"Only a war can save Gordon Brown"

by johnofgwent

At the age of 19 I walked away from a wreck of a car smash from which by rights I really should not have. A thirty two tonne articulated lorry failed to bother to brake for the red lights at which I had just stopped, picked my car up and tossed it through the air across the junction as if it were a cricket ball struck by Sir Garfield Sobers.

Although I walked to the ambulance (I should not have - the ligaments in my back still pain me in winter to this day) the experience burned into my mind as some sort of insane slow motion high definition video recording, the making of which caused the erasure of almost every memory from the preceeding three weeks of my life.

I am far from alone in experiencing this but the researchers at the Medical School thought they'd won the pools when I responded to their request to help with their research into memories of trauma a few months later. Today, thanks to the help from an old friend skilled in the ways the mind works, I can pull back those memories and relive a few moments from 1970's Britain in high definition colour ! But the images play in slow motion, as if photographed for a Tarantino Kill Scene.

And as I have read the online newspapers every day for over a fortnight now it seems the world of politics is having its own "Tarantino Train Wreck" moment. I would have said that Gordon Brown seems to be a man who is, for some reason, allergic to political success.

I would have said it, but regrettably some hack of a journalist beat me to it.

After the BNP election broadcast the left wing hacks predictably began their pitiful bleating on various online fora. Clearly missing the party that they once considered their own, a party which not only disowned them but then allowed a man incapable of experiencing good fortune to sit in its "big chair", they lashed out the only way they could, and rounded on the group that will be there nemesis. Us.

They're still having a go, of course. Pathetic warriors using thirty year old weapons and ammunition well past its sell by date. They open fire knowing full well there is a fifty-fifty chance a misfire will blow back in their faces, but fire they must, for they are dinosaurs defending an idea whose time has passed.

But one of the more "joined up" arguments they hastily assembled together in defence of what was little more than a "blog in a newspaper for which the blogger got paid" sent me off asking the question "just who is this bloke they refer to".

And it quickly became obvious that he may be no friend of Nick Griffin but he's most unlikely to appear in Gordon Brown's "Retirement Honours List".

If real life were a movie, instead of a cruel and horrifying string of random unfolding events, the mortifying slow-motion car crash that is Gordon Brown's premiership would inspire pity in all but the most stone-hearted audience member.

And that's just the opening sentence.

Assailed from all directions, stumbling, bumbling, droning, punch-drunk, hapless, hopeless, and aching with palpable misery, he increasingly resembles a depressed elephant, slowly being felled by a thousand pin-sized arrows fired into his hide by a million tiny natives ....

Here is a man apparently allergic to luck.

Nothing goes right for the Brown minister. He can't even pop on to Youtube and attempt a smile without everyone laughing and calling him creepy. And they're right. The smiles were creepy: they made him look like the long-dead corpse of a gameshow host resurrected by a crazed scientist in some satirical horror movie.

Normally, to experience this sort of shared mutual shame, you would have to stumble unannounced into a room and unexpectedly catch someone doing something acutely embarrassing, such as masturbating or miming to Kaiser Chiefs in front of a mirror .....

This is different ..... And I don't know about you, but I'm finding the tension unbearable. I can't wait for the general election - not because I want to see Prime Minister Wormface Cameron smugging his way into Downing Street, because I don't - but just because I don't think I can bear this mishap-strewn landscape a moment longer. It's like being trapped in a hot room filled with an overpowering fart smell, waiting for someone outside to come along and open the window.

In the meantime, is there anything Brown can do? ..... A hastily orchestrated overseas war might save the prime minister's bacon, although, given his track record for bumbling calamity, picking a fight with an entire country seems ridiculously ambitious. Maybe he could declare war on a small town - something the size of Newbury or Ashby de la Zouch. Don't worry about the motive - just make something up. Claim the inhabitants were illegally stockpiling Tamiflu or something, then pound them for a fortnight using all the murderous technology the Ministry of Defence can muster. Use something exotic. Something you have to drop from a Super Huey. Something that whooshes and goes bang and looks cool in widescreen ...

Failing that, simply bursting into tears on live TV might be a good move. Pay a visit to This Morning for an ostensibly upbeat chat about how this whole government thing's been working out for you, then suddenly go quiet and well up. Wait till Phillip Schofield puts a hand on your shoulder before letting rip - but when you let rip, really LET RIP. Wail. Howl. Punch the cushions. Quake with sobs. Say you're sorry for all the mistakes and beg for a chance to put it all right. Make stuff up if necessary. Pretend you've been a heroin addict or something like that. Weep 16 litres right there on the sofa if you have to.

I could not have put it better myself. But you can read the whole thing in context here.

Pack Your Bags, Gordon. For the love of God pack your bags. Take the initiative while you can, for in a fortnight's time the front bench of the "government" you "lead" are going to pack them for you and dump you, and your weighty baggage, without any ceremony or emotion, straight into a skip outside Downing Street's rear entrance.

Have you no shame, Gordon ? Or could it be that your recent "secret" chinwag with your old mucker Tony Blair - so secret it's all over the papers - was to explore ways of extricating you from the mountain of shit you have foud yourself buried under.