Mike Smithson reminds us that 313 MPs signed Gordon’s nomination papers 3 years ago today, they didn’t hold a competitive election, they didn’t have a debate in which Gordon would be tested and expected to make his case – a weakness clearly visible in the TV debates.*  Guido said at the time they would rue the day.

Like lemmings they followed Gordon and he will lead them over the edge to electoral oblivion. Yesterday the news channels were full of Labour frontbenchers looking constipated with pain, even accomplished TV performers like Andy Burnham couldn’t find a way to spin it – Gordon had just unfairly and without reason called a Labour voter, with legitimate worries, a bigot.  Neither Mandelson, Campbell or Maguire could find a way to put a positive spin** on it, our Kevin seems to have thrown in the towel.

They knew Gordon had just guaranteed Labour activists hell to come on the doorstep.

Steve Richardson, a long-time apologist for Brown, writes in the Indy this morning

Goodness knows what is going on in Brown’s exhausted mind when he makes these wholly misjudged, angry exclamations. We can only guess… the mystery at the heart of yesterday’s drama. Why was Brown so angry in the first place?

Gordon was angry because he is a malevolent weirdo, unable to relate people like a normal human being, unable to interpret the emotional signals and body language that we all do instinctively.  He is a bonkers, not like an eccentric old aunt, but like a dangerously paranoid political psychopath. Privately aides were grateful yesterday that he hadn’t launched into a foul mouthed tirade or hit anything other than the car “it could have been worse” they were saying yesterday. The voters have now heard a little of the real Gordon, they won’t find it attractive.

*Punters on Political Smarkets currently rate tonight’s TV debate winner probabilities Clegg 54%, Cameron 52%, Brown 12%.

**For a while Mandelson and Whelan tried to blame the Murdoch press / Sky News.  When that didn’t work they Mandelson dropped out of view. Whelan and Prescott, in what is pretty disgraceful lying, are now claiming Mrs Duffy is bought and paid for by Lord Bell and the Sun.  It is as if Damian McBride had never gone away…

LabourVision.TV launches today – a crowd sourced effort to produce an online anti-party, anti-political election broadcast.  Details revealed later as to how your home made video can be part of Gordon – the Disaster Movie premiering on May Day.  The bar is high. Come back tomorrow…

Do you think Mandy and Bad Al Campbell are just taking the piss out of Gordon now? “Yeah, it’ll be great, the headlines will be all ‘Gordon’s comeback tour’ like Elvis in Vegas!” It is a farewell tour, isn’t it…

Danny Finkelstein says…

“You have to be impressed with Gordon Brown. His two children are only 6 years old and 3 years old. And yet it turns out that at bathtime, they squabble about membership of the European People’s Party.”

On the Marr show Gordon raged against the moral bankruptcy of Goldman Sachs; “I want a special investigation done into what has happened at Goldman Sachs.”

Perhaps he could ask Gavyn Davies to investigate? For many years he has been advised by Gavyn Davies, who made some £150 million during his period as a Goldman Sachs partner.

It was Davies who last year urged Gordon to implement Mugabenomics, turn on the printing presses and call it quantitative easing. Davies has been a big donor to the Labour Party and a long-term supporter. Davies’ wife Sue Nye was Gordon’s private secretary in Downing Street and they are known to be good friends. Perhaps it was they who stole Gordon’s moral compass.

UPDATE : The more Guido thinks about this, the more he likes Gordon’s idea. Questions Guido would like the Goldman Sachs special investigator to get answered:

• Exactly how many boardroom lunches and suchlike did Gordon Brown have with Goldman Sachs figures?
• During the many lunches Gordon had with Goldman Sachs did he discuss policy or matters which they were able to exploit to their advantage in the markets?
• Goldmans were known to be major sellers of gold before Brown announced his extraordinarily ill-conceived plan to sell the Bank of England’s gold reserves.
• Gavyn Davies was an adviser to Gordon Brown during this period.  Did he recommend, advise on or know anything of the intended gold sales policy?  Did Sue Nye know of the intention to sell gold?

These are not matters of little import, Gordon’s gold sales debacle cost the Treasury £6 billion, the amount that Gordon claims will devastate the economy if the Tories cut it from public spending. The bank is known at rival firms as ‘Government Sachs’ because senior partners keep so close to governments and in particular finance ministries…

Gordon Brown implausibly claims…

“What people are saying to me is look, we have come through a lot and it has been a very difficult global financial recession, we’re coming through it, we’re coming out of it – Britains on the road to recovery, now don’t put that at risk”

Alistair Darling, Ed Balls and Gordon Brown claim that the Tories will take money out of the economy by cutting government spending, the Tories skirt round the issue by saying they will actually cut waste and undo the government’s proposed N.I. tax hike because it is a tax on jobs. The Tories have balked at directly crossing the Brown/Balls dividing line on tax and spend by directly taking on the idea that somehow government spending is better than the private spending that taxes reduce.  They are still advertising a vote-winning anti-tax message, but they are unwilling to take the argument further that lower taxes stimulate higher economic growth.  How different it is in the U.S. where even Obama ran and won on a tax-cutting platform.  Obama promised the middle-classes a tax break in a budget deficit environment little different to that faced the UK.

The Tory message is no new taxes and a slower increase in debt.  If a candidate in America suggested (as Brown and  Balls do) that raising taxes for the government to spend would support the economy, he would be laughed at, Obama during his presidential campaign said “The last thing you want to do is raise taxes in the middle of a recession because that would just suck up more demand out of the economy and put businesses in a further hole.” If only the truth of that was as recognised across the political spectrum in Britain.

For many years Gary Elsby was a regular contributor to the comments on this blog, much to the amusement of fellow co-conspirators. So it is without hesitation that Guido endorses his campaign “to do battle” and “carry the torch of socialism.”

The former Stoke Labour Party constituency secretary is standing as an independent, this is a bit of collateral damage in advance of the full-scale civil war that will come following a Labour defeat. Mandelson is trying to hold the line against the Whelan-Balls-Brown axis which is putting its placemen into upcoming seats using UNITE’s muscle with Tom Watson enforcing the faction’s advantage wherever he can. Mandelson in private sees the battle for Labour’s soul as his primary mission having calculated that Labour is likely to face at least one, if not two terms out of office.

The exit of so many Blairites has been a tawdry money-grubbing affair which has strengthened the Brownite / UNITE hand with ordinary disgusted Labour Party activists.  Mandelson has weakened his hand by misjudging matters and insisting that a “toff” like Tristram should be a standard bearer for his faction.

All in all, Stoke promises to be a foretaste of the chaos that will engulf the Labour Party following election day…

It takes something for a civil servant to write publicly to the PM admonishing him for lying.  Could it be that three lies this month based on twisted statistics were just too much for the offical charged with counting the beans.

The Lies of March:

• “Some people talk as if net inward migration is rising. In fact, it is falling..”
• This lie drove Michael Scholar at the ONS to protest (above) at Brown’s corruption of the integrity of the statistics.
• “We have shown our commitment to our armed forces by increasing expenditure on them every year…”
• In real terms expenditure went down and he had to apologise to parliament for this lie.
• “Everyone now has a clear right to see their neighbourhood policing team spending 80% of their time on the beat”
• The Advertising Standards Authority banned a government advertising campaign from going ahead using the same claim because it was misleading.

Gordon pathologically lies with numbers all the time, he constantly reels off fudged statistics whenever he is questioned.  Crime statistics are massaged and worst of all the government’s real debt position is hidden using PFI and by ignoring public sector pension obligations. When the Tories get in one of the first things they should do is restate the national debt to honestly reflect the dire truth of the position hidden by Gordon’s years of deceit…

Hat-tip : C4 News Fact Check

Harry Cohen has benefited from Guido’s attention in the past.   The chippy left-wing MP who disgraces the Leyton parliamentary seat once held by Winston Churchill claimed substantially more for his second home  and expenses than any other MP in London, in fact his annual expense claims of £123,718 are £30,000 higher than neighbouring Walthamstow Labour MP Neil Gerrard’s claim of £92,228 and greater than Chingford Tory MP Iain Duncan Smith’s allowance of £104,222.

He claimed “I am almost certainly the most professional MP Leyton and Wanstead has ever had, and that includes Winston Churchill.”

Despite Leyton being a mere half an hour from Westminster on the Central Line tube, Harry Cohen claimed the maximum tax free second home subsidy of £21,63.  The Metropolitan Police has begun a criminal inquiry into Harry Cohen, who claimed more than £70,000 for a “second home” while renting out his main property.  Perhaps the Met Police might want to investigate other MPs doing the same trick. Guido has asked the question before: where is Gordon’s first home that entitles him to claim a second home allowance?

Gordon lives in grace and favour accomodation in Downing Street, he has use of the grace and favour Chequer’s mansion.  He pays nothing in rent or mortgage for those properties.  When he married he adroitly gave to Sarah the flat he bought cheaply in dubious circumstances from Robert Maxwell’s estate and Guido understands they now rent it out at a profit.  That leaves only his old Fife home.  It is clearly his real home, it is the only one he owns. Yet he designates it as his “second home” for expenses purposes.

See : Gordon Claims for His Second Home: Where is His First Home?