Labour scraped little more than a quarter of the votes in Thursday’s
elections, yet emerged with the upper hand. The party took a drubbing in
Wales but remained easily the largest party. In the English councils it did
less badly than expected. Overall, Labour received a slightly higher
proportion of votes than a year ago. In Scotland Labour lost to the Scottish
Nationalists but was not trounced as it had feared.
The Conservatives did better than last time and exceeded their opinion poll
scores. But so oddly does our elec-toral system distribute votes that even
though the Tories gained a colossal number of seats nobody can be sure that
a 40% to 27% lead over Labour would give them an overall majority if
repeated at a general election. Anyway, Labour can hope for better because
governments usually improve on their midterm nadir.
In Scotland the Liberal Democrats have to choose between maintaining their
coalition with Labour, despite the electorate’s vote of little confidence,
or entering a partnership with the Nationalists, with whom they have a
fundamental disagreement over Scottish independence.
Most strikingly, Gordon Brown’s worst fear has not been realised. It is not as
easy as his opponents had hoped to argue that he is despised in his own
land. When he becomes prime minister he will still be plagued by the West
Lothian question because much legislation that he initiates will not affect
his own constituents (whose laws are generated by the Scottish parliament
more than Westminster). But Brown’s predicament would be far worse had the
Nationalists squashed Labour north of the border.
Expectations are an important part of political warfare. Labour won that
battle and the other parties lost. The SNP is left trying to explain why its
narrow win was well short of the large lead it enjoyed in the opinion polls
at the start of the campaign.
The Liberal Democrats must be dismayed that where Labour crumbles the crumbs
are not going their way. The Conservatives point to successes in the north
of England, but know that their support there is still disappointing. Only
Labour comes out slightly better than predicted.
Brown is, in a sense, lucky that expectations of him are so low. As Tony Blair
ends his stint in Downing Street people feel contempt because they initially
hoped for so much and now feel cheated. Last week I wrote a few
complimentary lines about Blair and have received numerous vituperative
e-mails demanding to know how I could write a single positive word about
this dreadful prime minister. Perhaps when people have forgotten how much
they once trusted him they will view his record more dispassionately.
By contrast I recall that when Margaret Thatcher came to office, Chris Patten
said to me that she had reached Downing Street with no goodwill at all.
Allowing for the fact that he was not exactly neutral, there was still truth
in it. She was elected with trepidation at a time of national crisis. As her
premiership progressed she gathered bitter enemies, but also admirers who
had not anticipated how determined and revolutionary she would be. For some
she was more ghastly even than they had feared and for others she was better
than they had hoped, but disappointment did not come into it.
I am amazed by how negative many are about Brown, especially the business
community. It is surprising, because the economy has grown all the time that
he has been at the Treasury. There is much to criticise in his record but
few previous chancellors could claim as much and none was there as long as
Brown.
It would not be difficult for Brown to exceed expectations, both because they
are so low and because people underestimate him. Do not be surprised if by
the end of the summer the buzz is that Gordon is turning out better than
foreseen.
The key for Brown ought to be to establish a style quite different from
Blair’s. To some extent he inevitably will. For example, Brown is unlikely
to idolise money and celebrity and that will be a relief. If Blair does not
quit his parliamentary seat at once he will have to declare publicly the
millions that he will earn between now and the general election and Brown
will look ascetic by comparison.
Can Brown break away in more substantial ways? For instance, people would
welcome it if he put spin to death. But the chancellor’s recent budget
statement absolutely misrepresented his measures. Brown did not forsake
Blairism but rather took the prime minister’s black arts to new heights.
Would Brown be willing to dismantle Blair’s croniocracy? Last week it was
revealed that lucrative quango jobs have been handed out almost exclusively
to Labour peers rather than those of other parties. But all we know about
how Brown divides the world into friend and foe suggests that he will rely
more on placemen not less.
Last week, too, the government asked parliament’s intelligence and security
committee to look again at whether MI5 should be blamed for failing to stop
two of the 7/7 bombers who had been under surveillance. But the committee
has a Labour majority and is headed by Paul Murphy, who was in the cabinet
until recently. It has no powers of investigation and reports not to
parliament but to the prime minister. So it will be hard to put any
confidence in its findings, even if they are revealed.
Is there any chance that Brown would do things differently? He has not been
visibly involved in the politi-cisation of Britain’s security services. His
fingerprints were not on the dodgy dossier of evidence about Saddam
Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction. It was Charles Clarke, not
Brown, who claimed that the London bombers were “clean skins” when they had
in fact been photographed and bugged by MI5. It is John Reid’s special
advisers who were suspected of leaking lurid allegations of terror plots to
divert attention from the home secretary’s problems with prisons.
Yet nothing makes me think that Brown would initiate a new era of open
government to increase public trust in our institutions. Perhaps more than
any minister he has resisted giving substantive answers to questions lodged
under freedom of information legislation. Evidently even if he can see the
intellectual argument for breaking with the Blairite past, he is, if
anything, more wedded even than Blair to controlling information. It is a
pity because the government will be hampered in the fight against terror by
public mistrust and parliament will be reluctant to grant new powers unless
there is greater transparency.
For David Cameron, Thursday’s results give the lie to the old adage that
oppositions do not win elections, governments lose them. As Neil Kinnock
proved in 1992, it is not enough for the party in power to be unpopular. The
electorate has also to believe that the opposition is ready for office and
Kinnock failed that test. The case for dismissing Labour has been thoroughly
made. The case for electing the Tories has yet to be articulated.
Cameron has with great skill moved the Conservatives to the centre and his
efforts have been noticed and rewarded with votes. But there is no sense of
crisis gripping Britain as there was when the electorate took a chance on
Thatcher. Cameron has no message for aspiring people as she did when she
promised to sell them their council houses. He is clever enough to
understand what the working classes want but he does not intuit it as she
did.
The Tories are relying on his charis-ma and it is indeed a formidable weapon.
But nobody knows whether it can defeat Brown’s experience and weightiness.
Ironically, if the economy gets worse, as it surely will, Brown’s chances
will improve because people would then fear change. If more Britons die in
Iraq, Afghanistan or in terror attacks at home, a worried public may prefer
to trust Brown’s unflashy solidity.
Last Thursday, on a dismal showing by Labour at the polls, the chances
increased that Brown will one day be elected to Downing Street.
