UK Politics
Labour's last Scottish leader?
Published 31 July 2008
Anger aimed at the Prime Minister has an added dimension explained by English unease at a Scot ruling over them
A single, distinctive observation stands out from the thousands of predictable words written and uttered since Labour's calamitous defeat in the Glasgow East by-election. During a discussion on Channel 4 News, the Scottish National Party campaigner and actress Elaine C Smith declared that she and her colleagues had genuine sympathy for Gordon Brown because they detected an anti-Scottish prejudice in the vitriol being thrown over him.
The comment was made in passing during a wider review of the post-by-election wreckage, but its importance should not be overlooked. The tone of the anger aimed at Brown in England has an added dimension explained by English unease at a Scot ruling over them. With a tedious regularity, Brown is portrayed as dour, Calvinistic, a distant figure disconnected from the political priorities of Middle England.
Like all caricatures, there are elements that reflect the genuine personality, but they ignore other, more flattering characteristics. To take one important example, Brown has a clearer understanding than most Labour politicians of the contradictory impulses that shape the English political landscape. In particular, he grasped more quickly than other shadow cabinet members in the early 1990s the Anglo-Saxon desire for high European standards in public services and low US levels of taxation. More broadly, he detects the deep suspicion of the state and at the same time a tendency to blame the government whenever anything goes wrong. His reshaping of economic policy to address these contradictions in the mid- to late 1990s makes him one of the biggest figures in the history of the Labour Party.
Brown's character is also more rounded. He has a zest for ideas that challenges the stereotype. His love of football places him close to the soul of many soccer-obsessed English voters. None of this is recognised in the portrayals of an out-of-touch prime minister.
Only one leader in recent times has suffered a similar type of onslaught, trapped in a caricature from which he could not escape. The attacks on Brown remind me of those that destroyed Neil Kinnock, another non-English leader. He has never recovered fully from the trauma, telling me recently that he came to realise the attacks were deeply personal: "In the end there was no getting away from it. Parts of the media and the voters did not like me."
I recall how Kinnock's surname was spat out with contempt by voters and powerful newspapers. He was the "Welsh windbag" - one of the more flattering descriptions applied to him. The same now applies to Brown. His surname is also spat out with fury these days. Parts of the media and some voters regard him as the personification of the more collectivist Scottish culture. They are wrong. Some would argue that he is not collectivist enough, but that is another story.
In a smaller way, Kinnock's non-English successor, John Smith, suffered something similar, never soaring in the polls during his brief leadership even though the Conservative government was falling apart at the time.
I am not arguing that Brown's Scottish background is the main reason for his extreme unpopularity. The state of the economy and his much-reported errors over the past year play bigger parts by far. However, I do not believe it is a coincidence that the two most electorally successful Labour leaders, Harold Wilson and Tony Blair, were both English (yes, Blair had Scottish roots, but they were hardly a prominent feature of his political personality), while Kinnock, Smith and Brown struggled to make headway.
Swaths of England are instinctively wary of Labour, whoever is leading the party. It does not take very much for England to turn rightwards. At the 2005 election the Conservatives won more votes in England than any other party, an extraordinary feat, considering that no one from Michael Howard downwards thought they were remotely ready for power. England happily voted Conservative in huge numbers in the 1992 election in spite of the poll tax and the economic gloom. Yet Labour has tended to respond to this wariness by electing a Scot or a Welshman as leader, a tendency that becomes even more complacent in the light of the devolution settlement.
Cabinet ministers and Labour MPs have a big question to resolve when they return from their holidays: Would replacing Brown with a so-called dream ticket of David Miliband and Alan Johnson, both English, transform Labour's chances? In my view, the risks of removing a prime minister outweigh the possible benefits, although the calculation is finely balanced.
I suspect the plotters misread the mood of their party. It is quite possible that if they toppled Brown in the hope of getting Miliband or Johnson they would end up with someone else entirely. But I can see the temptation. Were they to pull it off, Miliband and Johnson would get a decent honeymoon in the media and would have a rapport with English voters. It would feel like a change of government. Miliband's highly calculated Guardian article of 30 July makes such a scenario more likely.
But were Brown to survive he would have to make his government more English. I do not believe Labour will flourish as a national party if it elects a non-English leader. Brown will be Labour's last Scottish leader.
Steve Richards is chief political commentator for the Independent
Martin Bright is away
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