Schadenfreude - the joy derived from the misfortunes of others - is an
uplifting emotion. With Gordon Brown’s premiership descending into disaster,
my heart lifts as I summon up my grudges from when he was chancellor and I
was his shadow. I am Gene Kelly, singing and dancing as the economic deluge
intensifies.
However, the pleasure that his downfall causes me - merely an occasional
columnist and late-night sofa pundit - is of little consequence.
More worrying for Brown is that schadenfreude grips the media in general. It
is widespread throughout the Labour party too. The Blairites are
cock-a-hoop. It is payback time for the decade that Brown sat in No 11
blocking and plotting.
Even those who recently supported him for the leadership have smirked a little
as the gods have punished his hubris. How pleased with himself he was when
in his last budget as chancellor he announced a cut of 2p in the standard
rate of income tax rate. He knew that the Tories would never have dared to
propose it. He thought he had left them with nowhere to go.
However, he bought his moment of parliamentary theatre by raising taxes on the
poorest, the constituency of Brown’s long-term supporters. It was a
perversion of his priorities: a symptom of being out of touch.
That happens when you have been absent from the world of ordinary people for
more than 10 years. So, which of you could say, hand on heart, that you did
not feel a little surge of joy when last week the government was
humiliatingly forced to produce an emergency budget to bandage the
self-inflicted wound?
It seems that the whole country has a little skip in its step thanks to
Gordon’s decline. Whenever two or three are gathered together at the bus
stop or in the pub a little banter about his fall from grace will brighten
even the cloudiest day.
This prime minister evidently attracts antipathy in a way that neither Tony
Blair nor John Major did, and without inspiring adulation in equal measure,
like Margaret Thatcher.
That may account for the extraordinary speed of Labour’s collapse. A few weeks
ago, before the March budget, it was gaining on the Conservatives in the
polls and stood just a few points behind. Now it is seized by defeatism.
The fact that Labour seems largely to have abandoned hope is the main reason
to doubt whether the party will in fact win. Objectively, it should, because
the Conservatives must climb an electoral mountain to prevail.
In any case the Tories’ position is fragile. At local elections and
by-elections it is plain that people enjoy voting against Brown, but they
are less clear what they are voting for when they put their cross in the
Tory box. Which aspirations do the Conservatives fulfil?
Labour should remember that many governments that trailed lamentably in the
opinion polls went on to win, Thatcher’s first government being the best
example. If public opinion can change then it can change back.
Last September Brown was enjoying a honeymoon and David Cameron was being
written off. That would be about the time when you could get long odds on
either Barack Obama or John McCain for president.
However, Labour isn’t reasoning. It would dump Brown (so recently elected
unopposed) if the party’s rules did not make it well nigh impossible, if
anyone else wanted the job just now, if there were a serious candidate.
Brown may have thought that appointing such a weak cabinet would make it
easier for his clunking fist to rule. In fact, it has robbed him of any
shield against criticism. Nobody wastes time attacking Alistair Darling or
Jacqui Smith since they are known only as lightweights.
This government’s problems are fundamentally different from those that
destroyed the last Tory administration. Major was more ridiculed than
disliked. By the time he sank in the opinion polls he had won a general
election. He was a less powerful figure than his nominal underlings, Ken
Clarke and Michael Heseltine.
The party was riven by an ideological split over Europe, an issue that was for
many more important than retaining office. Perhaps there we find the only
point of clear comparison with Labour’s malady today. To a number, settling
old scores matters more than winning – but unlike the Conservatives,
Labour’s strife is about tribes not causes.
Even beneath the sombre countenance of Mervyn King, the Bank of England
governor, I detected a little bounce, as last week his grim assessment of
the economy overshadowed the prime minister’s latest relaunch: the unveiling
of a new legislative programme. Remember that when the Northern Rock crisis
broke, Labour briefers blamed the Bank. Brown then undermined King with his
seeming reluctance to reappoint him. Recently the prime minister has
predicted that interest rates would fall, perhaps forgetting that he handed
over such decisions to the Bank. Now King has exploited Brown’s loss of
authority. He has dared to make gloomier predictions than the prime minister
would authorise and has made it clear that interest rates may not be
falling.
The economy has entered a new phase, as King indicated when he alluded to the
“nice” decade being over. With a little hindsight it is now clear that
economic success under Major and Blair depended entirely on weak inflation.
We could have low interest rates, cheap credit and easy mortgages. Our homes
soared in value. Now inflation, even measured by the consumer price index,
will reach almost double the government’s target. The retail price index,
which past governments used as their infla-tionary compass, will rise far
higher.
In the United States the Federal Reserve Bank has chosen to fight the
recession in preference to restraining inflation. King has declared that he
will not follow suit, rightly, since inflation and its aftermath debilitated
the British economy for decades. However, the fact that we have inflation
now robs us of a cosy certainty that has long underpinned our feeling of
prosperity.
At the same time the government’s fiscal policy – the second foundation of
economic confidence – has collapsed. To debate whether Brown’s emergency
budget will cause him to break his “golden rules” on borrowing by a billion
or two is to miss the point. As chancellor he was Jekyll and Hyde. After his
first years, prudence made way for profligacy. Once, he vowed to borrow in
times of need and pay back in periods of plenty, but latterly he lingered in
the red all through the boom, and in the lean years ahead he will simply
have to move deeper into debt.
Inflation is back, fiscal discipline has gone, the government is weak, the
Bank and the Financial Services Authority mishandled Northern Rock, and the
Commons is shamed by how it has handled members’ expenses. I am pessimistic
about the British economy not because I have any insight into how far house
prices will fall or inflation rise, but rather because the political and
institutional framework that inspired trust has fallen down.
How should the Tories react? Until recently it was obvious that to avoid too
much probing, they should align their economic policy with Labour’s, just as
Brown in opposition pledged to stick to Conservative plans. Even now to
deviate too far from Brown’s figures might simply invite again the question
that has dogged the party at three elections: “What are you going to cut?”
But can the Tories go on linking themselves to Brown now that his reputation
for economic competence has been entirely lost?
It is not an easy call, but I think the Conservatives should continue to sit
on their hands. Labour is destroying itself and the opposition should supply
no distraction.
The draft Queen’s speech last week proved that Brown will appropriate any safe
ideas that the Tories devise, but anything more radical could provide the
prime minister with fuel for political recovery.
Cameron should relax and savour the prime minister’s discomfiture. That will
put the Tory leader closely in touch with the mood of the nation.
Martin Ivens is away
