PoliticsHome | Gordon Brown: stuck in the early nineties?

Wednesday 24th June 2009 | 13:48

Gordon Brown: stuck in the early nineties?

Roughly three quarters of the Phi100 insider panel, including a majority of left leaning panellists, believe that Gordon Brown’s thinking has not significantly developed since 1994

Gordon Brown's political mindset is stuck firmly in the early nineties, in the view of the PoliticsHome Phi100 panel.

The panel, which includes MPs and peers, media commentators, party strategists, and leading political thinkers, were asked to assess the theory put forward by Daniel Finkelstein in this morning's Times that:

‘'The central ideas that make up Gordon Brown's policy, political strategy and day-to-day tactics were all developed between 1992 and 1994. He hasn't had an important idea since. Nor has he discarded an important idea since then, remaining doggedly faithful to every last one.'

Overall, seventy four per cent of the panel endorsed this view, including ninety per cent of right leaning panellists and sixty three per cent of those on the left.

Non-aligned and Lib Dem panellists also strongly supported the theory.

Time warp

A Lib Dem strategist said that the theory was ‘probably a little unfair, but not by much’.

A left-leaning thought leader said: ‘There is some truth in the charge, but put in that bald way it is unfair.’

Right leaning MPs enthusiastically backed the theory, however. One believed that the Prime Minister was now ‘trapped in a time warp’.

Another proposed an earlier date, saying: ‘he reminds me of the post 1815 French Bourbons.’

Leave a comment...

j park

14:36 |
24 Jun 2009
Recommended
9

Gordon Brown is certainly out of date, out of touch and irrelevant to the 21st century.

Tim B

14:36 |
24 Jun 2009
Recommended
9

1994?? Listening to him talk about class warfare, Tory Toffs, the 'Gentlemen's Club', hard working families etc, taxing the rich, and this curious obsession from Labour philosophy that higher government spending, in and of itself, is 'Good', makes one wonder if he is not stuck in the dogma of the 1960s, let alone the 1990s.

Suzanne Kinnear

15:23 |
24 Jun 2009
Recommended
4

I honestly think that Gorden Brown is way out of his depth, he was desperate to become Prime Minister and now he wants to hang on for dear life, a miserable failure with no ideas left

Bourbon Gordon

15:42 |
24 Jun 2009
Recommended
4

Forgotten nothing. Learnt nothing.

Or is it the other way round?

Cathleen

17:21 |
24 Jun 2009
Recommended
3

I'd go further back. His ideas are redolent of the assumptions prevalent in the Labour movement in Scotland in the '60s and '70s. He's adapted to the problems and aspirations neither of the majority of the population, which lives in England, nor of the late 20th and early 21st century.

Flying Scot

17:42 |
24 Jun 2009
0

Well little has changed in the Liebour Party North British branch OTHER than they are being dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st Century

Brigham

11:18 |
25 Jun 2009
Recommended
1

The thing that amazes me is that 20% still agree. I would have thought by now he has proved himself to be such an idiot, nobody would still believe anything he says.

JohnC

08:09 |
26 Jun 2009
0

A lumbering dinosaur who can only act on a learning curve that stopped and was hard wired in during the 1960's.

The fleet footed younger mammals such as Cameron running rings round him make you wonder how long can such a flawed being, unelected by his party and the country survive .

For the sake of the country not long please

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Gordon Brown: stuck in the early nineties?