Gordon Brown on the Andrew Marr show

By Alex Smith / @alexsmith1982

UPDATE:

I’ve now seen the interview with Gordon Brown and do think it was a more personable performance than I’ve seen from the PM for a while. There was a degree of honesty, and perhaps some over-compensating for past coldness with too much personal narrative, too many “hold on, Andrews” and too many interruptions and distracting responses.

Certainly, the rhetoric on cleaning up the way Parliament operates and overhauling our constitution through a comprehensive reform bill was encouraging, as it was to hear the PM state that the House of Lords cannot be allowed to stay in its current form and to frame that no other leader has made direct suspensions of expense abusing MPs from their parliamentary party. Brown was also commanding on the econonmy, saying that while Labour’s quick measures were praised by the IMF, the policies of the opposition would have led to more debt, more job losses and far slower recovery from the recession.

On the negative side, Brown was non-commital and showed the type of dallying and exessive pondering that belies the current crisis and negates the present opportunity for change. I was disappointed not to hear more specific details on the type of discipline that expense abusing MPs would face. The PM refused to name specific cabinet ministers that would be investigated by his so called star chamber. Even when Andrew Marr referred specifically to Geoff Hoon, James Purnell, Hazel Blears, Ed Balls and Alistair Darling, Brown would not specifically support or condemn any indivudual. Maybe that’s good HR management. Maybe it’s just more politics.

It also was disappointing to note that large chunks of Constitutional Reform would be in the next Labour Party manifesto, rather than passed under the current parliament using the majority and mandate the government already has. But the most demoralising quickfire answer to the serious question, framed in the long-term conditional and hypothetical:

Would you stand aside for the sake of the Labour Party?

No.

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I haven’t yet been able to watch the Gordon Brown’s performance on the Andrew Marr Show, but will do as soon as it’s up on iPlayer. I’ve read a bit of the commentary from elsewhere, and the general view is that the PM was very closed and evasive on the toughest questions.

One of our readers, Love’s Labour Lost Shakespeare, said it was “disastrous”:

“Evasive, self-serving, indecisive – in fact all we’ve come to regard as his trademarks, but in spades this time. Viewers will have been shouting at the screen for Marr to say something like, “No Prime Minister. YOU listen please.”

Meanwhile, Iain Dale says is was an impressive display of Stonewalling:

“He came out fighting, although I doubt whether many voters will have been swayed by what he said”.