No choice for Labour

The Times has a Leader today asking if the result of the Euro Elections will be the final chance for the Labour Party to dump Gordon Brown. It asks

The Labour party is about to suffer a serious electoral defeat. The Cabinet now has a big decision to make - whether or not to act.

The problem is that Labour knows that it has gone past the point of hoping that dumping its leader will enable then to be voted in by the public.The public has had it with Labour, regardless of whether it is Gordon Brown or one of his lackeys that is running the party, why would one of the current Cabinet want to take on this fatally poisoned chalice. Labour under Gordon Brown have managed, yet again, to do what Labour always does and bring this country to the verge of Bankruptcy. As usual it will have to be the Conservatives who have to supply the medicine, a medicine that yet again will not taste very good, but has to be taken to allow us to no longer be the sick man of Europe.

Gordon will continue doing what he does best, building lists of what he thinks we should do, with no reference to anyone else, as only Gordon knows how to save the World. The Times gives a clue to why Gordon is currently bunkered away pretending to be Macavity rather than out in the real world. According to the Times he is

...already working on how he plans to respond. Mr Brown is said to be weighing his options for a Cabinet reshuffle, discussing plans for political reform and putting the finishing touches to a national plan in the hope that he can restart the conversation about economic recovery.

In reality what Gordon is doing is trying to save his skin until next May when he finally has to have an election, one he knows he cannot win. Then and only then will he relinquish power as he, as the saviour of world, cannot face defeat.

As the Times puts it.

Of course, Cabinet members may choose not to act. This would involve closing ranks around Mr Brown on the ground that economic recovery will provide a political dividend. This would mean making an honest judgment that, for themselves, for their colleagues in the PLP, for the reputation of the Labour Party and for the sake of good government, they truly believe that Mr Brown offers the best leadership. It is hard to believe, for anyone familiar with the mood of Cabinet and senior Labour advisers, that they think that Mr Brown can deliver the best possible result for the party at the general election.

The question is now whether any of them is prepared to act. For a long while they have steadfastly maintained, at least in public, that the cost of removing the Prime Minister from office was greater than the benefit. Perhaps the verdict of the electorate will steel one or more of them to speak the truth about power. But doing nothing is itself a choice. Either way, Labour's future is not just Mr Brown's but the Cabinet's collective responsibility.

So the choice is stark for the Cabinet and any member that wants to be leader, either go for it now and be defeated as Leader or wait until Gordon resigns and still get beaten at the polls.

Not much of a choice but we can at least hope that someone in the Cabinet has the the balls to realise that under Brown we are doomed to even more serious problems, economic and political, and that anyone would be better than having Gordon in charge. They at least could say they tried their best to get us out of the mess that the UK is currently in.

The Choice for Labour -Times Online

The writer is the UK prime minister

According to the article in the FT

the writer is the UK prime minister.

Well he may well have that position at the moment in name but by his inactions over the past few weeks few would actually know it. Whilst the Economy has been going down the pan and MP's are being panned, Gordon has been in the Bunker drawing up more lists of what he has supposedly done and what he is going to do to make him look good. The one list he has forgotten is the one about doing anything to sort out the actual situation we are in.

What does his article actually have to say. Not much really despite being in a paper in which you would expect some reasoned argument. His first riposte is to warn us about how the dreadful Tories would have a problem with Europe. I quote from the article as follows

So we face a choice: to embrace our membership of the EU knowing that committed partnership is the only way to achieve our common aims and protect British jobs, or to accept the Conservative opposition’s approach to British membership, which would threaten many British jobs.

So from this we learn nothing apart from some fear-mongering. Gordon is apparently right and anything the Tories do is wrong. No description or help to tell us what the Tories would do wrong, they are just wrong, a telling argument.

Next we get some puff about how Gordon has saved the world, words such as IMF and G20 to make it all sound impressive, but then we come to the meat, a new list from the Bunker. Actually it is just a call to the European Investment Bank to lend more quickly and to riskier investments, by which I assume he means lend to the UK as we are becoming more and more of a risky investment.

Finally Gordon mentions what is going on in the UK at the moment, well not really he skates over it and says he is just getting on with the job, he will shortly have a new list completed of how he will fix it all.

A quick final paragraph to try and blame it all on the Tories who of course created all the ills of the current Government.

Worth comparing this trivia from Gordon with what the Prime Minister in waiting has been doing over the past weeks. Whilst Gordon has remained curled up in his Bunker, David Cameron has been out speaking to the Country and attacking the problems head-on and with reasoned argument.

More and more we see the Media and the Public turning to Cameron when they want a response to our current problems. They know that Gordon is bunkered and only has one club, the wrong one, to get out of the hole he has dug. Cameron though appears to have the whole set of clubs and the knack of knowing which one to use and when.

FT.com / Comment / Opinion - What Europe must do to build a recovery

Tax rise threat to ‘save as you earn’ schemes

As I expected the Capital Gains Tax change announced in GordonsDarling's first budget will hit Share Option schemes , and yes I do have one!

This was supposed to simplify CGT and hit Private Equity Chiefs, however it looks like it will also hit, not only entrepreneurs and the like, but also savers who at the moment appear to be a dying breed as is normal when it looks like we are going into a recession.

As noted in the depths of the CSR (p146 apparently) the savings ratio in the UK is the lowest it has ever been as noted here.

So what has the Chancellor done he has changed the rules and now the 1.7m savers in share-save schemes will face increased CGT taxes up from 5% to 18% for basic rate Tax Payers and from 10% to 18% for Higher rate tax payers.

According to Labour they are trying to encourage Long Term savings and wider share ownership. Either they are lying about this or they are just incompetent. They just can't work out joined up government.

As normal with one of Gordon'sLabour's tax changes it is the poorest who are hit hardest.

According to ifs ProShare, whose members include many FTSE-100 companies, the CGT changes were ill considered and would hit some savers hard.

“While the Treasury may have sound reasons for simplifying CGT, it would appear the consequences for employees saving through employee share plans had not been fully assessed. These apparently unintended consequences contradict the government’s stated commitment to encouraging long-term saving and to its support for wider share ownership,” it said.

So another "hidden" tax from Gordon. As they said it's all in the Detail.

FT.com / In depth - Tax rise threat to ‘save as you earn’ schemes

Cheap and Nasty knock-offs.

The Telegraph has an article entitled "Darling's tax hike demolishes business builders" and starts out with a joke about Aberdeen which I was surprised they knew about as it's north of Watford.

The joke is

In Aberdeen you can tell when it's freezing: lawyers resort to sticking their hands in their own pockets.

It continues

No need for that, in Westminster, where Alistair Darling, the Aberdeen-educated lawyer, stuck his hands in the Tories' pockets, pulled out some policies, and claimed them for himself.

Do I need to say much more! I do hear the Sun has headline tomorrow of "Stop Thief"

Darling's tax hike demolishes business builders - Telegraph

Another Feartie cock-up

It appears the Tax Credit system is causing unnecessary distress and hardship to the poorest families it was designed to help.

That's probably an understatement, I know of more than a few families who no longer claim for Tax Credit' because of the number of problems they have had with the system. Maybe this was Broon's idea of saving money for the government, another part of his "Vision" for Britain.

In case you had forgotten Tax Creditswere introduced in 2003 as part of a drive by then-Chancellor Brown to reduce poverty, but has been dogged with problems, not least because of its built-in requirement to claim back many of its payments.

As well as this it has cost the Tax Payer about 2bn because of poor administration and overpayment of some 6bn.

According to the Parliamentary Ombudsman more than a quarter of all complaints received from the public were about the tax credit system, run by HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC).

Scotsman.com News - Latest News - UK - Watchdog attacks "harsh" tax credit system

EU treaty same as Constitution

This article in the Scotsman will not leave Feartie Broon much room to move after his answer to questions about why there would not be a Referendum on the "new" EU Treaty yesterday.

The Parliament's all-party European Scrutiny Committee concluded in a report that the effect of the entire new treaty was "substantially equivalent" to that of the Constitution.

The Conservatives' Europe spokesman Mark Francois said in view of the committee's conclusions, Brown was "morally bound" to offer Britons a referendum.

But Europe Minister Jim Murphy insisted that the new treaty was "significantly different to the old constitutional treaty in intent, form and substance" and that the version Britain would sign up to was even further from the old Constitution.

So when Gordon takes out his "red pen" to compare them he will find his work has already been done for him and they are virtually the same. He will then have to as a "conviction" politician honour the Labour Party manifesto which, in 2005, promised the voters a Referendum.

I have no doubt though that Gordon using his own special "moral compass" will find a new direction to move that will not allow us to have the promised Referendum.

Never mind perhaps it was just a "Vision" when Blair promised us the Referendum.

Just in case you wondered 9 out of the 16 members of the Committee were LAbour MP's.

Scotsman.com News - Latest News - UK - UK report says new EU treaty same as Constitution

Marr Bottles the Big Feartie interview

Just watched Andrew Marr and the full interview with the Big Feartie Brown. Atrocious journalism, he never challenged him properly once and let him blather on about change and competency rather than attacking the issue. Brown himself was just as poor, faltering and nervous and full of what HE had done. Truly the politics of I.

Now wonder the Big Feartie chose him to do this interview. Any serious journalist given this chance would have forgotten his own prejudices and been on the attack from the word go.

Anyhow that will be the last we will see of Brown for a while, he will be doing his "Macavity" the cat act again until as late as possible next week. Maybe he even won't turn up for some of those important announcements in Parliament that he was due to make next week. The ones like Iraq and the CSR that were so important next week, Flunkies can do these for him and take the flack. I have a feeling PMQ's on Wednesday might be slightly interesting and embarrassing for him.

Worst Blow in 25 years to a Prime Minister

Over at the Coffeehouse Fraser Nelson is reporting that Adam Boulton has thrown his dummy out the window at Brown as follows.

One of the worst blows to a serving prime minister that I can remember in quarter of a century of covering politics."

He blames the debacle on Brown's advisers. "

If I was giving him any advice tonight it would be ‘sack the lot of them’”.

And he's hiding away while Ming and Cameron are taking questions.

"It's not leadership as most people will understand it."

As Fraser Nelson says

This is just a nuclear bomb.