Politics
Mr Brown silenced his opponents, but not for good
Published 25 September 2008
He said he intended to defend the interests of the weakest from now on. It was a statement of a new political direction
Gordon Brown made two important speeches at Labour's annual conference. His main address, unexpectedly passionate, self-examining, candid, won him congratulations, standing ovations, handshakes from delegates and whoops of the kind more usually associated with Tony Blair's conference performances. The consensus of the commentators, for now at least, is that it has won him, and the party, a breathing space from the leadership machinations of the past few weeks.
But Mr Brown also addressed conference on the first day. This was a speech that had to set the tone of conference and to serve as a challenge to those plotting against him - and the plotting was febrile in the bars and corridors of the various conference hotels. This first speech was delivered with rather less of a drum roll, but it was historic. In the end, not only might it save Mr Brown's career but it could secure Labour a fourth term of office. With that first speech, surrounded by his Treasury team, talking more frankly and straightforwardly about the impact of the international banking crisis and its implications for government policy, Mr Brown spelled out to conference that he intended, from now on, to defend the interests of the weakest.
This was a statement of a new political direction - what he would later call "a new settlement". His aim had been, and would continue to be, to protect those on low incomes: "We had a choice . . . to leave them defenceless or stand with the people of this country and help them through difficult times." To demonstrate that this was not mere rhetoric, he went on to say, referring to the Lehman's bankruptcy where $8bn was repatriated to the US shortly before the collapse: "We are asking the American government to get that money back to pay salaries, not of high-flying financiers, but of cleaners and computer operators who would otherwise be denied their money."
When he went to Manchester, Mr Brown needed to rein in rebels such as the Business Secretary, John Hutton (whose questionable loyalty to the Prime Minister was exposed this month when he refused to condemn calls for a leadership contest), and to see off a challenge from the Foreign Secretary, David Miliband. But his under-reported opening speech was an important first indication that, having triangulated for months, Mr Brown had decided to attack from the left, or what he preferred to call the "radical centre".
More encouraging was Mr Brown’s assertion that governments can and should be a powerfor the good
His second address revisited these themes of helping the poor to survive the credit crunch. It has been closely analysed. Many are saying that Mr Brown should have made a speech such as this at last year's conference, setting out as it did the principles that his old supporters have always believed he stood for. While reiterating that his government remains "pro-enterprise, pro-business and pro-competition", as it must, Mr Brown acknowledged, powerfully, the limitation of market forces: "Just as those who supported the dogma of big government were proved wrong," he said, "so, too, those who argue for the dogma of unbridled free-market forces have been proved wrong again."
He criticised the bonus structures operated by the leading investment banks and made it clear that he intended to press other countries to work with Britain on how, in a globalised economy, financial institutions can be better supervised. This is what his critics from the left have asked for. They must now acknowledge that there is movement on these issues.
Certainly, there were points in the Prime Minister's second speech where he appeared to promise that Labour had a panacea for every section of society. His language suggested it was the party's job to attend to voters' worries, whatever they were, rather than trusting in a shared understanding of Labour's roots and philosophy.
"People . . . feel anxiety about crime . . . And so we will be the party of law and order . . . And for the first time ever we've got more British pensioners than British children . . . So we will be the party for all pensioners . . . There are new pressures on parents . . . And so we will be the party of the family."
And sometimes he made a direct and overly emotional appeal to us to believe in him, Gordon Brown the man - who came to London not to join, as he put it, but to challenge the Establishment - rather than his actions and ideals. "Understand that all the attacks, all the polls, all the headlines, all the criticism, it's all worth it, if in doing this job I make life better for one child, one family, one community," he said. "Because this job is not about me, it's about you."
Much more encouraging was his assertion that governments can and should be a power for the good - an attack on those Tories who loudly view "rolling back the frontiers of the state" as an act that empowers rather than abandons the citizen (and also on some of those Blairite MPs whose worship of the market and embarrassment about the state would have baffled earlier generations of Labour ministers). He also told his audience that Labour should be proud of its triumph in establishing a welfare state. "No one should live in fear of their old age because they worry their social care will impose financial burdens," he said. "The generation that rebuilt Britain from the ashes of the war deserves better . . ."
A centre left weary of being taken for granted, treated as voting fodder rather than as a force upon which the party relies for its very philosophy, can find in Mr Brown's two speeches a basis for believing that idealism and practical politics can once again be reunited. And a belief, too, that governments are responsible for citizens: "To meet these new challenges I say to our opponents: 'those who don't believe in the potential of government shouldn't be trusted to form one'."
It is an indication of how far the centre of politics has shifted to the right that such a declaration seems extraordinary. Nonetheless, it is a small triumph on which to build our hope that Labour could fight for a fourth term on a principled manifesto and defeat a resurgent Conservative Party as inexperienced as it is unconvincing, a party of free markets, tax cuts and deregulation.
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