Labour loses Glasgow East

The SNP have defeated Labour by about 350 votes.

This is a safe seat- even safer than Crewe and Nantwich where they suffered another by-election loss just about a month earlier. All the speculation is whether Labour replace Gordon Brown. All the polls suggest it would not make a difference, and it would be hard for Labour to impose a 2nd unelected Prime Minister on the public, so I would guess that Brown stays on for the General Election.

I have to feel bad for Gordon Brown. This is the latest event in a string of bad luck. Nothing seemingly goes right for him. Much of the perception about Brown is driven by the media action line of "Brown the psychologically flawed, dithering, control freak, incompetent, boring, scheming politician." The British media have typically acted like sheep and decided that David Cameron's Conservatives are new, chic, modern, young, green and a less nasty kind of conservative. Can anybody really say their is a great deal of difference between Coke and Pepsi er- Tory and Labour? Heck, the conservatives budget matched Labour's spending levels so as to avoid a fight. Brown is viewed the way he is mostly because of personality and p.r.

I think my feeling sorry is also merited by Brown's failures not being all that much different than that of Tony Blair. Early release for prisoners- that happened under Blair. Government incompetence under Blair- you bet. Browns Government did lose millions of people's tax records, but is that substantively much worse than Blair's Government under which crime went up and up while civil liberties went down? Brown dithered on Northern Rock causing a run on a bank, but if you look around the world you can see the banking crisis is not isolated to Britain. Removing the bottom 2P tax bracket raised taxes on some poorer people, but just about every government has done something that has resulted in this. To listen to the claims today this makes Labour no longer a party for the poor. Not that I thought they ever were, but these claims are just hyperbolic.

Im no fan of Brown but Im not going to kick him when he's down like the rest of the sheep.