In a private meeting of the Parliamentary Labour party at Westminster on Monday night, Gordon Brown accepted that his party has suffered badly in recent months as the recession has hit the UK. He warned MPs to ‘brace themselves for a fresh battering from voters in the coming weeks as the recession deepens’.
He went on to say that the current economic crisis was a test of Labour’s character, but insisted that the party would recover from its plight. Labour has suffered badly in opinion polls, while especially the Conservatives have been riding high. Some polls have put Labour as much as 20 % behind the Tories. In addition to bad polls for his party, the Prime Minister took a personal blow yesterday when another poll showed that 63 % of voters believe Labour would be better with another leader.
Brown is pinning his political and economical hopes on the London summit of world leaders in April, but many ministers believe that it will get worse before it gets better. This is not good news for a Prime Minister who is facing approval ratings mirroring the ones of George W Bush at the end of his reign. With local elections coming up in June, Labour and Brown will have to work hard to convince voters that Labour is the best to steer through the storm.
Ironically, the British public would have been more forgiving if Gordon Brown had been prepared to admit that he had made mistakes and apologies, instead, he has blamed everyone else. The economy was driven by debt and a housing bubble on his watch, as Chancellor, he elected to do nothing other than preen his feathers, now he is paying the price for HIS mistakes…and of course, so are we!