Time for a change?

In the latest polls, Labour has slumped to 16 points behind the Tories. As The Times notes, this is their lowest since the disastrous year (for Labour at least) of 1983. It appears that nearly 50% of people think that Alistair Darling is a crap Chancellor and Gordon Brown has his lowest rating since becoming PM. Vince Cable has accused Gordon Brown of making a transformation "from Stalin to Mr. Bean" and I'm beginning to wonder whether it's time for the government to go.

Back in June I was quite the support of Gordon Brown - I was somehow under the impression that he'd be a good PM and better than Tony Blair. I think now I'm being proven wrong.

When Blair first became PM in 1997 progress was made quickly. We had the referendums and subsequent devolution in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, along with the London Assembly. There was progress in Northern Ireland and the Good Friday Agreement was reached. We had the Human Rights Act and the Freedom of Information Act. The House of Lords reforms began and some control over monetary policy was handed to the Bank of England. On top of this, Tony Blair was (emphasis on was) charismatic and popular.

Contrast this to Gordon Brown and we have the Northern Rock crisis, several episodes of large scale data loss, the row over the new EU treaty and now a disappointing budget. To top it off, we've got some idiotic nationalistic policies suggesting that children should swear allegiance to the Queen and citizenship tests for immigrants that the average Brit would struggle to pass. Gordon Brown was first compared to Stalin but is now seen to be more like Mr. Bean. He's a boring bloke and can't relate or capture the imagination of the public. People look at him and think back to the failures of the past 8 months and the final years of the Blair era.

Many of the recent fuck-ups could be pinned down to the Chancellor, but people aren't stupid enough to see him as the cause of the problem. Gordon wasn't compared to Stalin for no reason. Each and every minister is a puppet of his and he is in control of policy. To sack a minister for a fuck-up would be pointless as people associate the problems with Brown.

I'm not a fan of the Tories at all and I'm not at all comfortable with the idea of David Cameron as Prime Minister but I'm beginning to think that few years of Tory rule wouldn't be a bad thing. If anything it would give Labour the chance to sit back and sort themselves out, regrouping under a new leader (read: David Miliband).