Song For Gordon

When you've been in training for ten years for one particular job how long before you have to admit, to yourself first and then publicly, that you simply aren't up to it? At work we can usually assess after a week, maybe two, if somebody is the right man or woman for the post they have filled - that's why we have a policy of giving all prospective staff a month's contract to begin with that way both parties can see whether or not it's a marriage made in heaven or a wet Tuesday in Dover.

Gordon Brown must go, sooner rather than later. This morning on Sky News the latest poll of polls shows that the Conservative lead would give them a majority in the House of Commons of 212 if a General Election was called tomorrow (or Monday I suppose). 212 !!!!!!!!!!!! Previously the only group of people capable of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory so emphatically were England footballers, cricketers or rugby union players. It's horrendous. Gordon's personal rating is the lowest of any politician in the history of politics, apart of course from Ian Duncan Smith's who was to politics what Geoff Thomas was to chipping French goalkeepers.

You can say that after thirteen years people want a change, just as they did in 1997 after 18 years of misrule by the Conservatives, but that shouldn't be a reason. You don't divorce somebody just because it's easier than working things through,okay not the best analogy, but these days, unlike the late seventies and early eighties, there isn't such a polarisation of political beliefs. Look on the 5Live Boards this week and, apart from the few right wing hardliners, a lot of people are uttering the same phrase 'I don't know what Conservative stand for these days'. Who does? David Cameron appears, to me at least, to have been hewn from the same P.R school as Mrs Thatcher and Tony Blair but with none of the formers political will, drive and conviction and none of the latters personality. The only reason his own personal ratings are high is because he smiles, doesn't come across on television as Mr Grumpy and never speaks about policy. The only areas he has spoken about, such as the Social Chapter, he's quickly shut up about - either because he's been told to or because he may just have realised that there's a whole generation of voters out there who have actually benefitted from the Social Chapter and that the Conservative arguments against it from the early nineties have been washed away by political and social changes. The only way that removing employees rights in the this country would change anything would be to see a huge increase in immigrants and employing them because they basically couldn't give a monkey's as long as they can earn more in Kettering than Katowice who cares?

There's a whole long list of policies, ideas, counter ideas, turns, back tracking, spin that have gone horribly wrong in the last year. It takes a big man to stand up and say "Sorry, I was wrong." Why can't he watch a tape of the post match interview Kevin Keegan gave after the England v Germany at Wembley back in October 2000, Keegan's last match in charge in the last match ever played at the old stadium. That's how to leave office, admitting you aren't the right man for the job and that you have realised that you can't do anything to change things.

Of course all politicians lie, it's what they do - possibly what they do best. There are politicians out there who do care, last year I read Oona King's autobiography and she was somebody who did actually live and work in her constituency and appreciated people's fears, hopes and ambitions on a daily basis - of course she was ousted by George Galloway as a result of her political leaders lying and betraying not only her, her constituents but the whole country. Career politicians are a new breed, something our Grandparents wouldn't have understood, but the world changes and so must we. Unfortunately in clamoring for the ferry of change we often forget to take with us the lifebelt of pragmatism, politics develops over years, not necessarily the ideologies, but the processes of Government. Take PMQ's for instance, how is that better now than it was ten or fifteen or twenty years ago? Where are the great public debates, the great orators? Where are the Tony Benn's, the William Hagues, the Dennis Skinners, the Shirley Williams, or, and I have my toes crossed as I type this - the Margaret Thatchers? People who have/had a political conscience, a belief, a conviction that public debate was a service.

Gordon Brown lacks humility above anything, I don't care if my PM is pug ugly and lacks a personality but I don't want him to change his policies when the Daily Mail tells him to. I want him to think things through, not rush things through because he has to appear with Fiona Phillips on the GMTV sofa and needs a soundbite before Penny Smith reads the news.

I don't want to be lied to about the Lisbon Treaty, or budgetary prudence, or educational standards, or the economic benefits of immigration and the numbers that would be coming in the first place. I don't want Government policies that mean all the Green Belt in East Dorset will be built on by 2012 unless we get a Lib-Dem or Conservative PM by 2010. I don't want Nathalie to be denied a place at University because some half arsed quota system introduced by the Labour Party means that the University has to award a place to somebody who has lower grades but fits the ethnic profile, and I don't want her to be denied a job for the similar reasons - this isn't a dig in anyway at third generation immigrants but at the ridiculous system we are soon to be exposed to that says regardless of your ability we must have quotas. This is the reason Kevin Pietersen left South Africa by the way.

I sometimes think that I defend the Labour Party on autopilot, because I have been a member, supporter, activist for thirty years they are as much a part of my DNA as West Ham, fish and chips, Match of The Day on Saturday nights. It's getting to the stage where I look at the policies and the leadership and have to admit with a heavy heart that I find it harder each day to agree with almost anything they stand for. I've always been the one in my family who has travelled the path less followed when it comes to the big two: religion and politics, my Dad did say to me about ten years ago that one day I might find my way back to religion, I'm not there yet but I can see myself voting for another party in 2010, all I have to do now is bone up on the Green Party policies.

Oh come on, you didn't really think I'd turn blue did you?