Can a swan sing

The plain was grassy, wild and bare,
Wide, wild, and open to the air,
Which had built up everywhere
An under-roof of doleful gray.
With an inner voice the river ran,
Adown it floated a dying swan,

Thank you Tennyson, be off with you now.


Gordon Brown is to fight back against his own incompetence by launching a series of speeches which, I hear, are to be on push-button subjects - education, healthcare, justice, housing, and so on. Gordon Brown, Prime Minister of the UK, Member of Parliament for a Scottish constituency will be living Tam Dalyell's nightmare. The only dilemma left for David Cameron is how hard he pushes the fact that Brown is lecturing England on matters for which he has no responsibility in his own constituency - pushing too hard might point the constitutional dichotomy down the road towards a constitutional crisis.


Perhaps the Conservative decision may be to mock Brown talking about issues which don't and won't affect his constituents while the economy - that thing that Labour was claiming Brown was so good at just a few weeks ago - goes down the pan. Does anyone in the Labour party think anything through these days?


I'm sure there will be people in the Labour party tunnel thinking that the oncoming train is bound to turn off onto a side line rather than continue heading straight towards them - they're wrong, the recent events are part of a long chain which you could trace way back into Blair's time with Cash for Honours, Formula 1, a disregard for the principles and history of the Labour party, and so on, but let's just look at Brown's time as Prime Minister:

• He finally makes it in the door in late June 2007
• June & July 2007 - flooding in England is badly handled and Brown is accused of hypocrisy and the anger got worse when it was revealed that Ministers had been warned of the flood risk well in advance.
• July, still, and Brown's new Trade Minister was revealed to have considered running for office with the Conservatives.
• Mid July and Douglas Alexander puts a diplomatic foot in it.
• Still in July, Brown's first glitzy fund-raiser comes off the rails a bit.
• August - Brown rushes back (from Dorset) to take charge of an outbreak of Foot and Mouth which turns out to have been caused by a DEFRA laboratory. Of course, it came back a week after Brown cured it.
• September brought a run on Northern Rock as regulation failed, and Brown used an old woman in a stunt.
• October - Brown's courage fails him. After talking up an early election and looking into the abyss, Brown backs off.
• November brings a new donor scandal - David Abrahams and the loss of the personal data of 25 million people.
• December and Brown misses a treaty signing with our EU partners, concentrating instead on 42 day detention.
• January 2008, Peter Hain has to resign from Government over a failure to report a donation.
• February, Northern Rock nationalised, columnists start mocking Brown and news emerges of the bloated bureaucracy in Brown's office and his increasingly bad manners.
• March - Darling delivers his budget with that rise in duties and tax changes.
• April - abolition of 10p tax rate from Brown's last budget reviewed in climb-down
• May - Boris Johnson wins the Mayor of London race but Brown is too rude to congratulate him.
• May as well - and the Empire Fights Back
• May - Crewe and Nantwich
• June - Brown messes up the diplomatic messages on Iran.
• July - Glasgow East
• August - caught lying over Northern Rock
• September - Milliband puts the boot in and Cairns quits.
• October - Brown nabbed fixing a consultation

We could go on, but what is clear that the Brown Cat Bounce is facing stronger and stronger gravity every time they throw the mythical moggy from the roof. Conservatives now sitting on a comfortable lead in England, the SNP right up there in Scotland, this is going to be an election cycle to remember.

Tennyson, you're back! What do you think of Labour's election chances?

Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
"Forward, the Light Brigade!
"Charge for the guns!" he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

"Forward, the Light Brigade!"
Was there a man dismay'd?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Someone had blunder'd:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

Mind how you go!