Metropol

Oh come off it. People even inside the labour party have been calling for him to leave for ages. If brown was honourable he'd have buggered off before the election, possibly causing labour to win. Instead he takes the country through an election he knows he will lose and only gets lost when it's plain he's not going to have any luck.

Very honourable to drag his party down with him.

WRONG.

cwathen wrote:As I said in another thread, a key issue I have with Brown is the manner in which he succeeded Blair as prime minister. It may well have been just and proper as far as the law is concerned, but I just cannot accept that any person should become prime minister without fighting and winning a general election and I have never been able to get past that. I realise not everyone will subscribe to my view, but I'm certainly not alone in it.

Do you not accept Winston Churchill's role as Prime Minister during World War 2?

The odd thing now of course is that if there's a Lib-Lab government then that Prime Minister will be 'unelected' too

cdd wrote:Oh come off it. People even inside the labour party have been calling for him to leave for ages. If brown was honourable he'd have buggered off before the election, possibly causing labour to win. Instead he takes the country through an election he knows he will lose and only gets lost when it's plain he's not going to have any luck.

Resigning in the run up to an election is hardly a good idea, it doesn't give the new person much of a chance before the campaign starts.

Not if the existing leader is popular, no. But fact is you could put a monkey up against brown and win, as Cameron has demonstrated. He had plenty of time to resign if he wanted to do the honourable thing.

Make no mistake, he only left when it became clear he wasn't going to get anywhere himself. Nick Clegg had already made it very clear he'd dooner do a deal with satan himself than with Brown.

Brown managed the quite astronomical feat of losing labour the election despite everyone hating the Tories at the time. I guess it's something to be famous for.

cdd wrote:Brown managed the quite astronomical feat of losing labour the election despite everyone hating the Tories at the time. I guess it's something to be famous for.

Did they?

I agree with Gav.
(Has that got old yet? Yes, probably but what the hell)

I think it's pretty noble. He knew from the start that Nick Clegg didn't want to negotiate with him, but was happy to negotiate with Labour. It's a good decision, and one that could lead to a Lib Lab pact.

Its seems Gordon has got the biggest maj of any MP.

cdd wrote:Not if the existing leader is popular, no. But fact is you could put a monkey up against brown and win, as Cameron has demonstrated. He had plenty of time to resign if he wanted to do the honourable thing.

Brown managed the quite astronomical feat of losing labour the election despite everyone hating the Tories at the time. I guess it's something to be famous for.

No party 'won' the election though, hence the current situation. The Conservatives did beat Labour or course... but it certainly wasn't an unmitigated success for them, Brown couldn't have been as unpopular as everyone thought and Cameron was far less popular than he thought he was

I seem to remember Jim Hacker didn't face an election as prime minister, but he seemed to be popular.

Alexia wrote:I seem to remember Jim Hacker didn't face an election as prime minister, but he seemed to be popular.

He went on to WIN an election!