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There was an article in today’s Daily Telegraph written by David Hughes who writes a political blog in the DT. Below is a comment I sent in to the DT in response which was published. The article summoned up a lot of screaming abuse aimed at Brown from other contributors and the odd, very amusing comment.

By adding the below to my own blog, is really as much as a “note & reminder” to myself to keep on track and to keep focused on the issues. It is easy to drift off course when as a consequence of trying to exploit a different angle on the current news stories. Mr Hughes did this by focusing on the fact that Frank Field’s personal comments about Gordon Brown may have the opposite effect than he intended by creating sympathy for Brown on his own back benches.

Whilst this may or may not be true, does it matter and would it change the unrest on the Labour backbenches which is fuelled mainly by them feeling that due to the unpopularity of the Government combined with the poor economic outlook, they will lose their jobs at the next election, whenever that comes.

My Contribution to the DT

Whilst I suspect that there is some truth in the thought that Frank Field may well have over stepped the mark and as a consequence Labour back bencher s may well rally to give Brown support as the Party Leader, so what ? The problem is that such calculations may well seem important inside the Westminster Bubble but are irrelevant to the world outside and particularly the electorate.

If the electorate thought that Brown was being treated unfairly, that would be a different matter but it is unlikely that after 10 years as Chancellor where he claimed every accolade for his great ability to manage the British economy, he must now take the blame as it unravels. The public at large gave him his honeymoon period and I would suggest that it wasn’t the “election that never was” that ended it, it was the way in which it was done:

The trip to Iraq to announce troop withdrawals that in fact were already under way, half already home in fact. The “pre-election” budget announcements intended to bribe the electorate with their own money and then when his courage failed, the bare faced denial that he intended to call an election in the first place. In this context, to the electorate at large, Frank Field’s comments have not registered, what did last Autumn was “Bottler Brown” and the subsequent economic news has already put the lid on it, the UK is in Limbo until the Summer of 2010 when we can clear out Westminster in a General Election.

There are some people, most who write in with their comments to the DT who are very knowledgeable on the ins and outs of Westminster but, we are a minority in the country at large. There is a phrase in Football about “thinking outside of the box”, I think David Hughes and all the other political journalists, ought to learn to “think outside of the Westminster bubble”.