[OPE] Class perceptions of the plight of Gordon Brown

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, "The beleaguered British Prime
Minister, Gordon Brown, attempted to claw back the support of disillusioned
working-class voters by pledging measures to rein in anti-social families,
teenage drunkenness and problem children."
http://www.smh.com.au/world/brown-promises-action-on-antisocial-behaviour-20090929-gb3g.html

According to the Dutch liberal daily NRC-Handelsblad, "In his speech at the
annual Labour-congress in Brighton, Premier Gordon Brown addressed himself
to the British middle class, in the hope to win votes which his party has
virtually lost"
http://www.nrc.nl/buitenland/article2373303.ece/Brown_richt_zich_in_rede_tot_de_middenklasse

Who is correct? Rachel Sylvester in The Times online suggests, more
credibly, that:

After more than a decade in power, the coalition of working and middle-class
voters that swept it to victory in 1997 is fracturing. "We've lost the
middle classes," says a Downing Street aide, "and we know we've got to win
them back." (...) A few years ago I visited the ancient Inca capital of
Cuzco in Peru. The buildings are a curious hybrid: the bottom halves are
made up of huge round boulders, laid by the Incas - but on top balance
spindly wooden balconies built by the Spanish conquistadors. For me it
symbolised the identity crisis of a former colony. Labour has a similar
identity crisis. It knows it can't return to the old Labour boulders, but it
doesn't really like the new Labour balconies - so it has absolutely no idea
how to construct a roof.
 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/rachel_sylvester/article6853007.eceMost probably Mr Brown hasn't lost so much of the workingclass vote, butmore the middleclass voters, previously more liberal, who no longer believein the third way and don't like Gordon Brown, and therefore intend to voteConservative. It's sort of like being "compromised out of power". He'd bebetter off talking about where all the new jobs are going to come from.Jurriaanhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yG07WSu7Q9w

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Received on Tue Sep 29 14:41:20 2009