A New Brown Strategy

So here we have the new Gordon Brown strategy. Whenever the opposition disagree with them, Gordo will tell them that their opposition is unhelpful and that they should unite behind the government in difficult times. Be it the outcry over Baby P, or the economic meltdown.

The implication is clear. If the opposition dare to oppose, then they are being obstructive and are damaging the attempts to rescue the economy and, the bastards, may actually be putting the lives of other kids at risk. It is not a million miles away from the same sort of strategy and the same rhetoric that allowed Bush to suppress any opposition to his policies in the aftermath of 9/11. If you opposed Bush, you were unpatriotic. And if you oppose Brown, then you are unpatriotic. And are damaging the country.

Which is, of course, palpable nonsense. Ignoring (for the sake of brevity) the fact that Brown is wrong over pretty much everything, let's instead note what the point of Her Majesty's Opposition. It is to oppose. And the Tory opposition does precious little actual opposing, so they should be praised when they do. See, when someone opposes Brown, they actually have a different opinion from him that is not right, not wrong, but just different. It is the totalitarian arrogance of Brown that allows him to claim any deviation from his supposed orthodoxy is unhelpful and wrong.

I've no doubt that Brown, if challenged, would argue that these are unprecedented times and that the Tories should get behind him. But are they really unprecedented? Babies have been murdered before. The economy has nosedived before. And the opposition they... well, they still opposed. After all, did the Labour party completely stop opposing the Tories during the recession of the early 1990's? If memory serves, they weren't - to say the least - that supportive. In fact, the last time there was geniune unity between the Labour party and the Tory party - to the extent where opposition stopped altogether rather than there being agreement on some issues or on some laws - was back in World War Two. And whilst things aren't great in this country at the moment, things certainly aren't as bad as back in the dark days of 1940, when Britain faced a real threat of invasion by a brutal, totalitarian dictatorship.

Brown's attitude towards anyone daring to oppose him is typical of Nu Labour arrogance. They have some solutions that they believe (wrongly) will help the country. They are so detached from reality, and so believing in their own hype (and the hype that the rest of the country stopped believing years ago) that anyone who does not agree must be being deliberately destructive. Rather than just someone with a different opinion.