If I were Brown, I’d tell the whole lot of them to get lost
Simon Jenkins writes in The Guardian:
The prime minister has extraordinary executive power and, on present showing, nothing to lose. Unless he needs specific legislation, he can make any decision he likes in the knowledge that, whatever else Labour MPs may do to him, they will not vote him out of power and precipitate an election.
Brown could do all the things I rather sense he would like to do. He could abandon 42-day detention, withdraw from Iraq and call the Olympians’ bluff by slashing the 2012 budget. He could cancel Trident, stop ID cards and kill the NHS computer racket, saving billions. He could tax those who have grown enormously rich under his regime and give generously to the poor. He could even honour his hoary old pledge to liberate local democracy and reinvigorate civic pride.
June 8th, 2008 at 11:35
I never cease to be amased by the line that Brown opposes all his government’s stupid policies: they might have been inherited from Blair’s government, but this line ignores the fact that he was the second most senior member of that government and was hugely powerful in it. The simple fact is that those are the government’s policies, and he is the head of the government.