Gordon Brown’s Britain

Great Moments In Socialism 70 Comments

Where the foxes caper unmolested, the government packs your school lunch, and Witness all ye who come here: the mother of all smack-downs….

I say we send Mr. Daniel Hannan an immigration application.
And at no extra cost – another installment of Not Waiting For The Asteroid…

The internet has changed politics – changed it utterly and forever. Twenty-four hours ago, I made a three-minute speech in the European Parliament, aimed at Gordon Brown. I tipped off the BBC and some of the newspaper correspondents but, unsurprisingly, they ignored me: I am, after all, simply a backbench MEP.
When I woke up this morning, my phone was clogged with texts, my email inbox with messages. Overnight, the YouTube clip of my remarks had attracted over 36,000 hits. By today, it was the most watched video in Britain.
How did it happen, in the absence of any media coverage? The answer is that political reporters no longer get to decide what’s news. The days when a minister gave briefings to a dozen lobby correspondents, and thereby dictated the next day’s headlines, are over.

This guy’s going to be Prime Minister some day.
Hopefully, ours.

70 Replies to “Gordon Brown’s Britain”

  4. In that short pan where Brown was shown on camera, he truly looked thwarted. Perhaps unlike most of the thick skinned brontosaurus’ we have for politicians, it is actually possible to embarrass the British PM.
    If I were him, I would have been under the desk listening to that superb scolding. But then, I am not an ego-maniacal, control-freak Socialist twit.
    We need a lot more of that sort of thing.

  5. As a Canadian/British citizen it does my heart good to hear this. I have never have voted in the British elections but I just may next time. Just gotta dig out that European passport and the Scottish birth certificate.
    Labour in Britain is just like the NDP here. They actually hate the working class people but talk like they are the only option for the working class.

  6. I always admire the well-honed debating technique of British parliamentarians (yes, I know, in this case he’s a MEP). Apparently someone was still teaching forensics when this fellow was in school. It has no doubt been replaced in the curriculum since then by some politically correct, feel-good claptrap, probably the fine art of not hurting anyone’s feelings.
    Contrast this with the oratory coming out of American politicians.

  7. I’ve read elsewhere today that he’s pro-Obama, so I don’t know that you’d want him as PM anywhere.

  10. Wow. To anyone who asks “where have all the leaders gone?”, I say, consider Mr. Daniel Hannan!!

  12. damn… damn good smack-down!
    In this case the British accent, mannerisms, and sarcasm just worked beautifully together. Perfect!
    I guess I was wrong, not all the British are neutered yet.

  14. How come all the good takedowns of Brown come from MEPs, and none from the Torys? Cameron won’t be any better.

  16. One hell of a post Kate !! They just keep appearing.
    Also, Hannan’s comments on the rising power of the Internet brings hope for Democracy and hope for our standards of living.

  18. Member of the European Parliament . . . the ultimate lip lock on a public teat.
    Nice drive-by but this guy is an Obama loving, big government loving skanky Europhile.

  19. As Gordon Brown ducks under his desk…and laughs.
    Reminds me of a recent TV interview.

  20. Fred, I read the column by Hannan above. It’s definitely not “europhile”. He’s spot on in some of his statements, and criticizes McCain fairly:
    “One of the consistent themes of McCain’s Weltanschauung is his unqualified support for European integration. It sits oddly with the other things he says. His criticism of the United Nations, for example, is spot on; but he seems unable to extend that logic to the world’s second great unaccountable, trans-national bureaucracy.”
    Sounds bang on to me.
    He does seem to have a bit of a boner for Obama’s style, but policy-wise Hannan’s writing in that article is mostly good. He wrote this a year ago, but I’d bet that a year later we’d find much less love in his heart for Obama given the policies he has chosen.
    What Hannan says is better than much I have heard and seen from our own CPC and the US republicans.

  21. I think Brown cannot last.
    Question is….is Cameron up to the task?
    UK is on the verge of requiring a Thatcher like cleansing…but I don’t know if they want it this time, and Cameron isnt cut from similar cloth.

  23. No Cameron is not up to the task.
    Come now, it’s just a speech in a pointless forum. We didn’t hear any solutions or anything. Remember all those lovely bullshit speeches from Tony Blair, which some thought Churchillian.
    As to the pro-Obama thing, well we can cut him some slack here. Warren Buffet is (was?) as is Fairfax Financial CEO Prem Watsa who told Diane Francis in a Financial Post interview that he is — gasp — a “free market guy”.

  24. “You cannot spend your way out of recession or borrow your way out of debt.”
    Would that PM Stephen Harper and the entire CPC had acted on such a belief a few months ago.
    Would that they would listen now.
    Canadians need to hear that every day for the next ten years.

  25. How can he like Obama if he’s spitting bile in Brown’s direction? Isn’t Obama Brown redux?
    Maybe he means “like” in the booty call sense.

  26. He was on Glenn Beck today. Said the US wasn’t in nearly as much trouble as Britian. Beck was trying to convince him that it was only a matter of time if the US brought in all the social programs that they want to. All and all he was very interesting to listen too.

  27. He was on Cavuto today. Said he’s going to give That One some more time….
    I hate to be a single issue person. But to be able to see through the bullshit of Ogabe; to me should be as natural as drinking water. If he doesn’t have that much sense then….

  28. I heard his rant on Rush Limbaugh’s show today, and he was also featured on Glenn Beck. Very impressive. FYI, he said that if he could have picked someone to vote for in the U.S. elections, he would have supported Ron Paul.
    We need more guys like him.

  31. What is it about British schools that produces people who are able to use the English language with such intelligence?
    If you watch their MP’s in action, many of them sound way more intelligent simply in the use of language than ours.
    As to Harper and spending, well look today Ignatiot was calling for a second round of stimulus (the first one still hasn’t even stimulated but anyway). How can we fight against that sentiment from all opposition parties? What we need now is a Liberal government with Conservative opposition much like in the days of the Reform Party such that created a situation where the Liberal government could do the right thing and cut spending with always the threat that “we’re not as bad as those nasty Reformers would be.”

  32. How many private sector jobs lost? and how many public jobs created?
    …and the black hole gets bigger.
    This world needs a serious colonic.

  33. Ron in Kelona, 07:48 PM: “Also, Hannan’s comments on the rising power of the Internet brings hope for Democracy and hope for our standards of living.”
    Guess why the Internet is on the radar of our glorious CRTC?

  34. Bravo! …” a Brezhnev era apparatchik”
    So who was the guy with the polonium 210 that did in Alexander Litvinenko?
    Must have been another one of those Kind Good Boys (KGB).
    Cheers
    Hans-Christian Georg Rupprecht, Commander in Chief
    Frankenstein Battalion
    2nd Squadron: Ulanen-(Lancers) Regiment Großherzog Friedrich von
    Baden(Rheinisches) Nr.7(Saarbrucken)
    Knecht Rupprecht Division
    Hans Corps
    1st Saint Nicolaas Army
    Army Group “True North”

  36. Withering smackdown. However, I was particularly impressed by the decorum of the House; can you imagine somebody delivering this screed in our pathetic HoC on Adscam, with chretien at the helm? You’d get about three sentences into it, and then be rudely shouted down by the opposite party. Or – truthfully – if somebody tried to lambaste harper in a similar fashion. There is NO decorum or courtesy in ottawa.
    This is why I have little time or respect for our politicians: they are mostly rude boors who would likely never stand for their behaviour if it manifested itself in their own children. And the fact that they consistently whine they are underpaid for doing this causes a continual burn…
    mhb23re
    at gmail d0t calm

  37. Do you think Harper has seen this and he is now standing in front of a mirror thinking “It could have been me”.

  38. Steve –
    Not particularly. That kind of oration is largely unknown in canada; canuck politicians would fear the public think them “too extreme” or “mean” to deliver that kind of smackdown. And, too, our guys wouldn’t likely carry it off with Hannan’s panache and remote disdain; they’d be prone to ranting for the camera, spittle flying hither and yon, thereby losing the entire effect of Hannan’s approach. That kind of verbal evisceration takes a deft touch, and I haven’t seen that in many of our politicians of any stripe: no subtlety, just schoolyard taunts and accusations. We have much to learn from speeches like this.
    mhb

  39. Having seen him on Cavuto, he prefaced the Obama thing as stating its historical significance i.e. a black president. I also think he may have been optomistic in drinking the Obama kool aid of balancing the budget “line by line” blah blah blah, cutting out wasteful spending etc. He certainly didn’t sound enthusiastic about TOTUS today. Do you think he needed a telepromter for that speech. Course, neither does Obama anymore, he’s moved on to the jumbotron.

  40. I haven’t seen someone’s nuts crushed like that since Macadamia went mainstream.
    Wooden, perfunctory manner….
    Gary Doer, call your office, Brad Wall on line 2.

  41. That was what needed to be said to that goof ball prime minister of the circle of stars. What does MEP mean?

  46. He’d have to be our President, cause there won’t be no more Prime Ministers in the Republic of Western Canada.
    http://www.republicofwesterncanada.com/index2.html
    The Coalition of Tards can fight for who gets to be the Grand Puba of the Sinking Hole of Eastern Canada… er… Global Socialism/Communism.
    Harper can come back and run for Governor of Alberta, and of course, I will become the Almighty Ruler of British Columbia. (Someone else may wanna call dibs on Saskatchewan, Manitoba & the Territories while they still can!)

  47. I like the cut of his jib. I’m always expecting PMSH to come out and give some leftist a smackdown like this but it never happens. I don’t know if this is the medias fault or what but he never seems to say “you know what, why don’t you cut the shit” I know speaking the truth in our country is a big no-no but just once I’d like to hear him trully lay it down without concern for power or anything else.I like him and I think he is the best pm I’ve seen in my lifetime but I feel he doesn’t do enough to stand up to these dirtbags. Turdeau was an idiot but at least he would tell you to “Go F Yourself” once in awhile.

  50. “The internet has changed politics – changed it utterly and forever. Twenty-four hours ago, I made a three-minute speech in the European Parliament, aimed at Gordon Brown. I tipped off the BBC and some of the newspaper correspondents but, unsurprisingly, they ignored me: I am, after all, simply a backbench MEP.
    When I woke up this morning, my phone was clogged with texts, my email inbox with messages. Overnight, the YouTube clip of my remarks had attracted over 36,000 hits. By today, it was the most watched video in Britain.”
    This is precisely WHY the internet (more accurately, civilian access to it) is under attack by pernicious ideological regimes in all countries including Canada (which is providing the most virulent attack on content access).
    Perhaps Mr. Hannan will vote against the sweeping internet gag bills being tabled in his own nation….then he can immigrate here and take on the Bowdlerish ideologues attempting to censor our internet access.
    Things were so much easier for the corrupt political class when they controlled the sole source of public info…ahhh the good ‘ol days eh, Joseph.

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