The Sketch: Wake up: Gordon the Bore is on again
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Your support makes all the difference."We will be judged by the results of our policies," Gordon Brown told us at his last press conference before the summer break. Was he right? Maybe "measures" will turn out to be more important than "men". There's an old aphorism to the contrary but there's always a first time.
The fact probably is that Gordon's exhausted us. His indomitability. His integrity. "Doing the right thing" all the time. We've had it with his heroic determination to do his best for Britain.
Even the people who actively want him gone have lost interest in him – that two-word e-petition that begs the Prime Minister "to resign" has slowed its growth dramatically (it's still top, mind you, with 69,000-odd signatories). But only 15 people signed it today. As officials might put it: "There has been a 95 per cent decrease in the rate of increase of the Prime Minister's deficit polling surplus."
What did we learn from his press conference? Only things that we already knew, if we'd been paying attention. But in point of fact, I didn't know that 250,000 people are now having their mortgage interest paid. They've lost their job and Gordon is using public money to prevent their houses being repossessed and put on the market. That's amazing, actually. If, of course, it's true.
It's a measure. Will people who like the measure be grateful to the man? Maybe they will. Maybe they'll vote for Gordon who is paying for them to stay in their family home. And maybe they'll outnumber the do-nothing fundamentalists who'll vote against the man who's preventing the market from clearing.
We heard more about Gordon's election strategy ("doing the right thing for Britain").
The 300,000 someone-or-others (young people, possibly) who are to be given this or that (an autumn job, maybe) – will they think: "That Gordon gets a lot of bad press but I've got a job and my parents have kept their house..."
It's not impossible, gratitude is a virtue, after all.
And the rest of us who've forgotten how Gordon saved the world banking system (and maybe he did) won't we come round, when we focus, when it's time to make the decision? He says we will, and his strategies seem to have worked before...?
I still can't see it. We're bored. We've had it. Whatever the measures he takes, we can all see a re-run of the Seventies looming with cuts, strikes, debts, deficits, bans, hangovers and property prices stagnating – but at a level too high for first-time buyers.
And Gordon's click-together rhetoric does nothing to explain the misery, let alone lift us out of it. Because with all he says and does, he's just arranging it so he can blame the Tories for five years of public spending cuts.
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