Steve Richards: Gordon Brown starts off stronger than anyone expected. But he is vulnerable too
He acquires the crown when Labour has been in power for more than 10 years - voters are restless
Thursday, 28 June 2007
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Goodbye, Prime Minister Blair. Hello, Prime Minister Brown. Politics never stops. If the relationship between the new and former Prime Minister were a Shakespearean play the drama would end with Mr Blair's resignation at the palace. Various blood-spattered bodies would lie across the stage. Instead Mr Brown appeared at the Palace minutes later and some of those bodies hope to be resurrected today. The play continues.
As the saga moves on the ambiguities are as deep as ever. Mr Brown begins his new job in a position of unprecedented powers and yet he is unusually vulnerable too. Roy Jenkins observed famously in relation to the young Mr Blair that he was carrying a fragile vase across a crowded room. One move out of place and the vase would smash into a thousand pieces. Mr Brown carries the vase now until the next election.
In some ways Mr Brown starts out in the most propitious political circumstances. Expectations of him were so irrationally low until recently that some are already pleasantly surprised, quite an achievement as he has only been in the job for one night. For a time the fashion was to dismiss Mr Brown as backward-looking, incapable of dealing with anyone outside a tiny entourage of men and unable to cope with media interviews outside his economics brief.
As this column pointed out at the time, someone who had risen to the top in the bear pit of Scottish Labour politics while dating a Romanian princess was not without political talent and charm. Even more obviously, a figure who had remained Chancellor for a decade, transforming Labour's fatal reputation for economic incompetence, was evidently substantial and cunning. Still quite a lot of people thought I was "Old" Labour or mad for detecting a big political figure in the form of Mr Brown.
Now he prepares, unsurprisingly, to announce radical reforms, declares a willingness to work with everyone from Paddy Ashdown to a defecting Tory MP and answers questions on everything from tax to Iraq. Suddenly the chorus of detractors change their tunes. Mr Brown begins his period in Downing Street benefiting from those earlier silly low expectations.
He benefits, too, from the unique context in which he begins his Prime Ministerial career. There are no other candidates from a leadership contest to reassure. His party is more or less united. He faces no brooding heavyweight in another government department. Instead he takes over after the relatively dignified departure of Mr Blair. For Mr Blair there was moving applause in the House of Commons to mark the final moment of his political career rather than a shoot-out in Downing Street.
The genius of the so-called coup last September was that the partly invisible insurgents managed to hasten Mr Blair's removal and yet allow him to depart at the time of his choosing. There might be bodies scattered around the stage, but there is not as much blood around as there was when Margaret Thatcher left, blood that continues to infect the Conservative party now.
There are few laws in politics. One of the continuing joys of politics is its unpredictability. Yet there is one law that I put forward now: Defections are a wholly reliable guide to the parties' prospects, much more so than opinion polls. In the late 1970s and 1980s all the defections were away from Labour to the Conservatives and the SDP. Even though Labour was often well ahead in opinion polls it lost elections. The defectors knew instinctively which way the tide was flowing.
Since the mid- 1990s all the defections have been away from the Conservatives. That is why the move of Quentin Davies to Labour is significant. His switch suggests that the tide flows towards Labour still. The Conservatives have failed to attract defections in spite of some unsubtle attempts in recent months. They must reverse the tide first.
Mr Brown intends to give them no chance to do so. But his need to be neurotically wary of the threat posed by the Conservatives highlights too the vulnerability of the new Prime Minister. He acquires the crown at a point where Labour has been in power for more than 10 years. Voters are restless, less willing to forgive lapses of judgement and acts of incompetence. This is why the drama has still an ambiguous quality.
Mr Brown's promise to form a ministry of all the talents is both a vindication of his unique strength as a new unchallenged leader and proof of his vulnerability. He needs to show that he is more than a tribal figure and that he can work with a range of people. For the second time in his career, and with a similar degree of urgency, he must reassure a sceptical electorate.
So expect some big changes quickly. The last time Mr Brown had to reassure voters was when he became responsible for the party's economic policy. As Shadow Chancellor he transformed Labour's policies. In government he made the Bank of England independent and revolutionised the role of the notoriously conservative Treasury. Bizarrely, this was at a time when some Blairites were accusing him of being cautious. Now Mr Brown must reassure voters that he can rise to the task of being Prime Minister. He will seek do so with some similarly substantial policy changes.
And yet even after the earlier reassuring radical reforms, such as making the Bank of England independent, Mr Brown retained considerable powers in the Treasury. Indeed he was the most powerful chancellor of the modern era. He will seek to be a powerful Prime Minister in No 10 too. Over the next few days there will be much emphasis on the renewal of Cabinet government, a shift of power to parliament and a breaking down of party barriers.
Of those three elements I sense that Mr Brown is most committed to the latter as he seeks to form his much-vaunted progressive consensus. He has developed a strong conviction in recent years that political parties are in decline and can no longer act alone as instruments of change. In particular Mr Brown noted that when he spoke at Labour party meetings on global poverty there would be a few activists gathered in a room.
When he addressed the same subject at meetings organised by Make Poverty History, the hall was packed. On other topics a Labour party meeting would be small, but at a literary festival a room would be overflowing again. Brown reaches out beyond party on grounds of expediency, but also because of a sense that the old culture of rigid party politics has changed forever.
But that does not mean he has waited all this time to sit in Downing Street giving away power indiscriminately. The public spending review will have more impact on the next few months than any other policy announcement. As the former Chancellor and a new Prime Minister Mr Brown will be well placed to pull the pivotal strings. Hello. Goodbye. Hello again.
