Like most Brown speeches it is worth revisiting after the bombast has had time to calm down. And once again Brown seems to live in a parallel universe where he is responsible for the good things yet oddly never responsible for the questionable mistakes or the policy disasters. That's evasive and cowardly, Brown must be the most furtive politician we've seen.

As for talk of prosperity, most western economies enjoyed a boom. Yet when the crunch came, more banks collapsed in the UK than the rest of the EU combined. Similarly, few countries had such a deep recession and to this day Britain is burdened with record levels of debt. Perhaps Brown had something to do with this, just as he was good friends with the Murdochs?

I can't help feeling his constituents must be feeling pretty short-changed at the moment. The first time he goes into Parliament to represent them for some time, and he decides to do it with an entirely selfish 30min tirade.

After all the lies from the Tories, who have blamed Gordon Brown for just about everything in the world, it was fantastic that he was given a chance to speak out.
The Tories were squirming and John Bercow wouldn't let them intervene, even when a Labour back-bencher told the children's minister to 'sit down stupid!' Brown was brilliant, shame Cameron wasn't there.

I suppose if an organisation accessed Dan's financial details, he will be very happy and very hospitable to them.

I watched the whole debate. As usual, the media uses the controversial and less flattering clips of GB's speech and avoid the bravety of the speech when taken as a whole.

Rather than sympathising with GB on the crime committed against him and the invasion of his child health issues; regardless of how they get the info, once again the media continues to undermine one of our best Chancellors, probably of all time.

And before any ignoromous mentions the financial recession, GB did not cause it. He did not cause the downfall of Lehman Brothers.

"delivered levels of prosperity that will be eyed enviously for generations to come. "

That short lived prosperity was funded on the backs of future generations and speculative housing investments.

He could certainly have done with a little less self exculpation, but it needs to be pointed out, and probably not by Ed, that there are serious policy differences between the party on the media and where the parties differ, those of the tories are invariably more favourable to NI.

What some have missed is Brown expressly blamed the Home Office as well as the Cabinet Secretary for not being able to launch an investigation into News International. This is obviously an attack by Brown on Alan Johnson who has said he couldn't in good conscience authorise an investigation into newspapers during the run-up to an election when those newspapers were supporting the opposition - it would have been seen as partisan. I have sympathy with Johnson - the preliminary steps for an investigation should have been taken with the investigation to be triggered as soon as the election result was done (hence avoiding any impact on the election result). This would also have tested Cameron the new PM's good faith as if the cancelled the pre-arranged investigation once in office it would show he was acting for News International's interests not the country's. Shame no-one thought of that - Brown wanted to attack News International once his attempt to court them had failed and the Blairites wanted to keep sucking up.

And now everyone wants to attack News International!

"Gordon Brown has nothing to prove. He is one of the truly great political figures of his generation"
This has to be the joke of they year.Smug b....er of 2010.{Post neo classical smug b.gger. Son of the manse moral compass smug something.A light touch smug economy wrecking something

wise old grandees like Jack Straw! Yet another joke
Forgot to ask why is Broon still drawing his pay while earning half a million by moonlighting at the taxpayers' expense

Broon belongs in a straight jacket in a secure unit in Fife Scotregion, he has no mandate whatsoever in England, he should go preach in his own Regions EU Regional Assembly..

Cameron and his sidekick are shallow
empty men..Miliband seems to be the same lets all play tiddlywinks all is lost

Hilarious listening to Blair on the BBC today saying how much he islooking forward to the Leveson Inquiry, Yeah right!
About as much as he looked forward to Chilcott.

Brown?

===> BIGGOT

OK - so Gus of the O'Donnells is a rosary-carrying( in triplicate ) Roman Catholic! But how come he attained the highest position in the British Civil Service?
Our assumption, having watched 'Yes, Minister!' and its sequel, was that senior civil servants came from a rotarian background or were, at least, as much committed to the Reformation as Henry VIII's Cromwell.
This is not a trivial matter!
Naturally, we have vetted this individual. It comes with relief to some of our number that Sir Gus's youth was not spent in the hands of wily Jesuits.
Nevertheless, the impact of such an appointment deserves serious consideration.
A constitutional expert should look into the matter. Immediately, Preferably not a monarchist. We understand that once the Monarch is viewed in the flesh by constitutionalists these experts become ardent royalists.
Magna Carta was of course an expedient treaty drawn up by an English king and his nobles.
Can't recall if the Pope stuck his nose in - but each of the parties was of the Catholic persuasion. [ Forget Sharia Law! King John wasn't serious ]
And the last prime minister but one! The one who didn't do religion! He converted to the Roman Catholic faith. No use blaming the wife. Much too easy.
At present there is also an impediment [ not of the speech variety ] to a Roman Catholic ruling the United Kingdom -particularly in Northern Ireland. Even the monarch's consort cannot be a member of this faith.
It's pretty obvious this constitutional problem requires sorting out.
Now that most of the Lords are literate perhaps it would be as well if the rules were written down and disseminated on Twitter or some such democratic network.
A 'word-of-mouth' constitution is not very 21st century.
Be grateful that Gordon Brown, that son of the manse, left office with that fierce Scots independence redolent of a John Knox.
History admonishes the unwary. James I and his son, Charles I are a warning to the British public.
Cameron is obviously not James II, but there have got to be doubts about George Osborne. He has Cavalier written all over him.

Guido Fawkes

Too much cross-contamination of the issues going on in this thread I'm afraid. And this is why political debate so often in this country has sunk to such levels of silly invective and unfocussed comment.

Let's just concentrate on what the MP's were discussing yesterday and all of us stop trying to rewrite history. The only real questions Gordon Brown has to answer in connection to his comments yesterday - are just what were his own relationships were with Murdoch and News International executives?

He laid out some of that yesterday, but not all of it was clear to me and some of the accusations levelled at him by Tory backbenchers were not to my mind met with a sufficient rebuttal or that convincing. He may have perfectly plausible ones. In which case he needs to make them more transparent.

As for his comments: Given the crap Gordon has had to put up with from the Tory Press, particularly the Murdoch arm of it over the past ten years, I think its about time they got a bit of it back.

But, as I said: He does need to come a little more clean on just what was his relationship with Rebekah Brooks.

Ed Milliband may have found a nice political playground to score points on, but God only knows how many politicians have been in bed with the media. For this reason, if Gordon Brown or anyone else wishes to stir things up, GOOD ON THEM, and if people like Jack Straw don`t like it, chances are they have skeletons in their clossit.

This could well be the greatest ever opportunity to clean up the landscape of the politician/media relationship, the more muck which gets highlighted the better. Keep it up Gordon, keep it up Tom Watson etc.

P.S. Hasn`t the prince of darkness gone quiet? What a surprise (NOT!!!)

I think our as-yet unborn children who will still be paying off the debt from their first ten years' wage packets might beg to differ on Gordon Brown being the economic genius that you imply.

But I do agree that he's in pain, and has a lot of ghosts, and is frankly allowing himself to be deluded about his relationship with the Murdoch press. Brown was (with Mandelson and Blair) the third pillar of New Labour, and that was built on the firm foundations of a good (i.e. sycophantic) relationship with Murdoch.

It's amazing how so many Labour supporters, who bullishly supported Blair/Brown through the good years, have forgotten the fawning support the Sun and The Times gave the Labour party. Their attack line on Cameron about Coulson is as deluded as Gordon Brown's rambling rant - Brown invited Murdoch to his son's funeral, for Heaven's sake! Cameron did *not* do the same when his son died. Just shows you the relative desperation of the two PMs...

Events are proving you right, Dan. The media are incessantly talking about Gordon Brown and saying nothing about Alex Marunchak, Paul McMullan, Sean Hoare, Terenia Taras, Laura Elston, Les Hinton, Clive Goodman, Glenn Mulcaire, Ian Edmondson, Neville Thurlbeck, James Weatherup, Neil Wallis, Andy Coulson, Rebekah Brooks, Sir Paul Stephenson, James Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch or David Cameron.

"Yes, FA, we do."

We do what?

"They are criminals. Do you understand?"

What do you think I don't understand?

Post something intelligible if you want to enter a discussion please.

Agreed. He should simply be smiling ear to ear at the destruction of News Corp. Just enjoy the Shadenfreudagasm.

" The big issue isn't Coulson who left Cameron's employ in January, months before the dam broke ..."

What, like this?

Stop blathering FA.

Codswallop.

'As chancellor, he delivered levels of prosperity that will be eyed enviously for generations to come. As prime minister, when the world stared into the financial abyss, it was he who successfully marshalled the global response.' and lay the foundations for the 2008 financial crisis whilst spending all the rainy day money and then some

Ian,

That's precisely why yesterday's speech was such a mistake.

A fascinating and relaistic assessment. I don't agree with everything you say but this puts things neatly into perspective. Such a shame that Gordon appears for only the second tinme in this Parliament and irrefutably demonstrates his true self.