Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the
tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds

Via ConservativeHome:

The Sun destroys Gordon Brown’s speech and record:

TWELVE years ago, Britain was crying out for change from a divided, exhausted Government. Today we are there again.

In 1997, “New” Labour, shorn of its destructive hard-Left doctrines and with an energetic and charismatic leader, seemed the answer. Tony Blair said things could only get better, and few doubted him. But did they get better? Well, you could point to investment in schools and shorter hospital waiting lists and say yes, some things did – a little.

But the real story of the Labour years is one of under-achievement, rank failure and a vast expansion of wasteful government interference in everyone’s lives.

Nobody can doubt the dedication of Gordon Brown – or the love and loyalty of his wife Sarah, who delivered a moving plea on his behalf yesterday.

But nor can they disguise the failures of Labour in Government over the last 12 years, many of them embarrassingly laid bare by the PM’s own words yesterday.

Britain feels broken . . . and the Government is out of excuses.

Speaking to the Treasury Committee of MPs, Mr King dealt a serious blow to Mr Brown’s political strategy of casting the next election as a choice between “Tory cuts” and “Labour investment.”

In the Budget in April, Alistair Darling set out plans to borrow an extra £700 billion over five years, taking the national debt to £1.3 trillion.

Simply paying the interest on that borrowing will soon cost more money than the Government spends on schools or defence.

via Mervyn King warns that spending cuts and tax rises are needed – Telegraph.

Even The Guardian has had enough of Gordon Brown:

Political reform can no longer be put aside as an abstract idea, of appeal to dreamers but not to voters who face the harder realities of life. The public is calling furiously for a better system. People want an honest parliament. They want leaders who are prepared to act. They loathe the old system, and many of the people who are part of it.

…

All must agree that the die is cast and a hard judgment made. Otherwise progressive politics will be dragged down at a general election in May 2010 that could lead to a much bigger defeat than Labour suffered in 1979. That might bring a chance for other parties to take it forward, as the Liberal Democrats are trying to do in this election. But they are not placed to enter government. Labour has a year left before an election; its current leader would waste it. It is time to cut him loose.

via Gordon Brown: Labour’s dilemma | Editorial | Comment is free | The Guardian .

Gordon Brown will be remembered as a brief and unsuccessful Prime Minister and as a less brief but more unsuccessful chancellor. That is sad for him but sadder for the United Kingdom. Of much greater long term importance is a proper understanding of the system of government we have, the system which is now failing. The Guardian calls for a revolution in the way of doing government without apparently realizing that no revolution is possible within their mindset. Do the left propose to abandon the idea that a few should choose appropriate outcomes for the many?

True progress will come when people achieve responsible independence yet have more to do with one another, freely. The appropriate system of government is not one of direction and control, of rules set and amended by unaccountable authority, of coerced action to achieve other people’s ends. The right system of society is one of freely-chosen interdependence and mutual cooperation, a system within which people are free to choose and strive for their own ends by their own means wherever neither impinges on the ends and means of another. A system within which people choose to recognize the needs of others less fortunate and help them.

The right system of society is the uncoerced free market and the welfare society. Labour will never deliver that: they will never deliver human progress worthy of the name. We need a general election. Now.

Gordon Brown’s government has suffered a shock defeat in the Commons on its policy of restricting the right of former Gurkhas to settle in the UK.

MPs voted by 267 to 246 in favour of a Lib Dem motion that all Gurkhas be offered an equal right of residence.

Tory leader David Cameron backed the Lib Dem motion to scrap rules which leader Nick Clegg called “shameful”.

Mr Brown’s first significant defeat as PM came despite last minute concessions being offered to rebel Labour MPs.

via BBC NEWS | Politics | Brown defeated over Gurkha rules.