Poll Confirms: Brown Bubble Has Burst

Tory takes vacancy in industrial district

(NEWSER) - The crushing defeat for the Labor Party yesterday in an election in a working class district of England could spell disaster for Prime Minister Gordon Brown, reports the Guardian. The opposition Tory candidate beat the ruling party choice in a by-election to fill a death vacancy by a whopping margin in the decaying northern England industrial town of Crewe—the kind of place considered a bedrock of Labor support. More»

(NEWSER) - Gordon Brown is livid and his colleagues in the Labour Party are ripping up copies of the Sun in public after Rupert Murdoch ended 12 years of support and backed Conservative David Cameron this week. “We don't need an Australian-American coming to our country with a paper that has never supported any progressive policies ... telling us how politics should be run in this country," said one union leader. More»

(NEWSER) - The improper-expenses scandal roiling the British government is so crippling that the entire parliament ought to be dissolved, and an emergency general election held, opposition leader David Cameron said today. The “political system is paralyzed,” said Cameron, who could push for a June vote, the Telegraph reports. “The country doesn’t want to wait another year to pass judgment on this government.” More»

PM's ratings tank in new poll, prompting Labour worries party could go down with him

(NEWSER) - British PM Gordon Brown suffered his worst ratings yet today, falling behind Conservative Party leader David Cameron in every category in a new survey. The Labour leader is scrambling to win back public favor after three in four people said he was doing a bad job, with almost half calling his governance very bad, the Guardian reports. More»

New PM will visit Camp David, insists he isn't 'America's poodle'

(NEWSER) - Britain's new Prime Minister is set to meet with President Bush at Camp David next week amid rumors that relations between the two nations have cooled since Tony Blair's departure. Brown is walking a tightrope between rebuffing this speculation and being seen as "America's poodle," an epithet Blair earned for his close collaboration with Bush. More»