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Tuesday 23rd September 2008

Len Freeman | 18:03 UK time, Tuesday, 23 September 2008

Here's Jeremy Paxman and Emily Maitlis with details of tonight's programme.

From Jeremy Paxman in Manchester

The late poet laureate, Ted Hughes, once wrote to Wendy Cope (surely Newsnight's nominee for the post - start writing in now) to explain why he liked her work. What he enjoyed, he said, was her ability to hit the nail on the head while everyone else was trying to hang a painting on it.

I suspect that Gordon Brown's medium of choice isn't poetry (what is it? - textbooks on neo-classical endogenous growth theory? - spreadsheets?) But he must have hoped he'd do much the same with his speech this afternoon. The question tonight will be how many portraits of an alternative leader are still hanging inside the cupboards of his MPs.

From the first chords of Iggy Pop on the warm-up tape, to the last blast on the conference's collective kazoo, the performance was relentlessly upbeat. Lots of bragging about what Labour's done, lots of talk about how he's going to fashion a new world settlement, based on the idea of fairness.

They wheeled his wife, Sarah, on to introduce his speech (which included remarks about how he wouldn't use his children as political props). Then he steamed on, about how he was what he was, and how deeply felt his convictions were. The aim was to weld the party and the leader together - he even, almost, said as much.

They seemed to love it in the hall, all right. But then, it would have had to have been utterly lamentable for that not to be the case. My guess, for what it's worth (utterly nothing - ed) is that it was enough. For now. But I'm not sure the pictures are going to be stuck on e-Bay just yet.

Join us at 10.30 tonight for (I hope) some more considered analysis from David Grossman and Michael Crick.

And from Emily Maitlis in London

You can understand why anyone might pause before writing a cheque for £700 billion.

Here in London we'll be talking about the US government super-bailout which appears - much to the markets' concern - to have stalled.

Today, Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke faced tough questioning by the senate banking committee.

What seemed - amidst the horror of last week's crisis - to be a lifeline is now looking, in the clearer light of the world surviving another week, to be a little hasty.

Can they afford to do it? Can they afford not to? As one US commentator put it, "if there's one thing worse than failing to save the financial system it's spending £700 billion and then still failing to save the financial system".

And Mark Urban is at the UN General Assembly, where President Bush and President Ahmadinejad are both giving speeches.


Comments

  • Comment number 1.

    Labour Party


    1) What is the point of having Free Cancer Prescriptions when NICE (in England) Stop the NHS from Prescribing Life Extending Cancer Drugs ?

    2) Heathrow 3rd runway, London papers this evening are saying the government has given the go ahead , even tho the public consultation is suppose to be still going on ?

    Maybe a hint for a question or two to our Governing Elites in Manchester.

  • Comment number 2.

    Enough indeed. The 10 pence tax 'mistake' was a QUITE DELIBERATE ploy to steal the budget headlines from the Opposition and
    he was rumbled ...... he should have been
    kicked out for that alone!

  • Comment number 3.

    Jeremy, do you say 'I hope' because of last night's slight technical hitches, or are you being rude about your esteemed colleagues?

    And don't degrade your opinion- John Prescott obviously values it immeasurably.

  • Comment number 4.

    'Brown's call for the setting of new standards "both internationally and nationally to curb unbridled speculation"
    in currency and derivatives followed Tony Blair's references the previous Friday to a "new global economy, terrifying in its power, making a mockery of national isolation".' [Report by Scottish Trades
    Union Review of speech by Shadow Chancellor Gordon Brown to Labour's
    Scottish Conference back in 1995 after
    the Asian currence crisis ...... my report
    wisely added: 'As yet the agenda remains
    exploratory ......'

  • Comment number 5.

    Iggy Pop? What was it - "Real Wild Child" to represent Gordon? Ha ha ha ha! I dread to think what Gordon reads. Maybe it's fortune cookies.
    I'm getting more and more used to the heir apparent (David Milliband) perhaps becoming the new PM. Who knows?

  • Comment number 6.

    Nice shoes Jezza suede is so becoming !

  • Comment number 7.

    LET'S NAIL JUST THE ONE THING.

    At #2 above, neilrobertson raises the 10p elephant. This has been poked at a number of times by various bloggers. I too have pointed out the 'fool or knave' quality of it.

    Gordon's reference to it in the 'great speech' to Conference (trailed as an apology) took the form of: "I was stung." He then moved on. That was no apology.

    THE 10p DEBACLE HAS NEVER BEEN EXPLAINED. No complex maths or economics is needed to understand why it was going to raise tax for a wide band of earners. Unless Gordon is a total impostor (like those vagrants who walk into hospitals and do eye surgery) he must have known what he had done. WE deserve to know what mental process he applied (what maths, indeed) not only to conceive it, but to stick to his guns when challenged. Surely this is worth some serious aggravation from - perhaps - terrier Crick? To let it drop is even more bizarre than the 10p itself. IT DEFINES GORDON!

  • Comment number 8.

    Gordon Brown talks of " fairness " yet he is prepared to champion Purnell's plan to force a million genuinely sick people to " work " . In the current economic climate it is likely that " sick " people will face a 40% cut in an already breadline disposable income and then be expected to pay travel to pointless soul destroying job interviews or training courses. Like Purnell said on Sunday you might just as well vote for the real thing ( the Tories ) if Labour are going to slavishly follow already announced Tory policy.

    No sign of abandoning Corporate Nazi policies like Toll roads, Bin Tax and ID cards. Ten bob fat cats might like the idea to give cancer patients " free prescriptions " but in reality it will only save them 100 quid for a pre payment certificate per year.

    Browns speech contained plenty of party friendly ten bob fat cat rhetoric but not much substance when it came down to important questions like how to effectively regulate the stock market parasites. Likewise his eco-fascist " King Canute " approach to climate change with emphasis apparently on totally inefficient wind farms with pointless stock market parasites subsidy. Brown claims that there will be a million new jobs in the " green revolution " but its likely two million currently sustainable jobs will be destroyed in the process. However, what do you expect when Browns speech probably had to face his puppet master's Corporate Nazi moderators before publication.

  • Comment number 9.

    Iggy Pop was of course lead singer of The Stooges, wasn't he?!

  • Comment number 10.

    Handshake between Miliband and Brown ? What handshake! The camera angle on Newsnight clearly showed Miliband grabbing Gordons hand as he was greeting Hazel Blears, and Gordon reluctantly offering a feeble gesture. Oh, theres a reshuffle, goodbye David.

  • Comment number 11.

    WORDS AND AMBIGUITY

    As I was saying, think extended family in the genetic (Y chromosome/MtDNA) sense of gene barriers and flow as a function of endogamy . Then consider how 'communism' rejected/ejected Trotsky in the 1920s and purged Bolsheviks in the 1930s. Hitler declared war on Bolshevism along wth Italy and Japan but he made a pact with National Socialist Stalin. Hess tried to broker a peace between Germany and Britain two months before the USSR and Germany went to war and Britain was allegedly divided in Westminster in the view of the USSR. It was Bolsheviks/Trotskyites who led the 'communist' revolution against their 'oppressors', but who were their oppressors in the Pale?. Where did they go from the Pale of Settlement at the end of the C19th? Where did Trotsky sail from in 1917? Where did most of the revolutionaries in 1917 come from? (See Bertrand Russell's autobiography, it was NYC). What has Trotskyism to do with free-market anarcho-capitalism? Why are Neoconservative roots in Trotskyism?

  • Comment number 12.

    Did he really use the phrase 'rock of stability'
    ..... as in 'Gordon Brown: Labour's northern
    rock of stability?'?!

  • Comment number 13.

    OMG!!!! It's the infamous Norman Lamont interview again, only this time, it's Geoff Hoon. Jeremy asked Hoon if he liked Brussels, then would he go back? With an enormous grin, Jeremy asked what if the PM asked him to go back? Ha ha ha ha! Oh the denials!!!!! Oh Newsnight, please put this interview up on the site :-)
    Priceless.

  • Comment number 14.

    I'd like to know who advises Gordon Brown? Are they deaf or like his ministers do they tell him what he wants them too! The public will let him see what they think, as he can't hear and yet again we get more of the same. He can find billions for nursery places, computers for children, ethnic minorities, and foreign countries.
    Money for his 'poor family' fixation, but he needs to be fair to all sections of society. Does he not think that pensioners or single and married couples might also be struggling in tax high Britain. Petrol poverty, heat or eat and rising prices have created a serious economic headache for many. Fairness, this is not. Just more of the same, but not for much longer, I suspect.

  • Comment number 15.

    Just watched the post-watch commentary (first Mr. Marr, now a Breakfast blonde... is there no end to the tough-talking heavyweights he will expose himself and his policies to?) with the main player.

    If he ever makes it here, a quick question for Mrs. Brown's (the shock, the awe!) hubby...

    How many others of those seeking to be paid and pensioned to 'have a go' at 'leading' our country have not quite figured out what is involved running a country whilst also managing a family?

    And then may loyally choose, having run it by the Party Leader four months previously, to 'totally understandably' drop this decision on him with truly exquisite timing?

    Just how daft is the public thought to be?

    If the selected public x-section from the same news is anything to go on, there seems to be a slight difference in opinion, and a damn sight more down-to-earth thoughtful common sense on real issues, in the family homes of the UK than there is in the Westminster/Fleet St bubble.

    I find this discrepancy, especially in a new-media age of instant interactivity, frankly amazing.


  • Comment number 16.

    What a speech,....er, no. Nothing about pensioners about to freeze this winter, still no apology for the ten pence fiasco, a reference yes but no apology. Purnell has not been reigned in and is he the new Portello? Nothing has changed and it is all Blairite Lite. John CruddaS MAKE YOUR MOVE NOW.

  • Comment number 17.

    GORDON DEFINED AND SO LIKE BLAIR (#16)

    And where (IF) I've made mistakes I'll put my hand up (IN FUTURE) and try to put them right. So what happened with 10p (NON-SPECIFIC) stung me (VICTIM) because it really hurt (VICTIM) that suddenly people felt (JUST THEIR PERCEPTION) 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 ('EVER WANTED TO BE' is not 'EVER HAVE BEEN'). And from now on ('NOW ON' IMPLIES: STARTING NOW) it's the only place I ever will be.

    And so (APPARENT LINK TO FOREGOING) I want to give the people of this country an unconditional assurance - no ifs, no buts, no small print (UNLIKE THE ABOVE) - my unwavering focus is taking this country through the challenging economic circumstances we face (COMPLETE CHANGE OF SUBJECT) and building the fair society of the future. (JOB'S A GORD'N!)

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