The End of the Line

As this government lurches from one embarrassing crisis to another, it is tempting to wonder just how Brown’s government has managed to go from the plaudits of the summer to resembling the stagnant, rump end of the Major years in such a short space of time. You could say it is simply circumstance, but that it not good enough. All politicians have to deal with negative and damaging events. The test of their mettle is how well they do that. And that is why Brown seems to be failing so abysmally.

It is not just Brown himself, although God knows the man has had the repugnant stink of angry failure around him for years. He is a dark figure in British politics – he looks not unlike a Labour version of Richard Nixon - haggard, bags under the eyes, jowly and angry at the world. He wallows in self delusion, drowning in a gloom caused by his own failings. He sees himself as a political genius, an expert at playing the political game. But like Nixon, he is a workmanlike politician at best, and is cursed with a deep cowardice that always drags him down at the very moment when he should be bold and when he could be carving out his niche as the conviction politician he so desperately wants to be. The real problem lies not just with the one-eyed git who is our PM, but also with the cadre of lacklustre fuckwits who provide Gordo with the iron ring that so detaches him from reality.

You sometimes hear the phrase, particularly from Nu Labour, that a political party who has been in power for a while needs to regenerate itself whilst in power. Now, translated from political doublespeak, it roughly means “the opinion polls have turned to shite, we don’t know why, and we don’t know what to do about it. So fuck it, we’ll acknowledge it without committing ourselves to any real course of action.” But there is some truth in any statement that the Labour government needs to attract some new talent. Because those at the very top of the government are not so much the bottom of the barrel, but rather the fetid bottom of a stagnant cesspool.

Take those in the Great Offices of State. Brown is in one. Enough said. Then take our foreign secretary: he is a geek who looks not just like he was bullied at school, but is actually still bullied today, in the Cabinet and everywhere else he goes. Our Home Secretary is such a non-entity that even now, after several months in the job, the focus of the media is on her cleavage rather than any policies or political actions. Say what you like about John Reid, but at least he gave you a reason to hate him. Smith just gives, and achieves, nothing. And finally, there is our Chancellor – a puppet Chancellor, a mouthpiece for Gordon Brown, and a man who will probably be remembered solely for looking like a cross between a man and a badger. These people are the best that the Labour party has to offer. These people are leading our government. I wouldn’t trust these people to lace their own shoes without several years of intense training. I overuse the phrase “Worthless Cunts” on this blog, but it perfectly sums up the muppets running our government at the moment.

And it comes at a time when the opposition parties are starting to figure out how to oppose again. Sure, I would rather douse myself with battery acid than actively support either the government or the two parties that make up the opposition, but at least the latter are starting to look credible. A look of the Tory front bench shows that there are the media savvy, the eloquent former leader, the intellectual and the bruising elder statesman. With the departure of Howard and the enforced exile of Clarke they have finally managed to escape the shadow if the Major years. Hell, they have even managed to find a role for the idiotic IDS. I still can’t stomach Cameron or the New Tories, but I do concede that they at least look like a future government now.

Even the Lib Dems, who I maintain are fundamentally pointless, have had the good sense to eject the desiccated Ming the Merciful. And regardless of whether it is Calamity Clegg or Hideous Huhne as their next leader, they will at least look more fresh and capable than the front bench. They have the strangely popular former leader, the youthful new leader (whichever one it ends up being), and some capable, some media savvy people coming through the ranks. I wouldn’t vote for them unless there was a gun to my head, but they look more of a credible proposition than the Labour cabinet.

Nu Labour is anything other than new now. It is tired, it is old, and there is nothing even resembling talent left in the upper ranks of the party. The Labour party have never been competent, but this is the real dregs of that incompetence.

With every new crisis, and against the opposition to the Brown administration, Nu Labour have come to resemble the over-flowing colostomy bag in desperate need of emptying – something that is full of crap and something that no-one wants to go near.