Gordon Brown is Not as Weak or Feeble as Many Suggest

There is much criticism bandied around Gordon Brown, and to be fair he is not doing a very proficient job. However, as always, people seem to ignore context of his failure, which is so key to understanding the situation.

At the last General Election in Britain, it was widely thought that Mr Brown would succeed Mr Blair, possibly in the term. In-fact, the Conservative Party used this as a criticism- “Vote Blair, Get Brown” was the line, but actually it encouraged many to vote for New Labour a third time: yet, people seem to have forgotten this completely.

When Mr Brown came into office, however, the situation was quite different. The parallels between the early-1990s Conservative divisions and those in New Labour are many, and show how history, particularly that of politics, is often based on recurrence. But this isn’t a beautifully subversive Nietzschean path to ultimate life-affirmation, this is cold and rather grey politics. What is most interesting is that the public knew so little about the man. In-fact, there were several public service documentaries in anticipation. Indeed, even though to critics (including myself) it seemed more like a dynastic succession than a democratic appointment, the public was cautiously optimistic. After all, what did they have to fear?

Gordon Brown The Chancellor is very different in peoples’ minds to Gordon Brown The Prime Minister. His reputation was based on a supposed financial prudence, and he was lauded by his allies and supporters as being the driving force behind the large growth of the British Economy, which set The City as the financial centre of the Capitalist world. However, this was not the case, as the current credit crunch and financial crisis all too clearly demonstrates. The economic growth was based on fundamentally unstable market forces: ridiculously inflated house prices; a banking boom based on dangerous high-risk securities; colossal takeovers and mergers allowed by the banking boom; the opening up of new markets such as Brazil, China, Venezuela and India; a near-defeat of inflation; record low interest rates worldwide…however, almost all of these factors were never instigated by ex-Chancellor Brown. The House Prices have been both caused by the banking boom and a very significant housing deficit, which the government has worked to solve: let’s not forget that one of Mr Brown’s flagship policies has been to close the deficit. Remortgaging has become far more common too, and this is all a part of a lessening sense of financial prudence within the populace, the rapidly expanding national debt burden, and the huge difference between income and debt in the average citizen all explain this.
I find, as a long-term critic of Mr Brown’s economic policy, this only causes Schadenfreude within me. What is not helpful for Mr Brown is that the regulatory system he designed and erected has been proven unfit for purpose. Regulation is generally a poor thing, as it can lead to protectionism, but in this case it failed to keep large, conglomerate banks on the straight-and-narrow of non-recession risk business plans. The shockingly few records over the meetings between Financial Service Authority (FSA) members and Northern Rock’s board of directors shows how faulty the regulator really is. Instead of being the light, guiding touch that a regulator should be, its touch was practically non-existent. What is interesting about Northern Rock however, is that it is the biggest victim of the Credit Crunch in Britain, but it had nothing to do with the sub-Prime mortgage market which has largely underpinned it. Instead, it had a risky and poor business strategy. This does mean, however, that it is a lot easier to fix than say Bear Stearns is going to be, or Bradford & Bingley if they went down. Mr Brown and Mr Darling made a fatal error of judgment, and should have immediately nationalised the stricken bank, hired an emergency team of planners and managers, pumped the company and rest of the market with liquidity, and sold the bank off as soon as possible to the financial sector. The dithering, however, has increased the national risk from tens of billions into the hundreds of billions. Perhaps Mr Brown should have pursued what New Labour has so dilligently and blindly pursued in its foreign policy: pre-empt events and circumstances with the out-dated and out-of-context Precautionary Principle. Instead, Mr Brown and Mr Darling paint a far better picture of the economy than is the reality.

The most recent rebellion against Mr Brown shows his character, that being over the abolition of the 10p tax rate, a policy which he instituted in his first budget. It was a political decision, not an economic one, in 1997, and it was during the 2007 Budget. In the former, it was so as to make New Labour the face of helping those in the lowest income bands; in the latter it was about making New Labour the party of tax-cuts. Both were statistical decisions to make the numbers work in favour of the party’s image.

Mr Brown is floundering because he has had the worst that can happen to a political schemer: he has been practically unmasked. The man who talks about bringing people out of poverty, is to many the man who gutted the pension system and possibly irrevocably damaged it for a generation, and all behind closed doors. He ironically faces David Cameron, who is very much a product of Blairism. Contrast him with his dour and incisive Shadow Chancellor George Osborne, and you will see the difference. In 1997, the Conservatives faced a new kind of politics, invented completely by New Labour’s masterminds: Peter Mandelson, Alistair Campbell, Tony Blair and of course Gordon Brown. They got into power by presenting an image of freshness, of style, and behind it all was a clear Conservative Party set of policies, not traditional socialist policy: the failure of Kinnock in the 80s all too clearly showed the need for a new and novel direction. Mr Cameron now characterises, in a very witty and Blairesque style, Mr Brown as a duddering, lying and ineffective leader. Mr Brown is unable to beat this, his image and basis of prudence almost completely shattered. When Brown tries to return the favour, and paint Mr Cameron as a merely a showman, he is met by laughter and rhetoric. Eternal recurrence! This is exactly the same thing which happened to the Conservatives when faced with Tony Blair. New Labour has been in power so long it has been beaten very soundly at its own game, and Mr Brown is saddled with a government which is going through a period where everything appears to be unravelling. The opinion polls in September, just before the ‘Bottled’ election fiasco, showed how Mr Brown’s prudence and workman conduct over the summer was strengthening his hand; this ‘bottling’ can be seen as the source of all of Mr Brown’s problems, his party out of ideas, he was forced to steal and misappropriate Conservative policies unveiled at their party conference; Mr Brown insists that the transcripts would reveal that the Treasury had considered Inheritance Tax reform before, and this is not unbelievable, but Mr Brown’s timing was catastrophically short sighted. But, much as what happened with the Conservatives, many are sick of New Labour. Critics like myself have been sick of them for the past 2 terms, but suddenly those who voted for Labour just to keep the Tories out are having to rethink, their very wallets at stake.

Mr Brown is caught in an awkward position. Give away too much, he is considered weak. Give away too little and he is a Stalinist oligarchist. Mr Brown is completely unable to find his balance, and the Conservatives are not letting him. Mr Brown is not weak or feeble, he has had the carpet pulled from under him. The huge clunking fist has clunked more than smashed.

Those low interest rates and low inflation were determined and built by the independent Bank of England, possibly Mr Brown’s shrewdest venture. Mr Brown is now the focus point for the rot within New Labour, and this is completely unfair. The blame can be appropriated to the other architects of New Labour too, not just Brown; interestingly, he is the only one still in power, and thus the party has no clear direction.

It is unfair to criticise Mr Brown so profusely; we must not descend into Populism, as New Labour did in the late 90s. We must put the substance back into politics, and the way to do that is to see the context. Mr Brown must be defeated at the next election, that much is clear: New Labour, like any party, have been in power so long they have run out of ideas. The Conservative Party is hungry and ready to go. Once Labour goes, it may take them another generation, but they will be stronger and better for it. Mr Brown is not Neville Chamberlain, he is a political opportunist, schemer and realist who has been thrown into an arena which is built around Blairish parameters. He has had his party implode around him, and his policies have fallen on deaf ears. It’s easy to see something as negative when you only focus on the negatives. Pity Mr Brown, defeat him with your own substance, but don’t be a populist fool whilst doing it, because when the next Mr Blair comes around to defeat your Mr Cameron or Mr Clegg, you will regret it.