Gordon serves Scotland

Gordon Brown launched his leadership campaign with a gushing Blair-hug and a lovely speech about how great Britain is going to be under a Brown premiership. The only problem is, nobody seems to want Gordon Brown as PM and pretty much everything he’s talked about changing is only relevant to England, not Britain. A poll conducted in Yorkshire asked the question whether Brown make a good Prime Minister with a simple yes/no option. Only three per cent of people thought he would – even Labour would struggle to put a positive spin on that result.Newsnight spoke to a sample of 30 Labour voters ranging from swing voters to Labour Party activists about what they thought of Gordon Brown as their leader and most people objected to him because he is old, deceitful and Scottish.

Of course, any suggestion that Gordon Brown shouldn’t be Prime Minister because he is Scottish is denounced as racist and Gordon is keen to show us all that while he is a die-hard Scot he is also British so there’s no problem there.

Except there is because the issue is not with his nationality, it is with the constituency he was elected to represent.

When the people of Kircaldy and Cowdenbeath elected Gordon Brown, they didn’t elect him on the basis of his policies on the English NHS, English schools or English emergency services.

They elected him to represent their interests in the British parliament on those matters that are not devolved to the Scottish Parliament and that list is a very small one.

Stuart Parr, Telford