I am only allowed by my wife to rant about Gordon Brown and his toxic impact on British life and politics a maximum of three times per week. Yes, she keeps track, and yes, even I will acknowledge that this has sometimes been necessary. No such restriction applies to this blog, however, which is just as well given recent revelations made by former Labour spin-doctor Damian McBride.
Apparently, Brown’s first instinct upon realising the gravity of the situation brought about by the global economic crisis and Britain’s unique unpreparedness to deal with it (thanks to eleven years of big spending Labour government) was not to issue a heartfelt mea culpa and apology to the British people for the upcoming lost decade that he was unleashing, but instead to start plotting the implementation of martial law on the streets of Britain.
The BBC reports:
Gordon Brown discussed deploying troops on Britain’s streets as news of the 2008 financial crisis became clear, an ex-Labour spin doctor has claimed. In extracts of a book published in the Daily Mail, Damian McBride said the former prime minister feared “anarchy” once the scale of the crisis was known. According to the book, Mr Brown said: “We’d have to think: do we have curfews, do we put the Army on the streets, how do we get order back?”
I am continually accused of being too hard on Gordon Brown. He was a good person, interlocutors on his behalf insist. His heart was in the right place, they plead. He was a simple humble methodist man who just wanted to do good for his country, they tell me. Blah, blah, blah.
This man, uniquely responsible for ensuring that Britain entered the great recession as the least well prepared of all of the major world economies, thought that the best way to deal with the potential fallout would be to deploy troops on the streets to stop us from looting and pillaging our country back to the stone age.
The article continues:
Mr Brown is quoted as saying: “If the banks are shutting their doors, and the cash points aren’t working, and people go to Tesco and their cards aren’t being accepted, the whole thing will just explode.
“If you can’t buy food or petrol or medicine for your kids, people will just start breaking the windows and helping themselves.
“And as soon as people see that on TV, that’s the end, because everyone will think that’s OK now, that’s just what we all have to do. It’ll be anarchy. That’s what could happen tomorrow.”
According to Mr McBride’s book, Power Trip, Mr Brown feared panic from other countries could spread to the UK.
I am genuinely unsure which is worse – the fact that the man brought our nation to a place where such draconian, apocalyptic scenarios even had to be considered, the fact that he thought they might be the best way of tackling the problem, or the fact that his current proteges are this very day standing giving speeches at the Labour party conference in Brighton where they are denying any responsibility for or complicity in Britain’s continuing economic malaise. There are no words or phrases critical enough of the premiership of Gordon Brown.
The book’s author, Damian McBride, does not do himself any great favours as he relates the tale. Grateful as we must be to him for shedding this additional light on the Brown terror, of course McBride was personally supportive of everything that Brown did:
“It was extraordinary to see Gordon so totally gripped by the danger of what he was about to do, but equally convinced that decisive action had to be taken immediately,” Mr McBride wrote.
He claimed the then prime minister understood the situation better than other world leaders, his UK opponents and senior bankers.
And the former spin doctor rated Mr Brown’s actions as “up with those of President Kennedy and his advisers during the Cuban Missile Crisis”.
John F. Kennedy and Gordon Brown – historical equals and political peers. Aside from the fact that they both ghost-wrote books about the meaning of courage, I’m not really feeling the similarity right now.
Semi-Partisan Politics 