Gordon Brown - Riding a dead Labour Government?

As we approach the Labour party conference, I've been thinking about the state of the Labour party now, and what they have achieved under Gordon Brown. There will be the obvious talk of a post conference bounce, but I think even the most optimistic Labour MP realises that the game is up. Labour know that they are doomed - and I'm sure they are kicking themselves for not getting rid of Brown when they had the chance - it's far to late now. To prove the point, only today did the BBC news site run a story on how Cabinet Ministers are coming out in support of Brown. They realise that the time has gone to be infighting and plotting for power - they are stuck with Brown through to the General Election.

I was trying to think of a way of getting over how terrible this Labour government has been under Brown's leadership. Unfortunately there are just too many cock-ups, embarrassments, lies and feats of incompetence to list. Then I remembered the "Riding a dead horse" analogy, and upon reading it for the first time in several years, I realised that it sums up Gordon Brown, and the Labour party's method of governance perfectly:

The tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians, passed on from one generation to the next, says that when you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount.

But in the Labour Party, other strategies are often tried with dead horses, including the following:

1. Buying a stronger whip.

2. Changing riders.

3. Threatening the horse with termination.

4. Appointing a committee to study the horse.

5. Arranging to visit other sites to see how they ride dead horses.

6. Lowering the standards so that dead horses can be included.

7. Reclassifying the dead horse as "living-impaired".

8. Hiring outside contractors to ride the dead horse.

9. Harnessing several dead horses together to increase speed.

10. Providing additional funding and/or training to increase the dead horse's performance.

11. Doing a productivity study to see if lighter riders would improve the dead horse's performance.

12. Declaring that the dead horse carries lower overhead and therefore contributes more to the bottom line than some other horses.

13. Rewriting the expected performance requirements for all horses.

14. Promoting the dead horse to a supervisory position.