Thread: A stirring and evocative speech from British PM Gordon Brown

Thought I was being sarcastic, didn't you? That's what I would've thought. Where did THIS Gordon come from??

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BA2Jz7xIXw&feature=player_embedded"]YouTube- Gordon Brown's speech to Citizens UK[/ame]

Of course there's some stuff in here I don't fully understand (I mean I understand it, but I tend to tune out whenever anything about taxes or the economy comes into a discussion) so I'm not endorsing everything he's saying, but where has this Brown been for the last few years? Maybe Britain wouldn't be under so much threat from that lunatic Cameron if this Brown had been showing his face a little more.

Who cares, Cleggmania shall make them both irrelevant. Or, it won't, but there's a distinct possibility that it will at least lead to electoral reform which is one thing this country desperately needs because the current system is shambolic and frankly undemocratic.

Also I haven't actually watched the video yet.

in other news, i LOVE the word "shambolic"

Originally Posted by sycld

oh so that's what you brits are calling it

well what do you expect the liberal democrats to do, dissolve the house of lords and replace them with either a directly elected upper house or one in which appointments are made by elected local government officials?

Essentially (and this is of course an optimistic best case scenario but hey, that's what politics is all about) a huge lib dem surge will create a hung parliament (a lib dem majority government is currently impossible). This means the other parties will need lib dem support for any policies they want to get through and a big compromise for this (backed by overwhelming public support because the public will realise that the current system does not represent them) will be a change to a system based on proportional representation or something. I can't be bothered fact checking and editing my hastily put together sentences right now because it's early o' clock in the morning but still, you get the idea.

That aside, after watching the video I've never been more convinced that Brown is a vapid, useless robot. He's just suddenly had some sort of obama emulation program installed and is now running on a passion overdrive setting. In terms of oratory, it's better than average for a UK politician but still not great (lots of fumbling words etc) but listen to what he says. It's all style and zero substance. Broad sweeping statements which are guaranteed to push Citizens UK easily manipulated buttons with a few tiny policy details at the end which are mostly to round off an attack on the tory inheritance tax cut policy. At least he didn't call anyone a bigot.

He's been watching Obama, that's for sure.

Originally Posted by sycld

oh so that's what you brits are calling it

well what do you expect the liberal democrats to do, dissolve the house of lords and replace them with either a directly elected upper house or one in which appointments are made by elected local government officials?

As I understand it, all the parties will end up doing this. Labour were initially thinking about a House of Lords composed of life peers (i.e. those who had achieved excellence in some field or other during their lives) as opposed to hereditary peers, but that's out of the window because the government retained the right to appoint peers and so the place is now stuffed with Labour cronies and people who made huge donations. So now, rather than devolve peerage adjudication to an independent panel/committee, we'll probably get a house elected on a 15 year cycle composed of "senators" and lose some of the balance the Lords has historically given to cheap democratic populism, all in the name of progress, see.

Originally Posted by simonj

Essentially (and this is of course an optimistic best case scenario but hey, that's what politics is all about) a huge lib dem surge will create a hung parliament (a lib dem majority government is currently impossible). This means the other parties will need lib dem support for any policies they want to get through and a big compromise for this (backed by overwhelming public support because the public will realise that the current system does not represent them) will be a change to a system based on proportional representation or something. I can't be bothered fact checking and editing my hastily put together sentences right now because it's early o' clock in the morning but still, you get the idea.

That aside, after watching the video I've never been more convinced that Brown is a vapid, useless robot. He's just suddenly had some sort of obama emulation program installed and is now running on a passion overdrive setting. In terms of oratory, it's better than average for a UK politician but still not great (lots of fumbling words etc) but listen to what he says. It's all style and zero substance. Broad sweeping statements which are guaranteed to push Citizens UK easily manipulated buttons with a few tiny policy details at the end which are mostly to round off an attack on the tory inheritance tax cut policy. At least he didn't call anyone a bigot.

He's been watching Obama, that's for sure.

Labour would at least hold a referendum on electoral change either to alternative vote or some other prop. rep. system, with or without the Lib Dems. It's only the Conservatives who are trying to defend First Past The Post and yeah they'll be swayed from that if it'll get them into office.
And ok he was very style over substance in that speech but that's the game the other two have been playing since the very beginning - the noticeable feature of this election is that only Gordon Brown has been talking substance at all (because he's a walking history of Democratic Socialism... think Mr. Die for leftist action in the West). I mean, I hate to defend New Labour but I really must call you out on accusing Mr. Brown of cheap imitation of Obama when that's what the other two have been doing from the very start - to a sickening extent. I mean seriously, one speech and you attack him on precisely the things that the British public have signally ignored in the other two.
P.S. The Lib Dems are not our salvation.
If the election was rigged and we got Labour again, what we'd get would be four to five years more of New Labour, the leftist wing of the We Love Thatcher party. Either we'd get more attempts to adapt leftism to right wing economic theory - like the quasi market stuff which ended with the hospital beds scandal stuff and the people-turned-away-with-cancer-having-been-given-a-check-up waiting lists stuff and the schools catchment area stuff, or we'd get a return to A Semi-Keynesian Old Labour and I really think that that would be the actual mythical ideal outcome of this election.
Of course, all the fears about Cameron are justified - the slimiest thing is that he talks like a One Nation Conservative (which is the closest one gets in current politics to my ideological home ground) with his Big Society nonsense but he's really a Thatcherite plain and simple.
The Lib Dems are worse than these two because either they have no idea what they're talking about or they have patently evil policies. The ONLY exceptions are the axing of the council tax, community based punishments and scrapping tuition fees and I'm not sure this stuff is economically possible without the daisies in the hair unilateralism nonsense.

In B4 Hussein comes in here and agrees with the speech

Yeah, except this isn't medieval history.

I probably should have just said 'this isn't france' as I'm quite sure the guillotine wasn't (widely) used over here anyway.

what the fuck this isnt someone getting kicked in the balls get that poop out of here

I was a stoner music student who dropped history when I was 14. I'm lucky I can even spell guillotine. Although quick research informed me that we invented an early predecessor to the guillotine which WAS used in medieval times. So suck it fag (cue your lame joke about ciggarettes and British idioms, or Bridioms)

Originally Posted by sycld

i'm so glad the british education system isn't failing anyone.

america's is, of course, without any flaw

Actually the Lib Dems quite firmly aren't Thatcherite. I daresay I'm quite alone in thinking the manifesto produced by the coalition better than any of those produced by the individual parties. Between them, they command a sizable enough majority that Cameron can afford Thatcherite rebel backbenchers and still get through the coalition's "Soft Tory" policies, and yet the Tory party is large enough to combine with the lib dem right to push through budgeting. What I imagined to be the broadly affected concerns of both parties for localism and accountability (For the Tories as an expedient way of phrasing policies that are otherwise simply traditional cries for "smaller government", tax cuts for the middle and upper class, and greater toil and industry and a lower standard of living for British proles; for the Lib Dems as a claim to offer change) have actually made it through to the coalition manifesto in most areas, so I feel I need to apologise for some counts of cynicism. Last but certainly not least, Michael Gove, my very favourite Tory, whose department offered some of the most innovative proposals in this election, has been given the seat for education that it was touted may go to a lib dem.
Of course, I still have reservations aplenty, but they're currently diluted by sheer relief that we avoided the "progressive coalition", deeply flawed as it was in every way, another Labour term, a Tory majority, and the promotion of the Lib Dems to second party; and that the horse trading ended not with the worst of both but with arguably the best. Finally, it's likely that David Miliband will be Labour leader and leader of Her Majesty's most loyal opposition, a position that he alone in that party deserves. Champagne all round.

Originally Posted by sailor jack

I actually think a lot of people agree with this. America is always proud of bipartisan legislation, this is no different. We should be happy that party politics might take more of a back seat.

whoa whoa whoa there I said that this coalition's manifesto was good
I'm certainly not rescinding my full blooded support for adversarial politics