Brown’s Premiership - By - Jahir Al-Bakr

Gordon Brown, during his long wait to become Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, periodically gave the impression that he was a true representative of labour values. At successive labour party conferences he would emphasise the praiseworthy values of the labour movement and the many ways that great movement had improved the lives of millions of British people. His utterances were merely an attempt, successful it would seem, to convince the unions and the wider membership that that he was the true personification of labour values and therefore the only one to succeed the much hated Tony Blair.

Upon Blair’s abdication, Brown duly succeeded to the premiership – and leader of the Labour Party. But now as prime Minister, Brown has not demonstrated that he is radically different from his predecessor in any fundamental way. Recently he went to Iraq to announce that 1,000 troops would be home by Christmas – but 270 were already back in England and another 500 already knew they were coming home. He promised new border police but it turned out he was just giving new uniforms to existing officers. He had the brazen effrontery to pledge British jobs to British workers knowing full well that that would be illegal under the European Community constitution. He had promised a referendum on the EU constitution but now he refuses to hold one. He vowed to control the numbers of migrants – but forgot to count 350,000. Is this the man that we really want as the Prime Minister of Britain? Or should we demand that he go now before he causes irreparable electoral damage to the already distrusted and discredited Labour Party?