The Wrong Man

Britain falls down international competitiveness league

The Guardian reports that Britain has fallen again in the international league of most competitive economies:

"The Conservatives attacked Gordon Brown's economic record last night after a new survey showed Britain had slipped down international rankings on economies' competitiveness.

The World Economic Forum's annual global report put Britain in ninth place in the world league for overall competitiveness, down from second place last year.

Shadow chancellor George Osborne said: "This report makes grim reading for anyone who cares about Britain's ability to compete in the face of the new economic revolution. As we become less competitive and not such a good place to do business, Britain is paying the long-term price for a decade of Labour government."

Gordon Brown likes to pretend that the economy is his strongest card but, in reality, Britain has grown more slowly over the last ten years than all other English-speaking nations.  Mr Brown has not used ten years of economic growth to prepare Britain for leaner times.   In good times economic dependency should fall but under Brown it has risen.  Our transport infrastructure has not been renewed.  Billions have been wasted in the public sector with productivity rates falling in most key services.

The 300,000 immigrants that Mr Brown failed to count

The Independent: "The Government faced charges of incompetence after it admitted that 300,000 more foreigners were working in Britain than it had believed.  It was forced to apologise after it dramatically revised the number of overseas nationals taking up jobs in this country since 1997 from 800,000 to 1.1 million."

The Daily Mail: "Ministers were forced to apologise last night after revealing that 300,000 more foreign nationals are working here than previously thought.  Labour's claims that 800,000 new jobs in the UK had gone to foreign nationals since 1997, was "incorrect", Peter Hain said.  The true figure is 1.1million, an increase of more than a third, the Work and Pensions Secretary admitted.  This means that foreign nationals have taken 40.7 per cent of the 2.7million jobs created over the period."

The Sun: "Tories said the development was “profoundly worrying” and accused the Government of losing control over the systems for migrant workers.  Liberal Democrats questioned how the public could have any confidence when ministers could not get the “basic facts right”.  And Sir Andrew Green, chairman of Migrationwatch, which campaigns against mass immigration, said the rise was equivalent to a city the size of Coventry."

Jeff Randall: We haven't been cynical enough about Gordon Brown

Some key quotations from an article by Jeff Randall in yesterday's Telegraph:

The great misleader: ""Misleading people". That was the accusation levelled by Gordon Brown at the leader of Her Majesty's Opposition. This was akin to Paul Daniels complaining that his rivals use sleight-of-hand to fool the audience.  When it comes to misleading, Brown is the boss. He is Marvo the Misleader, the Daddy of Dissemblance. Where others employ fake magic, Gordon's trickery is real: successes appear from nowhere; failures vanish.  If misleading were ever to become an Olympic sport, Brown would win more gold medals than Mark Spitz."

Always misleading: "Whether it's on crime, education, taxation, truancy, health, child poverty, public finances, economic growth rates, domestic elections, the European treaty (aka constitution) or the most obscene distortion of all, weapons of mass destruction, almost nothing we are told seems to bear scrutiny.  When examined closely, time and again, there are omissions and distortions, fudge and mudge."

Misled about immigration: "We were told by Labour - dishonestly - that 13,000 immigrants would arrive here from the EU's new Eastern European members. At least half a million have turned up and more are on their way.  Instead of admitting the problem and dealing with it, the Government tries to dress it up as a brilliant manoeuvre to solve our pensions crisis and make us richer.  A recent study claims that immigrants contributed £6 billion to the economy last year. That may be correct, but it does not mean that we're all better off. It's not the size of the national pie, but the slice that each of us gets that matters. Immigrants don't just help pay for the pie, they also eat it."

Does Brown think we're stupid?: "Brown has a reputation for being formidably clever. Perhaps this is why he treats the rest of us as if we were graphically stupid. How else can we explain his expectation that the public will keep swallowing fiction as fact?  His final act as chancellor was to boast of a tax-cutting budget. Except it wasn't. City economists quickly worked out that the tax bill had risen.  Crime, we are told by the Home Office, is going down. Maybe. But violent crime, according to the Centre for Crime and Justice, has been going up."

New book reveals feuding, bullying and foul-mouthed Gordon Brown

A new book by Dr Anthony Seldon, serialised in the Mail on Sunday, reveals more details of the terrible relationship that existed between Brown and Blair:

• "The book claims that Mr Blair protested: "I feel like an abused and bullied wife," after Mr Balls was "astonishingly rude" to him during talks between the camps last year over when he should leave No 10.  According to Dr Seldon, out-spoken Mr Balls also turned his fury on Mr Brown when he refused to step up the pressure on Mr Blair to resign.  The book claims that when Mr Brown returned to his office after failing to trigger a full scale revolt against Mr Blair in a radio interview, Mr Balls reportedly told him: "You bottled it.""
• "Dr Seldon's book says 40-year-old Mr Balls regarded Mr Blair as a "moron" and egged on Mr Brown to drive him from office."
• "In his book, Dr Seldon shows Mr Blair struggling to govern the country against a backdrop of constant tension and foul-mouthed flashpoints with Mr Brown.  Dr Seldon says the main reason Mr Blair was frustrated at not securing a bigger Commons majority in the 2005 election was because it meant he could not sack Mr Brown."
• "Seldon says that when Mr Blair put Alan Milburn in charge of Labour's 2005 election team, Mr Brown shouted: "You've appointed that f****** Milburn! Is it about cooking the manifesto against me?"  After another showdown, Mr Blair complained: "All he would say is, 'When are you going to F-off out of here?'""
• "The book also tells how Mr Blair rejected a demand by Mr Brown to ensure no one stood against him in the leadership contest. And when Mr Blair refused to stop Mr Milburn and Mr Byers speaking out, Mr Brown threatened: "If you don't do what I ask, then there'll be big trouble.""

More in the Mail on Sunday here and here.

Will Gordon Brown honour his promises?

In this video Gordon Brown pledges to honour the promises Labour made at the last election. But will he?

Just Gordon posters

As Brown goes to Lisbon for the summit today, the Conservatives have got three Smart cars touring around Westminster towing this poster. William Hague, Caroline Spelman and Mark Francois launched it outside Millbank half an hour ago. Hague said:

“Gordon Brown began his time as Prime Minister talking about listening to and trusting the British people. He said that keeping manifesto promises was a matter of trust for him with the British people. He was right then. But this blatant breach of a manifesto commitment shows why he is forfeiting the people’s trust. He may wish to forget his promises. We will not let him.”

Gisela Stuart criticises Brown's "old-style politics" for "lacking veracity"

Labour MP Gisela Stuart has been one of the most outspoken people on the left in calling for a referendum on the EU treaty.

Now she's turned it up a notch in the Evening Standard by linking the deception over not holding one with Brown's attempts to say that he didn't cancel the general election because the polls turned:

• "Recent events have shown some rather old-style politics, with the Prime Minister looking indecisive and lacking veracity"
• "To pretend that Labour was not gearing up for an election or that opinion polls played no part in the decision to postpone it was silly and gave David Cameron some of his most damaging ammunition."
• "Sticking to your guns in defence of a patently dishonest position is not leadership but the soft option and a cop-out from a specific promise made to voters."
• "The path adopted by the Government is neither honest not coherent. We have reached the absurd position where the Government says there will be a referendum only if its red lines are not met, so presumably it will ask people to vote 'no' on a treaty it has not signed."
• "The red lines are red herrings. It's a matter of trust and integrity. A referendum was promised. It should be delivered. If Labour can't trust the people, why should the people trust Labour?"

Ouch!

No friends left

In case you were wondering why you have one less friend on Facebook today, we should inform you that the profile for "Gordon Wrongman Brown" has been deactivated by the Facebook administrators.

There are thousands of spoof profiles like that one so we can't help wondering if the thin skin of our Prime MInister had something to do with it. An email from the Labour Party or the Government would have done the trick.

Ah well, it was fun while it lasted!

Voters believe that Brown spins and steals (policies)

An ICM poll for Newsnight's new politics page finds that the public believe that Gordon Brown is as much of a spin merchant as Tony Blair and has stolen Conservative ideas on tax.

61% said that Gordon Brown was "no different" from Tony Blair in terms of political spinning.  15% actually thought that he was more likely to spin.

57% agreed that Gordon Brown had "pinched Conservative ideas on tax" and including them in Labour's spending review.

Shadow cabinet minister Chris Grayling has also uncovered doctoring of Gordon Brown's monthly press conference.  Many readers might find some of the 'doctorings' insignificant but a transcript should be a faithful transcript.  If minor edits are permitted, bigger edits will be next.

MIDDLE EAST
What Mr Brown said:
"And the Iraqis have got to get a message, as I will give them today at the House of Commons, that they must not intervene in Iraq in a way that is breeding further violence . . .  and the Iraqis must hear the message..."

What the official transcript says:
"And the Iranians have got to get a message, as I will give them today at the House of Commons, that they must not intervene in Iraq in a way that is breeding further violence . . .  and the Iranians must hear the message..."

TORY TAX PLANS
What Mr Brown actually said:
" ... if we were to go back to that idea that we had in the early nineties where you make tax promises, have no way of sensibly or realistically affording them, then that not only means that you cannot meet your promises, it causes economic stability and it was exactly the problem that was caused in the early 1990s..."

What the official transcript says:
" ... if we were to go back to that idea that we had in the early nineties where you make tax promises, have no way of sensibly or realistically affording them, then that not only means that you cannot meet your promises, it causes economic instability and it was exactly the problem that was caused in the early 1990s ..."

THE NON-ELECTION
What Brown said:
When asked if if he was a "Fife featie" (Scots slang for a coward), Mr Brown replied:  "Not at all! You know in this debate about strength and weakness and about fear and determination, I think let the people judge..."

What the official transcript says:
The exclamation "Not at all" is not recorded.

EU TREATY
What Mr Brown said:
"...people believe the change is so fundamental as a result of this amended treaty that there should be a referendum. Now that is where the issue lies..."

What the official transcript says:
"...people believe the change is so fundamental as a result of this amending treaty that there should be a referendum. Now that is where the issue lies..."

Brown has failed to crack down on fat cat bureaucrats

The Evening Standard reports the irony that the Government's spending watchdog Sir John Bourn has racked up £27,000 on eating out (as well as receiving hospitality from big firms) and £365,000 on travelling (i.e. first class travel with his wife to exotic locations) - all in the last three years. He's the man responsible for investigating waste and extravagence in Whitehall. Good work if you can get it.

New research released by the Conservatives today shows that the number of senior civil servants like Bourn has grown by almost forty per cent from 2000, to 2007. Senior bureaucrats now cost the taxpayer a staggering £250 million in salary costs alone.  Theresa May, the Shadow Leader of the House of Commons, commented on the statistics:

“As Chancellor, Gordon Brown commissioned Sir Peter Gershon to make government more efficient.  He said he would deliver a gross reduction in civil service posts of 84,150.  But these figures show that this was just classic Brown spin – more of the same old politics. On Gordon Brown’s watch, there have been more than a hundred tax increases, central government has been getting bigger and bigger – but we’ve seen little improvement in public services. Whatever Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling claim, it is clear that they are not the change the country needs.”

£16bn pa tax credits system "too flawed" to help poorest families

According to the independent Parliamentary Ombudsman Ann Abraham. Read her full 50 page report on tax credits here, the second one in two years. Key extracts from her press release include:

• "Complaints to the Parliamentary Ombudsman about tax credits continue to rise; they currently form more than 26 per cent of all complaints to the Ombudsman. The complaints fall into three key groups: the design of the system; failures in complaints handling; and unfair or unreasonable recovery of overpayments."
• "Overpayments and underpayments are unavoidable aspects of the system which will occur however well it is administered, and they will therefore continue to generate dissatisfaction and complaints."
• "The unfair and inconsistent application of Code Of Practice 26, and the unduly harsh nature of some of the decisions taken on recovery, caused extreme worry and anxiety to many low income families. The outcomes of some of those decisions seemed to fly in the face of the aims of the tax credit policy."
• "In such instances, the impact on those concerned, typically those on the very lowest incomes who are the most vulnerable in society, is huge and highly distressing"
• "For a number of families their experience was so bad that, regardless of their entitlement, they said that they would never again apply for tax credits."

So Chancellor Brown's £16 billion a year flagship policy for helping the most vulnerable in our society has not only been very wasteful but has entrenched poverty (100,000 more children have been classed as poor in the last year), penalised stable families, kept parents out of work, and caused unnecessary distress to the poor souls caught up in its bureaucracy.

Many of those very souls are still tribal Labour voters. How long can their perception of Labour as the party of social justice last?

Our 'election is off' graphic

ConservativeHome used this graphic when, on Saturday, it broke the news that the autumn election was off.

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Gordon goes off the rails

Thanks to Robert Mcilveen for sending in this 'Gordon Goes Off The Rails' YouTube from the Thomas The Tank Engine series.

The five minute episode portrays Gordon as full of himself, grumbling and becoming very cross. In a temper he ends up in a ditch, humilated.

Remind you of anyone?

Fake hospital opening tops off 100 days of spin

The Conservatives have today released a dossier of what Brown has spun since he came to office. It comes as they highlight the fake opening of a Cardiothoracic Centre by Brown today:

• The May/June edition of the Basildon & Thurrock Hospitals newsletter featured this photo of a senior civil servant handing over a ceremonial key to the Chairman of the local NHS Trust.
• On July 2nd it was press released that the Centre had taken its first patients.
• Alan Johnson visited the operational facility at the end of July.
• Brown was pictured today (October 4th) cutting the ribbon to 'open' said facility. One of the first patients from July, Peter Cripps, was even brought back for the 'opening'.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FULL DOSSIER

Brown's neglect of British farming

The recent outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease brings back painful memories of the 2001 outbreak which saw farmers across the country watch helplessly as their cattle were slaughtered by government officials.

Perhaps learning from the mistakes that Tony Blair and he made in 2001 Gordon Brown was quick to act; he cut short his holiday to demonstrate that he was in control and took the credit when the disease appeared to have been contained, saying ‘Britain is open for business…We have restricted the disease to a limited area of this country.”

But five days after the livestock movement ban was lifted new cases of foot-and-mouth were reported and that was just the first of several new outbreaks.

Now farmers who have struggled with the fear of another foot-and-mouth epidemic are facing the threat of bluetongue disease. In times passed a beleaguered farmer might have looked to the government for help but no longer.

One of the travesties of Gordon Brown’s decade at the top of government is his neglect of British farming.

• Under Labour 31% of farming households are living below the UK poverty line. The average farmer earns less than £14,000, half the amount a farmer earned in 1997 and nearly half of farms have a net farm income of less than £10,000. Dairy incomes have fallen by 20% in the last year alone.
• Under Labour almost 80,000 people have left the agricultural labour force and 2,125 dairy farms in England have closed since 2002.
• Under Labour Defra regulations are up 40% since 2003. According to their own figures the cost to business of Defra regulations is £527.8m
• Under Labour bovine TB has accounted for almost 160,000 cattle and £500 million.  22,000 cattle were slaughtered as a result of bovine TB in 2006 and the total cost of bovine TB is now £100 million per annum.
• There is also the failure of the Rural Payments Agency - documented on Warmwell.

It is no wonder an August study in the British Medical Journal found that farmers have the lowest quality of life in Britain, with a suicide rate twice the national average.

Gordon Brown might aspire to national leadership but his treatment of Britain’s farmers show while he will never stand for the heart of England.

Gordon Brown - the plagiarist

Danny Finkelstein has got a great post over at Comment Central.  It appears that the ever-so-authentic Mr Brown has had to borrow the speechwriting skills of Bob Shrum.  Danny compares speeches by previous Shrum clients with Mr Brown's effort of Monday...

"Al Gore 2000 nomination acceptance speech: I know my own imperfections. I know that sometimes people say I'm too serious, that I talk too much substance and policy.

Gordon Brown: Sometimes people say I am too serious and I fight too hard and maybe that's true...

Al Gore 2000 nomination acceptance speech: I pledge to you tonight: I will work for you every day and I will never let you down."

Gordon Brown: This is my pledge to the British people: I will not let you down.

John Kerry 2004 nomination acceptance speech: And what can I say about Teresa?  She has the strongest moral compass of anyone I know.

Gordon Brown: And this is my moral compass.

Bill Clinton's State of the Union 1995: As we move into this next century, everybody matters; we don't have a person to waste.

Gordon Brown: This is the century where our country cannot afford to waste the talents of anyone."

I hope Mr Brown will ask for a discount from Mr Shrum.

Brown's council tax rebate for servicemen is unfunded

With much fanfare Gordon Brown has announced a 25% council tax rebate for servicemen in Afghanistan and Iraq.  Conservative defence spokesman Liam Fox shows that the money for this rebate is coming from the existing defence budget and servicemen will still be more poorly treated by this arrangement that convicted prisoners...

• No new cash. There is no new funding for today’s announcement – cash will be reallocated from the existing MoD budget.
• Rebate ‘less than prisoners’. Prisoners pay no council tax at all in the UK – but if you serve in Iraq or Afghanistan for six months, today’s announcement means personnel will get just £140 off. This means that over the course of a year, troops are still £1,181 worse off than a prisoner (based on Band D).
• Fiddled figures mean less cash for troops. Today’s MoD press release boasts a 25 per cent rebate based upon ‘the average Band D Council tax bill’. But the small print shows that they’ve not actually used the Band D figure to calculate the rebate. Instead, they’ve used the figure for average council tax. This means, troops living in Band D accommodation, such as families, are getting £25 less than they should (£140 rather than £165).

Liam Fox commented:

“Gordon Brown loves to grab a good headline and pretend he’s backing our troops. But as ever, when you look at the small print, you discover it’s another con trick. This will squeeze the frontline budget as there is no new money. The discriminatory nature of this discount will fuel divisions within the Armed Forces as it only applies to those serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.  The fact that prisoners pay no council tax, while our boys on the frontline do, shows how low a priority the Armed Forces are under Gordon Brown.”

Is Mr Brown really keeping you safe?

Mr Brown likes to portray himself as the man who will keep you safe from terrorism.

In reality Brown's Britain has lost control of its borders, refuses to ban extremist organisations like Hizb ut-Tahrir and is cosying up to extremist Muslim organisations.

In yesterday's Observer Nick Cohen examined another way in which Gordon Brown is undermining the long-term security of our country: He is doing nothing about Saudi subsidy of extremist mosques.  The whole article is an essential read.  Cohen focuses upon the ways in which the authorities have failed to progress the findings of Channel 4's Undercover Mosque programme.  That programme discovered "Saudi clerics pouring out their loathing of unbelievers" as well as "pamphlets and DVDs that attack women, Jews, Christians and explain that Aids is a Western plot."  "They are available," writes Cohen, "at the bookshop of London's Regent's Park mosque, which was built with Saudi money and is run by a Saudi diplomat."

Tory MP Paul Goodman has written to Government ministers about the West Midland Police's appeasing decision to complain to OfCom about Channel 4 rather than investigate Undercover Mosque's findings.

Mr Brown needs to answer some questions

After Mr Brown's evasive performance on Andrew Marr's BBC1 programme this morning, Conservative HQ has listed ten questions that Mr Brown still needs to answer:

1. "If education is his ‘passion’, why is it the case that two in five 11-year olds cannot read, write or add up properly?
2. When did he first know about the problems at Northern Rock?
3. Why does he think that £1.3 trillion of consumer debt is ‘a good thing’?
4. Does he also think it is ‘a good thing’ that Government debt has grown by over £150bn since 1997, and is forecast to grow by the same again over the next 5 years?
5. Is he happy with the level of immigration into the UK in the last ten years?
6. Will he take responsibility for the fact that after years of promises to tackle MRSA, the number of people killed by MRSA has quadrupled since Labour came to power?
7. Why did he deny that a lot of the increase in health spending has gone on bureaucrats when the Government’s own figures show that the number of managers in the NHS is increasing almost three times as fast as the number of nurses?
8. If he really believes that we should show greater appreciation for our troops, why does he continue to allow them to live in such poor accommodation?
9. Why didn’t he talk about our broken society when the Government’s own figures show that violent crime has doubled under Labour?
10. If he really wants to trust the people, why doesn’t he let us have a say on the European Constitution in a referendum, as he promised before the last election?"