BROWN COULD REGAIN OUR TRUST IF HE'D JUST ADMIT HIS MISTAKES
FURTIVE: Brown reneged on his EU promise
By Jimmy Young
HAROLD Wilson once said that a week is a long time in politics.
The past 52 weeks must have seemed like an eternity to Gordon Brown who staggered, battered and bruised, to the end of his first year as Prime Minister on Friday.
One of the most significant and damaging changes over that year has been the disappearance of trust. How can a man who boasts of being a son of the manse and carrying a moral compass, a man who was so trusted when he took over from Tony Blair just a year ago, have become so mistrusted that we barely believe a word he utters or a promise he makes?
We knew about his stealth taxes and his raids on private pension funds, which have destroyed the hopes and plans of many for their declining years, but at least he could claim that those were his policies and he hadn’t broken any promises.
This was not the case with the European Constitution disguised as a treaty. He promised us a referendum and he flagrantly broke that promise. Even when he signed it, he did so in such a furtive manner that he pleased nobody and looked the thoroughly untrustworthy politician many feel that he has now become.
It’s no secret that many of us are wary of trusting our politicians and we don’t have faith in our unelected bureaucrat masters in Brussels. So who can we trust?
I haven’t dabbled in buying and selling shares for some 40 years but I remember that, in those days, the pledge of stockbrokers was: “my word is my bond.” generally speaking, it was.
Who would we trust now to honour a promise? The Prime Minister? Government Ministers? Planners in Whitehall who always know what’s best for us? Local councillors? Estate agents? Bank managers? I suspect there will be many more negatives than positives in your answers to those questions.
I am not one of those who dreams of a return of the days when, allegedly, we all left our doors unlocked, but is it really too much to hope for a return to the standards of decency where we know that banks won’t gamble our hard-earned money on highly risky sub prime loans, that politicians will stop breaking promises and telling us barefaced lies and that estate agents will operate on the basis that their word is their bond?
For a start, although Gordon Brown’s embarrassingly inept performance as Prime Minister has probably doomed Labour to lose the next election, he could refurbish some of his damaged reputation by publicly admitting that he was wrong to deny us the referendum he promised us on the European Constitution.
It wouldn’t take much effort to restore our trust in a great many institutions and people. But will it happen? My advice is, don’t hold your breath.
●E-mail Jimmy at jimmy.young@express.co.uk
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NO REALLY ?????
06.07.08, 9:38am
Oh please Brown is only symptomatic of the utter decay of NuLabour which began almost as soon as Blair took office, one disaster after another.There is no "hope" for this party. End of.
• Posted by: Macgregor • Report Comment
BROWN COULD REGAIN OUR TRUST
06.07.08, 9:32am
Hey Jimmy
What are you talking about, he never had our trust, we never wanted him.
He is a Prime Minister without a mandate to govern.
This is the man that for ten years as Chancellor, taxed us to the point of pain, stole from, and ruined the pension funds, sold most of the gold reserve, when the price of gold was at an all time low, etc. etc.
For you to write such an article, I can only assume you have been promised some reward, we all know, that it is par for the course.
May be 'Sir Jimmy' if you convince us he is a good, decent and caring man.
• Posted by: sheptenelan • Report Comment
IT WOULD TAKE A LONG TIME
29.06.08, 8:20pm
As someone who spent their whole life controlling the finances of small companies - the real world - I have to say that, if Gordon Brown were to start admitting his mistakes now, he would still be confessing in twelve months time.
• Posted by: peterwest • Report Comment
HEY LOL!!!! BROWN "CARRYING A MORAL COMPASS"? THE MAGNETIC NORTH MUST HAVE SERIOUSLY SHIFTED OFF ITS AXIS
29.06.08, 7:21pm
Dictator Gormless Brown is totally incapable of admitting his mistakes. He does not know the meaning of the word "sorry".
Get it right Jimmy, Gormless is a control freak of the first order - there is no intonation in his voice - he is merely reading typed lines of depression into a microphone.
AND THE ELECTORATE HAVE HAD ENOUGH OF McBrown and all the other McMafia in the House of Conmen.
• Posted by: ReubenMohawali • Report Comment
MAN OF PRINCIPLE!!!!......HA HA LMAO!!!
29.06.08, 5:21pm
He may HAVE been a man of priciple and a man with a moral compass, but he left these at home the day he became a socialist member of parliament.
There are super advanced electron scanning microscopes in the most advanced of our Universities and research institutions, but I'll bet the nations' wealth not even these can detect any morals within the 'great unelected' and his party of thieves.
• Posted by: moorlok • Report Comment
NOBODY TRUSTS A WEASEL.
29.06.08, 5:05pm
Jimmy, Jimmy. How could you write this?. After all the respect I built up for you, you write almost in a forgiving mood for this "yesterday's man". If someone proves, he pr she, that they have no character and will twist the facts at any time for the sake of expediency, then they are beyond the big forgiveness routine. Concentrate on the removal van, Jimmy. Most of us can't wait,
• Posted by: bluenote • Report Comment
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