On this page today I am about to take a risk. Ten minutes ago I asked a
Whitehall press officer a question. Upon her answer my whole argument
depends. But because I can guess it I am launching into my column regardless.
Zoe at the Treasury sounded helpful when promising to call me back, and
doubtless she will. But that may not be until evening. So I will spend the
day writing this column, trusting Zoe’s answer does not spoil my argument.
Reckless? I am strangely confident, certain that I have spotted yet another of
Gordon Brown’s fatuous and unproductive little ideas, and that it will have
come to nothing. Or so I concluded when a year ago, on March 8, 2006, The
Guardian carried, online, this report: “Gordon Brown today floated the
idea of ‘midnight football’ for badly behaved youngsters, as he put forward
a series of carrot-and-stick schemes for dealing with unruly teenagers.
Under the plans, law-abiding kids would get up to £25 a month of vouchers to
be spent on sports and leisure facilities, while those out of control would
be given ‘mentors’ to keep them out of trouble . . . ‘This is not a handout;
if you don’t behave, you don’t get it,’ he told GMTV . . .”
The Chancellor of the Exchequer thought his idea a runner. I thought it so
pie-in-the-sky that it was astonishing anyone had put ballpoint to beermat
to record it. When I read the report, the plan shrieked “won’t happen” at
me, so I resolved to check what came of it.
Today I did. While we await the Treasury’s reply, let’s step back for a more
general look at the emerging shape of this Chancellor’s political
imagination.
Last week Mr Brown announced that immigrants should do community work before
being allowed to become citizens. He was also said to be thinking of “trial”
or “temporary” citizenships. It did not take researchers at Conservative
Central Office long to list a few of the obvious questions, to which I’ve
added some more of my own.
- How many people will these proposals affect?
- How many extra civil servants will be needed to administer the scheme?
- What will it cost to administer?
- For how long will would-be citizens do “community work”?
- What community work? Where? Who’s doing it at present? Who will accommodate
them?
- Who will pay them?
- Will this apply to all those seeking British citizenship — to applicants
already working and/or living here (probably the majority)? To doctors and
nurses?
- How will this help to track the uncounted illegal immigrants and failed
asylum-seekers who have no intention of applying for citizenship?
- How will this deter illegal immigrants from entering the UK in the first
place?
- What is the point in granting “provisional” citizenship when we can’t find
illegal immigrants or failed asylum-seekers in the first place?
- How long would provisional citizenship last?
- What will it be provisional on?
- What would happen to individuals who have provisional citizenship revoked?
Would they be deported?
- Who will decide? Will such decisions be appealable?
- What is the evidence that (apart from imported partners in arranged
marriages) failure to integrate is a major problem among legitimate
citizenship-seekers?
And so on. May I detain you a moment with a few more of Mr Brown’s bright
ideas: Those Brown Initiatives In Full.
“I would like to talk about Britishness and the future of Britain. I think
people who come to Britain must learn the English language.” (September
2006). In October 2006 the Government cut funding for English classes,
“effectively ending” as, one Labour backbencher complained, “free tuition
for low-paid migrant workers”.
In his 2006 Budget he promised to create “one million youth volunteers”. So
far there are 42,000. The Youth Volunteering Commission he created (run by
Rod Aldridge, who had donated £1 million to the Labour Party eight
weeks before his appointment), is costing £1.4 million a year on “management
and administration”.
“Interested people will establish a new Institute and Forum for Britishness
Studies examining the forces at work in shaping the future of Britain,” said
Mr Brown in the Express in 2004. Nothing happened.
“What is the British equivalent of July 4, or even the French July 14, for
that matter? . . . What is our equivalent of the national symbolism of a
flag in every garden?” he asked the Fabian Society on January 14, 2006.
Search me. No proposals followed. Then he announced a new annual Veterans’
Day on June 27 of every year. Did you notice it? Few did. Almost nothing
happened.
What happened to the new, independent NHS Board? To the Economic Plan for the
Middle East? To the Written Constitution? To bringing the World Cup to
Britain? . . . Oh, lay off. This would be cruel sport were this man not
proposing to be Prime Minister in a few months. His ideas have an April Fool
quality. Presbyterian? They are inconsequential to the point of frivolity.
Mr Brown’s friends encourage us to contemplate his first 100 days. They call
this period the “Brown Bounce”: 100 days apparently packed with policy
surprises, all wildly popular. But what are they? Ah, that’s for them to
know and us to guess. Perhaps sunbeams are to be extracted from cucumbers,
or the secret of perpetual motion to be discovered by British Forum for the
Discovery of the Secret of Perpetual Motion, to be funded by Mr Brown?
Where is this treasure chest of glittering initiatives that nobody (including
Mr Brown himself as Chancellor these past ten years) had somehow thought of
before? Has he thought of them yet, but is keeping them secret? Or does he
plan to think of them later? There is a difference between postulating, as
an abstract idea, a hundred days of whiz-bang new initiatives that have
crowds cheering and polls soaring, and actually thinking of some.
If they are such eureka ideas, how come they never occurred to anyone,
including Mr Brown, earlier? Because, you see, we do have some experience of
the ideas that Mr Brown thought of earlier. The precedents are not
encouraging. Though at first sight random, tinkering, fidgety, hit-and-miss
affairs, a thread does run through Brownite initiatives. I would call it
“how not to create a great sculpture”. If this Chancellor were a sculptor,
his approach would be to take a big lump of stone, observe that it was by no
means the boy David, chip a bit off where the boy David obviously wasn’t,
stick a bit on where the boy David obviously ought to be. And continue in
this way, chipping and sticking, cutting and pasting, lunging with his
chisel, then dabbing with his glue brush. But it’s not enough.
. . . Here this column must be interrupted. I have just taken a telephone
call. To my question about Mr Brown’s plan to pay youths to stay out of
trouble, the Treasury can now give an answer. The answer is that this is
nothing to do with the Treasury, so why don’t I ask the Department for
Education and Skills?
I do. They call me back. Yes indeed, some “pilots” to try out Mr Brown’s idea
did take place as promised. Management consultants were called in to
“research” whether the IT existed elsewhere in the world for the voucher
cards that youths were to be issued with. The consultants charged £2 million
(isn’t Google getting expensive?) to discover that no such technology
exists. A from-scratch scheme would cost £30 million. But the budget for the
entire project was just £44 million. This would leave only £14 million to
spend on the benefits.
The whole thing has been abandoned. “I will do such things,” says King Lear,
“— what they are, yet I know not: but they shall be the terrors of the
earth.”
I know not what they are, either. Nor, I suspect, does King Gordon.
Gordon & Slick Dave seem to think the solution to every problem is to throw money the way of the problem. Some of these problems are not even the governments concern, but a consequence of the breakdown of family values.
You cannot solve such problems by throwing money at them. Hoodies don’t need hugs, empower the police, and let then be tough on crime & antisocial behaviour. Then we’ll see how many hoodies continue to roam the streets.
This current climate of political correctness and nannying will be the undoing of this generation.
tim, london, london
Did nobody point out to Gordon when he was lamenting the fact we didn't have the equivalent of July 4th and July 14th that these commemorated REVOLUTIONS? Perhaps we need a revolution to get rid of New Labour and then we can celebrate Liberation Day. April 1st would seem appropriate.
Andy, Whitchurch, England
Gordon Brown looks more and more a tragic figure - strutting the world stage like a understudy comic actor playing the copper in one of those stale old Whitehall farces. Like any actor worth his Equity card, Gordon has learnt his lines OK - but they are delivered without conviction, passion or impeccable comic timing. But then he is understudy to the true thespian of British politics - Anthony Linton Blair - who never once forgot his script..(Well he did but Paxman failed to capitalize on it !)
But more worrying for Gordon is the total lack of ... new hair style ! Forget Clause 4 (I have ) and cast your mind back to the period just after we said a fond farewell to John Smith. Tony changed his hair style ! That's right ! The biggest contribution to his success in politics is not down to Alasdair Campbell but his visionary hairdresser !
Act now Mr Brown, book up to see your barber and ask him to make some necessary cuts - chat over your next big policy idea with him to !
D Latham, Swindon, Wiltshire
By the time I got to the end of this articlee I was humming a tune to myself that the subject had brought to mind. It was from the film A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, sing along: "We're busy doing nothing working the whole day through, trying to find lots of things not to do". That sums up this chancellor and this Government, the problem is that they spend billions in taxpayers money "doing nothing"!
Colin S, London,
Dear Matthew Parris: You are not a man to be taken in. That makes you abnormal. What is wrong with re-extracting sunbeams from the green ones? Politics is the art of the palingenesis of the impossible squared by rational reason performed by the Harvard MBA cadre. You have not heard of this before? Under Blair, the art has reached its dizzy implication: nothing means nothing. From clone of Blair there may be some degeneration of the message. However, once Saturn has shed his black rays deep into the soul of Brown, they can be recovered by muttering, "New Labour-- To The Skies!" Dimly do you discern the future. Time to award you an MBA. King Lear would have been proud.
Clayton Burns, Vancouver B.C., Canada
Gordon Brown is a socialist who wants to tax as much as
possible and redistribute the largesse.He will certainly lose the next election after he is crowned Englands 'First Minister'.He also thinks Britain-if it still exists-is powerful enough to solve massive problems like Africa .England should break away from Britain and Europe- both drag us down.
AMAC , Liverpool,
Spot on Matthew. Currently we have a crazed evangelical at the helm, wailing "legacy, my legacy", and next we will have, for those familiar with The Moomins, the Groke, a truly terrifying prospect. For none Moomins afficionados,
1. Shame on you. Even if you don't have children, they are essential reading.
2. The Groke looms in on places in the dark, sits on things and freezes them to death.
Help is all I can say, help us all
Jeremy Poynton, Frome, 51st
Gordon Brown feels that he is now type cast as the specialist Treasury Minister.
To break away from this and show that he could also do Tony Blair's job, he first presents the facade of a 'brilliant new idea' to see if people show interest.
Then if people like it he tries to add more substance to it.
Rather than just then wait to see if 'takes' with the public, to keep up the momentum he comes up with his next spur of the moment idea.
This can all rebound with time.
The more Gordon Brown spouts in the way the deeper he digs the political pit in which he resides.
Three years ago he was wanting to display a 'caring' and worly image.
Throwing UK tax payer's money at third-world starvation seemed a good idea.
Now it would hardly be a vote winner with UK Trade Union members in the public sector no longer being able get wage increases commensurate with inflation.
Mike, Bath, UK
Always an academic will always be an academic. Brown does not live in the real world and has know business sense what's so ever, and has not acquired any for the past 10 years. But then again, this is what too expect from Labour. Taking ideas from the other political parties and rehashing them to fit their ideologies. However, in Brown's case he seems to have so many things up his sleeve and there I thought: ' he's just eating too much'.
Jay, Harrow,
I am wondering whether some of these plans could be quicky activated by the simple expedient of changing the name of existing regimes.
Most immigrants already do a form of Community Service on arrival, although at the moment we just call it low paid work.
'Provisional Citizenship' has existed for many years as temporary work or student visas, and more recently as a transient stage for asylum seekers whilst awaiting a decision on refugee status .
Armistice Day ('Poppy Day) could easily morph to Veterans' Day, to include the more recent remembrance of Falklands and Iraq as more distant memories fade.
Notebook or PDA should always be at the bedside to capture the fleeting insight of dreams for possible deployment of value in the real world, but the ballpoint beermat metaphor might need further evaluation by consultants deemed fit for purpose.
dr venables preller, Warminster, UK
How come all these new ideas are not in Labour's Manifesto? Am I naive in assuming that major policies that are not in the Manifesto are illegitimate and unconstitutional? The arrogant complacency of New Labour is about to reach new depths. Well, I take comfort in the belief that this government has two more years to make such a royal screw-up that Labour will be a dirty word for the following 18 years.
Richard, Preston, UK
Everyone in the Labour Party seems to be under the impression that once Blair leaves office his influence will go with him. They believe a Brown premiership can be a clean page, wiping out all memory of the mistakes and discredited policies of the last ten years. Some chance. Imagine it: the first time Brown tries to repudiate or even merely re-spin a decision made in the last ten years Blair will pop up to make sure that the electorate is reminded that his Chancellor's fingerprints were on every policy. He will have a view on every novel proposition his Chancellor produces: indeed, I suspect he will continue to generate his own policies. Blair seems convinced that he, personally, has been given divine responsibility for the country. He will see maintaining a continuing influence as his duty - his legacy. And Blair is the consumate media manipulator; can we really imagine Brown and his supporters outsmarting Blair when it comes to fashioning the narrative?
Anne Murphy, London,
Gordon Brown is rather like old Kaiser Bill - all tough appearance but a bit of a dingbat.
It amazes me that the British economy continues to prosper (given such little hiccups as the ruination of pensions and the dreadful child benefit scheme) despite his constant money-grabbing micro-management..
He will never be a popular success as he lacks, for good or ill, the fundemental mountebank ingredient so necessary to reach the top in political life, and which is so obviously present in certain other more emolient colleagues.
Tom Livingston, Winchester, England
What a farce, we now have to wait for the Labour Party to decide the election process before we get into weeks of paralysis. Just for him to distance himself from his own policies andhead off in a new direction. Or a new spin put on the same old policies of tax, spend, meddle, spin
Steve, HK,
The only certainty in Brown's first 100 days is that he will continue his desperate attempts to rebrand himself as more British than Scottish.
Ian, London, UK
I wonder if Brown is the analogue to Ming Campbell; determined that he is the better man for the top job, but ultimately an electoral disaster when he finally displaces the incumbent leader
TomTom, Leeds, England
.......and as always, large sums of money going in to some jokers pocket.!
.... and anyway, how do I get on to these gravy trains?
Neil , KL,
Oh woe are we!
Alice, Moscow,
Inevitably more scurrilous gobbledegook will effuse it's way out of the Treasury in the weeks to come.Social disfunction and desperately limited ability still hampers any real progress.What a sad waste of everyone's time...
Matt, Knutsford,
Very Witty and insightful. I lived in the USA for 6 years....why doesn't the American Press examine the activities of Mr Bush and his advisors with the same level of insight? Whatever Mr Brown may be accused of , he is way above the intellectual level of his counterparts in the USA.
Prof. A.Dixson, Wellington, New Zealand
Oh Darryl, do grow up! Of course Brown can talk about policies and what he would like to see happen, and the issues he believes are key to improving our lives. Read the list of fatuous things Brown claims and thinks to see how empty his mind is of ideas. It all comes down to one thing with Brown - the State, the State, the State, with Brown running the State. How anyone can think that they can make better decisions on so many subjects than the sixty million people who live in Britain and the billions otside is beyond me - and they say he's intelligent!
Tim, London,
This is all good fun, but are any of Cameron's "propositions" any more coherent and thought out. Take "making neglecting children like drink-driving" - this makes no sense either. Drink driving is a criminal offence, for which there is a straightforward proof, punishable potentially by prison. Is he really suggesting that fathers should be made to spend time with thier children under threat of prison? That this would be good for the child? How would it be monitored and enforced?
It seems that the whole body politic is running scared of any serious ideas, or threat to anyone's vested interest. The result is on both sides a series of vacuous pleasant statements that offend no-one and lead to nothing.
Nick, France,
I have a radical but simple and inexpensive idea for dealing with unruly hooligans, whom the police find difficulty in controlling, and, in some cases, don't even try to. Handcuff these social pests to lamp-posts for 12 hours, perhaps with a blanket on a cold night. Offenders will suffer a modest degree of discomfort, and would earn the ridicule of the general public during the following morning. I doubt they would do it again. But it will never happen, because human rights take precedence over common sense in today's crazy Britain.
David Barker, Hitchin,
How can you expect the Chancellor of the Exchequer to implement policies when he is not yet Prime Minister. Gordon can't say anything to please people like Matthew Parris, If Gordon doesn't come up with policies Matthew will say it's because he has none, when he does state policies people like Matthew will complain he is either undermining the Prime Minister or the policies are not being implemented, when of course he can't, especially when departments like education, health and work & pensions are controlled by Blairites.
Darryl Matheson, Elgin, Moray, UK
I think it not wise to jump to conclusion before trying.
On this page today I am about to take a risk. ‘midnight football’ The electricity bill will go very high. carrot-and-stick schemes for dealing with unruly teenagers. This works for the animals I have not tried this on the youths. I am scared. “trial” or “temporary” citizenships. Do not say Mr. Brown is not trying He is. Because, you see, we do have some experience of the ideas that Mr. Brown thought of earlier. See what I have a clearer picture on this. You do not have one, so why blame Brown. He has ideas. They may not work but do not write them off.
Firozali A.Mulla MBA PhD, Dar-Es-Salaam, Tanzania
With the top job in his sights ,Gordon Brown nowadays is just talking for talking's sake.
His purpose is to dominate the limelight.
After a while this could become counterproductive if the needle gets stuck in the groove.
The issue is therefore, will Tony Blair be ready to go before Gordon Brown reaches his last sell-by date to the electorate?
Maybe Tony Blair is hanging on at No.10 until after Gordon Brown has peaked and is on the way out anyway?
Mike, Bath, UK
Prime Minister Malvolio's scheme to make people pass a test to become citizens is sinister. As Matthew Parris predicts, it will never happen that way, but in floating the very idea they are softening you up for a system of compulsory tests requiring you to be licensed to do things you now take for granted, and the tests will require you to prove that your face fits. Sieg Heil!
j j toogood, Cambridge,
Gordon Brown would have a better future if he made no mention of stupid new policies and concentrated on getting rid of stupid old ones,i dont think I even have to mention what they are.
John, Newcastle, Tyne&Wear
I'll never believe he fully understood the ramifications of stopping the reclaim of ACT on dividends. He certainly didn't think through the "Nil rate" £10,000 Corporation tax band, which he quietly withdrew a couple of years after he created. And he certainly misjudged the stupid draft laws on trusts, which he hurriedly withdrew after howls of protests from the rich and powerful. And these are matters on which he should have some knowledge, not to say hundreds of advisers who should also understand them. Either he is very stupid or employs stupid people or doesn't listen to the people he pays to advise him. Each one worrying characteristics in a future prime minister. I think he fails to understand (as perhaps Mr Cameron may also fail to understand) that we have witnessed in the prime minister one of the finest actors the media has ever seen, able to announce 24/7 NHS dentistry via the internet without anyone batting an eyelid. He will indeed be a hard act to follow.
John Miller, Dundee,
Brown seems to forget that not just has Blair been PM for 10 yrs, but he has also been his sidekick for as long. I'm sorry Gordy, but if you did'nt have the guts to tell Blair he was wrong all those years ( inc the Iraq war ) you are not fit to hold the post as Prime Minister of this country.
And I do wish Cameron would stop running around the world doing his green stuff and look at pensions/health service ect.... Sorry Mathew I'm not after your page which I read and re read always.
John, Essex, UK
The awful truth is that has been the story of 10 years, we just didnt believe it could be true. They have achieved zero, everything was deception. Throw money at the NHS and education but no need to make it work, they have the boast of greater investment.
If brown really is as clueless as his first pronouncements indicate then what horror story is lurking at he treasury?
Steve, HK,