General Election – Will You Vote For Gordon Brown?

“Dear Gordon, Over the last 12 years in government, and before, you have made an enormous contribution to this country and to the Labour Party, and this is very widely acknowledged.

“However we are writing now because we believe that in the current political situation, you can best serve the Labour Party and the country by stepping down as party leader and prime minister, and so allowing the party to choose a new leader to take us into the next general election. Yours,”

But the Prime Minister’s spokesman later indicated that no action would be taken against those Labour ministers who may have ‘milked the system’.

“I think the Prime Minister has seen all of the explanations from the different ministers and he is satisfied with those explanations,” the spokesman said.

o The Bank of England, which has managed Britain’s gold reserves for more than 300 years, was never asked for its advice on whether Britain should sell the gold. A senior Bank of England executive said the timing of the sale was “not debated”.

o At a secret meeting with senior gold traders, Bank of England officials were warned that the proposed auctions would achieve the worst price for taxpayers. The officials are understood to have agreed with the analysis but said they were powerless to influence the Treasury.

o Several Asian countries including China are named by an insider as having bought the gold “on the cheap” from the Treasury. The Chinese may have made more than £1 billion from Brown’s botched sell-off.

Sir John also warned of bleak economic times ahead, adding: “It’s beginning to unravel in quite a serious way. The economy is running into serious difficulty.”

Pointing out that Mr Brown as Chancellor introduced the financial regulatory regime that allowed the near-collapse of Northern Rock, Sir John predicted that the bank’s failure would cost taxpayers more than the £3.4 billion his Government spent trying to keep the pound in the Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992.

“We don’t yet know what the cost of Northern Rock to the economy will be, but it is quite likely that it will exceed the cost to the taxpayer of Black Wednesday,” he said.

The best way, I think, of understanding how the special relationship works is to answer this question. When a visiting American actor comes here and makes nice noises about Britain, do you feel all warm, gooey and proud? I bet you do. Now think how it works the other way round. When a British actor goes over there and makes nice noises about America, do you think they even notice?

Honestly? I believe it’s time we stopped deluding ourselves about our relationship with America, which since the late 1940s has produced virtually nothing. And tried to make friends with the French. Because the last time we did that, the world got Concorde.

Sir Victor Blank and Gordon Brown have made a bad banking crisis worse by fatally contaminating one of Britain’s few good banks. Mr Brown was the foster parent. People should remember this the next time either of them claims to have acted competently during this crisis. Sir Victor should go now; the electorate can decide on Mr Brown’s fate when he deigns to call an election.