The fact remains, no one voted for either as PM when the took over at number 10. People somehow felt that the PM is somehow a president, elected into office. The UK does not work this way. The fact stands a significant number of people complained about Brown based on where he was born. I heard it in cafés almost every day.
Indeed. A President is elected into office for a term, and is able to continue until the term ends. A UK Prime Minister becomes PM if and only if he secures the support of a majority of MPs in the House of Commons - the moment a PM fails to win a vote of confidence he is out. It is not and never has been a requirement for a PM to win a general election to take office.
Great,so if folks vote for Miliband next year,they might get a load of Balls for the next 5 years.Oh Joy.
In the unlikely event that Miliband wins the next General Election his leadership will be secured; but Red Ed has a lower popularity rating than Cleggy, and in Scotland more people trust David Cameron than Red Ed Apparently the Conservatives have someone who's sole job is to forge links with the Ulster Unionists, and don't forget that in their first term in office north of the border the SNP led a minority government supported by informal links with the Conservatives Bring it on.
I find it surprising that people would have resented Brown as PM purely on the basis that he was Scottish when his predecessor in the post was also Scottish and when the period during which his party was in government featured more Scots in senior ministerial positions than any that had gone before. People resented Brown's elevation to the top job because it was the result of a prearranged private deal between himself and Blair from which the process of democracy was excluded; and they resented Brown the man because he was the most catastrophically disastrous Chancellor in living memory who took over a healthy economy and left it so comprehensively bankrupted that the burden will be felt for a human lifetime at least and the damage done will probably never be repaired, and because they saw him as a repellent, morose, dictatorial individual whose messianic belief in his own brilliance and his moral right to wield power despite overwhelming and inarguable evidence to the contrary was deluded to the point of being sociopathic. Being Scottish was the least of his shortcomings.
So you'd rate Brown above Lawson, or below, in terms of effective Chancellors? You seem to be sitting on the fence a little.
You are mixing up Brown as chancellor and Brown as PM. Also, I am reporting what heard on a daily basis in cafés and on TalkSport. It was appalling. You may wish to deny the fact, but it did happen. This being just one example of xenophobia directed his way. I can't stand the guy, btw, but I don't condone or deny what actually happened.
As far as I'm concerned Brown was a disaster full stop. Whether PM or Chancellor. Never has a less suitable pair of hands been allowed to fiddle with the levers of power. I don't deny the stick you heard against Brown but I can only speak for what I saw and heard and I can't recall resentment levelled against his Scottishness but against his incompetence and manifest unfitness to hold high office.
Scottishness would only be thrown into the mix after things go wrong. I've no doubt that Welshness would have been leveled if Mr Kinnock had been in power. On a brighter note it looks like Milibands days are numbered.
hope note, he works wonders for the snp. roll on the general election, the next step towards independence.
Miliband will remain as leader of the Labour Party until at least the general election. The fact that this means Labour is less likely to do well in that election is to be welcomed. I can't see either major party gaining the necessary seats for an overall majority, so it looks like another coalition, the only question is between which parties.
Just as a matter of interest, who would you replace Milliband with? Who is the obvious choice? I can't see one. His brother might have been a good bet. Personally, I don't dislike Milliband, or think he'd be any more incompetent than Cameron or Clegg really. They are all much of a muchness. Like all negative PR, (public relations, not proportional representation), the more the media tell us what a disaster Milliband is, the more he will be seen as a disaster. He hasn't yet had any real power to be disastrous with as far as I can see. I'm keener on Labour values than Tory ones, but would you trust them with an economy? Er.... Fortunately, it's not my problem as I don't have a vote.
E.U. will never work for the people when parliaments run it like this EU talks snub makes mockery of pledges to Scotland | Scottish National Party
This the heart of politics. Those on each side devote a lot of effort to trying to convince the media, and ultimately the voters, that their chief opponent is disastrous, incompetent, dishonest, unpopular, etc etc. And within every party there are some who would love to stab their leader in the back and take his place, or better still get someone else to stab the leader in the back; so they try to position themselves for the next leadership contest. Again, all this is the very stuff of politics and what keeps it fascinating. It's knock-about stuff, not to be taken too seriously. It is a curious feature of human psychology that such a lot of people see only the froth on top, and never seem to notice what is really going on underneath.
How quickly the SNP has forgotten what the result of the referendum was: just to remind you, it was NO to independence. That means Scotland remains part of the UK, and will not become an independent country. It is the UK which is an EU member state, and the UK government which conducts all dealings with the EU. That is not going to change. Alex Salmonds posturings about this serve only to make him look ridiculous, not to say a poor loser. But thanks for drawing them to our attention.
deffo, but unlike you i can see no sense in sending me to do your job. very good mechanic lousy lawyer. same shit different day by the sounds of it.
The media like to bang on about Milliband's competence, or lack of it, and they like to tell the electorate why it is that they have no confidence in him, instead of asking them. Most people have more intelligence than to judge a person on his ability to eat bacon sandwiches decorously, nor are voters as exercised with social origin as the media like to think they should be. Milliband was born to privilege as surely as Cameron. The difference is that privileged lefties are called "intellectuals" and privileged Tories are called "toffs". Other than that they are two peas in a pod who were both groomed from birth to be career politicians and have by-passed real life in the process. If people have no faith in Milliband it will be for this reason and because they know perfectly well that he is an old fashioned trade union socialist who spouts the sort of schoolboy Marxist tosh they thought they'd heard the last of thirty years ago; that he has no policies except those he has made up on the hoof to be "eye-catching", and that, like his brother (whose greater popularity with Labour Party membership the media have mistaken for general public approval) was present at the scene of the previous government's crimes and will not be forgiven for it.
