Untying the Gordian Knot
Food is good here at the JJB. Lamb Shanks as main course. Same as the last gala dinner I went to. We eat up and chatter all the time. Sheila tells us the whole family history. Love breaking out over a Labour committee table somewhere in London. Moves round the home counties including Kent - where my in-laws spring from.
MC Howard calls order. There is a greeting and Ian McCartney stands up and goes to the lectern. And he does a lot of remembering the Pope, thanking key guests and building up Gordo.
There is a one minute silence for the Pope who has 'died after a long illness' as they say. Gordon is introduced.
Whatever he had been planning to say is abandonned. The pope has died and party politics must take a back seat.
So Gordon Brown speaks without notes. He makes some humerous remarks about his early travails as an eager young politico. But soon to orate on one of John Paul II's priorities. Ending poverty. And Gordon in this off the cuff, speaking from the heart, mode is absolutely fantastic. There is not a stutter or a pause. This is telling fact after telling fact. The UK will achieve 0.7% aid by 2015 but at current rates the rich nations as a whole will not achieve this ot that by 2115, 2150 or even worse.
Britain will use all leverage it can to turn this round. Gordon will personally push this anti poverty agenda to the limit. Here at home and globally.
As Polly Toynbee has written in the Guardian the real life statistics on the alleviation of poverty achieved by Labour and the very real prospects to go further appeal to the great British public. It is a wonder that this is not front and centre of the campaign. Some passion for redistribution and justice would go a long way.
Passionate belief after passionate belief. Mr Brown will almost certainly be drawn into party appeals to the nation's key voters - even talk of privatisation and choice - but here freed from party attack politics he is immense.
In fact there are probably less than 1 million voters who will decide the outcome of the election. I know the feeling as in Manchester we could have lost five more seats or gained/saved five more, turning on just 500 votes across the whole city.
We get our picture. We get our pudding. We get no raffle. Il Papa's dead. But Gordon has taken a sharp blade to the Gordian knot.
And with one bound he was free.
MC Howard calls order. There is a greeting and Ian McCartney stands up and goes to the lectern. And he does a lot of remembering the Pope, thanking key guests and building up Gordo.
There is a one minute silence for the Pope who has 'died after a long illness' as they say. Gordon is introduced.
Whatever he had been planning to say is abandonned. The pope has died and party politics must take a back seat.
So Gordon Brown speaks without notes. He makes some humerous remarks about his early travails as an eager young politico. But soon to orate on one of John Paul II's priorities. Ending poverty. And Gordon in this off the cuff, speaking from the heart, mode is absolutely fantastic. There is not a stutter or a pause. This is telling fact after telling fact. The UK will achieve 0.7% aid by 2015 but at current rates the rich nations as a whole will not achieve this ot that by 2115, 2150 or even worse.
Britain will use all leverage it can to turn this round. Gordon will personally push this anti poverty agenda to the limit. Here at home and globally.
As Polly Toynbee has written in the Guardian the real life statistics on the alleviation of poverty achieved by Labour and the very real prospects to go further appeal to the great British public. It is a wonder that this is not front and centre of the campaign. Some passion for redistribution and justice would go a long way.
Passionate belief after passionate belief. Mr Brown will almost certainly be drawn into party appeals to the nation's key voters - even talk of privatisation and choice - but here freed from party attack politics he is immense.
In fact there are probably less than 1 million voters who will decide the outcome of the election. I know the feeling as in Manchester we could have lost five more seats or gained/saved five more, turning on just 500 votes across the whole city.
We get our picture. We get our pudding. We get no raffle. Il Papa's dead. But Gordon has taken a sharp blade to the Gordian knot.
And with one bound he was free.
posted by Chris Paul at 11:58 PM
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