After months of dreadful headlines, has Gordon Brown’s luck turned at last? A
comfortable Labour victory in the Glasgow North East by-election on Thursday
— the party’s share of the vote actually went up on the 2005 election —
followed a narrowing of the Conservative lead in the opinion polls at the
beginning of the week. The prime minister performed well on Radio 4’s Today
programme, too: in place of the usual I Speak Your Weight machine, a human
being appeared in the main interview slot.
In a highly specialist field, admittedly, The Spectator parliamentary awards
(I was a judge) this year gave recognition to the achievement of government
frontbenchers, not office-hungry opposition spokesmen. The economy showed
signs of revival, too — the rise of unemployment was the lowest since the
onset of the recession; the Bank of England’s forecasts for growth were rosy.
Yet there was one fly in the ointment. The prime minister had been involved in
an unseemly scrap with The Sun, Britain’s most popular newspaper. For 13
years the “red top” has supported new Labour (The Sunday Times, also owned
by News International, has been far more critical), but recently it switched
to David Cameron’s Conservatives. Its coverage of Brown’s misspelt,
handwritten letter of condolence to Jacqui Janes, the mother of a dead
soldier, was brutal. The prime minister was pilloried in an editorial for
showing “underlying disregard for the military” and failing to bow at the
Cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday.
As is so often the case this aggression backfired, eliciting sympathy instead
for Brown’s failing eyesight and his genuine concern for the bereaved. The
next day The Sun published a record of his follow-up telephone conversation
with Janes to apologise for his letter’s errors. The nation’s instant focus
group, the BBC’s Question Time audience, wanted to put its editor on the
naughty step. Unlike many politicians and journalists who regard their
profession as a blood sport, the public likes to give the underdog a
sporting chance.
Yet the fundamentals for Brown haven’t changed. Scotland is a special case,
say the psephologists: Labour is the party of opposition there, not
government, and benefited accordingly. South of the border the party is
suffering its sixth successive year of decline. Our opinion poll today shows
the Conservative lead widening once more.
The Sun is an excellent weather vane of opinion and that is what really hurts
No 10. For it is not alone in deciding that the prime minister is a “dead
man walking”. The Establishment appears to agree, the civil service is
preparing for a change of government, and Labour-supporting members of the
chattering classes are calling for a change of leadership. The centre-left
Compass group, which refused to join a centre-right coup against him at the
crucial moment last summer, now appears to be equivocal about its allegiance.
Besides, the main charge against the government won’t go away. The Sun and
Janes have the backing of top military brass for their accusation that the
prime minister has failed to give the army the resources it needs to fight
its campaign in Afghanistan.
A Roman emperor once said: “I don’t mind if they hate me as long as they fear
me.” No 10 fears ridicule most of all. New Labour remembers what its allies
dished out to the last Conservative government. Is Caliban seeing himself in
the Sun’s glass?
When still nominally a journalist, Alastair Campbell, later Tony Blair’s
communications chief, played on John Major’s social insecurity by concocting
a story that he had the habit of tucking his shirt inside his underpants. By
accident or design, Campbell failed to write up the tale, but disseminated
it among fellow members of the lobby. It soon found its way into print and
subliminally created the perception that Major was a hapless fool.
The Sun, too, played a part in shaping Major’s public persona. The former
prime minister attempted to deflect personal criticism of his leadership
after the Black Wednesday ejection of sterling from the European
exchange-rate mechanism by ringing up editors to blame the Germans. When he
got through to Kelvin MacKenzie, editor of The Sun, he let it be known that
he had told Major: “I’ve got a large bucket of shit lying on my desk and
tomorrow I’m going to pour it all over your head.”
Journalists may no longer tremble at Brown’s wrath but they do cross
themselves when Peter Mandelson draws near. At the Spectator awards (he was
made “politician of the year” for propping up Brown after the disastrous
local elections) he performed his sinister minister act to perfection. He
sat through one of Boris Johnson’s funniest speeches with granite features
and on the platform reduced London’s ebullient Tory mayor to wary silence.
He would be back next year, Mandelson sneered, “to give his award to Gordon
Brown” for winning the election. Among the political children he stands out
as a grown-up. By no accident, he spun the counter-attack against The Sun,
weaving a dark narrative. Cameron and his newspaper friends conspire against
the interests of the common man. Proprietors want to promote reactionary
Tory toffs in order to serve their selfish interests. Be warned.
This is crowd-pleasing stuff in Labour circles, but the cheers are a little
self-indulgent. Although their heads tell them it is wise to have good
relations with newspapers, in their hearts many Labour MPs dislike the
compromises they must make to win power. In his diaries chronicling the
impotence of a junior minister, A View from the Foothills, Chris Mullin
characteristically explodes at one point: “Instead of wobbling around in the
middle of the road, attracting flak from all sides, wouldn’t it be nice just
to do the right thing for once and tell Rupert Murdoch, Paul Dacre, Conrad
Black et al to f*** off.”
Mandelson, Brown, Campbell and Blair always knew better than to give in to
that temptation.
Last week No 10 charged The Sun with “dragging down” public life. Yet Brown,
the injured party in this instance, has sometimes played it very rough
indeed. He used the press assiduously as part of his relentless campaign to
get Blair to resign only two years ago. Charlie Whelan and Damian McBride,
his spin doctors, were implicated in vicious briefing wars that spiralled
out of control. The new Labour “family” still bears the scars from one of
the Brown camp’s greatest triumphs, the resignation of Mandelson. He may be
Brown’s last line of defence today, but not so long ago he was being hounded
for backing Blair for the Labour leadership.
Sources close to the then chancellor leaked to The Guardian the revelation
that Geoffrey Robinson, the paymaster-general, had secretly given Mandelson
a huge loan to cover the mortgage on his house. When the story broke, both
men were forced to resign: the neatest of coups, as Robinson’s financial
dealings by then were becoming an embarrassment to his old friend Brown.
While decrying what he called “the feral beasts of the media”, Blair made a
partial confession of error in his last speech before the chancellor pushed
him over the cliff: “I acknowledge my own complicity. We paid inordinate
attention in the early days of new Labour to courting, assuaging and
persuading the media.” It was ever thus.
One late December day in 1916 Lloyd George was invited by George V to form a
new government after the newspapers agitated against his predecessor
Asquith’s lackadaisical prosecution of the first world war. You would have
thought the new prime minister would have immediately got down to the vital
task of cabinet making. Think again. The Welsh wizard had more important
things on his mind. He kept an engagement to dinner with Sir George Riddell,
owner of the News of the World, and Lord Burnham of The Daily Telegraph. Ah,
the good old days indeed.
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