn't make for a particularly great one as long as he can command respect, prove himself to be competent and steady. But he's failing on that count too. So what's better than 'nothing'? Something. And as long as the Tories offer 'something' tangible or not, even just style, Labour is in trouble.

[Peter]

I would have to agree with Matthew Parris - certainly we seem to be waiting for Brown to have the ideological moment that we all assumed he had spent 10 years formulating, and now many of us wonder if it will come at all. The principal problem this government is having is that it is too often responding to the agenda and not shaping it, which was the forte of Blair and Thatcher.

Perhaps one of my principal reasons to support Brown is my total disgust at the way he is treaded - the politics of attacking the person should not be accepted in political discourse. Categorically disassemble policy proposals, you get my total respect, but the way that the Tories, Cameron and Osborne in particular, treated Brown whilst he was still Chancellor was simply unconsciable.

Perhaps the moment where my distaste for Cameron was truly realised was the 2006 Budget. He came out with such gems as: "He is an analogue politician in a digital age. He is the past". Given that Cameron promised to end "Punch and Judy politics" I had to view it as reversing course on the most basic political promise - to be civil and disagree agreeably.

Undoubtedly it is my idealism that yearns for a less adversarial politics, a politics based on principle and not, well, politics.

[afleitch]

I would have to agree with Matthew Parris - certainly we seem to be waiting for Brown to have the ideological moment that we all assumed he had spent 10 years formulating, and now many of us wonder if it will come at all. The principal problem this government is having is that it is too often responding to the agenda and not shaping it, which was the forte of Blair and Thatcher.

Perhaps one of my principal reasons to support Brown is my total disgust at the way he is treaded - the politics of attacking the person should not be accepted in political discourse. Categorically disassemble policy proposals, you get my total respect, but the way that the Tories, Cameron and Osborne in particular, treated Brown whilst he was still Chancellor was simply unconsciable.

Perhaps the moment where my distaste for Cameron was truly realised was the 2006 Budget. He came out with such gems as: "He is an analogue politician in a digital age. He is the past". Given that Cameron promised to end "Punch and Judy politics" I had to view it as reversing course on the most basic political promise - to be civil and disagree agreeably.

Undoubtedly it is my idealism that yearns for a less adversarial politics, a politics based on principle and not, well, politics.

I can't disagree with you on that, though always keep at the back of your mind at least; the confirmed, rumoured and suppressed for convenience, manners in which Gordon Brown treated his predecessor. Much of which was also driven by differences in personality. That may be the reason he has failed to command the same degree of loyalty and respect frolm some of his parliamentary party.

[afleitch]

Hooray... I get a refund of sort, backdated as of the autumn, if they can hammer something out. Better save my wage slips and be first in line for a complicated re-claim form that goes through HMR&C! And do I get this every year? Until I'm old enough (because I'm just a little nipper) to claim WTC?

So we're getting the £7bn back...from where I don't know AND it's going to cost them more in administrative costs!

It would have been cheaper just to u-turn completely.

[Silent Hunter]

Hooray... I get a refund of sort, backdated as of the autumn, if they can hammer something out. Better save my wage slips and be first in line for a complicated re-claim form that goes through HMR&C! And do I get this every year? Until I'm old enough (because I'm just a little nipper) to claim WTC?

So we're getting the £7bn back...from where I don't know AND it's going to cost them more in administrative costs!

It would have been cheaper just to u-turn completely.

It would have been cheaper to have done this earlier.

What is Mr. Cameron planning to about poverty anyway, rather than opportunism?

Field has withdrawn his motion. This, for the time being, is over.

[afleitch]

From The Times

'Only a quarter of the people expected to lose out as a result of the abolition of the 10p income tax band will get help from Gordon Brown’s compensation package if it contains the options indicated by ministers, a leading independent think-tank has found.

As Alistair Darling appeared to have reassured Labour MPs finally that low-paid workers would have their compensation backdated to the start of this financial year, the Social Market Foundation’s figures highlighted the limitations of the rescue efforts.

In a report rushed out after Mr Darling’s climbdown on Wednesday, the SMF said that the Chancellor’s proposals, which are aimed at helping the worst-hit losers, were constrained because of a shortage of cash and the difficulty of targeting losers. Ministers have suggested privately that the package will cost less than £1 billion.

Mr Darling has said that he wants to compensate pensioners aged 60-64, low-paid workers without children, and other younger workers. The SMF says that if he does that, as expected, using winter fuel payments, the national minimum wage and working tax credits it will cost from £500 million to £1 billion, and help fewer than a quarter of the worst-hit.'

[Silent Hunter]

http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/politics/domestic_politics/factcheck+camerons+tax+cut+sketches/2104957?intcmp=news_fc_cameronguardian

So, Mr. Cameron?