Sympathy for the PM?

Any regular readers of this blog will know that I am not a massive fan of Gordon Brown. In fact, I despise the man with a passion that sometimes surprises even me. And one of the wonderful things about modern politics is I know I am not alone in this feeling of deep malice towards our unelected PM. However, Gordo seems to have found an unlikely ally in a former Prime Minister. No, it isn’t Blair coming to Gordo’s rescue – I still think Blair hates Brown as much as amoebic dysentery – but rather Sir John Major is giving some grudging support to the PM:

“Former Conservative prime minister Sir John Major has said he feels "human sympathy" for Gordon Brown.”

Presumably Major means he is feeling sympathy as a human for Gordo, rather than Gordo is a human deserving sympathy. Because Gordon isn’t human. Oh no, I rather suspect he is a malicious demon goblin from the deepest bowels of Hell. But Major offers further reasons for feeling bad for our demon goblin friend in Number 10:

"He has been doing an extremely difficult job in extremely difficult circumstances… For a long period he had an extraordinary ride and was praised more than he deserved. I think perhaps he's being blamed more than he deserves. Perhaps these things even out."

Ignoring the startling scenario of John Major invoking basic karma, let’s look at what he has actually said. Now, I think we can all agree that Gordon got far more praise that he deserved when he was Chancellor – although with this track record any praise whatsoever is more than he deserved. And now, maybe, he is being blamed more than he should be. But there is still one motherfucking load of shit that can be laid directly at the door of the dour drip. The difficult circumstances may not have been entirely his own fault, but so many of the problems that have befallen Gordon are entirely down to him and him alone.

I know why Major has been quoted here, and why his irritating yet ultimately innocuous comments have been made into news. After all, the lazy journalistic perception is Major is just like Brown. Except, he isn’t. He really, really isn’t. Major was elected in a three-way contest by his MPs. He took his party to a (startling) victory in the 1992 General Election. He screwed up the economy in one gigantic – and utterly avoidable – fuck-up in 1992. And then he worked hard to rebuild the economy so when he handed it over to Nu Labour in 1997, it was in a strong enough position to withstand a decade of slow, Nu Labour acidic attrition.

Brown, on the other hand, was elected by precisely no-one. He flunked the chance to fight an election that he might win. He presided over the slow decline of the British economy for a decade, and now is sitting there panicking as recession grows ever more likely. For every problem faced by Britain, there is no sense that Brown is working to improve things. The solution to every problem is to ask the British people to sacrifice further, whilst that bloated pestilent sore of a Prime Minister gorges himself at banquets and lives comfortably off the taxpayers. Major may have been a poor Prime Minister, but he was one fuck of a lot better than Brown is proving himself to be.

And there is another reason why it is far easier to feel sympathy for Major. You get the impression that Major – as spineless, weak-willed and devoid of charisma as he might appear to be – was at least a nice guy. He wanted to do well for his country, he genuinely thought what he was doing was right. Brown, however, exudes this awful arrogance that suggests he is completely devoid of humility and feels he deserves the title of Prime Minister. That is combined with a gnawing self-pity and hatred for others when things don’t go right for him. Major comes across as a nice guy, Brown comes across as anything but.

As I read Major’s words, the thought occurs that he isn’t talking about Brown when he mentions “difficult circumstances” and “human sympathy” – he is talking about himself. And I don’t think Brown – the egregious cunt that he is – deserves even an iota of sympathy. Rather, he deserves to be punched in the face with a brick until his jowly, Droopy-esque cheeks become mashed into his skull and the desiccated, malfunctioning calculator that Brown calls a brain stops working once and for all.