An English acquaintance, who has lived and worked on the Costa Del Sol in Spain for many years, explained to me the difference between how a Spaniard and a British man react to offence.
“The Spanish man will approach you rapidly with arms waving and voice raised in passion. He will give you a verbal bashing but will rarely strike a blow. The Brit will remain still, with narrowed eyes, you may not even realize you’ve offended him until his fist smashes into your face.”
Gordon Brown is in the latter situation now. The nation has narrowed its eyes and gone quiet, as it surveys the wreckage of its hopes, the trashing of its country, and the depressing fact that “nothing works any more”.
The “great, clunking fist”, as Tony Blair called Brown, is all set to be on the receiving end of an even greater bunch-of-fives.
He may not realize this yet. His recently-acquired maniacal grin of self-satisfaction has only just peaked, beginning a long, slow downturn of the rictus muscles.
After a week of shocking revelations, showing the National Debt set to double in a few short years, matching that of the country’s annual economic output, plus the Nixonian arrest of an Opposition Member of Parliament for effectively doing his job, the mood of the nation is dire and Brown is its focus.
Even his opinion poll gains, after the bank “bailout” that failed, have now retreated, handing a 15 point lead to David Cameron’s Conservatives.
Brown’s great ploy of bringing back arch-enemy, Peter Mandelson as Lord Mandy of Huckleberry and Folly in the Counties of Yorkshirepudding and Heartlessness, has fractured into Victorian melodrama. Mandy’s real opinion of grim, “fatally flawed” Gordon is all over the papers this weekend.
How the Tories must be chortling. Just a week ago Shadow-Chancellor, George Osborne, was lost at sea, and boss Cameron was a shallow novice not fit to black Broonie’s boots.
But the real change is in the demeanour of the electorate, the ultimate arbiter of who shall rule over us. If you look it straight in the eye, the face of Ray Winstone stares back at you. A study in suppressed fury, brittle calm before a storm, narrow-eyed, focused malignity, fists curling, sinews clenching … You get my drift.
Gordon doesn’t stand a chance. The British are seething for an opportunity to take revenge on the man and the government they blame for making such enormous bets on failure with their money.
The reckoning will be harsh, richly-deserved, and probably fatal to the Labour party, which will yet again leave office as the author of national disaster.
John Evans
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