UK NEWS
'CRISIS, WHAT CRISIS?' WELL, MR BROWN...
A string of key figures have given damning criticisms of Brown
By Kirsty Buchanan and Jason Groves
A KEY ally of Gordon Brown last night admitted the Prime Minister was facing a crisis.
Health Secretary Alan Johnson laid bare Cabinet fears about the scale of the problems gripping Government by recalling the words of former Prime Minister Harold Macmillan.
“Macmillan said ‘Events, dear boy, events’ are the things that mess up a premiership,” he said. “And we have had a lot of events since Gordon took over almost a year ago.”
Mr Johnson insisted Mr Brown had handled matters very well but suggested the Prime Minister was having trouble getting Labour’s message across.
His comments echo those of Health Minister Ivan Lewis, who exposed concerns about Mr Brown’s leadership last week with a warning that Labour was “losing touch” with voters’ concerns and heading for defeat in a general election.
With Cabinet Ministers already jockeying for position as successor, an economy on the slide and a housing market in turmoil, the Prime Minister has been told by worried MPs to get a grip on Government or risk revolt.
While Mr Brown cannot face a challenge to his leadership, Blairites are preparing to go on the record against the besieged Prime Minister if Labour suffers massive losses in the May 1 local elections.
Damning criticisms by a string of heavy hitters, including former Health Secretary Alan Milburn and former Home Secretary John Reid, would increase pressure on Mr Brown to stand down for the good of the party ahead of an election which could be delayed until 2010.
Brown loyalists insist there is no credible candidate to take his place, but Mr Johnson or Justice Secretary Jack Straw are being earmarked as potential caretaker leaders to steer Labour through a fourth term battle.
One senior minister told colleagues: “We have got to hold our nerve, keep our discipline and make sure we get our message out clearly.
“We cannot afford to get distracted by the grumbling and mumbling that you get when things look difficult, which clearly they do. The time for jockeying for position was a year ago – there are a lot of people in the Labour Party who will not forgive anyone who tries to destabilise Gordon.”
But others believe Mr Brown’s troubled premiership has just weeks to right itself before the Prime Minister reaches a point of no return.
If Labour’s London Mayor Ken Livingstone loses City Hall to Conservative Boris Johnson, Labour MPs fear the party would be fatally wounded.
Critics say many of Mr Brown’s wounds are self-inflicted. They blame him for dithering over the date of an election, bungling the Beijing Olympics debate and abolishing the 10p tax band, hitting millions of low-paid workers.
London Minister Tessa Jowell broke ranks yesterday by warning Mr Brown to take “very seriously” the simmering backbench revolt which, she said, was not confined to the “usual suspects”.
Mr Brown will fly to the US next week to meet President George Bush and presidential hopefuls John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, but the long-planned trip will only fuel an impression of a Prime Minister in flight from crisis.
Despite Mr Brown’s pleadings that Britain is well placed to weather the global economic storm, critics warn that he does not seem to understand the scale of the housing market crisis.
Chancellor Alistair Darling yesterday blamed banks for freezing first- time buyers out of the market by demanding larger deposits.
The number of loans could be halved this year, leaving a million home owners unable to buy and millions more facing the prospect of negative equity with house prices set to fall by up to 30 per cent.
An opinion poll last night put further pressure on Mr Brown. YouGov has Labour on 26 per cent, the Lib Dems on 17 per cent and the Conservatives on 44 per cent – enough to secure a Conservative majority in a general election.
The Prime Minister’s own standing with voters has plunged from a peak of 48 last September to minus 37 – the sharpest decline of any modern leader.
Only 14 per cent of voters thought Mr Brown was in control of events.
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CRISIS
20.04.08, 3:46pm
so
Jack straw might be the stand in prime minster, is he the one that not many years ago, increased over the top prison sentences, which have seen little old dears locked up for not being able to afford there council tax bills and judges dishing out massive sentences for drug dealers etc that asn't even made in dint in the drugs on the streets, yet letting child molesters, peado's rapists etc get sentences that don't come no where near to fitting the crimes they do ,his he the one that stood by Tony blair on the war in iraq that they had weapons to detroy the world and all thats been found so far are pea shooters, god help us if we have to put up with anymore of these people, and the next lot the conservatives,that we'll build more prison places and lock even more up, why don't they really just look at the true courses of crime 3 million kids in poverty that tells a complete story to why crime is commited, but they will go on locking the poorest of society up who are not dangerous which will reap the seeds of more crime and it will go on and on
• Posted by: ray1960 • Report Comment
COME OFF IT P-P
20.04.08, 11:58am
Things have got better.
Better sleaze
Better jobs for the boys
Better expenses for MPs
Better money for Govt advisors
Better ways of screwing the Taxpayer
Better redistribution of wealth as the poor don't need it
:-)
• Posted by: KaosTheory • Report Comment
ANOTHER WEEK OLDER AND THE CRISIS JUST GETS WORSE
20.04.08, 10:38am
Remember "Things can only get better"?
Gormless is facing two serious rebellions in his own party, he is fcing appalling personal poll ratings, he is facing Labour's lowest poll rating ever, he is less popular than Neville Chamberlain, inflation is going berserk, he has betrayed the british people on the EU and basically everyone is now treating Gormless with the contempt he deserves.
Gormless is a "dead man walking".
But things will only get better when we have finally consigned Labour to history. There is only one way to do that. We must go out in our millions and vote Labour out.
• Posted by: Peter_Pan • Report Comment
EVENTS JUST HAPPEN
14.04.08, 1:14pm
Gordon the moron engineered every single thing that is now wrong with Britain.
Immigration,the international health service,rotten schools,filthy hospitals,the pensions crisis oh and much,much more were all the Scotch scumbags doing.
Are they now trying to pretend that events just overtook them like a tsunami.
These corrupt thieves have lied so often they now believe their own fabrication.
• Posted by: thewarlord • Report Comment
DISASTER UPON DISASTER
14.04.08, 10:10am
At last the truth is out. Despite all the labour spin to the contrary, Brown was a disastrous Chancellor. Providing you're sufficiently self deluded there is nothing easier than spending money, particularly if it's not your own and Brown has been blowing ours for the last ten years. Now he has moved on to be a disastrous Prime Minister and even though nobody elected the man there is no way of getting rid of him unless his own party throws him out and who would they chose next, the mind boggles.
• Posted by: splodge • Report Comment
CRISIS,WHAT CRISIS?
13.04.08, 11:49pm
Seemed to have heard that phrase said before by Jim Callaghan ,then look what happened
• Posted by: Maggie • Report Comment
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