The half-dead prime minister - Polly Toynbee

Another killer blow from the Guardian and Polly Toynbee

Inside the party this is a miserable debate of the despairing, most of whom agree their prime minister is leading them to calamity. The dismal question is whether the chaos of a second regicide might bring yet worse voter revenge than soldiering on with a leader who rates lower than any other since polls began. For a while yesterday, Hazel Blears's selfishly-timed resignation with her rude "rock the boat" brooch send shudders of revulsion through some in the party. Was this a Blairite putsch? Purnell, as a second Blairite assassin, will not calm those fears among some.

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The half-dead prime minister | Polly Toynbee | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

Polly no longer thinks Gordon is the savior

Polly has obviously lost all hope in Gordon Brown now

Even after that calamity, at Tuesday's political cabinet, with blood already on the highway, the prime minister's indecision was terminal and fatal. I am told a leading cabinet minister gave him a strong and detailed expenses reform plan, with a script for presenting it. But it sat on his desk for many days. He couldn't make up his mind, he was "reflecting" on it. Since nothing is proposed to cabinet without Brown's prior support, the plan was never presented, the discussion was diffuse and nothing was resolved. But when Cameron announced his press conference for a few hours later, it was plain he had a plan of his own. So Harriet Harman was sent out in a hurry to present a plan the cabinet hadn't discussed. Cameron triumphed: it hardly mattered what he said or if his plan made sense – it too may unravel – when he showed himself forcefully decisive in a crisis and his words answered the wrathful spirit of the times: "Politicians have done things that are unethical and wrong. I don't care if they were within the rules – they were wrong." Compare and contrast that with Gordon Brown days later: "Where there is irregularity it has to be dealt with." For two weeks Chief Whip Nick Brown – and therefore Gordon Brown – knew what Elliot Morley had done because he told them, but no action was taken. That's what happens in a bunker under siege where dwindling trusted advisers lose touch with the daylight world outside.

Only Alan Johnson can prevent Labour catastrophe | Polly Toynbee | Comment is free | The Guardian

Polly Toynbee - Gordon Brown must go

"He made the rich richer and the poor poorer. The Labour party can't go into the next election under Brown's leadership"

At last you've worked it out Polly. Gordon is a just not what you need for your Socialist Paradise.

As she says

It's all over for Brown and Labour. The abyss awaits. As long as he remains leader, there is nothing that wretched Labour candidates can plausibly say on the doorstep at next month's European elections. They are struck dumb. Why should people vote for them? The horse manure bought on expenses is garnish for a decomposing government. The heart of the matter is the economy, and Brown's responsibility for the bubble years. He personally is to blame for Labour's failure to ensure that ordinary people on median incomes and poor people at the bottom received a bigger share in national growth: it turns out that they fell back and only the wealthy prospered. Labour made the rich richer and the poor poorer: growth for the few, not the many.

The thing is, Polly, he hasn't managed to do much good for anybody, everybody (apart from the odd banker) is worse off, not just the poor and the rich, but especially everyone in-between. This is the problem that Gordon caused in his 10 years as Chancellor and has now exacerbated in his two, yes just two years as Prime Minister. Polly you try to excuse your old blind faith in him by saying

I was among those looking for the best in him, celebrating his undoubted concern for Africa, foreign aid and child poverty – but no one can know a leader's mettle until too late.

Unfortunately dear, you did know, you just were so up your own a***hole that you didn't bother to actually take in all the evidence. It was all there for you to see and most people could see it and had seen it for years. Gordon Brown was a car-crash waiting for the first tricky corner. Please now go and read back all your columns and see how many times you have been wrong. Then take a flight out to your Tuscan prole villa and retire and leave journalism to those who actually know what they are talking about.

Gordon Brown must go. Deadline: June 5 | Polly Toynbee | Comment is free | The Guardian:

The Bully that is Paul Dacre

Agreement with Polly Toynbee is something I seldom have, but her article on Paul Dacre, the Daily Mail editor is something I am in complete agreement with.

This paragraph should give you a flavour

Dacre, the nation's bully-in-chief is, like all bullies, a coward: he refused to go on the Today programme yesterday to argue his case. He never dares face his critics, happy to fry alive all and sundry, never apologising, never explaining. There is a good reason for this: the stance his paper takes on just about everything is so internally contradictory and inconsistent that he could never survive even minimal scrutiny. The Mail's mishmash of lurid scandal, bitching about women and random moralising zigzags all over the place, dishing out pain and praise often according to who it has succeeded in buying with its limitless chequebook, or who has infuriated it by selling their wares to another bidder.

Now I'm sure the Guardian has no liking for Dacre but this is a bit more than the Guardian having a go. It exposes the strange link between the two little bullies Dacre and Brown and their even stranger friendship. Polly has this to say

One reason why it's easy to despair of Gordon Brown is his incomprehensible and grovelling friendship with Dacre, Labour's worst enemy. Where was Brown on the eve of his party's disastrous Glasgow East byelection? He was far away at Stratford-upon-Avon, watching Hamlet with his good friend Dacre. The Mail plays a curious cat and mouse game with Brown, sometimes praising his moral qualities on inside pages while assaulting Labour on its front page. Dacre is said to be very close to the Browns - which makes you wonder about the spinning of the PM's much-vaunted moral compass.

The Guradian also has a potted history of Dacre here. An interesting point is the final paragraph

One of Brown's first acts in office was to abandon proposals for supercasinos, a plan which had been the target of a fierce campaign in the Mail.

This maybe shows how deep the relationship is between the two.

Polly Toynbee: Judge Dacre dispenses little justice from his bully pulpit | Comment is free | The Guardian

Pretty Polly Toynbee is looking after the poor people again

Let them eat Cake - Polly at work

Last night I saw this article by the esteemed Polly in the Guardian about GP's and the set up of Polyclinics and pointed Dr Crippen to it though no doubt he would have seen it or had it brought to his notice fairly quickly. I would have had a go at it but I thought someone who really knew the facts would do better a job and Dr Crippen has done just that. Do go and look at the whole article. A quick extract below to whet your appetite

When I started NHS BLOG DOCTOR a couple of years ago, I soon came across the DK, the ageing Greek and Tim Worstall. All three seemed mysteriously unified in their hatred of Polly Toynbee. As Polly increasingly frequently turns her champagne socialist hand to the NHS I begin to understand why she was so disliked. Today, she has produced a tendentiously headlined concatenation of half truths, misrepresentations and down right lies about GPs.

Dr Crippen finishes off with the following which gets to the heart of what Ms Toynbee is

Her article is offensive, full of hate. Like every other man and woman in the country, doctors want to improve their income. Her imputation that doctors are lazy, uncaring and cynically chasing money at the expense of their patients is outrageous. It is also upsetting and demoralising. Most doctors are decent, honourable people trying to do a good job in increasingly difficult circumstances.

The worst thing about Polly is that she has prostituted her journalistic credentials for a cheap headline. She purports to know what “ordinary people”, to her the “common folk”, want and need from their doctors. Heavens, she has even pretended to be poor for a few weeks. Gosh, that’s brave, Polly.

She has not got a clue. Ignorance is bad enough for someone in her position. But it is worse than that. She is dishonest. She is a hypocrite. She has no understanding of ordinary people, or their needs, When she is not in her Italian villa, she sits in her spacious Victorian house in one of London’s most desirable suburbs, regally handing out pieces of intellectual cake to the poor folk.

Polly a True champagne Socialist at work!

NHS Blog Doctor: Pretty Polly Toynbee is looking after the poor people again

Rousing the sulking, apathetic hordes

According to the veritable Polly Toynbee rousing the sulking and apathetic hordes who don't have an interest in Politics or want to vote is easy. Just give them the ability to vote for those who won't win in a straight forward first past the post election.

According to Polly

An alternative vote (AV), ranking candidates in 1,2,3 order, allows for a second preference to be redistributed from the lowest-scoring candidate's share until one candidate has more than 50% of the vote. It's hardly revolutionary, but it makes it worthwhile to vote for a smaller party as first choice, with a second-choice backstop to keep out whichever party you hate most: Greens and others can register their true support. It is such a small change it needs no referendum and should be done right now for the next election.

Notice how she says that the second vote can be used to keep out the party you hate most. Now I can't imagine that her desire for AV, as she calls its, is anything to do with the fact that the Conservatives now have a regular double digit lead in the polls.

Polly Toynbee: One small electoral change could rouse the sulking, apathetic hordes | Comment is free | The Guardian