Will you remember Gordon Brown as a PM?

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

He was always Blair's grumpy Chancellor, wasn't he? Actually, between finally and grumpily taking over, and then losing the general election by pointing out that one of his voters was racist, he did have the best part of three years of being Prime Minister. Darling, the lad whose eyebrows were twenty years younger than his head, was Chancellor, in the Brown years.

No-one - literally no-one - is going to reference, or remember, the "Brown period" in any British political or history book, are they? He'd have been more famous had he presided over the loss of Suez, ffs. I feel rather sorry for him, actually. I hope he's okay.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Will you remember Gordon Brown as a PM?

And .. once again I've managed to put this in football not world. Damn this tablet.

ADMINS!!!!

[Ray de Galles]

Will you remember Gordon Brown as a PM?

They'll be dancing in the streets of the Football forum tonight.

[E10 Rifle]

Will you remember Gordon Brown as a PM?

No-one - literally no-one - is going to reference, or remember, the "Brown period" in any British political or history book

I disagree strongly. The defining economic event of the past 30 years happened on his watch, and his response to it was swift if flawed. The 2008 crash defines our politics to this day, even if those in power are in denial about the ideological causes of it.

Also, the whole "election that wasn't called" thing in 2007 remains one of the great political "what ifs". It was an incredibly significant political period, I think. Brown must bear responsibility for a lot of it (along with some credit). Also, the story of the hollowing-out and death of New Labour cannot be understood without the Brown years.

[beak]

Will you remember Gordon Brown as a PM?

Le Fusil dEst Dix wrote:
Also, the whole "election that wasn't called" thing in 2007 remains one of the great political "what ifs".

And one we might end up repeating if the vote is for leave, and Cameron steps down, no?

[E10 Rifle]

Will you remember Gordon Brown as a PM?

The Fixed Term Parliament Act could well mean we won't have one. The Tory party aren't fans of democracy and won't hold an election if they can best avoid it.

[Patrick Thistle]

Will you remember Gordon Brown as a PM?

Le Fusil dEst Dix wrote: The Tory party aren't fans of democracy and won't hold an election if they can best avoid it.

Particularly not the faction who 'win' if we leave.

[Lang Spoon]

Will you remember Gordon Brown as a PM?

Poor old textured like sun, too Fife to pass as human, too churchy to rock n roll. What the wider world sees as weird hunched and furtive passes as normal in the last kingdom.

Probably why I find it hard to hate him in spite of it all (esp his panto turn as unionist grumbler in chief), hard not to see my snippy unintentionally glowering awkward side in him.

[Banky Edwards]

Will you remember Gordon Brown as a PM?

Rogin le fan du fauteuil wrote: Darling, the lad whose eyebrows were twenty years younger than his head, was Chancellor, in the Brown years.

'How can you expect a man to run an economy when he can't even make his own face add up?' As I once read about him.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

Will you remember Gordon Brown as a PM?

He came across like some tragic character in a stage play, undone by the short-sightedness of his own paranoia and the bad decisions it drove him to (in particular, bottling out of a 2007 general election following his unopposed election to the Labour leadership).

His time as PM is unforgettable because of the 2008 financial crisis, which totally dominated it. (It didn't come out of the blue: the interbank credit markets tightened dramatically mid-2007, by tragic coincidence just after Blair resigned, and the markets had a feeling of imminent crisis from that point on.)

Apart from making the call as PM to bail the banks out (in line with the leaders of other major economies), he'll be remembered as Chancellor for selling billions' worth of Britain's gold just before gold started a huge climb in value, and much more seriously starting the bullshit public accounting-driven PFI insanity which has enriched scheming bastards at the current and almost indefinite future expense of the British people, and for his jaw-droppingly foolish hubristic claim to have overcome the "boom and bust" cycle.

Also we'll remember the endless tedious political machinations around the Brown v Blair undeclared war which dominated the Labour government and were about pathetically minor differences in policy but major clashes of obsessive personal ambition.

And finally of course his massive "bigot" banana skin slip in the election campaign.

He wasn't terrible (apart from PFI), far preferable to warmonger Blair or the poor-screwing Tories, but it's the absence of anything particularly good to set against the bad stuff that dooms his memory.

[Satchmo Distel]

Will you remember Gordon Brown as a PM?

He never won an election as party leader. That's got to hurt him; like Gerald Ford or Alec Douglas Home.

[E10 Rifle]

Will you remember Gordon Brown as a PM?

One call he has been totally vindicated over is not joining the Euro. About the only substantial policy difference he had with Blair.