Countdown for the conmen

This morning’s confirmation from Peter Mandelson that the planned Comprehensive Spending Review is to be scrapped is further confirmation that Labour does not wish the public to see which Departments will receive cuts to their budgets after the General Election should they be successful.

This country’s debt is now approaching £1.3 trillion – a mind-blowing figure –yet Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling want to continue the pretence that Labour will continue to spend in the years ahead rather than tackle the increasingly desperate economic problems we face.

There appears nothing that this wretched Labour Government will not do or say in their attempts to fool the British people and cling to power.

But, thankfully, the citizens of this country are not stupid and the vast majority will not be fooled.

The day of comeuppance for Gordon Brown and his diminishing band of followers is getting ever closer.

A Major difference in character

The events of the last few days surrounding Gordon Brown’s future have led me to cast my mind back almost exactly 14 years to when then Prime Minister John Major was facing increasing murmurings about his own leadership.

I’ve since found and now reproduce below an extract of the famous statement he delivered in the garden of Number 10 following his decisions to resign as Conservative leader on 22 June 1995. It makes interesting reading:

“I've been deeply involved in politics since I was sixteen. I see public service as a duty and if you can serve, I believe you have an obligation to do so.

“I've now been Prime Minister for nearly five years. In that time we've achieved a great deal, but for the last three years I've been opposed by a small minority in our party. During those three years there have been repeated threats of a leadership election. In each year, they have turned out to be phoney threats. Now the same thing again is happening in 1995.

“I believe this is in no one's interest that this continues right though until November. It undermines the Government and it damages the Conservative Party. I am not prepared to see this party I care for laid out on the rack like this any longer.

“To remove this uncertainty I have this afternoon tendered my resignation as leader of the Conservative Party to Sir Marcus Fox, the chairman of the 1922 Committee, and requested him to set the machinery in motion for an election of a successor.

“I have confirmed to Sir Marcus that I shall be a candidate in that election. If I win, I shall continue as Prime Minister and lead the party into and through the next election.

“Should I be defeated, which I do not expect, I shall resign as Prime Minister and offer my successor my full support.

“The Conservative Party must make its choice. Every leader is leader only with the support of his party. That is true of me as well.

“That is why I am no longer prepared to tolerate the present situation. In short, it is time to put up or shut up.”

The fact that Mr Major went on to preside over a massacre at the polls two years later is almost irrelevant, as the Conservative Party was essentially incapable of being led at that time. Indeed, he was much more popular with the British public than the party itself.

But my point is very simple – Gordon Brown does not possess either the guts or the principles to “do a Major” and gave his own party a chance to have a say on whether he should continue as their leader.

Instead, he prefers the classic Brown techniques of authorised briefings against perceived opponents – Environment Minster Jane Kennedy resigned yesterday after being his latest victim – strong-arm tactics from his whips and sheer, old-fashioned delusion.

I would imagine historians will, in years to come, judge John Major much more kindly than they will Gordon Brown.

HRH Gordon Brown

In the midst of the continuing hoo-hah over MPs' expenses, Gordon Brown now finds himself accused of failing to secure an invitation for Her Majesty The Queen to this weekend's D-Day 65th Anniversary commemorations in France - in case she over-shadows his own regal presence.

The Queen has no official engagements on Saturday and Buckingham Palace has made clear it would have accepted an invitation had one been forthcoming.

Speaking yesterday, Mr Brown defended the situation saying that the event was intended, "for prime ministers and presidents."

It must therefore have escaped his attention that presidents, like kings and queens, are heads of state meaning Her Majesty should certainly be there.

But that, of course, would mean the Queen standing alongside Presidents Obama and Sarkozy rather than the Prime Minister himself.

Gordon Brown's premiership has long since defended into farce but this, in my view, takes it to an entirely new low.