National News Rishi Sunak

Here's where I put the cat amongst the pigeons. Gordon Brown has been my favourite recent PM by a long long way.
 
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Wandering Yellow said:
He totally f----d this countries gold reserves.
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For the most part, rich Western countries holding gold is largely pointless. Definitely with hindsight he could have gained a better price by waiting but the value of gold today would cover about two weeks of our current deficit - not negligible, but hardly pivotal.

For various boring reasons there is no need for us to hold gold. It is only a precautionary thing to have if there is a run on the pound. And even then it's not particularly useful because as soon as you sell gold reserves the price goes down.

And then there are the achievements - tax credits lifting half a million children out of poverty, shortest NHS waiting times in history, crime was down by a third under his watch (well from 1997 to 2008), huge funding into education, the disability discrimination act, the cancer guarantee, banning of cluster bombs, civil partnerships, the creation of sure start. It's not a bad list.

I know there are a lot of complaints and I get that but I still think we had a government intent on making the country better then. As ever just my opinion though.
 
Eric Blair said:
Here's where I put the cat amongst the pigeons. Gordon Brown has been my favourite recent PM by a long long way.
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Totally agree. Someone who understood you are elected to serve your country not yourself! Labour could learn a lot from him.

And he recognised and called out a racists when he saw one. 😉
 
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bazzer9461 said:
Unelected PM a bit like an unelected foreign minister
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I think a lot of people disagree with me but I was totally fine with Brown becoming PM in this way. We don't elect Presidents which is a great thing (I have a horrible feeling that if we had done then Nigel Farrage could have come close to becoming President on a one off vote - that's a different point though).

Instead we elect MPs who represent us and decide who to lead their party. I'm also not really in favour of letting party members have a direct vote on party leaders (maybe letting their votes count for 50% and MPs the other 50%) because you tend to end up with crackers people like Truss leading things. As for Cameron - it's different as he is not even elected as an MP. He's an improvement on some of his predecessors (Boris and Truss) but that is beside the point. It sets a precedent (which admittedly existed in the 1960s) that an unelected person can quickly sit in the cabinet. Can you imagine the (probably rightful) outrage if Blair got made Foreign Sec in a future Labour Gov? The principle stands regardless of the party in power.
 
QR said:
Get up with the program. She sits as an Independent having been kicked out of the Parliamentary Labour Party. Now what were you saying about Sue Ellen?
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I missed that. Was it Keir who kicked her out?

Mental is took so long for Labour to kick her out to be honest.
 
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