I can remember the old Tories - their amorality, their inhumanity, their blind desperation, their total ugliness of body and soul. I feel sure there are enough like me to keep these new androids out of power for another five years at least.

Tom, London,

Very interesting source of comments.

Where are all the Tory voters. Gone & emigrated every one......

Richard, Bucharest, Romania

"Taunt them. Humiliate them. Kick them."

I think that's right.

We mustn't be afraid of victory.

Unlike someone I could mention.

David Moss, London, UK

They've waited so long for this, Matthew and the Tories - a chance to put the boot in to Labour. Just 3 weeks after holding a double digit lead in the polls it's apparently all over for big Gordon.
Although the Labour anti-Blair plotters must be wondering what the hell they have done (chuckle), things are not yet that bad for Labour.
Matthew is getting just a liitle bit too excited when he claims that Blair "did nothing". The improvements in hospitals, schools, Northern Ireland and many areas of welfare are all on record and make his assertion ridiculous.
Cameron will regularly make mincemeat out of Brown at PMQ but, since TV coverage began, only Blair, Hague and Cameron have excelled in that forum. Thatcher had the same hectoring approach as Brown, but it didn't seem to do her any harm.
My advice to all those with blue rosettes - take a deep breath and don't go down the Punch and Judy road. Otherwise hubris beckons at the next election.

arnoldo, Coventry,

Douglas Newell - you and your fellow Scots shouldn't be voting at all for who governs England. Most of us south of the border don't want the Scottish mafia in power here. You use terms like 'chinless posh twits' (how outdated & old Socialist is that?) because you Scots have a collective massive inferiority complex; that's your problem, not ours. Who in England cares what you think? We're paying huge subsidies to keep your lot in benefits, public service pay and pensions and aren't in the mood to be told by you who should be running our country. Blair was accepted because he looked & sounded English (and was often more Tory than the Tories). Now we've got the dour, hatchet-faced Broon and his (mainly Scottish) old Socialists to contend with, the people who voted for Blair will be repulsed by his usurper and vote for the natural party of the English - the Tories. Keep bashing them, Dave!

anne, bournemouth,

I'm surprised Parris hasn't suggested that Dave resurrects the "demon eyes" poster the Tories used on Blair and add them to Brown's visage. And what kind of result did that bring? Why, another Labour victory at the polls!

K Philips, London, UK

Cameron should keep after him and fight for our troops as they fight for us. It was a dishonourable way
to gain political points. Brown I see as an enemy of our country as I have not much listened to what he preaches but have noted what he does. This act speaks for itself as does the denial of the polls having
any influence on the decision not to run, and more.
Brown is accustomed to steath and making bullets for
others to fire,keeping himself out of range.His craving for power and the limelight has been his undoing I think he is totally unfit. My grandma used to tell me that most bullies are cowards when push comes to shove. He deserves everything that Cameron can
hit him with untill he has gone.

D Eccles, Accrington,

Gordon Browns actions since becomming leader remind me of a poem by Roger McGough titled The Leader

I wanna be the leader
I wanna be the leader
Can I be the leader?
Can I? I can?
Promise? Promise?
Yippee, I`m the leader
I`m the leader


OK what shall we do?

GMG, Rigby, Warwickshire

Nick's point relatets to the media: When William Hague stood for PM, the BBC online had glowing reports of TB, but very little about WH. Pictures of the incumbent, none of the opposition candidate. You wouldn't know WH mattered. It was a wash-out. This was
before I read online papers, such as THE TIMES, so I don't know
about their coverage.

Hermann Burchard, Stillwater , Oklahoma

The problem with this little idea is that once 'Dave' and friends start going for the man and not the ball, might not he find the same treatment applied to him and the shadow front bench?

A combination of his public school pals and (apart from William Hague) a conglomeration of no-hopers who make Alistair Darling appear charasmatic.

Scoring points in the infantile jousting match that is PMQ's does not a government-in-wating make; Dave is going to have to come up with a 'big idea' and some real policies, before he can hope to be taken seriously at the next election.

C G Nugent, London, UK

Putting aside partisan views for the moment (and I do have some). I think that last weeks PMQ demonstrated one of the unique strengths of the British parliamentary system. To see the Prime Minster subject to visceral "bear pit" criticism on state financed televison by the state financed leader of Her Majesties Loyal Opposition was a delight.
A uniquely British experience that all sides should take some pride in being a part of, even those who suffered on this occasion.

Tom Sykes, Huddersfield, UK

Politics itself has become nothing more than an infantile schoolyard, and I for one, am sick of it.

Weak blows and insults will only get any party so far, and with no solid manifesto Cameron is going to have to pull his finger out to get any kind of political advantage.

While I agree that Brown is little more than smoke and mirrors, the Tories are laughable as an alternative.
So forgive me for sounding ignorant, but I think I prefer Labour simply because theres no other choice".

After all, pull enough tricks and one day you just might actually pull a rabbit out of a hat.

Jon Taylor, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, England

Yes, how right Mr Parris is. Our very political system is based on conflict, as is our legal system, and if the opposition fails to oppose with all the vigour it can, then the system stops working. Labour got it with 'Tory sleaze' the slogan for far less actual sleaze than this government has produced. For ten years we have had Tory 'nice' ness, ugh! Hard critical points must be made. As for our rugby team, we need a powerful and overwhelming scrum to shove Labour back and back, then make them dither, run sideways, and concede points. Come on you Tories, at last, get stuck in - an opposition cannot win on trying to jolly nice, rounds of applause to Blair in the Commons etc. British politics is brutal, in the interests of truth.

Norma, Cowley, UK

Oh dear, Cameron, Cameron Cameron . . . I wonder when the truth of his student days will emerge and leave his earnest, pink face popping like a stranded goldfish?

Here's to his smug, patronising and frankly rude performance at PMQs last week coming back to bite him, hard.

Frank Evans, Reading,

It is suprising that Matthew Parris is still under the illusion that the Westminster playground is of great interest to the general public. Its not that they don't like the "yah boo" politics, they just switched off years ago. William Hague hammered Tony Blair at the despatch box; fat lot of good it did him.

The Tories Inheritance Tax wheeze was the kind of smoke and mirrors trick Brown has been pulling for years - I guess Brown is kicking himself he didn't come up with it first.

The truth is Cameron's Tories are just as much vacous triangulators as Blair/Brown were.

Nick, France,

And what happens to "people who walk on water"...given enough time, they are often run over by speedboats!

We've sat by our TV screens for the past 10 years enduring nothing else but shyster politics and I write so in all honesty!

Talking of honesty...it isn't something people from the legal profession are often really interested in. Fabrication and in the support of, are more likely to be the 'stock-in-trade' used time and again in their goals.

We've witnessed nothing more that the aforementioned for so long now. Two shysters, Blair and Brown, with fantastic amounts of media coverage included... peddling their arguments at the expense of every citizen in the land! So typical and to be honest, so expected! For what else would a pair of shysters like these two do...it’s in the nature of the beast!

Was Blair a captain of industry...or Brown for that matter? No, just two guys trained to conduct an argument at another’s expense, win or lose!

David Downes, Chester, UK

Elections are seldom, if ever, won -- they're almost always lost.

I have a feeling that you advised Cameron to replace his entire front bench with cats, and he followed your sage advice, the strategy would still prove successul.

Rob, London,

Couldn't agree more, new labour has been a disasterous exercise in half baked ideas not thought through to their full consquences e.g. Tax credits, human rights act (now we can't deport known terrorists), Immigration (no forward planning on how to accommodate the 2 Million plus new arrivals since 1997 i.e. housing, public services, schools etc), Iraq, selling off our gold reserves (and announcing such at a time gold was cheap), Prescott's planning disasters meaning our suburbs are being turned into urban sprawls of flats, stealth taxes, council tax raises due to demands placed on local govt by central govt policy, Higher educations fees (why do we need 50% of the population with a degree and why should the British tax payer give student loans to foreign students)... I could go on.

Tim, Cambridge , UK

Do you think we all will remember where we were and what we were doing, the day when the little boy shouted, " Look! the Emperor is naked , he has no clothes"

Larry, uk,

I've really loved Matthew Parris' columns over the years, but this is just totally over the top. The crucial phrase here is 'Blair did nothing, and Mr Brown did well enough while he stuck to Tory spending plans, and then began to drift'. This is hadly analytical, or even properly critical. Any true analysis would have to take account of (a) the Blair government did a lot, whatever one thinks of it. Where's the coverage here of the Working Families Tax Credit, the minimum wage, peace in Northern Ireland, devolution for Scotland and Wales, better paternity and maternity terms, increased education spending? And (b) Brown only followed Tory spending plans for two years after the 1997 election. It must have been a slow 'drift' indeed to only become apparent, and begin to slow growth, eight years on. Huge falls in NHS waiting lists have been bought with the cash in the interim. Hyperbole can only take us so far. I think we need a bit less partisan howling and frothing at the mouth here.

Glen O'Hara, Oxford,

Matthew

Give our former prime minister his due. Mr Blair achieved a lot.
Looking at the consequences, I'm sure many of us wish he hadn't.

Otherwise, an excellent article.

Don, Gateshead, Tyne & Wear

There are many interesting comment s but all miss the point,
Labour is going to get trounced at the next election. The tide
has turned even Brown and the Labour Party know it.

Denver Watt, Osaka,

Excellent article Mathew, what a joy to see such a turn around for the Tories. I was always confident Dave could show his talents once parliament returned.
Poor guy had a tough time being overshadowed, whilst Brown took over & then all the disasters which had to be overseen by a new PM.
But , now the house is back & Dave truly magnificent, Brown was well ' trounced,' he crumbled before our very eyes , we saw what was always suspected & were warned about before he took over, he is deeply flawed, like any bully you turn on you see the glass jaw.
Must be deeply worrying for him to think he may have this every Wednesday, I do hope he can come up with some kind of fight because the last thing I want is him getting sympathy votes. !
For those who knocked Cameron on his schooling, I would say this is where Eton scores, with eloquence & confidence, both strangers to Broon, the other missing quality is passion, DC shows passion in spades not spin, I can see leadership skills there too .
to

maggie millington, Brittany , France

Fine, Matthew, let's have some booh-hoorah politics for a while but when the silly season comes to an end what is the difference between Punch and Judy, Cameron and Brown? On the question of the EU, for example, there's not a toilet paper width between them. Neither has the bottle to give the British people the ultimate choice to stay in the EU or leave it. Paradoxically, if, as now seems probably, we get the new treaty then it will be easier for the UK to leave the EU. Brown can then taunt Cameron with the prospect of taking the UK out because he knows that will split the Tory party from top to bottom. Then there's the new Eastern Question: Turkey. Will Cameron join Merkel and Sarkozy and oppose Turkey's entry into the EU or continue to take exactly the same line as Brown?
It could well be that in the end Punch and Judy politics will be replaced by Twiddledum and Twiddledee politics, ie a lot of Twoddle.

Dr David Green, Athens, Greece

Matthew, if they go for the men of New Labour, is there not a risk of the Equal Opportunities Commission requesting an equal share of the flak for the apparatchicks also?

That could impact in a negative way on old-fashioned but relevant and voter friendly notions of gentlemanly conduct

drf venables preller, Warminster, UK

Not all of us thought that NuLabour was the way ahead,I remember the 1997 election for one thing.The BBC interviewed a woman on the result and she replied that "Britain had been conned" and I thought then she was totally right.
My god ,how long a time it has taken this country and the media to understand this.Remember all those slogans-tough on crime,tough on the causes of crime-Education,Education,Education-The Third Way-Ethical Foreign Policy etc,they were all shams and the country kept on wanting to believe it.Now with Brown they are just waking up to the fact they have been conned.

Nigel Wheatcroft, Wimbledon, UK

I think another useful tactic would be for Cameron to bring up a new subject each PMQs such as gold sales, government borrowing in supposed 'good times' etc.

Brown seems utterly incapable of thinking on his feet (unlike Blair) and watching him shout meaningless mantras in reply will help nail the reputation of the 'amazing brain' once and for all.

Mike, Weston,

I couldn't agree more. We must first expose and then get rid of this disgusting lot: Brown and his band of incompetent automatons whose only ability is obfuscation. Still there are so many people who believe all this twaddle about Brown delivering an economic miracle; and who have not yet realised what transfer of sovereignty to Europe entails; and who still believe hosing money into a bottomless pit will fill it.

RalphG, London,

I entirely agree with the article. Trouble with the Tories over the past ten years has been that they think they can just turn up for an election and get voted in. On just about every issue,
there is more than ample ammunition to attack Labour for the past ten years of waste. Even Labour's (Brown's) vaunted handling of the economy over the past ten years is absolute left wing spin. From inheriting a balanced budget and probably the most benign economic circumstances in the world for the past hundred years, Brown has managed to turn the economics of this country in to those of a banana state. Britain is now the most indebted nation in Western Europe. Even Darling in this weeks budget has to borrow even money.

chris, woodbridge, suffolk

As a non-American who formerly lived in the USA for several years, your decription of America as a place "where they think in German but speak in English" triggered an 'aha' moment, and switched on a little light in my mind. This is so true. Now I feel that I understand the Americans a lot better. Thanks for your original insight, on this and many other issues.

Mark, Johannesburg, South Africa

Why were people so easily fooled by blair? one look at him screamed used car dealer he only ever smiled from the nose down.Brown was and is the follower always asking "whens it my turn" well its his go and he has made a right mess already.Watching PMQs shows he just cant handle a situation where he is not the boss cameron laughed at him and he lost it I thought he would scream.The body laguage also speaks volumes.
To sum up I wouldnt trust the man in a real crisis because he would come apart at the seams,He is as they say all mouth and no trousers,a dud,ahollow man.

mitch, wolverhampton, England

While I heartily approve of killing off this Government, I have to disagree about Brown having no vision. He does have a vision: a sort of Calvinist-Communist state where he and his fellow Scots exercise absolute power over a castrated England. Having bled the middle classes of England dry of savingts he is now looking for any wealth they might have stashed away in bricks and mortar. The thought that they might want to pass on their house to their own children rather than to newly arrived immigrants never entered his head until last week.

Yes, Tories, go for the jugular but don't be in any doubt about this beast. He may wear a tie (but not a dinner jacket) yet he doesn't share English values or those of even most Scots who, in the main, are prudent.

Adrian Gilbert, Tonbridge,

Thats a good attack policy, however the current band of non-entities that make up the Conservative Party are an even more un-electable bunch than the curent Labour party.

The reason that Labour have been in power so long is not that they have tricked the population with weasel words, its that the alternative, a bunch of chinless posh twits who are out to line with pockets as much as they can and who have nothing in common with the vast majority of voters, are entirely unrepresentative of the people they want to lead.

Look at the audience at any Tory event, they're all ancient, the blue rinse brigade. Yesterday's people.

Me, I'm not a big Fan of Labour and Brown (I liked Blair BTW) and have voted Conservative in the past, but I'll not vote for the big fake Cameron bandwagon. Cameron and his people don't represent my interests any more.

Now if Davies or Hague were leader...

Douglas Newell, Saltcoats, Scotland, UK

For a man to seem so huge when behind Tony Blair, so arch and prominent, a fixer, a Caesar, thumb always cocked, and to see him now makes one believes Mr Brown's image to have been a shadow on the bedroom wall. He was a bogey man and like so many of the ineffectual he attributed to himself the 'big hitter' tag that he could hide behind. The gag in Father Ted was the difference between 'very small and far away'; Mr Brown manages to be both. For a man that wanted that job for so long to come to the despatch box with nothing new shows a man that is a spinner rather than a doer, someone who has subjugated whatever intelligence or energy he had to the dark side and been drained in the process. Once you fall out of love you cannot conscience the touch of that person and so Brown has become a pariah and another week like last week and he will be unsupportable. "Ita feri ut se mori sentiat", Strike him so that he can feel he is dying, Suetonius, 'Caligula'.

Malcolm Turner, Alsager, England

Cameron should go for the jugular. Brown looked so uncomfortable at the despatch box during this weeks PMQ's. He is desperately vulnerable now. No mercy, no quarter. Remember how Blair took Major apart in the commons from 93-97. It wasn't pleasant watching but it worked.

will clouston, corbridge, northumberland

Matthew, you (rightly) pour scorn on "triangulation", but this is the essence of Cameron's hug a huskie approach, and Osborne's crafty balancing of IHT tax cuts with "let' hit the non-doms" - except that he didn't realise (or didn't care) that he would be hitting foreign nurses rather than billionnaires. Please don't try to pretend that this is the start of "ad hominem" arguments against Labour. In your political columns over the years you've rarely done other than attack the man rather than the policies.

William, London,

Gordon Brown is now a wounded and dangerous beast. He has to be destroyed before he can recover. If he is allowed to do, so it will take much more effort to destroy him on a second occasion.

His caution over the referendum issue needs to be used to entrap him. His anger at PMQ to ridicule him. His recklessness in abandoning Labour values and adopting Tory policies on inheritance tax to destroy his credibility. His 'attachment' to his moral compass to harass him.

Given the money spent on it, We should by now have a NHS the envy of the world. Instead it could hardly claim to be the envy of the Third World.

Gordon Brwon teh raodblock to reform must be destroyed for all our sakes.

Anthony, London,

If its "spin without substance" you're looking for, look no further than David Cameron, who has always seen himself as the "heir to Blair" and even now has nothing to say about policy, other than to knock the governmnet. That's not a manifesto for ruling the nation, Dave boy. Give it up, there are still adults in control.

Chloe, London, England,

Michael Moorhouise (France) comments that your article was "juvenile and blinkered". So how many more years must this hollow government continue in office without serious opposition ? Without it being exposed or tested ? Forced to account for its actions while the nation bleeds to death due to debt and dithering.

"Will the current Cameron bubble last?" The same question was asked of Blair pre 1997 and he set out with Alistair Campbell to destroy the Tories and in particular John Major . (Under pants and shirt jibe for example !) A sustained onslaught which worked !

Brown wouldn't condone this type of politics, would he ? Perish the thought !! Passive politics suits our Gordon at present - government of the talents etc get the great and the good on side with a little patronage paid for by the taxpayer...nothing but decorative cannon fodder ! Tories must prod and probe - or Brown will win by default.

But then who cares? You obviously don't, Michael !

David L, Swindon, Wiltshire

Quite so, Matthew - Brown is the hollow man. He has no "vision", except to stay in power by fair means or foul (mostly foul). So Yea say I, kick them hard, kick them when they are down, kick them when they are staggering to their feet again, kick them kick them kick them.

Brown must go. ASAP. Before he does even more damage than he has already done.

Jeremy Poynton, Fromeville, 51st State

To Clive S,
I may live outside the country but I can cotribute in an useful way. I will use my postal vote to vote Tory and boot
out this dreadful "Old Labour".

Denver Watt, Osaka,

Absolutely. I was beginning to despair that David Cameron would ever start really hammering this government until the last couple of weeks and now he has at last come out fighting. Hammer them DC, hammer them incessantly. Point out the absence of ideas and policies, the spin without substance. Where's the vision Gordon? should be the constant refrain.

Here's all DC has to say: Our prime minister has no vision other than tax and spend and he can't even get that right. Our public finances are spiralling out of control despite uninterrupted growth. The NHS is a bottomless cash pit for no return. The armed services are being run down and yet asked to do more and more. The police are too busy filling in Labour's forms and harassing soft targets to stop children being shot in the street. Schools are failing to provide a basic education to too many. A government that can't run a flagship tax credit system is planning complex ID cards. We have no control of our borders. Hit them hard DC.

Paul Owen, Birmingham, UK

The point about Americans thinking in German is interesting. The massive numbers of Germans who migrated to the U.S. before and after the War of Independance had a very big effect on the way English was and is spoken. German very nearly became the official language of the country after the British were ( with French help ) defeated. Without bothering you with the written German....`I´m good´( the answer to `how are you ´), `Have a nice day ´ and all of the anally-fixated expletives are direct translations from German and there are many more examples.
John in Berlin, Germany.

John, Berlin, Germany

A true analysis of Nu Labour. They were always the emperor with no new clothes. For the last few weeks people have actually been referring to GB as a credible, trustworthy politician. What rot. Blair saw the chickens, and they were heading for the roost, so he got out.

A pity MM lost the plot after his first five words.

George Edwards, Beijing, China

True, MP is at his best here, the antechambrist, loiterer in the halls of parliament, insider, gutter fighter with a mental switch blade. Rip these hellions to shreds, seeing what they did to England. The hospital infections by no means are mere symptoms. Tories to work out new policies "behind the scenes?" Start with plans for gradually privatizing the NHS, piecemeal, artfully, by business men giving individual doctors authority to work at will. In my father's small branch outside Hamburg of a large but private pediatric hospital, the isolation ward he designed with fortress-like installations to prevent cross-infections. No one on government pay will go to the trouble as my dad did in his professionalism. Slash tax rates.

Hermann Burchard, Stillwater, Oklahoma

This is a hollow government led by a hollow PM, it no longer has purpose and the electorate has rumbled. Why should we indulge GB his whim to be PM a second longer than necessary, he's not a leader and despite the clamour of the New Labour clack, he wasn't even a good Chancellor. Mililband was right when he said on Question Time months ago words to the effect that we'd wonder what we'd lost when Blair had gone. Labour has replaced an undeniable national leader with a dud. Brown's a boring apparatchnik and whatever weight he carries in Scotland is lost in the contempt of the English. Labour has better leaders in waiting than this. And Cameron's Conservatives? on present form they'll win the next election outright.
MP's point is obvious - this is personal, the PM is poor stuff, blast him till he shrinks.
A last point - anyone living out of the country who feels the need to contribute should come home first and travel on the proverbial Clapham omnibus. The climate has changed.

Clive S, East Sussex,

Superb; as you write it just gets better. I wish I'd written that it sums up my view.

roger graham, worthing,

What a marvellously intelligent article !
Juvenile and blinkered describes it best.
MP writes increasingly for tabloidal effect and does your paper no favour.
Will the current Cameron bubble last? Not a hope.
What then will MP write....who cares?!

michael moorhouise, Bazauges, France

Quite right Mathew on a number of points. I'd always thought that Blair was the King who had no clothes. Brown started well but this business with the election and then just taking the Opposition's policy or at least pretending to indicates that he is as much political strategist as was Blair (and Clinton). Now the Tories must continue to oppose New Labour in the most vigorous way possible. There's so much to critisize - just get on with it and don't ape Nu Labour - they are past.

Ian Burgess, Bristol,