Gordon Clown .Com

Gordon Brown is set to face a major headache just as he takes over as leader of the Labour party, an event that now looks to be mere weeks away.  It has recently transpired that Labour, who have long been running close to the wire in financial terms as witnessed by the various loans for peerages scandals that have come to light in recent years, are £5m in the hole for party funding.  When installed in office around the beginning of July, Gordon will have to go cap-in-hand to any and all who may cough up to keep Labour from going bankrupt.

Tony Blair has screwed Gordon again, somewhat, as it appears that a few rather sizeable loans taken out during his time are due for repayment very soon after Gordon takes over, and with the good favour of Tony amongst the wealthy a thing of the past, it now appears that those loans are likely to be called in.  The scale of the Labour party’s debts are staggering, and perhaps only outdone by the massive debt that Gordon has put the country in during his 10 years as chancellor.

On 13 September, Lord Sainsbury, the former science minister, is expecting £2 million to be returned.

On 30 September, £1 million is due to Nigel Morris, co-founder of Capital One Financial Corporation, and £400,000 should go to businessman Derek Tullett.

Sir Gulam Noon, the Indian food tycoon, is due to have £250,000 repaid on 30 October.

Another £1 million is owed to developer Barry Townsley in April, and two loans of £500,000 each from former Capita boss Rod Aldridge are due in autumn 2008.

The loans were taken out on Mr Blair’s orders during a panic over funding for the 2005 election. A police inquiry is thought to have recommended charges be brought over allegations that some of Mr Blair’s officials dangled honours, including peerages in front of wealthy backers.

Labour also owes £2 million to fashion magnate Richard Caring for a loan taken out last year and repayable next February.

Channel 4’s Dispatches programme tonight examined some of the personality traits that Gordon is said to exhibit behind closed doors that may betray his unfit state to govern the country.  Chief among these was his propensity to only listen to a very small group of so-called “trusted advisors”, those from the past such as Geoffrey Robinson and Charlie Whelan, both now fairly disgraced, and present advisors such as Ed Balls.  Brown was portrayed in the programme as a control freak whose treatment of other ministers and colleagues ranges from ignoring them to bullying them and worse.

“I’ve been a political journalist for fifteen years and have closely followed the career of Gordon Brown. I have written pieces that both criticize and praise the Chancellor but one thing is unarguable - he is a massive politician of exceptional gifts, the kind of figure that comes along once in a generation - and in a few weeks time he’ll be Prime Minister. And yet some very senior figures on his own side are certain he is unfit for office - one has called him a ‘control freak’, another ‘psychologically flawed’ and one serving cabinet minister has said he’d be a ‘f***ing disaster’,” says Peter Oborne.

Again and again examples are given of how Brown snubbed, cut, bullied, ignored and ploughed his own furrow. Even friends acknowledge the problem. The film examines a double allegation of a refusal to collaborate with his colleagues allied to vindictiveness against those who threaten to stand in his way. These character traits have mainly been concealed from the public but they have shown themselves in a series of feuds, particularly with potential challengers; for example his clashes with Robin Cook, Mo Mowlam, Peter Mandelson and Alan Milburn.

Brown’s relationship with Blair is also put under scrutiny. Brown arrived at 11 Downing Street still believing he should be the man in No.10. He’d been given by Blair unprecedented authority over economic and domestic policy. Brown has interpreted this as a licence to defy No. 10.

Numerous and authoritative accounts of Brown’s behaviour in government, the sulks and surliness, refusal to co-operate - according to one extremely well-placed insider he even stormed into No 10 and hurled obscenities at Tony Blair - paint a very different picture from the warm man loved by his friends.

In conclusion Peter says, “Gordon Brown is going to be the next Prime Minister. It’s important for all of us - except perhaps the Conservative opposition - that he should be a success. But we’re taking a giant leap in the dark. Gordon Brown is a brilliant man, capable of great warmth and human decency - but he’s also very closed, clannish, suspicious, tormented and very difficult to deal with. The success of his premiership depends on whether, when he attains his lifetime ambition and enters No.10 Downing Street, he can become a changed character.”

Only time will tell whether Gordon genuinely can change his character and reverse the clear flaws which have been demonstrated by his time in Number 11.  The odds don’t look good.

The newspapers today are reporting that Gordon has admitted his mistakes in an aim to make a clean break with the Blair years.  These mistakes he has specifically admitted to are as follows:

• Some mistakes made in Iraq
• Some mistakes over ID Cards
• The culture of celebrity

Cunningly, none of these mistakes could be directly pinned on Gordon and for most of them, Blair is more to blame.  Although quite who can take the blame for the “culture of celebrity” is anyones guess.  Gordon, of course, failed to admit his more numerous and gross errors as Chancellor, preffering to brush the following under the carpet:

• Inflating enormous debt bubble
• Destroying pension schemes
• Massive PFI off-balance-sheet debts
• Massively increasing tax burden through fiscal drag
• Selling Gold reserves just before Gold tripled in value
• Creating the biggest trade defecit in 10 years
• Pricing hundreds of thousands of people out of owning their own home
• Nose picking
• etc

Conveniently the above mistakes were not mentioned.  Over the coming months and years, as the long term effects of these blunders become progressively clearer.

After taking a pasting at the polls on Thursday, obtaining a meagre 26% of the popular vote and losing control of the Scottish Parliament, Gordon must be wondering what message the general public are trying to send him. Blair, having promised to serve a full third term, looks set to take the money and run next week, looking forward to having more free time to spend “up George Bush’s arse” in the future, as the BBC suggested on Have I Got News For You. Gordon, meanwhile, is facing virtually no opposition in the leadership contest - most likely because in the next 2 years the job of Prime Minister will undoubtedly become a poison chalice as the chaos caused by his economic mismanagement while in No. 11 begins to unfold.

There can be only one message to take from Thursdays humiliation for Gordon - the public doesn’t want you as Prime Minister, and therefore you must call a general election once you take over as leader of the Labour party. The Tory’s election campaign slogan from 2005 of “vote Blair, get Brown” appears to have come true, and the country at large is lodging its protest vote here and now.

With the polls looking awful, allegations of electoral fraud in Leeds and severe mismanagement of the chaos that has occured concerning the Scottish ballot papers, things aren’t looking too promising for a Brown premiership. The Scotsman highlights Gordon’s difficulties north of the border:

GORDON Brown yesterday suffered a massive personal blow to his status as prime-minister-in-waiting after the party he aspires to lead lost an election in his own backyard.

The Chancellor had played a major role in the Scottish Labour Party campaign, both with repeated public visits, and as a key strategist behind the scenes.

Yesterday’s disastrous result for Labour could set up years of constitutional wrangles for Mr Brown, who is likely to have to fend off attacks from the SNP in Edinburgh.

The message is clear to Gordon - the nation demands an election.

The Independent lays into Brown today, saying that he is a nasty piece of work for the way he has treated those people who’ve been unfortunate enough to see their pensions go belly-up.  But to expect anything different from the Iron Chancellor is clearly misguided, as he has shown his true colours only too well in recent times.  Public dissatisfaction with Brown is bad, but with the move nextdoor and more and more past mistakes coming to light, it’s likely to get far worse.

Gordon Brown is a pretty nasty piece of work. Over the past three years, he has done everything in his power to prevent the Government having to provide financial help to the 125,000 people who lost their occupational pensions when their companies went bust. And every concession that has finally been made, every penny that has eventually been paid, has come only after a lengthy battle.

By the time this year’s Budget came round last month, the political pressure had become so intense that Brown finally conceded to enhance the grossly inadequate Financial Assistance Scheme (which he set up in 2004 to stave off another backbench revolt). However, his new and more generous package still fell short on just a few details.

For a start, one of the biggest problems with the FAS is that those who qualify aren’t getting the money quickly enough - some died before they saw a penny. As a result, the campaigners had proposed that an emergency fund be set up to help those most in need. Getting rid of archaic rules that force bust pension-funds to buy annuities for their members was another suggestion that would help the remaining cash in distressed pension schemes be released immediately.

And finally, while the new FAS will cap benefits at £26,000 a year, well above the £12,000 cap originally put in place, there is still no inflation protection - ensuring that pensioners’ incomes will be reduced in real terms every year.

The combined cost of sorting out these final niggles would be negligible. However, when the opposition parties laid down an amendment to the Pensions Bill this week, which would have dealt with all these issues in one fell swoop, the Government whipped its members to vote it down. Although several Labour MPs rebelled, the Government still narrowly won the vote - a political victory for Brown, but yet another blow for those who lost their pensions.

It’s sad that this issue has got caught up in Brown’s campaign to become the next Prime Minister, and disappointing that he didn’t realise he could have done the right thing and emerged looking compassionate rather than mean-spirited. Who knows; the public may even have started to believe in the cuddly image the Chancellor has been trying to cultivate by pretending that he listens to the Arctic Monkeys.

Although the Government began trying to fight off its responsibility to the 125,000 victims of this scandal by saying that it was not its job to underwrite private sector pensions, the precedent of this case is no longer very important. With the Pension Protection Fund in place, people who lose their pensions in future will have a lifeboat waiting to rescue them - funded by private, not public, money.

The real message that the Government’s stubborn stance has sent out is that, while it might be willing to send money to the other side of the world if there’s a natural disaster, it’s not prepared to put its hand in its pocket for its own citizens when their life savings have been washed away through no fault of their own.

This week’s defeated amendment still has life. It must be voted on in the Lords, and if it is upheld there, the Government will face yet another Commons vote. In the meantime, however, thousands of people struggle on without the pensions they are owed.

This is Brown’s chance to show that he has an ounce of compassion in him.

Hardly likely.

It’s reported in the newspapers today that Gordon has said he intends to serve seven years as PM, three in this term before a general election in 2010, followed by another four years assuming he wins.  However, with public opinion firmly against him and an unfolding economic disaster waiting to happen, it’s far more likely that Gordon will struggle to survive his first 3 years, let alone achieve any more.  Gordon was effectively given a get-out-of-jail-free card today by David Miliband, who has announced he does not intend to stand against Brown in the competition for the Labour leadership likely to take place in a few months time.  Of course it matters little what happens to Gordon now, the damage has already been done.

Mr Miliband said that he was “not a candidate” in the race for Labour leader. He would still be under 50 in seven years’ time.

Under the plan being discussed, Mr Brown would serve for one full Parliament if he wins the next election.

“Gordon is planning to do three years (to the next election) and four years and then step down,” an ally said.

“That is seven years. You only have to look at Thatcher and Blair, who did 10 years.”

Gordon was dealt the final insult by Tony Blair today, who failed to show up to the Commons to vote for Gordon in the no-confidence motion.  One has to wonder that if Blair had been compelled to vote, which way he might actually have voted.

The Daily Express has the pick of the bad news stories for Gordon today, with its frontpage headline suggesting that inflation could lead to base rate rises up to 6%, and consequently larger mortgage bills for homedebtors.  They also include a rather telling comment about Gordon’s handwriting, based on the signature in his letter to Mervyn King.

CRIPPLING rises in mortgage bills were forecast as “certain” last night after a shock leap in inflation.

Economists tipped the base rate to rocket over the 6 per cent mark, leading to eye-watering hikes in repayments for millions of home owners.

And the mortgage misery spelled humiliation for Chancellor Gordon Brown as the Bank of England took the unprecedented step of formally warning him that prices are running out of control.

Households now face punishing interest rate rises on top of spiralling costs for fuel and consumer goods as well as the biggest tax burden in history.

A quarter-point jump to 5.5 per cent will see payments on a £100,000 mortgage rise from £722.80 to £738.99.

But if interest rates peak at six per cent as predicted by some economists, the monthly payment will soar to £771.82 – an increase of almost £50 a month. Owners paying off a £200,000 home loan – the average price of a three-bedroom semi – will have to find an extra £1,176 a year.

At the same time there is the prospect of a summer of discontent, with huge pay de­mands by unions expected to keep wages in line with rising prices. Eco­nomist Phil Shaw, of international banking group Investec Securities, said: “The inflation figures make an interest rate rise a certainty, along with the possibility of another rate rise
bey­ond that.”

Figures due to be released today from the Office of National Statis­tics showed that inflation hit 3.1 per cent last month, way above the Treas­ury’s 2 per cent target.

The rise in the Consumer Prices Index – which does not include home loans – was up from 2.8 per cent in February.

The news sent shockwaves through global money markets, with the pound briefly passing over the two-dollar mark.

In exceeding the target by a full percentage point, the inflation rise reached the level where Bank of England Governor Mervyn King is obliged to provide the Chancellor with a written explanation.

It was the first time Mr Brown has faced such a letter. In it, Mr King warned that the Bank will almost certainly hike interest rates next month from 5.25 per cent.

He said: “The Monetary Policy Committee remains determined to set interest rates at the level required to bring inflation back to the two per cent target.” This was likely to have that effect on inflation “within a matter of months”.

He blamed an “unexpectedly sharp increase in energy prices” which had offset a fall in petrol prices, and he highlighted rises in food prices caused by global weather conditions hitting production.

Firms were also raising prices of consumer goods in response to “robust” spending by shoppers. “Furniture and furnishings rose by almost 10 per cent in March, a record rise,” his letter said.

Both the Chancellor and Tony Blair tried to shrug off the inflation nightmare yesterday. In his reply to Mr King, Mr Brown wrote: “Inflationary pressures have been a feature of the major industrial countries in recent times.”

Effectively backing further interest rate rises, he added: “I agree that the Monetary Policy Committee’s approach is appropriate to the Government’s monetary policy objectives, namely to maintain price stability.” Meanwhile, Mr Blair told his monthly Downing Street press conference: “There’s tremendous pressure on families all the time. I think it’s a feature of today’s world that people are stretched.” And he risked ridicule by claiming that Mr Brown was “the best Chancellor since the Second World War”.

Shadow Chancellor George Osborne said: “Gordon Brown’s reputation for economic competence is unravelling before our eyes.” Lib Dem Treasury spokesman Vince Cable said interest rate rises “will cause misery for thousands of people in severe debt who have borrowed up to the hilt to secure a mortgage. Debt servicing problems will only get worse.”

Howard Archer, economist at Global Insight, said: “This is a thoroughly nasty set of data that essentially guarantees that the Bank of England will raise interest rates.”

Graeme Leach, chief economist at the Institute of Directors, said: “The case for a further quarter-point rise cannot be in doubt. It looks like a done deal.” Louise Cuming, head of mortgages at moneysupermarket.com, said the increase had taken the City by surprise.

It threatened those trying to get on the property ladder. “If we don’t get new buyers into the market, the market will stagnate,” she added.

Tony Woodley, general secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union, said: “Employers had better get used to the idea that our pay claims this year are aimed at winning workplace victories on pay so that workers can afford to meet their rising living costs.”

Mr Brown’s reply to the Bank of England interested handwriting experts. Erik Rees, of the British Institute of Graphologists, said: “This is the handwriting of a man whose statements you have to check and check again. The fact the word sincerely is virtually illegible is very apt.”

Mervyn King was forced to write a letter to Gordon today after the Chav Price Index hit 3.1%, the highest level since the measure began in 97.  The RPI, a more true measure of inflation, rose to 4.8%.  Last time RPI was at these levels, interest rates were 7-8%, yet the Bank of England seems content that rates around 5% are enough to control inflation.  Evan Davis hit the nail on the head today when he asserted that the China deflator may not be having such an influence as before.  The Bank predicts CPI will fall back to target by the end of the year, but they have been incorrect with predictions in the past.  If this prediction were to prove incorrect, the timing could not be worse.  The letter, incidentally, was barely worth the 10-year wait, and was largely along the lines of “please don’t sack me”.
Meanwhile Gordon will soon face a vote of no confidence in parliament over the pensions fiasco, the Tories using an opposition day to table the necessary motion.  This being parliament, Gordon is unlikely to lose the vote, but another vote - the local elections taking place in the first week of May - could prove far more damaging for Gordon.

It’s being reported in the press today that Gordon is to face questions in parliament after telling a news conference at the IMF that selling off Gold reserves in 1999 for a cut price was the “right thing to do”, despite the fact that Gold has nearly trebled in price since then.  The Times is reporting that this single decision alone by Brown, taken against the advice of his more experienced colleagues at the Bank of England, has cost the country £2bn.  To put that in perspective, Black Wednesday - when the Major government attempted to protect sterling within the ERM - cost £3.3bn, and was seen as a massive and catastrophic event at the time.

Insiders involved in the decision have broken ranks after an 18-month battle in which the Treasury has blocked attempts by The Sunday Times to make public the official advice received by Brown before he sold the gold.

They have revealed that Bank of England officials had serious misgivings over the chancellor’s determination to sell 400 tons of bullion in a series of auctions between 1999 and 2002, when the price was at a 20-year low. Since then the price has almost trebled, meaning the decision cost the taxpayer an estimated £2 billion.

The Bank of England, which has managed Britain’s gold reserves for more than 300 years, was never asked for its advice on whether Britain should sell the gold. A senior Bank of England executive said the timing of the sale was “not debated”.

At a secret meeting with senior gold traders, Bank of England officials were warned that the proposed auctions would achieve the worst price for taxpayers. The officials are understood to have agreed with the analysis but said they were powerless to influence the Treasury.

Warnings over the risks of losing money from the gold sell-off are understood to be set out in internal correspondence sent by Bank of England officials to the Treasury in 1999.

Last night the Bank of England sought to distance itself from the decision to sell off the gold. In an unusual intervention, it said: “In regard to the gold sales, the Bank acted solely as agent and the decisions were taken by HM Treasury.”

Its statement casts doubt over previous assurances given by Treasury ministers and Tony Blair to parliament that the decision to sell the gold reserves was made on the “technical advice of the Bank of England”.

A senior investment bank director, present at a meeting held by the Bank of England in May 1999 to discuss the sell-off, said: “We were told this was a Brown thing and that the Bank had no say over what was going on. The officials were unhappy.”

The gold sell-off is seen in the City as Labour’s equivalent of “Black Wednesday”, when John Major’s government lost £3.3 billion in a day in its failed attempt to prop up the pound.

Parliamentary questions will take place on Tuesday.

Happy Easter, Gordon!  As people all over Britain unwrap their chocolate eggs this morning, Gordon is discovering his very own sickly surprise as a Times/YouGov poll reveals that 57% of people think he is unfit to lead the country, after the damaging pensions trickery was revealed last week.  Only 41% thought he was doing a good job as Chancellor, down from 51% in March.  Meanwhile, over half of those polled characterised Tony Blair as “out of touch, untrustworthy and overly concerned with spin”.

Finance minister Gordon Brown, overwhelming favorite to succeed Tony Blair as prime minister, suffered a blow on Sunday when an opinion poll showed more than half of Britons thought he was unfit to lead the country.

In another setback for Brown, a newspaper said there was growing pressure for another member of the cabinet to challenge the Chancellor of the Exchequer for the leadership of the Labour Party when Blair steps down.

Blair is widely expected to quit in June or July after a decade in office. With no serious challenger yet emerging, Brown has been seen as a virtually automatic choice to succeed Blair as party leader and prime minister.

But some Labour politicians doubt Brown’s leadership credentials and opinion polls show he would fare badly against David Cameron leader of the main opposition Conservatives.

The Sunday Times said only 27 percent of 2,218 people questioned in a YouGov poll thought Brown was fit to be prime minister after a row last week over his handling of pensions. Fifty-seven percent thought him unfit.

The poll showed Britons were losing faith in Brown’s stewardship of the economy — his strong point until now.

Forty-one percent thought Brown was doing a good job as finance minister, down from 51 percent in March.

Not great for Gordon.  Meanwhile, it seems a serious challenger in the upcoming leadership contest could be emerging as John Reid has revealed that he will back a David Miliband led challenge to Brown’s bid for Number 10.  Gordon was hoping for a clear run to nextdoor, but now it is becoming increasingly clear that he may face a full leadership campaign, with all the dirty dealing revelations that is likely to bring out into the open.

John Reid, the Home Secretary, will back a Labour leadership challenge by David Miliband in order to stop Gordon Brown taking over, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt.

If Mr Miliband does not stand, Mr Reid is even prepared to fight the Chancellor himself as a “last resort”, friends have disclosed.

The revelations are a huge setback for Mr Brown’s hopes of taking over from Tony Blair, almost certainly at the end of June, as smoothly as possible.

They also offer the starkest evidence of the seriousness of the split between the Chancellor and Cabinet ministers who want to preserve the Prime Minister’s political legacy.

Mr Reid’s intervention means that Mr Miliband, the Environment Secretary, who was on a family holiday in France last week, is under the most concentrated pressure he has yet faced to run against Mr Brown, the overwhelming bookmakers’ favourite to be the next prime minister.

Mr Reid, seen as a potential candidate until a series of -crises at the Home Office, has been tipped as likely to remain in his job under Mr Brown. But that now appears impossible with Mr Reid ready, according to his friends, to act as Mr Miliband’s “standard bearer” inside the Cabinet and even to stand himself if no other credible challenger enters the fray. The decision raises the prospect of a Miliband-Reid “dream ticket” trading on the Environment Secretary’s youth and the Home Secretary’s experience.

“John wants David to stand against Gordon,” said a close friend of Mr Reid. “He believes he will do so - and that if he does, he can win. It will take balls to stand. But there is no use saying ‘wait till next time’, because there may not be a next time. John is making it clear he does not want to stand himself. He will be 60 next month. But if nobody else does, he will, as a last resort.”

The developments make it certain, for the first time, that a Cabinet-level challenger will declare he or she will fight Mr Brown. Any candidate must first obtain the signatures of 44 MPs, but friends of the Home Secretary say that would be no problem for either Mr Miliband or Mr Reid, such is the growing disillusionment about the Chancellor among backbenchers.

In recent weeks, according to senior Blairites, the party’s private polling has shown the Chancellor’s popularity falling badly among voters - particularly after his 2p cut in income tax was denounced as a Budget “con trick” by the Tories and he was found to have acted against warnings from his civil servants in his decision to launch a “raid” on pension funds in 1997 which has cost them £100 million.

Ministers close to Mr Blair also believe the next Labour leader should be English. They suggested that Mr Blair feared that Mr Brown would “wreck” New Labour’s achievements.

The pain continues for Gordon today as readers of the Telegraph are asked to comment on how the Great Pension Robbery Of 1997 will affect them.  The sentiment is clear for all to see, and it’s not pretty.  It must be plain to all but the most backward members of the general public now that Brown has created a crisis waiting to happen by raiding our future to pay for his.  The Labour Party will surely soon realise Gordon is a lame duck candidate and a non-starter as Labour leader and Prime Minister.  Who knows what damage he could do if he ever makes it as far as nextdoor?

Some of the comments by Telegraph readers are shown below to give an impression of just how anti-Gordon the public is becoming:

Mr Brown should face criminal charges for stealing £100bn of pension funds from us over the last 10 years.
He is a duplicitous serial offender from whom we have no protection.

…

I am age 68 and it looks as if I will need to work to age 75 in order to erase the damage made to my pension by Mr Brown, I ask the people of England, do we want this man in charge of us ?. I think not.

…

The RECENT REVELATIONS with the release of the ’suppressed’ treasury documents show just how completely Gordon Brown is unfit for high office. I had always assumed that his disasterous decision to abolish the tax relief on pension fund investments was due to incompetence. Now I realise just how callous the man is. Along with millions of others my pension fund will be worth at best half of what I had expected when originally planning my retirement. The number of families destined to have a much poorer quality of life in retirement can directly lay the blame on one person. Adding ’salt’ to the wound is the realisation that his generous pension postion is not only ‘ringfenced’ but will be paid for by his many victims.

…

This is a disgrace. He ignored advice and has ruined, or will be responsible for the ruin, of the lives of nearly everyone in the country except for foreign immigrants. In better times this would have been a resignation issue. I expect we wont even get an apology. Blame the CBI? Like all New Labour they blame everyone but themselves and take responsibility for nothing.

The above are just a handful of the 250 comments that the Telegraph website has received on this issue at the time of writing, universally condeming Gordon Brown for his out-and-out theivery.