Kevin Maguire and Charlie Whelan are two of the most high profile former members of the inner-circle of the TaliBrown, now they are at the core of the continuity-TaliBrownies. Both are allies of, and boosters for Brown’s heir, Ed Balls. Both of them today are not happy…

Our Kevin says Not-So-Red-Ed was “scared of his shadow – or at least the notion of making either Ed Balls or Yvette Cooper his Shadow Chancellor. So the timid new Labour leader fluffed his first big call and played safe with Alan Johnson. As a result he missed a glorious opportunity to recast his party’s economic policy and to turn the tables on the Tories.” Maguire, in his role as TaliBrown propaganda chief, makes no secret of his preference for deficit denial.

Despite swinging the unions behind Red Ed to win control of the Labour Party, the TaliBrown bully and union-fixer Charlie Whelan is still unhappy; mainly with Peter Mandelson and David Miliband. Telling The Times that David Miliband was annoying and should “get a life” after his failed leadership battle, adding for good measure that his exit from the Shadow Cabinet was ungracious.

“It was slightly self-indulgent to just go off. It didn’t look good. It would have been best for him to say straight away what he was going to do. It’s a tragedy when you lose your job, you are on the dole and you have no money for your family. Politician losing top job is not a tragedy. It’s personally uncomfortable but that’s all. This is why David’s attitude annoys me. He didn’t get the job but it’s not a disaster. Get a life.”

Whelan also backs Ed Balls to be Chancellor in the Shadow Cabinet claiming “He’s got a grasp of the economy and his position on the economy is the right one”. Charlie adamantly rejects the accepted wisdom that Labour’s defeat in the last election was in any part down to Gordon Brown’s deficit denial, claiming

“We could have won that election. Peter Mandelson went round at Christmas saying it’s going to be a catastrophic defeat. Well, if you’re going into the election with your main man telling you you’re going to be defeated then you might as well pack up and go home. Obviously the campaign was an unmitigated disaster.”

Guido can see Balls and his boosters waging low intensity political warfare on Red Ed for as long as he seeks to get on the reality-based side of the deficit denying dividing line. That is something Balls and the rest of the continuity-TaliBrown will be determined to block…

The metal plaque commemorating the opening of the Canary Wharf offices by Gordon Brown in April 2004 is up for auction at Christies at the end of this month. Guido will be bidding for this, tangible evidence, that the accursed Gordon Brown caused the global financial collapse which began with the fall of Lehmans.

He jinxed the financial system…

Lest we forget the 13 years before the last 100 days…

Two years ago when Guido first asked the question “Is Brown Bonkers?“ he raised hackles in the unpopular parts of the blogosphere, Sir Michael White and others said it was an unpleasant smear and there was general condemnation for bad taste. Guido felt, once again, like the little boy who pointed out the emperor’s nakedness.

Yet senior Blairites were adamant, telling Guido that Brown was mentally unsound. In Westminster there was a muted but open debate in the margins as to Brown’s mental state; Was he autistic? Was it Aspergers? Did he have a personality disorder? Was he on medication? Even Andrew Marr asked him “Are you on drugs?“

Now Mandelson reveals that it was the view of Tony Blair, who had worked closely with Gordon Brown for two decades, that he was

“Mad, bad, dangerous and beyond hope of redemption… flawed, lacking perspective and having a paranoia about him… He’s like something out of the mafiosi… He’s aggressive, brutal…there’s no one to match Gordon for someone who articulates high principles while practising the lowest skulduggery.”

The national tragedy of Gordon Brown is two-fold; he blocked Tony Blair’s necessary welfare reforms not out of principle, but merely to frustrate Blair for his own personal political advantage. Secondly for purely political reasons he pursued Kamikaze economics that drove the economy into unprecedented levels of debt. The mad rivalry with Blair when the British economy was in the best shape to carry out the reform of the welfare state wrecked the best opportunity to ready Britain to compete in the global economy of the future.

Brown’s personality problems will be paid for over generations, this government is now implementing many Blair-like reforms that could have been carried out a decade ago when the economic conditions were far less difficult. The madness of Brown’s debts will be paid for by our children’s children.

When Rawnsley’s The End of the Party book came out in January on the heels of Peter Watt’s Inside Out and the allegations of Prime Mentalism committed by Gordon Brown were again denied, Guido predicted that Labour Will Have a Khrushchev Moment of Truth in the End:

When Brown has gone after the election it seems inevitable that we will eventually have a Khrushchev moment, where a senior Labour figure articulates what everyone knows.  It will be devastating.  Gordon Brown is a malevolent, deeply damaged and unpleasant human being.  He is at the centre of a culture of political bullying that has been unhealthy for the Labour Party and the government.  The loyalist cabal around him are unpleasant people who have no place in a healthy political culture, they are as secretive and malicious as they are vindictive and vicious.

Gordon Brown was often compared to Stalin, but who will be Labour’s senior Krushchev figure who condemns the previous regime? Mandelson has laid to rest any continuing pretence (if there was any) about the TeeBeeGeeBees, the vicious infighting that paralysed Whitehall for a decade, yet was denied on camera in barefaced lying by Labour politician after Labour politician, including Mandelson. Mandelson is getting all the coverage for his book The Third Man highlighting the failings of Gordon Brown. Less focus is on David Miliband, Mandelson’s new protege gave a speech yesterday that comes near to that Krushchev moment

I agreed completely with Gordon Brown, when he became Prime Minister in 2007, that we needed renewal.  I supported and voted for him.  I agreed that we needed greater moral seriousness and less indifference to the excesses of a celebrity drenched culture.  I agreed with him when he said that we needed greater coherence as a government, particularly in relation to child poverty and equality.  I agreed with him on the importance of party reform and a meaningful internationalism that would be part of a unified government strategy.  I agreed that we needed a civic morality to champion civility when confronting a widespread indifference to others. But, it didn’t happen. It was not just more of the same.  Far from correcting them failings – tactics, spin, high-handedness – intensified; and we lost many of our strengths – optimism born of clear strategy, bold plans for change and reform, a compelling articulation of aspiration and hope.  We did not succeed in renewing ourselves in office; and the roots of that failure were deep not recent, about procedure and openness, or lack of it, as much as policy.  That is a political fact and now words are cheap but the stakes are high.

It was a backhanded condemnation of Brown’s failure. If David Miliband wants Labour to move on, a frank, uncoded, reflection on the period of Labour brutalism is required. Brown was a disaster for the Labour Party and the country, if Miliband wants a reborn Labour Party he first has to bury Brown in the truth.

UPDATE : Punters give David Miliband a 63% chance of being the next Labour leader.

Deborah Mattinson was Gordon Brown’s personal pollster and part of the bunker / Smith Institute inner circle around Brown. In her new book ”Talking To A Brick Wall‘ she has revealed something that gives Guido an immense amount of satisfaction. For over a year Guido ran a campaign against Gordon Brown’s Smith Institute, the charitable front for his political ambitions. The years of guerrilla warfare waged by this blog were not in vain, it drove him mad:

Guido Fawkes, launched a campaign attacking me personally for the public sector work that Opinion Leader did. He, and other Conservative bloggers picked up on the citizen engagement work that OLR had done. He accused Government Departments of hiring OLR solely because of my work with GB and implied that the work that I conducted for GB was a quid pro quo for the Government Citizen Engagement work.

As anyone who has bid for Civil Service contracts will verify, nowadays – quite rightly – everything is tendered to within an inch of its life. Knowing a Minister, let alone the Chancellor and PM heir apparent, would be a hindrance rather than a help and place the potential contract under closer scrutiny. It was true that much of the time that I put in for Labour was pro bono, as it had always been. Like most political activists, whether drafting leaflets or knocking on doors, I gave my time willingly out of support for the cause. Furthermore, many of the costs associated with my political work were paid by the Labour Party or by a sympathetic organisation such as the Fabian Society. Nonetheless, the story ran. This was a tense and difficult time and GB was impatient with anything that might adversely affect his forward march. On one occasion after a particularly nasty piece, claiming ludicrously that Opinion Leader had charged £153, 484.38 for a one day seminar, had run, GB burst into our weekly meeting and exploded, ‘You’re in the eye of the storm. What are you doing about it?’

I was hurt both, by the accusations themselves, and also by GB’s less than supportive response. I had seen him treat others harshly but, up till then, I had always been made to feel valued. After much agonising and, following discussions with Viki, my ever tolerant business partner I decided to step down from my role as CEO of Opinion Leader and stopped working on any public sector clients, to avoid making either GB or Opinion Leader Research vulnerable to further attack. Instead I focused on my corporate role as Joint Chair of Chime Research Division. Meanwhile, sadly, GB shelved the listening programme – it looked to be more trouble that it was worth. . . Citizens were not going to get their say after all.

It is good to know that Gordon was such an avid reader…

The Telegraph is reporting that before the election Gordon quietly arranged for the Prime Minister’s remuneration package to be cut from £194,000 to £150,000, with no formal announcement being made.  Guido had to laugh, Brown has made sure Cameron will be quarter-of-a-million poorer over the next 5 years. Cameron can’t complain, we’re all in this together…

In an effort to shore up the ruling Democratic Party’s faltering fortunes in an election next month, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has resigned under pressure from his party telling them “In order to revitalise our party, we need to bring back a thoroughly clean Democratic Party.”

There are parallels, Hatoyama – nicknamed “The Alien” for his quirky comments – has a reputation for indecision and broken promises to match our former PM. Many on the oppostion benches will be thinking that if only Gordon Brown had been as honourable as the Japanese PM, the Labour Party might still be in government.

“Thank you and goodbye.”

Labour have just sent out this poster (except it isn’t a poster, it is a amateurish crap graphic).  According to Labour HQ tonight is going to be about Style versus Substance :

Guido has altered it for accuracy : Gordon versus the Voters…

UPDATE : Just checked the latest prices at specialist political bookmakers Smarkets:

• Gordon Brown has a 25% chance of winning
• David Cameron 52% chance
• Nick Clegg is favourite with a 55% chance.

Take Guido’s advice and bet against Gordon Brown…