Gordon Brown And The Generals

[poliphilo]

I'm guessing Gordon Brown has an old-fashioned, 60s radical, Old Labour distaste for the military.  I'm more or less of his generation and I have it too. This might explain why he was so bloody rude to the Generals when he was Chancellor.

I'm all for being bloody rude to the Generals.

But it's all on the surface with him.  He retains the attitudes of a bolshy undergraduate but he doesn't carry through. He didn't resign over Iraq or cancel Trident or pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan when he succeeded Blair.

So it's not actually war he objects to or the hardware of war- just soldiers.

 And because he didn't want to deal face to face with soldiers we're now in a situation where our military are overstretched and underequipped and ill-cared for.

We're fighting two wars and he thinks the Minister of Defence has so little to do that he makes the job part time. Unbelievable.

They used to say he was deep- I guess because he sulks a lot and reportedly reads books- but there aren't any principles there or real ideas (witness the last Queen's speech) just an Emo attitude and massive self-regard. 

Comments

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

You know, I do think both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown are actually decent guys who went into politics to make a difference. They are not especially left wing, and once the Berlin Wall came down it would have been hard for them to make a career as card carrying socialists. So they refocussed on treading the difficult path between the American free market economy and the European soft social democratic model.

Tony is rather too articulate about his beliefs and motives, which makes him sound smarmy, Gordon is a lot like Mr M, a quiet, semi-Asperger's type who finds it hard to articulate what he feels. We could wish they had acted rather more left-wing, but it must be very hard when you actually get into power and there are all those career Sir Humphrey's telling you that "that would be a courageous decision, Minister". We all of us make mistakes in life. In my job, I have the great advantage that I do not do my work under public scrutiny.

I think the New Labour government went into the Iraq war because they really believed in the Weapons of Mass Destruction. A far far bigger scandal than losing a couple of CDs centres on - who told them about these fictional weapons, who lied? I don't know if we will ever find out. I suspect that David Kelly knew the truth, and was about to tell it, but he was silenced.

However, for the first time since 1983 I am listening a little harder to what the Tories have to say, and my motives are around speed cameras, CCTV, identity cards, ASBOs and detention without charge for more than 28 days. Who would that thought that the Labour government would go so fascist on us?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I believe you're right. Blair and Brown aren't intrinsically bad. No-one goes into politics wanting to be Dr Evil.

But I'm afraid I can't give them the benefit of the doubt over Iraq. I was following that story closely and I knew at the time the WMDs were being used as a pretext and probably didn't exist. The evidence just wasn't there. And No 10 tacitly admitted as much by "sexing-up" the dossier in house.

I have never ever voted for the Tories and it bothers me to find I'm considering doing it next time round. But Cameron has positioned himself on the right (by which I mean the left) side of the argument too many times now for me to dismiss him out of hand.