Brown feeling blue

It’s safe to say this has not been a good week for Gordon Brown. First came the news that Northern Rock, the mainstay UK bank that had a bank run about a month ago and was bailed out by the government, can’t find a buyer except predatory private equity firms making obscenely low-ball bids. This is bad news for chancellor Alastair Darling because the government may not recoup its bailout money, and although they assured the bank’s customers that their money was safe in order to stave off the bank run, it is now unclear whether that money really is safe.

But this news was quickly overshadowed by the bombshell that dropped Tuesday, when it was revealed that the government has lost data on 25 million Britons. Two unencrypted disks with the records of 7.2 million families claiming child-benefit payments went missing when they were sent from the Revenue and Customs department, which is overseen by the Treasury, to the National Audit Office. It's the biggest loss of personal data in British history, and second only to the loss of data by the VA in the US last year.

Then yesterday Sir Ken Macdonald, the Director of Public Prosecutions, and Lord Goldsmith, the former attorney general, told the House of Commons yesterday that not only did they not support Brown’s proposal to extend the amount of time suspected terrorists can be held without charges, they would resign if any such changes were to be imposed.

It’s been a meteoric fall for Brown in the last two months, from riding high during his initial ‘honeymoon period’ to his current position, it’s unbelievable how a PM can fall so far so fast. It all started when Brown allowed election rumours to persist unabated, catching political flack when he finally squashed them. This made Brown look irresolute and calculating, and gave the Tories a big opening to criticize him. Now, with the vicious tongue lashing delivered by David Cameron to Brown in yesterday’s prime ministers questions, some in the Labour party are even quietly wondering whether Brown is the right man to lead them into the next elections. Even though there’s virtually nothing Labour MPs could do to change this, the fact that they are hypothesizing about it must be deeply worrying to Brown’s team.

Something tells me those elections won’t be coming for a long, long time now.

Europe Caught

The big story today is the Council of Europe report implicating 14 European countries – including Britain, Germany and even Sweden – of aiding or being complicit in the illegal kidnapping and transfer of suspects by the US. Swiss Senator Dick Marty, in a press release accompanying the report, said despite their protestations after the Washington Post revealed the existence of secret detention centers in Eastern Europe, certain individual European governments knew of the plan.

What the report doesn’t include is hard evidence of the existence of these detention centers or the transfers, but concludes it is nearly certain they exist in Poland and Romania. The reaction by those two governments has been laughable, with some representatives claiming to be incredulous that such an outrageous accusation has been made, and others candidly admitting that the findings are true.

One thing is for certain: this entire debacle will cause lasting damage to US-Europe relations, and European countries will be extremely hesitant to cooperate with the US when it requests assistance in the future. In fact, I suspect some countries, like Germany, may question whether the US base presence in the country can still be justified, and may insist that these bases be put under NATO control.