Is There Life After Bigot-gate?

Tonight Gordon Brown was interviewed by Jeremy Paxman on BBC Newsnight. It was a strange set - also used in interviewing the other two main party leaders - in which the two men appeared sitting on a couple of chairs in the middle of what appeared to be the middle of a wide open empty floor of an abandoned office block. Where they the last men standing in UK Ltd and about to put the lights off as they left? Apparently, this was the first time that Mr Paxman had interviewed Gordon Brown since he became Prime Minister. In fact he performed very well. He seemed quite relaxed and not ready to be bamboozled by Paxman into saying what he did not want to say. He was very eloquent in re-stating as he and his chancellor have both done for some time, that cutting back on government spending should not begin until the economic recovery is well advanced. It is an argument with some merit but he should still face up to advising what he will cut when the time comes. I do not think he can ring fence things which account for almost 33% of all government expenditure and say that those areas will not be cut back. The biggest is the NHS and there is no doubt that the service is weighted down rather heavily with excessive bureaucracy.

I think that Gordon Brown is a fundamentally decent man but corrupted so much by the monstrosity that is New Labour - that artificial contrivance of Mandelson and Blair and spun by Alistair Campbell - none of whom ever had any political principles whatsoever - that he has lost his ability to judge anything correctly. Yet with all his faults I still tend to think that he is the best man to be PM. He appears to have a stature that the other two just do not have and I think also that their lack of experience is a big negative. I don't think that either of the other two leaders are bad men either but they are very rich and have come from very privileged backgrounds.

But as Gordon Brown fights on in this General Election, there are yet more rumours about plots in the Labour Party to get rid of him and - God helps us - replace him with "the dream team" of David Miliband and Alan Johnson. Are they all insane? Dream team? It is more a ghastly nightmare. And if the dream team is so good, why has this General Election been all about Gordon Brown? Why have we seen almost nothing of other senior party figures on hustings or touring the country and putting the party's case?

I rather feel at this point that with all pressures removed and with nothing to lose Gordon Brown will perform better that he has done at any time in the last three weeks. He could even laugh when Paxman asked him why he thought that nobody liked him. The fundamental problem for Gordon Brown is just that he has been the man in charge, first during his ten years at the treasury and then three years as PM and he has allowed the economic mess to develop without putting the brakes on. Even before the financial crisis we had government debt that was far too high.

We will probably have a hung parliament but how the government will pan out is still impossible to say.

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