by Ann C Evans

Created on: July 27, 2009

Can Gordon Brown win the next election in his own right?

Gordon Brown was never given a mandate by the British people; he became Prime Minister on the coat tails of Tony Blair who resigned his office mid term. He was the only realistic candidate at that time to take over the leadership of the Labour Party and subsequently to assume its premiership.

So in the first few months of Gordon Brown becoming prime minister everything pointed to an early, swift election with an evens chance of a winning outcome. However being the person he is, a gutless, non gambling ditherer, he let that opportunity slip by. Perhaps he wanted better odds or more likely perhaps, the fear of going down in history as the shortest unelected serving prime minister, was too much for him to bear.

The whole political scene as well as the financial one has changed dramatically since the early days of his premiership. To-day it's fair to say that nothing ever is going to be the same again in British politics for whichever party comes to power.

In the political scene the whole disastrous affair of MP's allowances did more it seems to rock the foundations of Westminster than anything previously including, dare I say, the whole Iraq War debacle. Although the expenses scandal affected all the parties right across the board, the Labour party being the governing party bore the brunt. Several of Gordon Brown's ministers, some even from his cabinet, handed in their resignations or were asked to go even after agreeing to pay back some of their 'erroneous' claims. Many would argue that most, not all, of these 'erroneous' expense claims, didn't actually break any laws. Even so, it seems that they did break the spirit of the rules. Besides the petty things they claimed for, e.g. loo seats, pet food, garden plants, and yes in one case even a packet of hobnobs, the crux of the row was mainly to do with the second home allowance.

Ministers from both main parties it seems were manipulating or 'flipping' both their first and second homes in such a way as to avoid paying a hefty capital gains tax. The whole expenses affair went on for weeks taking up valuable parliamentary time leaving less time for other important issues. Consequences even led to the speaker of the House, Mr. Michael Martin, to quit; the first Commons Speaker to be effectively forced out of office for 300years. It appears that Mr. Martin had previously blocked proposals to reform minister's allowances in making them more

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