Brown Addresses Labour Party Conference

This year, the Labour Party Conference is in Manchester, and it is there that Gordon Brown, probably for the last time, addressed the multitude as Prime Minister. His government has struggled in the last 15 months, and the party is declining terribly in the polls. If he’s still PM at this time next year, it will be a miracle. In his speech, though, he gave the listeners glimpses of what might have been.

First off, one must remember that Mr. Brown is something of a dour Scot. Or as he put it, “if people say I’m too serious, quite honestly there’s a lot to be serious about – I’m serious about doing a serious job for all the people of this country.” He isn’t Barack Obama on the stump – although he did steal a line from the senator’s Denver speech, “this job is not about me, it's about you.”

However, he delivered a well-written speech competently and with some feeling. On the National Health Service, he went passed statistics, saying, “when we talk about the 240,000 lives that are saved by the progress Labour's NHS has made in fighting cancer and heart disease, that's not just a number – that’s the dad who lives to walk his daughter up the aisle and the gran who is there to clap and cry at her grandson’s graduation. 240,000 families still together - and now thousands more with new and better treatments from an expanding NHS -- we're changing the world the only way it can ever really change - one life, one family, one hope at a time. That's the real power of Labour to change lives.”

Right after that he said, “why do we always strive for fairness? Not because it makes good soundbites. Not because it gives good photo opportunities. Not because it makes for good PR. No. We do it because fairness is in our DNA. It's who we are - and what we’re for. It's why Labour exists. It’s our first instinct, the soul of our party. It’s why when things get tough, we get tougher. We stand up, we fight hard - for fairness. We don’t give in, and we never will.” Not quite Churchillian, but Sir Winston wasn't a Labourite.

And then it was time to hammer the Tories, “If you look beneath the surface, you’ll see that the Conservatives might have changed their tune, but they haven’t changed their minds. The Conservatives say our country is broken - but this country has never been broken by anyone or anything. This country wasn’t broken by fascism, by the cold war, by terrorists. Of course there are problems, but this is a country being lifted up every day by the people who love it.”

And a special round of applause for these two points, “so here I am - working for this incredible country, while trying as far as possible to give my children an ordinary childhood. Some people have been asking why I haven’t served my children up for spreads in the papers. And my answer is simple. My children aren’t props; they’re people. And where I’ve made mistakes I’ll put my hand up and try to put them right. So what happened with 10p stung me [a tax that he proposed that hurt the poor most] because it really hurt that suddenly people felt I wasn't on the side of people on middle and modest incomes - because on the side of hard-working families is the only place I’ve ever wanted to be. And from now on it’s the only place I ever will be.” One suspects that it is too late for Mr. Brown and too late for Labour.

© Copyright 2008 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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