THE TELEGRAPH: Gordon Brown is picking a fight with the Tories that will damage Britain, says Benedict Brogan.
So the general election is to be fought on the playing fields of Eton, which I suppose makes a nice change from the West Midlands marginals. No wonder Gordon Brown sounded so perky yesterday. He spoke like a man set free. In a fight to the death, there is no longer any point pretending to govern in the national interest. As it was in the beginning for Labour, so shall it be in the end: class war, plain and simple. Soak the rich, crow about it, and damn the consequences.
That enclave of privilege and educational excellence featured prominently at Prime Minister's Questions. Mr Brown spat out the name with the venom he reserves for those he despises most – namely Tories, those educated privately, and the English middle classes. "Is it public services for the many or inheritance tax cuts for the few? Your tax policy seems to have been dreamed up on the playing fields of Eton," Mr Brown taunted David Cameron, quoting no doubt from Labour's campaign battle plan. On the benches behind him, it was open season on the toffs in tails.
The brazenness with which Mr Brown reduced the election ahead to a battle between the rich and the rest has one advantage at least: it exposed the fraudulence of his claim to govern for all the people, or whatever the phrase was that he used when he first took over in 2007. He governs for himself and his party, first and always.
And, like the Russians retreating before Napoleon, Mr Brown pursues a scorched earth strategy. Its purpose is two-fold: to put the Tories on the spot as an Opposition by driving them towards difficult policy choices that can then be demolished, while doing everything to ensure that if they do get in, they will find the wells have been filled and the fields ploughed with salt. >>> Benedict Brogan | Wednesday, December 02, 2009
