UK Politics
After a traumatic start, is Brown daring to show greater courage?
Published 13 December 2007
A year ago, as the end appeared nigh for Tony Blair, a parlour game became fashionable in the narrow circle of Westminster journalists. Who, they wondered, would be the first columnist to recant his or her hostility to the outgoing leader and beg him to return?
It is worth noting that, for all Gordon Brown’s troubles in his first six months in office, nostalgia for the prime minister who oversaw the biggest foreign policy disaster in at least half a century has been largely absent. Blair, quite simply, is not missed. As we wrote in our special issue marking his exit, he brought about many positive changes – not least a consensus on spending for public services and a more socially liberal outlook – but he should have quit in 2003 after his terrible decision to go to war in Iraq.
Blair’s refusal to go earlier made the inheritance harder for his successor. It gave the Conservatives more time to build a proper fighting machine, after a decade of weak opposition. And it increased in the minds of the public a sense that perhaps the new Labour era was drawing to a close.
Brown’s task was to deal with the former encumbrance, and to disabuse people of the latter. His good start was due to deft handling of crises, some luck, and a hysteria in the media that appears to have lost all ability to look beyond the day-to-day. The zero-sum language of modern politics decrees that one leader must be supreme, the other hopeless. The truth is that Brown was never as invincible as he and his aides thought they were before their botched “no election” decision. Nor did his position become as parlous as it was then deemed.
The main flaw was not Brown’s response to troubles, ranging from Northern Rock, to the missing child benefit disks, to the saga of David Abrahams and his donations. The real problem, evinced during his unedifying speech to the Labour conference, is that he has yet to find, let alone articulate, a clear sense of what he wants to use his hard-won power for. One has the impression that, even more than Blair, Brown regards the purpose of politics as outwitting his opponents, rather than enacting change. The change “fromwhat” (the extent to which he does or does not distance himself from Blair) matters less than the “towhat”.
Strangely, Brown has said little about his economic goals since leaving the Treasury. He is surely right to highlight education and skills as the great enablers in a competitive, globalised world. But, in a country that has seen social mobility fall and inequality (at least between the very rich and the very poor) rise over the past decade, has he given up on any egalitarian ambitions?
In his intriguing interview , Ed Balls, the Children’s Secretary and the PM’s right-hand man, insists this government is pursuing “progressive” and “egalitarian” principles. Its problem thus far has been not in policy, but in communication skills, he added. One wonders whether Balls is not speaking to a gallery on the left while other media handlers keep the right wing sweet.
After all the autumn’s traumas, certain announcements and initiatives have given rise to cautious optimism. The programme to increase public housing would go some way to help those on low and middle incomes, particularly as the economy slows. Any positive checklist should also include constitutional reforms. These do not go far enough, but a start has been made. On the environment, the U-turn on windfarms is important. Balls’s own Children’s Plan is both laudable and ambitious.
One further event is worthy of mention. The formal transfer of authority over the province of Basra to local forces presages the end of UK engagement in Iraq. Britain now has a chance to revive its foreign policy. Brown has already recalibrated links with Washington; his refusal to meet Robert Mugabe in Lisbon was admirable in its principle. A new internationalism requires greater co-operation with Europe. Will Brown show courage in an area where he has so often fallen short?
In six months, Brown has been buffeted by a series of dramas. But he has yet to face the true political test – to use his tenure to produce a fairer and more progressive Britain. If he is to do that from 2008, he has to tackle the issues head-on that Blair failed to confront.
A parable for our time
A parable for our time At a time of year so associated with the most famous of biblical stories, the nation has been entertained by a tale as strange as any to be found in the Apocrypha or the more obscure reaches of the Book of Malachi. Indeed, the case of John and Anne Darwin could be the long-lost “parable of the prodigal parents”. They ventured far from their offspring and dissipated their children’s inheritance in exotic climes, eventually returning to ask forgiveness (here, alas, we must depart from the Scripture, as anything resembling a fatted calf is nowhere in sight).
Other biblical parallels – or, near-parallels – can be found. Like Moses, borne through the river of reeds in a papyrus ark, so John Darwin’s narrative begins on water, although it took five years for the canoeist to be discovered, whereas Pharaoh’s daughter chanced upon Moses rather more quickly. Just as the infant Jesus had “no crib for a bed”, so too Mr Darwin was deprived of normal sleeping quarters, having to make do with a hidey-hole in his wife’s house – arguably better than a stable.
Mrs Darwin has had to make a long journey to return to her home: to obey not the decree from Augustus Caesar that the whole world should be taxed, but the equally insistent demands of two insurance companies keen for her to render unto them the £150,000 that belongs to them. Now the couple could do with the help of at least three wise men – or “m’learned friends”, as we call them nowadays.
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