THE TELEGRAPH: An MEP's withering attack on Gordon Brown in which he likens him to a "Brezhnev era apparatchik" has become a surprise hit on the internet.
Daniel Hannan, the Conservative MEP for South East England, publicly lambasted the Prime Minister over his economic record after he addressed the European Parliament on the global financial crisis on Tuesday.
With Mr Brown looking on, he told fellow MEPs that Britain was entering the recession in a "dilapidated condition", with an "almost unbelievable" deficit.
In a blistering riposte to the Premier's calls for a concerted international effort to tackle the crisis, he accused the former Chancellor of trying to "spread the blame" and called him a "devalued Prime Minister".
The three-and-a-half minute speech, which drew cheers and laughter from fellow MEPs in Strasbourg, was not covered on mainstream broadcasts.
But it was posted on the video sharing website YouTube shortly after the sitting and attracted 90,000 viewers within 24 hours after being picked up by US news outlets and political blogs.
In the most critical passage, he told the Prime Minister: “When you repeat, in that wooden and perfunctory way, that our situation is better than others, that we are well placed to weather the storm, I have to tell you, you sound like a Brezhnev-era apparatchik giving the party line.
"You know and we know, and you know that we know, that it's nonsense."
Accusing Mr Brown of losing his moral authority by failing to live up to his own rhetoric, he said that 11 years of his stewardship had left the entire country in "negative equity".
Every British child is now born owing around £20,000,” he said.
“Servicing the interest on that debt is going to cost more than educating the child.”
He added that Mr Brown, who hopes to strike a "global new deal" at the summit of G20 leaders in London next month, was “pathologically incapable” of taking responsibility. >>> By John Bingham | Wednesday, March 25, 2009
