The vilification of the prime minister on his first anniversary is grotesque.
The scale of Labour’s defeat in Thursday’s Henley by-election was
humiliating, as are the weekly poll ratings. But party leaders have been in
dire straits before and can usually rely on the loyalty at least of close
supporters. The psychological abuse now being heaped on Gordon Brown is
beyond reason. He will probably be Britain’s leader for another two years
and his mental equilibrium must at some point become a matter of national
security.
A year ago on this page I wrote that the hounding from office of Tony Blair
and the eulogistic greeting of Brown was overdone. The latter’s record at
the Treasury suggested few of the personal or political qualities required
of high office. His leadership was characterised by hesitancy, secrecy,
mistakes and a reluctance to admit mistakes. I even hazarded that Blair
would chortle, “You’ll miss me soon enough when I am gone.” I received a
disagreeable postbag.
The same view expressed today would evince a yawn. Never has a political tribe
turned so swiftly on its chief and beaten him close to death. Labour has
become the nasty party. Last week I catalogued the following epithets
exclusively in papers that eagerly welcomed Brown to Downing Street:
“dilatory . . . unfocused . . . stubborn . . . weak . . . austere . . .
unapproachable . . . pathetic . . . tragic . . . a calculating schemer . . .
desperately flawed . . . and a dead man walking”.
His failings run from temper tantrums and phone smashings to an inability to
sleep at night. That the latter is related to concern for a sick child is
disregarded. Nocturnal e-mail ramblings are tossed onto the charge sheet
along with dishevelled clothes and bitten fingernails.
Commentators in papers which a year ago were euphoric at Brown’s advent now
dismiss him as useless. They seem to have agreed a collective sense of
disappointment in their protégé, as if we were back to the days when
Northcliffe and Beaverbrook treated prime ministers as their land agents.
Brown in Downing Street has been exactly as was predictable from Brown at the
Treasury. Having come to office with no professional or executive
background, he showed serious managerial failings. He barricaded himself
against his civil servants behind a coterie of aides who, knowing his
personal foibles, kept him from the public eye. For 10 years he declined
every chance to move to other departments to broaden his experience.
When Brown arrived at Downing Street the simplest of leadership skills were
still foreign to him: chairing a meeting, delegating a decision, bolstering
a subordinate, suffering fools gladly and organising his time. He was clever
and usually charming in private company, but also highly strung and dreadful
at human relationships. At the very least, he was a high-risk leader for
Labour after the dazzling glissando of Blair’s premiership.
The left’s greeting of Brown “by acclamation” was astonishing. It was as if he
would salve their consciences after 10 years of having to pretend to support
Blair. He would put the Labour back into “new Labour” and rediscover his
party’s soul. He would sting the rich, help the poor and end Blair’s
public-sector neo-Thatcherism. Out would go the smiles, the spin, the
tabloid vacuities of Alastair Campbell and bling politics. In would come
high seriousness.
So at first it seemed. Brown “pulls down the curtain on celebrity politics”,
we were told. He was “at the top of his political game”, grappling with
terrorist bombs and flood emergencies. He was “the mature statesman”
distancing himself subtly from Washington, “rejuvenating Labour and sowing
panic in Tory ranks”.
This was the epitome of wishful thinking, an analytical blunder that says much
for the short-termism of British political commentary. It was Brown as much
as Blair who oversaw Labour’s conversion to Thatcherism, back in the
mid1990s. It was he who indulged high earners and drove forward
privatisation and private finance. It was he who opposed decentralisation
and neutered whatever virility the 1980s may have left in British socialism.
Brown at Downing Street has made mistakes. He dithered over an early election,
which was forgivable, and over decisions on the 10p tax rate, antiterrorism,
cannabis and Iraq. But so did Blair. He has not been funny or glamorous or
personable – but that was the whole point of being Brown.
The only things that have changed in the past year are the housing market and
the price of oil. They are not Brown’s fault, even if his reckless borrowing
contributed to the sense of impending crisis.
In general the prime minister has behaved wholly in character. Not one of his
turncoat critics is entitled to express surprise or complaint. He was and is
the leader they so glowingly contrasted with his predecessor.
They carried him to power on a chariot of golden expectation. Now he is down
in the polls, they beat him senseless as “war veterans” might beat an
antiMugabe voter. It is politics as horror movie.
For the rest of us, the country must still be run by the man in charge,
probably for two years to the next election. It may seem futile to suggest
that the cabinet just pull itself together, but a lot of good can be done in
two years. That Brown has little to lose should be an advantage in
strengthening him to do the right rather than the popular thing.
A British prime minister has great executive power. Unless he needs new
legislation – to which this government is addicted – he can make any
decision he likes. Even in the Commons, 10p taxes, 42-day detention and the
planning bill have shown that the whips can deliver backbenchers by hook,
crook and the sure knowledge that many will lose their seats if they force
an early election.
Brown’s chief failing has been a desire bordering on obsession to meddle with
every detail of the public sector, believing falsely that anything to which
the word “private” (or “consultant”) could be attached would thereby “drive
change”. He has attempted to micromanage the health and education services,
the police, planning, transport and the courts: matters that are delegated
to subordinate arms of government in any sensible democracy.
Such centralism was never going to work, has not worked and will not work. Yet
time and effort have been wasted on “reorganising” services from the centre,
and shocking quantities of money lost thereby. There are now rumours that
Brown will pretend to decentralise health and the police, yet again. The
government has become one gigantic fidget.
The next two years would see Brown well advised to leave public services
alone. Let them settle down, evolve their own targets, fix their own
leadership and accountability. Whitehall should go on sabbatical.
Instead there are two great projects desperate for Brown’s personal attention.
The first is to protect Britain from what could be a serious world
recession, even if forecasts of “depression” are excessive. He may have to
sacrifice his pet fiction: that managing banks, interest rates and inflation
is a wholly technical matter that can be left to the Bank of England. This
“fair-weather” delegation was always going to snap when a recessionary push
came to shove, as now. The profession of economic management is globally on
trial. If Brown has any reputation to protect, it is here.
The other project is to extricate Britain from foreign entanglements that the
prime minister protests, in his private moments, were Blair’s most poisoned
chalice, notably the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. These wars are going
nowhere. Brown must find a way of disengaging that does not make a
humiliation of retreat. At the same time he must redefine Britain’s vexed
future in Europe and refocus relations with America under its new president.
Both these projects are properly the domain of the prime minister. Both play
to his intellectual strengths and not his organisational weaknesses. Two
years is a suitable span across which to bring both to a sort of completion.
They offer Brown an opportunity to do the country some service before the
next election.
Brown is a lame duck who should never have been encouraged into this political
pond. But lame ducks have their uses. The future offers challenges more
important than opinion polls, party backbiting and media character
assassination. For Brown at present, they should also prove more enjoyable.
simon.jenkins@sunday-times.co.uk
