As The Rich Feel The Pinch The Poor Feel The Punch

Having repented of the 10p tax debacle Gordon Brown felt,perhaps for the first time in his political career, that the situation was bad enough that he should apologize. Lagging 20 odd points behind the Tories it was time for the American
style personalization of this once great Goliath of British politics. Threatened
by two seamingling annointed David's at the same time (Cameron & Miliband) it was fitting that he should try to kill two bird's with one stone using the soundbyte
'It is no time for a novice'. But this PM who has managed to survive what can only
be describe as a political stoning faces an avalanche of problems to come. Firstly
as a Labour PM he needs to politically justify the bailing out of some of our richest
institutions using taxpayer's money at a time when the gap between rich and poor
in this country has never been greater. Make no mistake this bailout is an economic necessity but if it fails (and much may depend on the speed at which it is implemented both here and in the USA) Labour will cruise to the much forecasted drubbing at the next election. If it succeeds one of two things can happen. Either Brown is credited with being the strong hand that arrested the wonderings of an increasing errant invisible hand of capitlism or people may feel they are rich enough to afford change in the guise of a Tory Government. But the problems don't stop there. This born-again Brown's moral failures on abortion and failing the poorest (in the UK and abroad) has led to the resignation of Ruth Kelly (a staunch Catholic) which has already dented his post conference bounce.
If he wants to borrow from McCain's campaign in
playing the experience card against George Osborne and David Cameron then he needs
to remember that John McCain has coupled that strategy with obtaining the high moral ground. To restore the latter he needs to stop passing the buck when it comes to oil prices. It is no good throwing your hands up in the air and describing it as an exogenous shock to UK economic system when in fact you were part of a government that has paralysed the oil producing capacity of the world's second biggest oil exporter.Furthermore please stop insulting our intelligence by pretending that the PM
can somehow affect the price of oil with a trip to Saudi Arabia. The truth is that the emergence of oil hungry China and India has not happened overnight and should have been adequately accounted for in terms of purchasing reserves.
Furthermore let us not dictate to other countries what they should do with their civilian nuclear programs while we have just sold our's to the French. The French are not to be trusted with our national security as it was they who sold nuclear technology to the Israeli army and started this nuclear standoff in the Middle-East.
But not all is doom and gloom for the Labour Party. If I recall correctly the conservative party were what seemed then an insurmountable 10 points behind Labour this time last year before the Tories turned it around in conference season. My hope is that New Brown if not New Labour delivers on the slogan borrowed from the Obama campaign-Change we can believe in!