Saturday, May 03, 2008

Who's Sorry Now ?

September 2006 ... Blair makes his valedictory speech at the Labour Party conference. You can see the video here.

I commented at the time :

It was a fantastic speech, even if I didn't believe a word of it (apart from those bits which agreed with my prejudices, of course) and consider Blair to have been the most disastrously successful election-winner since Stanley Baldwin. Listening to the R5 coverage, the presenters were struck by the supportive texts and calls coming in (the general message being 'they must be crazy to drop him').

How confident the Labour party were, that they could jettison perhaps the greatest con-man in British political history. "It wasn't the Tories, it was Labour that forced Tony Blair to depart now - instead of serving the full term he promised at the last election."

Now ? Peter Oborne :

It is worth recalling that only as recently as September Gordon Brown seemed unshakeable as British prime minister. He was 15 points ahead in the polls, his leadership was universally praised.

Had Brown called an election then - and how much that memory must torture him! - he would have won a commanding victory and be looking forward to being in power until 2012. Yet, he recoiled at the last moment - and this week he paid a terrible price for that cowardice and procrastination.



In Hank Williams' words :

You know that you're the one to blame
There's no use to pretend
Today's the day you start to pay
I'm Sorry For You, My Friend.


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

ah, but if he had called the election then he would have had to make promises on the new EU constitution / Lisbon treaty, and he therefore wouldn't have been able to get away with pretending that it was a different thing.


Its funny how listening to the BBC and skynews at all the reasons and excuses of why Labour did so badly I haven't heard anyone even mention the EU betrayal.

Anonymous said...

Keeping the UK in Iraq could only have hurt Brown as well. Why does he continue to follow this unpopular and unproductive policy?

Anonymous said...

Look like the Brown Matrix is heading down the pan then!