A comment in London daily The Morning Star on Gordon Brown, Tony Blair’s Chanchellor of the Exchequer, and, many observers expect, his successor as Prime Minister, when Blair will finally have to resign in disgrace:
GORDON Brown’s spurious claim to draw inspiration from MK Gandhi while rejecting his philosophy of non-violence is on a par with having Nelson Mandela as an idol without sharing his repudiation of apartheid.The only basis for the Chancellor voicing his freshly revealed admiration for Gandhi is that he is in India and he wants to ingratiate himself with people there - possibly for electoral considerations in Britain.
To make matters more ridiculous, Mr Brown twinned Gandhi with imperial apologist Winston Churchill, who referred to the Indian national leader as a “half-naked fakir,” in his short list of heroes.
Having identified the key aspect of Gandhi’s outlook with which he could not concur - pacifism - perhaps Mr Brown ought to have indicated how, in so many other areas, his and the mahatma’s ideas dovetailed.
Perhaps Gandhi was speaking directly to Mr Brown - whose labour movement supporters insist that he speaks fluent real Labour in off-duty moments - when he said: “To believe in something and not live it is dishonest.”
Was he thinking of the Chancellor’s treatment of Britain’s pensioners when he said: “To forgive and accept injustice is cowardice?”
And there are countless quotes to provide eloquent condemnation of new Labour’s Brown-inspired economic policies that glory in the further enrichment of the rich, whether by skewing the taxation system in favour of big business and the wealthy or by spiking criminal investigations into arms traffickers’ bribery of overseas officials.
