Is William Hague gay?

The Telegraph feel able to allude to this question and the BBC seem also willing to dip their toes in to the water.

Oddly I don't remember any of the mainstream media being at all willing to report the many and varied allegations about the sexuality of Gordon Brown. Indeed until Matthew Parris let the cat out of the bag about Peter Mandelson's sexuality this too was apparently a forbidden subject at the BBC, despite being well known in the real world.

I must be clear that I do not care one way or the other what William Hague's true sexuality is, I do care about the double standards that the BBC and other media apply in their reporting.

Matthew Parris calls Gordon Brown a liar

Matthew Parris as usual writes beautifully , here are some excerpts:

"There’s a rude word that won’t appear in this column. As a child your columnist was taught to avoid it. The word begins with l, and the three-letter version means untruth. The four-letter version describes someone who habitually tells untruths. These terms should hang in the air, on the tip of my argument’s tongue, tantalisingly unarticulated. They should hang unvoiced, too, above the figure of our present Prime Minister.

“In every year in the future,” said Gordon Brown on June 5, “public spending will continue to rise.”

There are a number of things that statement wasn’t. It wasn’t a half-truth. It wasn’t an evasion. It wasn’t a distortion. It wasn’t a sleight-of-hand. It was a far, far simpler thing. It was a flat . . . you know what.

...

And when you realise that the projected cash totals on which Mr Brown was basing that . . . fib . . . also include the ballooning costs of our national debt, and of bankrolling a growing army of the unemployed, it becomes even clearer that the impression he meant his hearers to gain — that there would be more in the kitty for things like schools and hospitals — was a barefaced . . . misrepresentation.

...

What a snivelling, broken-backed little attempt at a wriggle-out. Caught in the act of telling a complete . . . whopper, unwilling to admit or apologise, and with nowhere to hide, Mr Brown attempts a new dishonesty: trying to suggest that because the high figure this year includes a lump of spending on something (the Olympics) that won’t be happening until 2012, you could sort of spread the lump forward into the figures for the whole pre-Olympic period, and make the graph continue uphill.

At this point, in any criminal court, the judge would explode with impatience, cut short counsel for the defence and direct the jury to convict. It won’t do — as David Cameron immediately responded this Wednesday.

...

A desperate man, Mr Brown is now so entirely shameless that he’s planning to keep . . . dissimulating about “Labour investment” versus “Tory cuts” in the hope that the stupid or ignorant will believe him, and the rest will despair of pinning him down and move on."

Who in the country believes the line that Gordon Brown is trying to hold to during PMQs? I don't, most journalists and bloggers that I read don't, even members of his own Cabinet have contradicted his claims. If it wasn't for the BBC still protecting Gordon Brown from full scrutiny of his words even more people would know what sort of a man was their Prime Minister.

From Stalin to Mr Bean to Konstantin Chernenko

Matthew Parris spots the similarities between Gordon Brown and another sad case, Konstantin Chernenko.

Do read the whole of Matthew Parris's piece about Gordon Brown's Friday press conference, but here's a few extracts:

"And now, it appears, another living waxwork is to join the grisly ranks in modern history. Another sweating, stumbling shell of a political career, drained of power or genius, impelled and sustained only by anger and pride. Another brittle, prickly carapace gone all squishy inside, surrounded by a plotting politburo, theoretically able to launch nuclear weapons, attend international summits, pat the heads of schoolchildren and kiss the hands of popes and monarchs, but disconnected from the control of anything the Government actually does.

...

This is pathetic. This is toe-curlingly awful. This is so abjectly, senselessly broken-backed that it almost isn't interesting to watch. I've seen poisoned rats die slowly, too, and after a while the spectacle loses the appeal even of the macabre.

It is also an act of supreme selfishness on Mr Brown's part. Wrapping himself like some wingless albatross around his administration's throat, starving his own colleagues of oxygen in his mindless determination that other careers should not live in order that his should not die, he has brought his Government and his party to the ground, broken their legs - and yet still will not release his grip. They must crawl on, shackled together, past the humiliation of Thursday's elections and onward for another year: plans jettisoned, policies stalled, Bills postponed, shelving everything bold, all in the name of mere survival. Mr Brown's survival. Never mind Labour's, never mind the future of progressive politics, never mind the ideas and spirits of capable men and women in and around his Cabinet. "

Gordon Brown - orator or fool

Matthew Parris has an excellent column on Gordon Brown's recent speech to the EU:

"I've just read one of the worst speeches by a British prime minister it's been my misfortune to encounter in 40 years following politics. Wilson had folksy evasiveness; Heath, wooden principle; Thatcher, tin-eared persistence; Blair, slimy charm. In every case you could tell why they'd got the job, even when you hated what they were doing with it.

But this? This hole in the air encased in a suit of clunking verbal armour? This truck-load of clichéd grandiloquence in hopeless pursuit of anything that might count as the faintest apology for an idea? Words fail me.

They certainly failed Gordon Brown, addressing the European Parliament this week. No wonder everybody's now watching the MEP Daniel Hannan's riposte, uploaded on to YouTube - for the sheer, blessed relief of finding anyone still standing as the grey ash came bucketing down.

Where shall I begin? Shall I bother? Is he worth it?

...

Enough. There's something wrong in our politics, something big and bang-in-the-middle: a howling question that is not about the global economy at all. It's about domestic leadership. It's about Mr Brown. He isn't any good. He's failing. He's embarrassing. He's dreadful. His colleagues know this. Yet they are gripped with a terrible fatalism, sliding towards election defeat as though catastrophe were unavoidable."

Do read the rest, the usual masterful stuff from Matthew Parris.

Why cancel PMQs (update)

Yesterday I blogged that:

"The death of a child is a tragedy for the family concerned but we are talking about the government of the country and holding the government to account. The Diana-effect has taken too much of a hold on the UK, In a time of economic crisis, you shouldn't stop the normal political affairs of the whole country because one involved individual has suffered a tragedy. What next, a national day of mourning when Jade Goody dies?"

Today I see that Matthew Parris agrees:

"I did not care for the House of Commons's impromptu memorial ceremony yesterday, which may now become a precedent for whenever a party leader suffers a close personal loss. The House is there to look outward to the nation as a whole, not inward. Parliament marks the deaths in action of British servicemen in Afghanistan with a simple one-line acknowledgement, and should do no more for sadnesses closer to home. I know many Members who have faced awful tragedies in their families and who have not asked (as I'm sure David Cameron did not ask) for this to be discussed in the Chamber. The case for full-blown statements from William Hague, the Prime Minister, Vince Cable and the Speaker was not evident to me; a single sentence from each would have been enough. And there was no case at all for suspending Prime Minister's Questions."

"O ye of little faith! This economic crisis is evidence that the market is working"

Matthew Paris explains why the "crash" isn't due to a failure of capitalism. DO read the whole piece but I particularly liked this extract:

"what pricked it? Did politicians rumble the trade? Did governments, or international forums or symposiums, provide the sharp instrument? Did academic research and expertise expose the dodgy product? Did statutory regulators apply the pin? No, the free market wised up and pricked this bubble. Politicians and finance ministers (if they had had the power) would have tried to keep it inflated. The market puffed itself up, and then, without intervention — despite intervention — the market let itself down. The speed with which this has happened has been awful, but however inconvenient for many or catastrophic for a few, correction is not a failure of the market, but a success."

Matthew Parris has some really bad news for us

Matthew Parris has some really bad news for us - "There's no new motor to drive the economy". Do read the whole article and then sleep well...

Ken Clarke seems to at least partially agree.

As does Peter Oborne.

Sleep might be getting even trickier than normal tonight.

Lest we forget - Tony Blair

In case we start to think that Tony Blair wasn't too bad a Prime Minister when compared with the walking disaster that is Gordon Brown and in case we get nostalgic, here's an extract from Matthew Parris's March 2006 thoughts on the then Prime Minister:

"I believe Tony Blair is an out-and-out rascal, terminally untrustworthy and close to being unhinged. I said from the start that there was something wrong in his head, and each passing year convinces me more strongly that this man is a pathological confidence-trickster. To the extent that he even believes what he says, he is delusional. To the extent that he does not, he is an actor whose first invention — himself — has been his only interesting role."

What a choice, Blair or Brown?

Do read the rest of Matthew Parris's 2006 article, it's good stuff.

Matthew Parris may have missed the point

I admire Matthew Parris's writings and his latest piece in The Times is well up to the mark. However in one paragraph he misses something, he writes:

"The common law offence of “aiding and abetting, counselling or procuring misconduct in a public office” sets such a ridiculously low hurdle that thousands of my colleagues in the newspaper industry, many MPs, most Opposition spokesmen, and innumerable helpfully indiscreet police officers would be behind bars if every offence was investigated and prosecuted. Much journalism would become impossible, legitimate questioning and debate by MPs would be ruled out, and activity in the public interest would be outlawed."

What he doesn't seem to consider is that Gordon Brown and his government might prefer it if much journalism was impossible and if legitimate questioning and debate by MPs could be ruled out. Maybe Matthew Parris credits Gordon Brown with more respect for democracy than he should.

Avoiding a general election

I mused yesterday about whether Gordon Brown might use various legislation so as to put off a general election. Today Matthew Parris puts forward another theory that is probably slightly more plausible but just as dangerous for democracy. Matthew Parris wonders whether:

"before the next general election, Gordon Brown will try to bounce the opposition parties into some form of national government."

Read the whole article like I did and the whole idea does make some sense, especially with the ever plotting Peter Mandelson back in cabinet where political machinations will be as much his responsibility as his theoretical portfolio.

Backed up by Labour's cheerleaders at the BBC you can expect Gordon Brown's fightback to be dirty, personal and sneaky. It is up to all of us bloggers to shine a light on the tactics being used, the bias being employed and the truth that should be told.

Matthew Parris in The Times

A brilliant article in The Times today by Matthew Parris today points out the problem at the core of Gordon Brown, he is never wrong. The article ends:

"...a cold, angry repudiation of the evidence itself, a look that suggests a different prism, a different picture; a strange, knotted, jaw-clenching, fact-defying, interview-wrecking rejection of what the rest of us see plain as daylight . . . this disturbs more deeply than everyday mendacity ever can. Where could a national conversation with such a man begin?"

Do read the rest here.

Matthew Parris on Gordon Brown and the Conservative party

A must read article by Matthew Parris in The Times.

"But those of us who maintain our long-held judgments about Mr Brown's utter incapacity for office need no more trouble ourselves with wondering what will humiliate him next than we need to study tide and weather charts to determine the moment when the incoming waves will breach the walls of a sandcastle. The castle is made of sand: it will yield. Gordon Brown is a vacuum: he will implode.

The implosion, however, will be ugly. Mr Brown is unlikely to go quietly. He may be mad but he's quite used to being mad, he's been mad for a long time, he doesn't see it, and on some ghastly level the prognosis is stable."

Coruscating stuff indeed and as ever with Matthew Parris, beautifully written.

"Tories must get lean and mean"

Some good policy and presentational ideas for the Conservative Party from Matthew Parris.

Matthew Parris on Gordon Brown

From today's Times comes this cogent analysis of Gordon Brown.

"As the year nears its close with a new Prime Minister test-driven, run-in and, from the look of him, near done-in, your diarist wrestles with a professional problem. I think Gordon Brown is mad.

But the trouble is, I said Tony Blair was mad, too. I said it for nearly ten years. Readers will surely begin to worry that it is I who am mad — or, worse, that I'm just a former Tory MP who thinks all Labour leaders are insane.

But with Mr Brown it shouts at you, doesn't it? The constant, mindless, repetition of comfort-blanket verbal formulae. The anger, the obstinacy — a man by turns bullying yet paralysed by indecision.

And those awful stories: fits of yelling at people, refusing to look at people, unpardonable rudeness to staff, fidgeting, nail-biting, afraid of letting go of anything, terrified of committing yet clinging with blind rigidity to commitments he does make. Then there's the (surely) telltale mistrust of all but a small circle of devotees...

I could go on. But I promise not to. Look, in return for easing up on this in 2008, can I just say one thing now about this madness stuff? With Tony Blair it was a metaphor. With Gordon Brown it's a diagnosis."


I'd like to hear from anyone who wants to take issue with Matthew Parris's remarks...

Matthew Parris and I agree on mobile telephones

I see that Matthew Parris is a devotee of the Nokia 6310i and sings its praises today. I too am a 6310i man, indeed I have a spare just in case my main one dies. As Matthew says people "still want them, because the keyboard is big, well-spaced and straightforward, the carcass is robust and the battery lasts about three days."

Use the technology you need, not the technology they say you need.

Matthew Parris in fine form

Take a read.