WHAT IS WRONG with Gordon Brown? The question is not rhetorical. but reflects genuine bafflement at his behaviour last month. This has nothing to do with what the Prime Minister calls the “soap opera” of the two men’s tortured relationship, nor with the question of when Tony Blair may hand over to Mr Brown. It has everything to do with the way Mr Brown approaches the job he has at the moment — and with what this says about his candour.
Every year the Chancellor of the Exchequer presents “the Budget”. Don’t ask why: he just does, it’s traditional. There is no particular need to do things this way; proposals for the revenue-raising side of Government could be announced as and when, as other departmental ministers do. But I suppose there is a case for rolling up announcements about the nation’s book-keeping into one comprehensive annual statement — and besides, MPs, the media and maybe some of the citizenry too enjoy the drama of the occasion: the battered red box, the metaphorical drumroll, the unveiling, the cheers and boos.
So that’s how it has always been done. The Chancellor goes into “purdah” with his advisers for a while, then at the appointed time he proceeds from 11 Downing Street to the Palace of Westminster, the media scramble for ringside seats, and television, radio and Fleet Street clear a great deal of space for the news. We have special Budget supplements, guaranteed front-page headlines, pundits standing by, and explanatory programmes in the broadcast news. In the City, accountants and analysts stand at the ready. Graphics boffins are poised to make colourful pie charts, and pictures of cigarette packets and glasses of beer, and arrows pointing this way and that.
All this, this attentive cocking of the nation’s ear, is what you might call our side of the bargain. It is expected of us; and, considering how boring most Budgets are, we deliver on our obligations in pretty impressive style.
But in return, something is expected of the Chancellor. It is to put the proposals he actually plans into the Budget statement he actually makes.
Not every detail, of course: just the broad thrust, the things a Chancellor knows will matter most to people, plus a few pieces of tinsel that may please or amuse, relieving the tedium. Background papers will also be issued that explain or fill in the details; and the debates on the finance bill can explore further. But the Budget statement itself should cover the bullet-points. Any Budget inflicts pain in some areas and offers relief in others, and we expect a fair summary of these, together with a signalling of any serious philosophical changes. Otherwise — obviously — there is no point in the performance.
It is, however, a performance, and nobody is surprised if a Chancellor makes hay with the sweeteners, gallops rather rapidly over the unpopular parts, and crafts his delivery in a manner designed to wrongfoot the Opposition. But beneath the horseplay there is a clear if unspoken assumption: a Budget statement includes a summary of what matters in the plans.
So what can Mr Brown have been thinking of last month when, in a long, tedious Budget statement containing everything but the kitchen sink, arguably the most controversial and far-reaching of all his proposals was simply not mentioned?
The Chancellor omitted from his text a key change that will not only affect hundreds of thousands of taxpayers and touch the future plans of tens of millions more, but signals an important philosphical direction. As The Times’s leading article on Thursday put it, Mr Brown is planning “the most sweeping change to trust law in a generation [which] will unravel decades of legitimate tax advice. Worst of all, it will apply retrospectively to trusts that have been already set up.”
Do you, then, expect me to begin special pleading on behalf of the (substantial) minority who have reason to worry about inheritance taxes? Far from it. I agree with the principle of what the Chancellor is trying to do. I am not comfortable with the advantage held by families with the expertise and time to create trusts over families who never think about “death duties” until somebody dies. I detest retrospective legislation, and believe inheritance taxes should be much lighter, but if the philosophy is to end (in time) the division between the Britain that hires accountants and lawyers to avoid inheritance taxes and the Britain that does not, then I’m on Mr Brown’s side.
But he should have said he was doing it. There was not a word in his speech. The signal for these changes was buried in the detail of the background paperwork, issued by officials. Mr Brown does not appear to have consulted anyone; so, like some other Brown initiatives, after close study this one may unravel. Had the Chancellor let anyone know his thoughts in advance, an intelligent discussion might have been possible, rather than screams of hurt caused by a big proposal of which we had no warning. Mr Brown gave the distinct impression he hoped we would not notice.
And when we did, inaccuracy was added to evasiveness. Dawn Primarolo, the Paymaster General, said the changes would affect “only a tiny fraction of the wealthiest top 1 per cent of the population”. They begin a process which will touch millions.
After that Budget speech, Gabriel Rozenberg reported in The Times that according to calculations by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, of the 45 policy changes signalled in the Budget, only 17 were properly dealt. These 17 gave £533 million a year with one hand and Mr Brown told us about it. But the other 28 measures, barely touched on or not mentioned at all, took from taxpayers with the other hand £780 million a year.
That was coy. But Mr Brown’s omission from the Budget of his plans to change the law on trusts was worse. It was dishonest. How else can such behaviour be explained? Can it really be that a speech which explained plans to fund a few “scholarships to American business schools for young British entrepreneurs”; undertake a “pilot for smart metering and a new labelling scheme” for energy efficiency; and announce “a new gap-year volunteering scheme”, had neither time nor space even to mention that a change to the rules on inheritance, affecting millions, was planned?
Perhaps you expect me to conclude that Mr Brown is turning out to be a wily fellow: a politician of devilish cunning. On the contrary, he’s just a chump! That wasn’t clever. What selfish purpose is served by a crass attempt to hide something that stands no chance at all of escaping notice? This behaviour is self-defeating — and especially so because where Mr Brown scores (so far) best on pollsters’ charts is for straightforwardness. The silver lining to his reputation for grumpiness and gracelessness is that people see him as a man who does not pull punches. So by behaving in a shifty way he squanders one of his most valuable assets as a personality. It is not rational.
I have a more worrying explanation than self-interest for Mr Brown’s evasiveness. I think it is infantile. Have you ever encountered those disturbed children who refuse to look at you, refuse to seem to hear you — as though, by not acknowledging you, they can somehow cause you not to be there? Whether or not Mr Brown does this to people, he does it to facts. He exhibits something bordering on Freudian “denial” that the unpopular parts of Government are anything to do with him — as though the Chancellor spends, but it is the Treasury that taxes. It fools nobody, but somehow comforts him, like sucking your thumb and looking the other way.
“Wily” is not the word for this, and nor is it smart. The Chancellor’s behaviour is at best unsettling, at worst dysfunctional.
