Gordon Brown as UK Prime Minister?

It has been announced today that Gordon Brown will automatically become the next UK Prime Minister after no other candidates are standing against him.

I openly admit to being more aligned to the Conservative Party than the Labour Party, but in recent years I have also believed that Tony Blair has been the only PM that was up to the job of representing the UK as our Prime Minister. Many may disagree with some of the decisions he has had to make or represent as the head of the country during this time, but hs has always had a personable and open nature that has worked well in international diplomatic meetings and as a representative of the country.

Now that he is stepping down I just don't personally think that Gordon Brown is the right person for the job. I completely disagree with most of his political beliefs and ideas, but equally I just don't think he looks or sounds right for the job.

The worst thing phsically has to be the horrible thing he does with his mouth when talking that just looks strange, and I don't think representatives from other nations will warm to him in the same way they did to Tony Blair.

So what are your thoughts on Brown taking over as Prime Minister in June?

As important as the news is I dont watch it, it's just depressing most of the time.

That is very true. It's like watching an episode of Eastenders, but with realism thrown in.

Isn't this against the Classicamiga TOS to discuss :p

Having said that, I'm with you on the fact that Blair, as much as he's criticised, will be looked upon as having been a very good PM. People have got hysterical over the fact he took the UK to war, but seem to forget that the final decision was put to a vote in the House of Commons which every elected MP in Britain gave their decision in. More MP's voted for it than against, and therefore we joined the United States. I wonder if had the Tories been in power at the time, the decision been any different. I doubt it. He's also handled events such as the 7/7 terrorist attacks extremely well.

I personally don't think Brown will make a great PM. I think we're going to see taxes increase much more than we did under Blair. He also seems very dull, without the character that Blair showed. When they were campaigning before the last general election Blair dressed fairly casually with open neck shirt and jacket, Brown opted for jacket, with shirt and tie, which looked too formal and not right for the event.

Neither do I think David Cameron and his 'hip' attitude would be the right choice. He says he's all for the environment and demonstrates this by cycling to work, except he has a car follow him, to deliver a change of clothes and shoes. Or the time he flew to the Arctic to show the melting icecaps and brought with him all the press. What's the point in me giving up my car, if he's going to fly thousands of miles to a good photo opportunity?

Having said that, I don't disagree with the way GB will become Prime Minister. People voted for a party (well a local candidate) not for the Prime Minister, so the party that's in power should have the right to choose our PM. It happened before in the early 90's so I fail to see why people are surprised and calling for a General Election. Even more so, as it was pretty clear when before the last election, Labour made it pretty clear that Blair wasn't going to be there for the whole period and Brown was more than likely going to be the one to succeed him.

This is very true. Although you are meant to vote in a general election based on the overall party values and policies, most people still do vote based purely on the leaders of each party and which they would rather see running and representing the country.

I expect it will be very hard for many to decide come the next elections if a change of leader doesn't happen for both Labour and the Conservatives between now and then. I just cannot see either being liked enough by the general public to want to vote for the party they are fronting.

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Isn't this against the Classicamiga TOS to discuss :p

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Well, yes. But as with most things the TOS is only really a guideline. ;)

I think it's OK to post such things in this polls and opinions area as it still keeps it out of the main forum. Just as long as it doesn't involve strong political or religious beliefs that could annoy others.

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Originally Posted by Harrison

I expect it will be very hard for many to decide come the next elections if a change of leader doesn't happen for both Labour and the Conservatives between now and then. I just cannot see either being liked enough by the general public to want to vote for the party they are fronting.

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Yeah, turnout could be very low. Where I am, a fairly safe Labour seat since 1997 went to the Conservatives in the Assembly elections a few weeks ago so with a lower turnout, a few hundred votes could decide the constituency and as such it probably won't be a great idea to vote for one of the smaller parties as a protest. It seems the least worst of the two big ones will get my vote instead. I think we really need to change the first-past-the-post system.

I don;t really care who is Prime Minister, as long as he/she does a good job of it.

I don;t really know anything about Gordon Brown so I have absolutely no idea whether he will be a good prime minister or not. We'll just have to wait and see.

Just look at how he has handled the financial budget of the country of the past few years and that will give you a very good idea of how untrustworthy the man is. And especially the last budget where he carefully made it look like most people were going to be better off, but when you actually worked it out everyone ended up paying out more than before, he had just shifted around the charges, taking away from one and increasing another. And completely removing the lowest tax band which will hit the lowest paid workers the most.

To saying you don'y really care who is PM is a very short sighted view, and if enough people have the same opinion it starts to question the point of democracy. If you don't care about anything political then you have no right to argue about any issues relating to the running of the country, right from who we go to war with, how much we are charged to fly to another country, the price of public transport... pretty much everything in your live that costs money. You need to care!

What do you guys think about the results of the election this year? Are you satisfied with the results? Seems like Labour got a real beating this time.

TBH I think Labour got off lightly. Gordon Brown up until yesterday was the most unluckiest man in the world. Almost as soon as he took power the sh1t hit the fan on a regular basis and most of it wasn't his fault. If Gordon Brown had had someone less oily than David Cameron up against him he would have had a proper trouncing. As it stands though I am most disappointed in the amount of votes cast for the Lib Dems as I've lived through an 18 year Tory government (1979-1997) and a 13 year Labour government (1997-2010) and I think both parties have screwed the country over and we have been left worse off than when we started in so many different ways and TBH I thought it was about time we gave someone else a chance to see if they can screw things up as bad.

However I do feel sorry for whoever runs the country because they have the farce that is London 2012 to govern and I'm pretty sure that a large part of the debt that has Greece in so much trouble was due to Athens 2004 so I'm fairly sure that by the end of the games Britain will be in an even bigger pile of excrement than it already is.

This post sound really cynical but when the results came in that my local MP was voted out all the news could say about her was that she was in trouble in the expenses row over claiming for £35,000 to have her house renovated (she bought a cheap house on expenses and used expenses to renovate it but said that in her defence she did use local contractors:hmmm:).

As for the election result. I was very pleased to see my local seat finally gained by the Conservatives, and this time by a healthy majority of over 4000.

It was also great to see the Conservatives gain 97 seats and Labour lose 91. I understand this is the biggest gain, and biggest lose in something like 80 years. It really does show how differently the population feel towards Labour compared to the last general elections.

The seats won by the Lib Dems was very surprising as everyone, press included, really thought they were going to do well. In the end they actually lost 5 seats.

However, it is disappointing that the conservatives could not reach the target 326 seats needed for a clear majority in the house of commons to automatically have the right to form a government. They did however get over 300 and a clear majority over Labours 258 seats, so I believe they should have the right to form the next government. If they can agree to a deal with the Lib Dems, as was mentioned today in Cameron's speech, and covered in the news that they are still in talks, then that will be great.

But if Brown somehow manages to retain power, even though they are 48 seats behind the conservatives and the fact that the conservatives gained so many seats in this election, then the population are not going to be happy. They voted in this election clearly against Brown and the state he has left the country in and want a change of leader and party to try and get a fresh perspective on how to move forward.

Brown wants to borrow and spend even more money in the coming year, driving the UK into even more debt. Cameron wants to stop borrowing and reduce spending, which is the only way we can ever hope to start reducing the huge deficit the Labour party have got us into. Borrow and spending more and more money you don't have is, as everyone knows, a sure route to bankruptcy, as can be seen by current events in Greece. I really hope the Conservatives can reach the agreement and form the next government.

Although I voted for the Liberal Democrats, I thought the Conservatives would win.

I voted for the Conservatives in the local election, but Labour won.

There was an article in the Yorkshire Post yesterday about how many hundreds of people where not allowed to vote, because they waited for hours in queues, only to be turned away at 10 O'Clock. I was quite surprised by this. I went in at 8:45am and there was one person in front of me.

It clearly states on voting cards that the polls close at 10pm, and by law they have to shut at that time so the process of counting can begin. Their were reports of Students turning up just before 10pm and without their voting cards, which meant it slowed everything down for everyone else in the queues. It also seemed from the interviews the media had with some who were turned away that they also didn't arrive to vote until just before 10pm.

How stupid are people? The polling stations were open from 7am in the morning, right through to 10pm, and yet they couldn't get there till just before it closed and then started getting mad that they couldn't get in.

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Originally Posted by Harrison

How stupid are people?

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How dare you ask that question. You should know by now that the only person you can rely upon not to be stupid is yourself and even then he's not 100% reliable either.;)

I've got a feeling that people went to vote late for 3 reasons. 1) All the billions of hours of election coverage started about 9 so there was bugger all on TV. b) people who hadn't voted saw the later exit polls and either wanted a conservative landslide so went out to vote tory or were disappointed at the Lib Dem figures so wanted to do some late votes for them. iii) it was a facebook/myspace/twitter thing. And finally it's the first time the students voted so they didn't know the rules and besides the pubs don't get interested until around 9 so there's no point going out before then.

The good news is that if things can't get sorted out between the parties we may have to go through all this again towards the end of the year.

My quote of the day was from a checkout girl whilst I was out shopping.

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I'd rather do my ironing than vote.

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Says it all really.

What is the purpose of the Poll Card?

I handed mine to the lady at the desk and she looked at the name and address, found my name and address on her long list, asked me if my name was Stephen Coates (surely that was obvious) then crossed me off the list.

Could I not just have told her my name and address?

You could and you can if you have a photo I.D. with you but the poll card also has a number on it which is what they are checking when they cross you off the list. Lets face it security in polling stations is pretty pathetic but there are and have been far easier ways of committing electoral fraud and with there being so much voter apathy the biggest signal that a fraud is being committed would be that more than half the people that were able to vote did actually bother.

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Originally Posted by Buleste

My quote of the day was from a checkout girl whilst I was out shopping.

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I'd rather do my ironing than vote.

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Says it all really.

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Democracy just doesn't work as it allows the intellectually challenged to vote and have an opinion(?). If they could really be trusted to vote, then they wouldn't all be copying the dress sense of their friends, family and neighbours; keeping gold chain, shell suit and car body kit companies in business, or just voting for the party their families always have.

They have no idea what their voting power means, or what each party or their policies mean to them or the country as a whole. It drives me mad.

I do not support full democratic process. The only real way to get a result based on reasoned voting, is to force everyone to take IQ tests and only allow those over a certain result allowed to vote. I can't see many people actually agreeing to that though as you could view it as a bit dictatorial I suppose. :lol:

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Originally Posted by Stephen Coates

What is the purpose of the Poll Card?

I handed mine to the lady at the desk and she looked at the name and address, found my name and address on her long list, asked me if my name was Stephen Coates (surely that was obvious) then crossed me off the list.

Could I not just have told her my name and address?

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The whole point is meant to be so only with a valid voting card can you vote. And once voted and your name crossed off the list, no one else can then vote using you name. It is a very primitive system, but sometimes I think simple is much better than advanced. While not perfect, it is a lot harder to tamper with than a computer based system for example. Look at the mess in the US elections.

Not sure about postal voting though. That is too easy to tamper with.

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Originally Posted by Harrison

I do not support full democratic process. The only real way to get a result based on reasoned voting, is to force everyone to take IQ tests and only allow those over a certain result allowed to vote. I can't see many people actually agreeing to that though as you could view it as a bit dictatorial I suppose. :lol:

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Hmm. Interesting idea creating a sort of eugenic democracy. The only problem with that is what do we do with all the 'tards who are too dumb to vote? Move them all to their natural habitats of Essex and Liverpool?:lol: (Let's see how much hate mail that gets me)

Or even better. Utilise our other main island to store them! ;)

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Originally Posted by Harrison

Democracy just doesn't work as it allows the intellectually challenged to vote and have an opinion(?). If they could really be trusted to vote, then they wouldn't all be copying the dress sense of their friends, family and neighbours; keeping gold chain, shell suit and car body kit companies in business, or just voting for the party their families always have.

They have no idea what their voting power means, or what each party or their policies mean to them or the country as a whole. It drives me mad.

I do not support full democratic process. The only real way to get a result based on reasoned voting, is to force everyone to take IQ tests and only allow those over a certain result allowed to vote. I can't see many people actually agreeing to that though as you could view it as a bit dictatorial I suppose. :lol:

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I agree and thats why ive never voted to this day. My political knowledge is prbly zero.

Consevatives= bad, Libdem= Laughable and Labour= gordon Brown whos a bit funny looking with shifty eyes and scottish.thats as far as my pollitical knowledge goes so to vote would be excedingly unwise.