EVERY NOW and again a columnist must take a flyer, or what’s the point? You do not turn to pages like this for 1,300 words of humming and hawing, nor to be sagely advised that Gordon Brown is the bookies’ favourite to be the next Prime Minister. Of course he is.
But what if the bookmakers are wrong? After a bit of a gulp because this column could look fairly silly in 18 months’ time, I’ll spit it out. Gordon Brown has an excellent chance — nearly 50/50 — of getting into Downing Street by sheer momentum, but I no longer think it’s the likelihood. Brown is losing momentum. On balance — and I think it’s a fine balance — my guess it that it will be Alan Johnson.
Previews of his interview on GMTV tomorrow morning suggest that the Education Secretary now has the guts to declare that he wants to be Deputy Prime Minister. He may well get that job. The present incumbent is finished. And what is then to stop Mr Johnson taking a crack at the top job when that comes vacant? And what reason has anyone to think that with a field of two experienced and senior Cabinet Ministers to choose from — the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, and the Deputy Prime Minister, Alan Johnson — 10 Downing Street will be in the bag for Mr Brown?
To political commentary, as to most other fields of prophecy, there are two distinct approaches. One is to look at the “why”. The other is to consider the “how”. In some measure we must all employ both, but my personal bent has always been for the first: to ask where the logic of the situation points, and to suppose that one way or another events will follow.
I have sometimes been wrong to trust logic, but of the logic itself in this case I have no doubt, and never did. It is not in the electoral interests of the Labour Party or a Labour Government to replace Tony Blair with Mr Brown. On every count except his stewardship of the economy, the present Chancellor of the Exchequer fails to excite or even to reassure. On either of the scales where leadership may be assessed — the ability to inspire or the ability to reassure — Mr Brown scores low.
He is not a persuader, he is not a salesman, he is not a visionary. He is not a diplomat, he is not a deal-maker, he is not a peacekeeper and he does not soothe. He is not a trailblazer and he is not a fence-mender. As he is neither one of nature’s comforters nor one of her electrifiers, the Chancellor’s supposed talents elude me.
How might his supporters reply? They would have to cite his practical record in government, but even here they would be on shakier ground searching for the good things he has done than listing the bad things that have not happened on his watch. In a week when Mr Brown’s family tax-credit system has begun to look an intractable mess and when, even on the Left, worries about the effect of his tax burden on the economy are beginning to surface, Mr Brown’s record does not now look as unimpeachable as his friends used to boast.
To this list of Nots we should add another big one. Gordon Brown is not a thinker. I know that’s a contestable remark to make of a well-read man with a powerful intellect, but what, pray, is Brownism? We know what Thatcherism was; I could even take a stab at defining Majorism; and in its tinselly and happy-clappy way there is certainly such a thing as Blairism. But what is it to be a Brownite — what, that is, beyond being a member of the gang whose members expect Mr Brown to be PM and hope he will give them a job?
I would go further. I don’t believe there are any Brownites: only a couple of loyal pals plus a roomful of opportunistic hopefuls. Brown’s army are mostly mercenaries. Strip “Brownite” of its careerist connotations and Mr Brown is left in a room empty except for Ed Balls. Remove Mr Balls and we have drained the concept of meaning.Michael Heseltine once said: “It isn’t Brown, it’s Balls.” He may have spoken truer than he knew.
The current Parliamentary Labour Party reminds me of a boarding school where the boys are divided into two “houses”, and which house you are put in is an accident, not an attribution. The great majority of Blairites and Brownites could switch labels and march equally easily under the other colours. This makes the leadership situation potentially more volatile than I think some observers have understood. The troops are capable of abandoning either banner — or both.
Gordon Brown looks no more like a winner today than he did in 1994 when, just as he prepared to step up into the Leader’s job, his party, the media and his best mate elbowed him smartly aside. One day we were all speaking as though Mr Brown’s leadership was the likelihood; the next we were recalling our long-held doubts about Brown and our longstanding admiration for Blair. What had happened overnight to change matters is rather unclear. It came as a nasty shock to Mr Brown: a political road accident to which he has ever since suffered from post-traumatic flashbacks. In his gloomy heart he has always half-expected it to happen again.
His gloomy heart may be right. Something is happening. The logic of the situation — the “why” — has not shifted: Mr Brown never did look like an asset at the next election. What has shifted is the “how”. Until recently Labour looked locked into an arranged marriage in which it hardly believed but from which, the invitations having been dispatched and the marquee hired, few could see a way out. The event was coming down the track with a grisly inevitability.
But Tracey Temple may unwittingly have thrown the points. A possible job vacancy looms which, if filled by the former postman to Dorneywood (honestly, you couldn’t make this up) could give the Labour Party that sense of an opening door which until now has been missing. Alan Johnson could be the ultimate third way.
Labour leaders are chosen by Labour MPs, the trades unions and ordinary party members. A recent ICM Guardian poll suggested, intriguingly, that Mr Brown has by no means taken his own party membership by storm. And have we any reason to believe the trade union movement will prefer Mr Brown to a former postman and former General Secretary of the Union of Communications Workers who seems able to talk like a good trade unionist without sounding like a Luddite?
I will not repeat what I wrote about Mr Johnson on this page in April. I am not a Johnson-watcher and do not know him; I just find that whenever one happens to see or listen to this man he appears well-judged, capable, moderate and likeable. He is clearly ambitious, but seems like a human being. He has a directness of speech. Plus (it would be dishonest not to include this, for it will make a difference) he is English.
In that same column in April I suggested that, logically speaking, the hour had come, but added that, cometh the hour, cometh not necessarily the man. Now we learn that Mr Johnson has the courage to put his head above the parapet. We also suspect (don’t we?) that Tony Blair does not really want Gordon Brown to take over. So — who knows? — maybe Mr Johnson is the missing linkage between logic and real life. It could just be that, as Labour MPs, trades- unionists and party members watch Mr Johnson on GMTV tomorrow morning, a log will quietly move itself from the jam.
The Tories must pray otherwise. I know whom I’d prefer to fight if I were David Cameron, and it wouldn’t be Alan Johnson.
Matthew Parris’s Notebook appears every Thursday.
