Opinion of Gordon Brown

[Phony Moderate]

Discuss.

[You kip if you want to...]

Incredibly positive.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

He reminds me of Terry Jones.

[BritishDixie]

He abolished "Tory Boom and Bust". Oh wait, he didn't. We just have bust now.

[Franzl]

Incompetent.

[Supersonic]

He abolished "Tory Boom and Bust". Oh wait, he didn't. We just have bust now.

Touché.

Big HP. Incompetent. Shouldn't have been Prime Minister and consistently sought to undermine Tony Blair.

[Silent Hunter]

Probably not cut out to be PM, but got a spectacular set of bad circumstances from the word go.

[freefair]

FF for keeping UK out of Euro and being a good father, HP in most other respects.

[RogueBeaver]

FF for keeping Britain out of the Euro but HP for everything else. Like 99% of finance ministers he was completely miscast as PM. Reminds me a lot of Paul Martin, difference is that Martin had a much better personality and was to his boss' right rather than his left.

[Torie]

A nebbish.

[YL]

Big HP. Incompetent. Shouldn't have been Prime Minister and consistently sought to undermine Tony Blair.

FF then.

I think he tried hard as PM in the face of some very difficult circumstances, and didn't actually do that bad a job.  On the other hand his legacy as Chancellor doesn't look so great now, though it has to be remembered that not many people (and certainly not the current Chancellor) foresaw what was coming.

[BritishDixie]

Big HP. Incompetent. Shouldn't have been Prime Minister and consistently sought to undermine Tony Blair.

FF then.

I think he tried hard as PM in the face of some very difficult circumstances, and didn't actually do that bad a job.  On the other hand his legacy as Chancellor doesn't look so great now, though it has to be remembered that not many people (and certainly not the current Chancellor) foresaw what was coming.

Last Part is true. Osbourne should not be chancellor. He promised to match Labour's spending plans until everything went pear shaped with the economy.

[afleitch]

Woeful as Chancellor in retrospect, woeful as PM.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Actually quite a good PM I think (or at least it's difficult to think of anyone else who would have done better under the circumstances; certainly not his predecessor or the current buffoon of an incumbent), though an awful Labour Leader (apart from his electoral strategy being pretty good).

Time as Chancellor is rather mixed, obviously. Some good decisions, some bad ones, and an impact on the government's Social Policy that has to be seen (from even a half-way leftish perspective) as positive. Of course I did well out of that personally. The obvious errors have to be seen in the context of the pattern of British politics between 1986 and 2008 in which the City was king through its sheer financial muscle and in which (as a result) no one in political life supported a return to the universe as it was before the Big Bang, though seeing something in context isn't the same as offering an excuse.

[TNF]

FF for preventing Britain from going into full on recession until the Tories came to power an enacted an austerity budget.

[FreedomFighter]

FF for preventing Britain from going into full on recession until the Tories came to power an enacted an austerity budget.

This, austerity won't work. As the New Deal shows, only Government Intervention can put the economy ship-shape.