Hain touted for Labour voter reconnection role!

I was absolutely gobsmacked to read THIS load of palpable tosh on the Telegraph's Three Line Whip blog. Bring back Peter Hain to the Cabinet? I'd rather have a red hot poker pushed up my bottom than see that man in any sort of position of power ever again. And I don't think I am the only one.

Patrick Hennessy, who wrote this canard, even says that Hain "is just the sort of sensible, grown-up politician the (Labour) party needs if it is to have any hope of reconnecting with voters."

It's not April Fool's Day already, is it?

New Zealand PM says: "You Can't Spend Your Way Out of the Crisis"

Picked THIS up via ConservativeHome. My eldest son lives in New Zealand and helped out on John Key's election campaign last year and has told me that he is typical of the "No. 8 wire"* attitude that characterises the Kiwis as a nation.

"We don't tell New Zealanders we can stop the global recession, because we can't...what we do tell them is we can use this time to transform the economy to make us stronger so that when the world starts growing again we can be running faster than other countries we compete with."

That idea - growing a nation out of recession by improving productivity - puts Mr. Key and his conservative National Party at odds with Washington, Tokyo and Canberra (and I would add London, too). Those capitals are rolling out billions of dollars in stimulus packages - with taxpayers' money - to try to prop up growth. That's "risky.... you've saddled future generations with an enormous amount of debt that then they have to repay....there is actually a limit to what governments can do."

"...while the U.S. and Australia broadly continued their economic liberalization programs under both right- and left-wing governments, New Zealand didn't -- until now. Over the past nine years, Helen Clark's left-wing Labour government rode the global economic expansion and used the revenue surge to expand government welfare programs...and embrace causes like global warming. As a result, the economy stagnated....".

New Zealand is a relatively small country so direct comparisons with the UK are not always relevant but the general thrust of John Key's approach is not a bad model for our Conservative Party to follow. Read the whole article and see what you think.


*The old settlers always seemed to be able to fix any bit of broken machinery with a piece of No. 8 fencing wire!

Beware of false gods!

That swivel-eyed Labour luvvie, Steve Richards, who calls himself a journalist but is in a fact a paid-up member of the "Gordon Brown for World President" movement was on Newsnight earlier spouting his own particular brand of gibberish.

According to him what this country needs is for Gordon Brown to remain as Prime Minister after the next election! Where the heck has he been living for the last 12 years? He has also had the gall to write this tosh in the Independent today where he says that Gordon Brown has "authenticity"!

WTF? Yes, he's an authentic bloody disaster who has been responsible for leading this country into the current disaster that befalls us. Just read the comments on Richards' article to get a flavour of how authentic people think Brown really is.

Arrest that woman!

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This woman had a point to make but this was not the way to do it. Mandelson had good cause to retaliate (a la Prescott and the egg incident) but he didn't. On the other hand she should be charged with assault.

Wee Dougie has let the cat out of the bag!

Douglas Alexander who is a cabinet minister (and brother of Wendy - that other Labour gargoyle) has just said on Question Time that "quantatitive easing" took 8 years to have any effect when Japan tried it in the early 1990s. (Not sure it had all the desired effects in the end, though.)

It'll be interesting to see how the Brown/Darling spin machine will deal with this in the morning.

Humiliated, hopeless, paralysed. Time to go!

Alice Miles has written a perceptive article in the The Times today which confirms that the downgrading of Britain's influence in the world to a third-rate power is now complete.

".... the White House was irritated by No 10's attempts to make it sound in advance as though Mr Brown and Mr Obama were somehow equals - worse, as if the British Prime Minister was en route to give Mr Obama instruction in how to handle the economic crisis.

The shenanigans yesterday dredged up unpleasant memories for Labour of another trip to Washington by a party leader, Neil Kinnock, in 1987. Then, in the run-up to the election, the Labour leader was humiliated by Ronald Reagan's failure to spend even the full allotted half-hour with him.

But the Obama snub yesterday was arguably worse: Mr Brown is Prime Minister, not just leader of the Labour Party. And in 1987, the White House snub, including a briefing that undermined Mr Kinnock further, was intentional: the President wanted to support Margaret Thatcher by making the Labour leader look like a twit. More embarrassingly the humiliation of Mr Brown yesterday appeared to be simple carelessness. I think unplanned insult is worse."

As one of the commenters on this article has already said:

"It is like watching the Titanic go down. The government is holed below the waterline through lies and incompetence and as a result have totally lost the public trust. The government know what their fate is and how long they have left, but they can do nothing to stop it. Their death is inevitable."

And so say all of us.

Darling - I'm so sorry. Not!

Dizzy has a brilliant take HERE on Darling's supposed admission that the Labour Government has got things wrong. He rightly points out that what he actually did was to subtly blame the Tories and the Civil Service.

I had the same impression after reading the original interview in the Daily Telegraph too. But we shouldn't really be surprised by this. All these failed Labour cabinet ministers have left in their armoury is to imply that all the problems they have had during the last 12 years in office have been caused by the Conservatives.

Expect to hear more of this spin over the next year or so.

At least Obama didn't wet himself laughing

Seems the excitement of the "pool spray" was too much for "Mr Prime Minister" Brown.

Fraser Nelson over at the Coffee House blog has a more considered view, as you would expect!

Oh twitter ye not, Gordon!

My Twitter friend Steve Green, who runs the excellent Daily Referendum blog, has pointed me to this lovely little spoof on The Crown Blog.

I do hope that Brown's visit to Washington will be little more than a damp squib but at the same time I hope he doesn't embarrass us either.

Obama is amused at Brown's claim he "saved the world"

My sources in Washington have assured me that President Obama will treat Gordon Brown with the same respect that the British Prime Minister showed to his predecessor. I understand that is code for "humour him for a couple of days and then get him back on the first plane available to the UK".

They regard him as little more than an irritant at the White House. He is seen as yesterday's man and they are just waiting for the chance to deal with a David Cameron government.

So get those postal votes in early - and often! (Well, if it can work for Labour in Glenrothes, it can work for the Conservatives!)