Please, make it stop

Christ.  I’m getting tired with asking what the fuck is wrong with The Telegraph.  A pat answer is that they’ve fired all the journalists that were any good and retained those that aren’t.  Today is a case in point – a glorious encomium to the wonder and marvel that is Gordon Brown’s leadership.  Some of this drivel from Mary Riddell is almost amusing:

The speech lacked the Prime Minister's usual statistical and literary flourishes.

Jesus, as bad as that?

His interest in the bond between Lincoln and Burns was, none the less, reflected in the speech. As two of the most respected world figures, the president and the poet shared a humble upbringing, a sense of destiny and a quest for social equality. The PM's assertion that "our first responsibility is to help the powerless" suggested that he saw this synergy replicated in an Obama/Brown partnership of like-minded pioneers.

Is this suggesting that Gordon Brown is one of the most respected world figures?  If so, I’m not sure who is more deluded, Riddell or Brown.

Whatever his culpability over City freeloading and lax regulation, he has produced as coherent and impassioned an exit strategy from recession as any world leader.

What is it?  Where is it?  He hasn’t got a clue what to do, which is understandable, and if Riddell is describing the ‘headless chicken’ approach that has been derided by virtually one and all as ‘coherent’ she’s operating to a very different definition to the one I have.

No leader has spent more time on the phone to Premier Wen Jiabao and other international statesmen.

That’s it?  He’s been on the phone?  Oh well then, panic over…

Critics wonder whether they can bear another 15 months of Brown. They should ask just how well they would fare without him. Voters will, soon enough, have their say on his fate. But if he had been ousted last year, or Mr Cameron had already been parachuted into No 10, it seems unlikely that a "novice" would have navigated disaster so surely.

Look, you can’t just keep repeating that Brown has handled this crisis surely when it’s so apparent that he hasn’t.  His Government have lurched from crisis to crisis, usually following whatever policy looks most likely to damage the short-term interests of the Conservative Party.  That’s not leadership.

It’s actually rather hard to dissect this piece, as the author seems to have spent the last six months with her fingers jammed into her ears going ‘la la la’.  Can we just say that Labour’s policies, on the economy as on so much else, are a combination of ineffectual and malign.  That virtually anyone could do a better job than the Labour Party.  And that the Telegraph seems to have entered a spiral from which only change of leadership can rescue it.