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View Full Version : Gordon Brown 'stepping down as Labour leader'



Daze
10 May 2010, 10:19am
Mr Brown, prime minister since 2007, said he wanted a successor to be in place by the time of the party's conference in September. Mr Brown announced his intention to quit in a statement in Downing St in which he also said his party was to start formal talks with the Lib Dems. The Conservatives won the most seats and most votes in the election and have been in talks with the Lib Dems. Mr Brown said no party had won an overall majority in the UK general election and, as Labour leader, he had to accept his part in that.

He said he had no desire to stay in his position longer than was needed to form a stable government, and that he would ask the Labour Party to set in form the process of a leadership contest. He said it could be in the interests of the country to form a "progressive" government - possibly in coalition with the Lib Dems - the UK's third largest party. It emerged earlier that the Lib Dem negotiating team, who have held days of talks with the Conservatives, had also met senior Labour figures in private.

The BBC's political editor Nick Robinson said one of the stumbling blocks to any Lib Dem-Labour deal had been Mr Brown himself.



http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/election_2010/8672859.stm


Good riddance.

barackobama
10 May 2010, 10:22am
About time.

Tcp-Kill
10 May 2010, 10:22am
SEHR GUT

Paul
10 May 2010, 10:23am
Maybe a labour/ lib coalition is on the cards now.

Tcp-Kill
10 May 2010, 10:25am
Yeah, apparantly the talks between cameron and clegg have gone well.

SgtJoo
10 May 2010, 10:33am
Well you knew that was coming.

LVG
10 May 2010, 11:44am
He was a failure but I'll miss his fails, Tcp you biggot

AndreiD
10 May 2010, 12:10pm
Bigot.

PotshotPolka
10 May 2010, 04:29pm
Threw himself on the fire for the party like Thatcher did, he deserves a little respect for that.

SgtJoo
10 May 2010, 04:35pm
Threw himself on the fire for the party like Thatcher did, he deserves a little respect for that.

Well with the amount of hate he's getting, it's the only shot Labour had at getting a coalition government started with the Lib Dems. If I'm not wrong don't they still need more votes even if they get the Lib Dems on their side. The Tories only need the Lib Dems to have the majority.

PotshotPolka
10 May 2010, 04:42pm
Well the shitty thing is that the Lib-Dems didn't really get enough votes to pit both Labor/Conservative against each other, even if there is a Lib-Labor coalition with a few fringe parties there's no guarantee it'd be stable.

SgtJoo
11 May 2010, 02:39pm
Well Cameron's the PM now.

James
11 May 2010, 02:54pm
Those who voted for him will start to hate him soon enough. Public spending cuts = less police, firemen, doctors, nurses, you name it.

Daze
11 May 2010, 03:06pm
I don't understand why you would even want to run for PM. As soon as you get the job, you are the dude who gets hated. You can never keep everyone happy.

Red
11 May 2010, 03:55pm
Those who voted for him will start to hate him soon enough. Public spending cuts = less police, firemen, doctors, nurses, you name it.

Also means lower taxes which will result in increased employment, job growth and in the end will ironically enough mean increased revenues for the government when the economy is stimulated and there is more taken in through sales taxes and taxes from corporations that are earning more from said spending increases from paying customers as more people are able to spend again.

And Public Spending cuts can be taken from places other than police/firemen/doctors and nurses(which shouldn't even be publicly funded), but is used as an emotional plea from the left to get people like you suckered in to hating on conservative government.

SgtJoo
11 May 2010, 04:24pm
Are the Lib Dems going to be considered conservatives for making this coalition with the Tories? I mean does it leave Labour as the only main 'progressive' party, letting them play off that for the next election?

PotshotPolka
12 May 2010, 12:13pm
You're applying US economics to British economics.

We need a large public sector to take the slack from the private sector; Thatcher proved that. They should definitely be publicly funded -- it not only ensures the economy (and essential public services) can stay reasonably stable during a trade recession but also that unemployment will not go through the roof. Public spending cuts need to be taken but shrinking the public sector to a noticeable degree would be disastrous for our economy (especially employment-wise).

Well I think the biggest issue is that he is comparing local municipal level public services to national level policies. Here the states and the municipal county/city governments have much more to do with government run hospitals/police and fire departments, especially in regards to pensions which is what they usually try to cut rather than services.

Thatcher privatized many parts of the economy, I'm not an expert by any means on it and I don't know the total ramifications it had on the economy, but until Thatcher Conservatives and Labor were in agreement on many things including the role of government in the economy. Thatcher pushed the Conservatives further to the right, Labor for a while took a strong step to the left with overtly socialist overtones.

The problem for you guys I'd say is there is no consensus on how to react to economic crises, we have a similar problem but I'd say not to the same degree: Bush launched a Keynesian style recovery plan that had bipartisan support and was probably one of his best moments in office.

Labor debates whether or not its easier to once again nationalize or heavily regulate key industries (but shit, we do the same thing with the automotive and financial industries so I guess we are the same), I believe the Conservatives prefer regulations but always stop short of privatization.

Cutting public spending in the sense that a sector of the economy would disappear or shrink rapidly is destructive in the short term until the economy is able to adjust. The extent to which you make these changes is the key variable. In the Russian case, shock therapy pulled the rug out from under everyone and the "short term" has lasted nearly two decades.
Correct me if I'm wrong on this.