I think we've got the measure of the man. Cowardly, bullying, incompetent and fiscally illiterate. Gordon Brown is comfortably the worst PM this country has ever endured. That much is uncontroversial. So what's going to happen next?
Look at the pressure his ministers are under: Wendy Alexander, Peter "the orange slug" Hain and Harperson are up to their necks in ordure surrounding party funding, only just providing support to keep the One-eyed Presbyterian thief out of the sewage. If you still think Gordon knew nothing, you'll believe a Labour promise to hold a referendum (on that, more later). These two women and one gastropod are all that stands between Gordon and knacker of the Yard. If they go, he goes.
The Badger-faced sock puppet is under pressure over Northern Rock and the missing discs and it appears likely that he's been less than truthful with parliament over both issues. None of these are his fault, but he'll carry the can for the disasters on behalf of their architect. The economy is about to roll over and house prices are likely to fall but there is no way he can borrow out of trouble, because Cyclops has already spent everything in the piggy bank while the going was good, before delivering a hospital pass to his minion ahead of a recession. If this recession is deep and nasty, there is one person who should cop the blame.
The Home Secretary has screwed up the police due to her own incompetence. She is also currently presiding over a prison system in meltdown, principally due a decade of underfunding at the treasury's behest, whilst you know who was in charge. This despite introducing a new law every day they've been in power. Immigrants swarm to this country, and though I don't care, many people do and it is consistently put at the top of the list of things Labour have screwed up.
Likewise Des "two jobs" Brown, quite the most useless Defence minister in history, is presiding over a grotesquely overstretched military which is only avoiding catastrophe due to the tireless 24/7 efforts of soldiers in Iraqistan, many of whom are on their third or fourth tour. With Kosovo about to blow up again this is only going to get worse. They are using worn out kit, in insufficient numbers and taking the weight off our unreliable allies, who refuse to fight. When this goes wrong, many soldiers will die, and it is a decade of treasury meanness whilst the one-eyed thief was in charge which will be the root cause, though no doubt some middle ranking staff officer will take the blame (and probably willingly too, as he'll be a Gentleman), when the body bags of 19 year-old soldiers come home in large numbers.
The benefits system is a mess, principally due to Brownian meddling and complexity, state "education" is crap because of decades of leftist dogma leading to functional illiteracy amongst 20% of the population. The less said about the NH"S", the better.
Every major department of state is approaching melt-down and disaster, or is already there. Barring a military disaster or some legal meat from the police investigations, nothing is likely to be fatal to the Government. Brown's response will be to hunker down in his bunker, throwing things at his "garden girls" for another two years and relying for information on toadies like the hilarious bulbous-eyed frog, Ed "balls" Balls. Meanwhile the Labour back-benchers and allies who so gleefully put him in place realise that he's not the man they thought he was; he is, in fact the man we thought he was*. Their wail of loss and anguish is still building, though they will remain too cowardly to defenestrate their fuhrer, who will remain the arbiter of their careers for the next two years. I think we can rule out a coup from within Zanu Labour 'till after the election. But the damage done to the Party will be real and deep.
Meanwhile we outside Westminster witness the disgusting breech of trust in the failure to hold a referendum on the Treaty Constitution, and then Gordon's slippery attempts to distance himself from the signing. This, of all the issues outlined above demonstrates most clearly what is wrong with the man: Unlike his predecessor, he cannot even lie with style and his "moral compass" points to the directly to the Sun.
Out in the country we little people will stare in resigned revulsion at the mendacity and incompetence of the ruling masters. I will characterise the Labour project thus: An interventionist state, with high taxes funding public provision of services, tight regulation of industry and a puritanical social agenda which seeks to use the law to better people's behaviour. This has demonstrably failed in every aspect. And here is where I get wishful: can this be the high point of the Labour project? Are we witnessing the last throw of the socialist dice?
Let me elaborate: The nanny state has not improved behaviour, indeed quite the obverse. People are no-longer responsible for their actions and behave accordingly, and thanks to an overgenerous welfare state, there's no consequences for catastrophically fucking-up your life. There is no way that the public services could have been funded any more generously in the last decade - we serfs have endured the biggest rise in peace-time taxation in British history, yet The NHS is getting more fucked by the day as C. Difficile and MRSA take their toll. Even simple stuff is going to hell in a handbasket: the roads are broken and the stinky bins are emptied every other week. The only people to benefit from this catastrophe are the Labour client state of public sector unions and the professional benefits recipient.
So people are starting, tentatively to call for freedom and tax cuts witness the euphoria with which the Inheritance tax policy of the Tory conference was greeted. The old "Tory service cuts" argument won't wash any more. If you can fire-hose money at the NHS for no demonstrable improvement, then you may be able to achieve the same service cheaper... Perhaps the logic will finally seep in that the state is incompetent and that provision should be left to the private sector. The Tories are likely to be timid in their first term, just as St. Margaret of Thatcher was, but they'll see which way the wind will blow.
But this is not the reason for the imminent death of the Labour movement: They are going to have to find a new man in a couple of years after the Goblin King loses the next election. To whom are they going to turn? A Lurch to the left under a Cruddas or his ilk will hardly reassure an electorate sick with Tax n' spend, and what about an oily, discredited opportunist like Straw? Let's just laugh at the prospect of a Miliband or a Balls led Labour party.
How are they going to arrest the decline in their post-industrial heartlands where the Liberal Democrats are starting to develop a base? What about Scotland - could the SNP gain seats from Labour there, even if people do not vote "yes" to independence in any upcoming referendum? In short, have Labour made such a hash of government that a further two years could seriously jeopardise their hegemony in the North of England and Scotland? There is even the prospect of a Tory revival in Wales.
Could the implosion in the Labour party following a catastrophic defeat be worse than that which happened to the Tories after 1997? Could this then leave them vulnerable to the other Left of Centre parties? The Tories faced no opposition on the right and were given a decade to sort themselves out. Will the Liberal Democrats be that Generous? Can they and others collectively push The Labour Party into third place, and into a slow, lingering death. God how I hope so....
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