Friday, September 14, 2007
Apparently unlikely allies: Brown and Thatcher
Margaret Thatcher returned to Downing Street for tea with Gordon Brown on Thursday in the Labour prime minister’s most brazen attempt yet to attract Conservative voters. (And why not ?).
Insiders said the meeting was set up four weeks ago and was not designed to overshadow the launch of Tory proposals on the environment.
Labour also revealed that it had hired Saatchi & Saatchi, the advertising agency which helped Lady Thatcher win power in 1979. Thatcher is still articulate, despite a series of strokes. But one intimate later told friends that, after Mr Brown praised her conviction politics, "we had to restrain her from sending a thank-you note".
Liberals say that rather than rallying floating voters under Brown's "all the talents" flag of convenience, it will remind them of other cheap tricks he's played in the past and might therefore restrain him from playing too many more.
Brown does leave that impression in some ways. By "cheap tricks" the April 2007 budget seems to be a key reference. Certainly that budget had a bad effect on the poorer people, and not the positive one Brown wanted to suggest. PFIs and other creeping denationalisation methods certainly do not seem very good policy either. But Europe overall does not seem to be as wise as it should be, and the privatisation of Deutsche Bahn could be one of the saddest moves of the decade. Write about Northern Rock ? Oh, a straw that shows the cold way the wind is blowing.
IMO: I have been uneasy about PFIs and other matters for a long time now, and in that I share a view with "Private Eye", certainly not something I always do.
Insiders said the meeting was set up four weeks ago and was not designed to overshadow the launch of Tory proposals on the environment.
Labour also revealed that it had hired Saatchi & Saatchi, the advertising agency which helped Lady Thatcher win power in 1979. Thatcher is still articulate, despite a series of strokes. But one intimate later told friends that, after Mr Brown praised her conviction politics, "we had to restrain her from sending a thank-you note".
Liberals say that rather than rallying floating voters under Brown's "all the talents" flag of convenience, it will remind them of other cheap tricks he's played in the past and might therefore restrain him from playing too many more.
Brown does leave that impression in some ways. By "cheap tricks" the April 2007 budget seems to be a key reference. Certainly that budget had a bad effect on the poorer people, and not the positive one Brown wanted to suggest. PFIs and other creeping denationalisation methods certainly do not seem very good policy either. But Europe overall does not seem to be as wise as it should be, and the privatisation of Deutsche Bahn could be one of the saddest moves of the decade. Write about Northern Rock ? Oh, a straw that shows the cold way the wind is blowing.
IMO: I have been uneasy about PFIs and other matters for a long time now, and in that I share a view with "Private Eye", certainly not something I always do.
# posted by uv : 7:09 PM
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