Guy Beres

I highly recommend reading Patrick Wintour and Nicholas Watt’s article on the British election that wasn’t in the Guardian today, published as it is on the eve of the anniversary of Gordon Brown’s ascension to Prime Minister. The worrying thing for Gordon Brown and New Labour is that the article really does have the feel of a pre-emptive historical post-mortem to it. Apart from providing a fascinating account of the rationale for the “on-again, off-again” election debate that dragged throughout last year, this article also reinforces what seems to be the widespread public perception; namely that Brown and Labour are not doing enough to interest the voters.

This concluding excerpt sums things up quite nicely:

Brown remains branded in the public mind as a disingenuous ditherer. His aides insist his fate still ultimately rests with the economy, and claim his poll decline follows the downturn in the economy, rather than his decision to skip the election.

Many ministers believe his position is irretrievable, while others believe Brown may eventually recover if voters look to the future.

One cabinet loyalist says: “We can win the election. But we will only do that if it [the vote] is about our future. If it is a referendum on us, we can’t win.”

It is fairly clear that the current senior Labour team does not have the charisma or gravitas to charm its way to victory as the government may have had the ability to do previously, courtesy of figures like Tony Blair and Robin Cook. If Labour want to win the next election (seemingly now against the odds), they need to develop a compelling vision for the future and sell it to the electorate. There is no other way. David Cameron is winning and will win the “shininess” battle – Labour need to win (and be seen to win!) the battle on policy substance to stand a chance at the next poll.

ELSEWHERE Also worth a look are Martin Rowson’s merciless cartoons from the Guardian cataloguing the recent trials of the Brown Labour era.

For many years during the era of the Blair Government here in the United Kingdom, Scotsman and Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown was regarded as the Prime Minister to be when Tony finally decided to step down and out of the public limelight. From what I can gather, Brown, unlike Blair in his latter days, was regarded quite favourably by many and attracted a certain degree of respect across the political divide. His avuncular character and his studied approach to politics made him, perhaps, Britain’s incarnation of Kim Beazley. While Blair’s approach to politics made him the focal point of the Labour Party while he was Prime Minister, it was seemingly always quietly observed that the brilliant Gordon Brown, behind the scenes, was one of the key driving forces for some of the better things the Labour Party did policy-wise. If Tony Blair was New Labour’s doyen of spin, Gordon Brown was thought of in some circles as Old Labour’s comparatively quiet doyen of policy. Saatchi’s infamous advertising slogan said it all. With Gordon, there really is no flash.

It has not yet been a year since Gordon Brown was anointed (without the shadow of any real competition for the role) as Prime Minister, back in June 2007. Brown seemed to hit the ground running as a leader during the early months, but since that time, something, for some reason, has been amiss. A public that had gorged itself on glossy and effective spin during the Blair years now found itself observing a somewhat grizzled Scot, prone to grumbling and often short of a trick in the charisma stakes. The association of Brown, in a sense, with “Old Labour” has proven to be an albatross. The Tory leader, David Cameron, looks comparatively young, fresh, and full of energy, and if the current trend continues, looks likely to be the next Prime Minister of Britain. It is a sign of the times that this characterisation of Brown from comedian Rory Bremner (published in The Guardian this weekend) hits Gordon’s plight so squarely on the head:

It’s a bit like having an uncle who’s been building something in the shed at the bottom of the garden for the past 10 years, and you go down to see what he’s up to, and you look through the window - and there’s nothing there.

For the majority of the past year, the question of Brown’s leadership has been handled with kid gloves by the media. Brown has been attacked mercilessly on no end of absurd fronts, of course, but the question of whether he really was the best person to lead the Labour Party at this time has not been raised very often at all. Unfortunately, but in a realistic sense fairly, it seems some in the professional media are starting to lose patience with the Prime Minister’s performance. Martin Kettle has quite a stinging opinion piece in The Guardian today that could well lead to a snowballing of leadership speculation:

Brown is not ready to give up, but nor is he confident he can win the public’s support back. For whatever reason, he lacks the certainty of his predecessor. Even when Blair was wrong, he was clear about where he was heading. But Brown lacks Blair’s confidence - and this is now corrosive. “The challenge is primarily psychological,” says a senior minister, “It’s about being confident.” “He simply doesn’t know what to do,” responds a senior backbencher. “There’s no sense of direction whatever. There’s nothing there.”

I would like to believe that policy really is king, and that all that Gordon Brown has to do to lift Labour’s flagging fortunes is to hit back at the Opposition with a wave of thoughtful, progressive policy reform. Reality, of course, is crueler and more fickle. Despite the fact that there probably isn’t so much of a hair’s breadth between Kim Beazley and Kevin Rudd in a policy sense on quite a lot of issues that one might consider, Beazley was unable to achieve in his three stints as Opposition Leader what Rudd achieved in his first. Leadership is as much about presentation as it is about policy, and at the moment, Gordon Brown is looking very much like the poor cousin of Tony Blair in this regard. “The flash” was not just there for show with Blair; it was needed.

I don’t think Labour can simply ignore the question of the leadership, in the somewhat yellow belief that Gordon Brown will lead the party to the next election, come what may. Brown himself and the senior members of the party should privately set a timetable detailing at what point other options for the leadership should be considered, if indeed Brown’s political fortunes continue to stagnate over the coming months as they are presently. I don’t doubt that the Prime Minister means well and is doing his darnedest to win over the punters, but he must, for the sake of the Labour Party, be judged on results, not just his efforts. The media and the party’s kid gloves must come off, because the current malaise is toxic and unsustainable.

The British Labour Party has published a list of its top fifty achievements in office since Tony Blair lead “New Labour” to power all the way back in 1997, on a wave of enthusiastic public support. As is often the case with lists of this nature, what has been omitted from the list is arguably just as interesting as what has actually been listed. There is not a single reference to the “war on terror” or any related measures aimed at improving security for British citizens. There is not a single reference to the war on Iraq. There is not a single reference to the Blair Government’s involvement in the conflict in the Balkans during the late 1990’s. There is not a single reference to the party’s somewhat conflicted position on adopting the Euro. In total, this all seems to represent an implicit admission by the party that the Labour Party’s foreign policy actions over the last decade are not something which it is proud of.

What I would like to see from the Labour Party here in the UK is a refreshing outburst of honesty. Accompanying this inescapably jaundiced list of fifty greatest achievements over the last decade, why not issue a list of the party’s ten greatest failures over the last decade, and then issue a comprehensive policy platform to address each of these failures? The Howard Government did the best it could to hide its numerous policy failures over the years, and by the end had far too much pride (or perhaps, hubris) to highlight the things it had done wrong and the things it could have done better. Its favoured approach was to soldier on practically regardless of what ordinary people thought of its policies, admitting as little fault as possible, and persistently attacking the Opposition’s credibility. That approach worked a treat in 2004 when Mark Latham proved quite vulnerable to a sustained smear campaign centred on his experience and temperament, but Kevin Rudd proved a much more teflon-like Opposition leader throughout 2007 and the rest is now history.

The British Labour Government, with a new leader in Gordon Brown, has an excellent opportunity to make a clean break from the past, and set a dynamic new course for the future. This may well entail the public disownment of some of the less attractive political legacies of the Blair years, but unless a clean break with the past is made, it is all too easy to see a similar scenario enfolding at the next election in Britain as unfolded in Australia last year. There are lots of criticisms that one can make of Tory Leader David Cameron, but he is certainly an Opposition Leader of the teflon-coated variety. That means that Gordon Brown in his team need to start rolling out some big, positive policy ideas if they are to emerge triumphant from the next election.

I don’t know what, if any sense, everyone is getting of it down in Australia, but British Prime Minister Gordon Brown (aka “great clunking fist”) is enduring a pretty torrid spell in political terms at the moment. In several months the man has not been able to take a trick, with the government shuddering to embarrassing scandal to embarrassing scandal. Tory leader David Cameron is doing a pretty good job of delivering ruthless soundbites to the media, and there is a certain sense out there that Brown might not be able to dig his way out of the hole he and Labour find themselves in post-Blair. After the former Prime Minister’s somewhat acrimonious departure, people need to find a reason to elect a Brown Labour Government. For the time being, at least, they’re still looking.

Well for once, UK Labour is following the lead of its Australian counterpart rather than vice-versa, and engaging YouTube in a concerted manner, with Labour:vision (warning: Gordon Brown video plays on page load). In general I am fairly sceptical that YouTube can play a really significant role in improving the current relationship between Labour and the electorate. On the other hand, there is little point denying that such a venture does actually stand a chance of getting through to people who otherwise would not have thought twice about the Labour Party or what it stands for. However, its scope is limited. As part of a comprehensive and coherent online strategy to engage people and interest people in public life and policy, something like Labour:vision can play a role. However, I think Brown Labour still has some way to go towards cultivating that sort of robust approach to the online world. The danger is that this latest move may be dismissed as desperate gimmickry by some.

Probably the best thing Labour could do right now is to deliver some positive policy proposals for debate, and seize the news agenda back from the Tories. At the moment, the government is in the strange position of being left in the lurch as its world disintegrates (due to circumstances variously within and beyond their control), whilst David Cameron jabs them rather assiduously with a red hot poker. It’s not a very pretty sight.