Posts Tagged → Gordon Brown
The past is prologue
The Labour leadership contest continues. So far, despite the best efforts of a few, there has been far more attention paid to the past than to the future.
There has been much too much effort, by some candidates, to find a route to reshape their record – as senior advisers, MPs or ministers – and too little effort in developing some definition on the issues which will determine Labour’s and Britain’s future.
It ill-becomes those who seek to lead the Labour Party for them to spend so much time trying to distance themselves from our collective record.
With the possible exception of the BBC’s Diane Abbott, none of the candidates can reasonably pretend to have been absent from Labour’s leadership for any significant period or any significant decision over the last 13 years.
But that does not mean any or all of them have to pretend that they agreed with every last dot and comma of what was done. I spent eight years as a special adviser to the Labour government. I am extremely proud of that government but I did not agree with everything.
I disagreed with Gordon Brown on his decision to raise the pension by just 75 pence. I disagreed with Tony Blair’s enthusiasm for joining the Euro. I was always sceptical about the PFI programme because turning capital investment into revenue expenditure is only ever a short-term solution to a long-term problem. I always viewed the internal opposition to foundation hospitals, modernising student financial support and school academies as about political positioning rather than political philosophy.
The point is though, that now none of this matters. Having an analysis of other people’s decisions isn’t the same as making them yourself. The past is only ever prologue in politics.
This Labour leadership election is not some sort of entry exam for Oxbridge. It is not about getting the history questions right. It is about getting the future questions right.
Where people stood on one issue or another – whether they thought Hans Blix should have been given more time or given the sack – does not matter a jot.
If you want to be Prime Minister it is not the calls you did not have to make that matter now but the calls you might have to make next time.
Tomorrow David Miliband is making a speech in Bristol which must be about the future or it will fail. His website says it will reflect on Labour’s record in government and set out his thoughts on the next stage of the party’s agenda to use the power of education to transform children’s lives. We lost the education debate at the last election to the Conservatives because we failed to have a vision for the future. We cannot ever allow that to happen again.
It is time this election started to come alive. Time it began to fizz with new policy ideas and an understanding of the future challenges a Labour government will face and the vision we have for public services in the new economic reality.
Because if it doesn’t there might not be a Labour government for a very, very long time.
The long lament
Thirty years ago Mrs Thatcher came to power. She changed politics utterly: moving the centre ground over three general elections firmly to the right; radicalising the right and the left as she did so, almost making the term ‘moderate’ seem like a criticism rather than a compliment; introduced the concepts of monetarism, privatisation and even Britain as ‘a property owning democracy’ into the bloodstream of public policy; all but broke the Labour Party and the labour movement; and of course, put Labour out of office for almost two decades until Tony Blair and New Labour created the opportunity to win again.
Few if any believed she would be so radical, so right-wing, so revolutionary in 1979.
Labour failed in the late 1970s to deal with its own demons. It mishandled a global economic crisis. It gave in too readily to trade union demands and allowed the Left to control the party. It seemed to be part of the problem with how power was exercised in Britain rather than the means by which ordinary families could do well and get on. It looked like it was being battered by events – including militant trade unionism – rather than in control. Frankly, Labour looked under seige.
And yet, in Jim Callaghan we had a Prime Minister and leader who was more popular than the party. More popular than Mrs Thatcher.
So, whilst there are parallels with where we are today there are important differences too.
We may have a leader less popular than the Opposition’s but we are not mishandling the economy; we may be conceding too much to the Left and the unions in the party but Britain is not in the grip of an industrial relations crisis. We may be being battered by events but to coin a phrase Jim Callaghan didn’t actually say, when it comes to comparing Britain today with 1978-79, ‘crisis, what crisis?’
That isn’t to say Labour isn’t in deep trouble. And has to change.
Of course, it is regrettable that Charles Clarke and Hazel Blears have to sound off in the media. Some of the language – like the ‘YouTube if you want to’ comment – was unacceptable because it was so obvious the media would have a field day with it.
It was equally unacceptable for John Prescott to call for Clarke to leave the Party for feeling ashamed over the McBride affair when I don’t know a single Labour member who didn’t feel ashamed and embarrassed by it.
But Charles, David Blunket, Hazel and others are merely expressing a sense of frustration – even exasperation – that so many Labour people have today.
It isn’t a Blairite thing or even a New Labour thing. It is a Labour thing: after a dozen years are we throwing away our own triumph in shifting the centre ground of British politics to the centre-left from the centre-right where Mrs Thatcher left it?
We were promised that when Tony Blair resigned we would experience “renewal in office” but it never happened. Instead, we have nose-dived in the polls, appear to have stagnated on reform, emailed away our “moral compass” and generally look like we’ve lost our touch.
If Charles Clarke and others weren’t speaking out in these circumstances we could legitimately ask why not?
This is not a Gordon Brown problem. Clearly he has had some communications and connection issues. But the problem is more fundamental than that: it is how we govern that is the problem not who leads the government.
To restore our reputation the government has to return to being New Labour.
We have to end and repudiate the language of Leftism that is creeping into the Labour lexicon. Allowing ourselves to fall into the Budget elephant trap of being badged “the end of New Labour” was a tiny example. Better to have cut income tax to stimulate the economy than to have broken our promise and introduced a 50p rate on top earners. Better to change the Budget plans now than break that pledge.
Criticizing primary school academies as being dangerous because they threatened to bring “free markets” to schools is crazy – especially as academies are a sound policy which New Labour introduced.
Giving local councils more say over academies or creating a new national control mechanism over them plays to activists not to parents.
We should be being more radical on schools and hospitals not slipping back or going silent.
Where are the policies and programmes designed to bring more power to parents, patients and carers through choice and competition between providers?
What is the long term vision for creating more new home owners not just more council houses?
Why have we stopped articulating our approach on crime, anti-social behaviour and bad neighbours when it connects across social classes and between communities?
How will more and more regulation on businesses – even in the name of ‘equality’ – help to create new jobs for those who will lose theirs in this recession?
Where are the plans to bring about a genuine greening of the economy as part of the recovery?
What is our appeal to the instincts and incomes of middle class voters who were essential to our victories in 1997, 2001 and 2005?
Why have we stopped owning the future? Why do we look like we have stopped all legislation with any edge? Even the Royal Mail Bill now looks threatened.
The answer is radical policy not just improved presentation. It is to be controversial if necessary not conservative by nature.
In 1979 we looked like we have been driven from office as much by exhaustion as election. We have to recapture a sense of excited in office not exhausted by it.
Jim Callaghan said during the 1979 election that he had felt that the tide had changed. He was right. It is not too late to turn the tide back in our favour. It needs us to be as bold and radical today as we were when we made the Bank of England independent.
Thatcher’s anniversary must be New Labour’s warning from history. Otherwise, the lament – to use Hazel Blear’s word of the week – will be long and hard and deep. It will be a lament for the lost opportunities of radical social reform by future Labour governments. Perhaps even for the Labour Party itself.
Credit where it is due
I have been accused of sometimes being too hard on Gordon Brown. It is certainly the case that I think he has issues communicating on an emotional level with the public or in a language they can understand. But, credit where credit is due: Gordon Brown did a very good job leading the G20 and secured an outcome which will help to knock some of the roughest edges off of the global recession. By their collective action the G20 agreement should help to avoid the isolationism and protectionism which combined to turn the Wall Street Crash into the 1930s Depression.
If communication isn’t GB’s strongest card then attention to detail certainly is and anyone watching his performance in the post-match interviews will have witnessed a Prime Minister with the facts, figures and finances at his fingertips. It is hard to see David Cameron commanding such authority on the World Stage.
Gordon may not be a Clinton, Blair or an Obama when it comes to selling the deal but even his sternest critics can not take away from him his success today. Tom Bradby from ITN asked if he was confident that the G20 meeting in London would now mark the beginning of the end of the Global downturn. Gordon avoided that trap. We had all better hope that if it is not the beginning of the end London’s G20 is at least the end of the beginning. If that proves to be the case Gordon Brown can take some of the credit.
Time to walk and chew gum at the same time
Sitting in my hotel room in Washington DC on Wednesday evening I managed to catch a speech President Obama was making to a town hall meeting in Orange County, California. It was, as usual, an inspirational speech from an inspirational president. Within it, President Obama set out some important contrasts with how the British government is handling the current political and economic crisis.
First of all, the President began by stressing that when it comes to economic problems and mistakes made in how to handle them he stressed that ‘the buck stops here’. The specific issue he was referring to was about bonuses paid to AIG executives. Of course, the Obama administration isn’t really to blame for the bonus payments – any more than Gordon Brown is responsible for big bonuses paid to bad bankers – but President Obama didn’t try to shift responsibility he took it. He knows that that’s what leaders do. The town hall meeting lapped it up. This is what Gordon Brown should have done to defuse the apology issue: to take responsibility for the situation rather than try to shuffle off the blame to others. By doing so, Obama looks in control, rather than the victim of events.
Secondly, the President made a vitally important point about priorities. He said that whilst he was facing criticism for dealing with more than one problem at a time, he believes that it is vital to address the economic crisis and to reform healthcare, improve schools, reduce reliance on carbon fuel and win the war in Afghanistan. He said that he wouldn’t choose between dealing with the economic crisis and reforming public services because people didn’t get to choose between dealing with their personal economic circumstances and the quality of the schools their children use and the healthcare they rely upon. It was, he said, time to chew gum and walk at the same time.
This is absolutely the right analysis and one which the Labour government would do well to emulate. As I have said here before, the government’s standing with the electorate is suffering from its failure to set out a radical and challenging reform programme for health, schools, energy and the wider public services. The Labour government too often looks like it has forgotten how to be radical reformers; that the ability to walk and chew gum at the same time is beyond them. 
If Labour is to have any chance of winning the next election it is vital that Gordon Brown and the Labour government learns some lessons from how President Obama is communicating on the economic crisis: taking personal responsibility even when it isn’t his fault; and making radical public service reforms even whilst dealing with the economic crisis. Labour has to show it can walk and chew gum at the same time.
IMF predicts UK recession will last longest of G7
The importance of a successful outcome to the G20 meeting to Britain is highlighted today with the International Monetary Fund predicting that the recession in the UK will be longer and deeper than amongst our competitors. The IMF predicts that Britain will be the only member of the G7 to experience a continuing economic contraction in 2010. These predictions come on top of bleak assessments on jobs. As unemployment passes two million today most commentators expect it to reach three million in 2010.
There was a time when Ministers’ claimed Britain was in the best place of any nation to weather and then recover from the global downturn. That sounded a little boastful at the time. Today it seems like an unfortunate joke. There are two million people sitting at home today who won’t see the funny side.
Inevitably, today’s gloomy predictions and terrible statistics will lead to more cat-calls for Gordon Brown to apologise. I’m not so sure it matters whether he does or he doesn’t use those words. The public know that this is a global downturn. They know too that whilst individual governments in one country or another might have done this thing or that differently, a bit sooner or a bit later, that in reality this hurricane was going to hit and to hurt.
The real point now for Labour is not to try to brief, boast or bluster our way through. No more leading the world or saving the planet. No more last in, first out idle rhetoric. Britain, for a range of reasons, not least our reliance on the City of London and financial services sector, and our over reliance on easily obtained debt to fuel consumer confidence, is going to experience a downturn beyond the memory and experience of most of our politicians and most of our people. When Alastair Darling told us that in an interview over Christmas he was made by his political masters to recant as surely and as fully as anyone faced with the inquisitors of the Spanish Inquisition. But Alastair was right and the briefers were wrong. The only way to convince the public that Labour knows how to deal with this crisis is to lower the rhetoric and level with them. It is not apologies we need now but humility.
So, when the G20 ‘global deal’ happens it should not be greeted with fanfares and fireworks because even if it amounts to anything much it won’t impact directly the million more Britons expected to lose their jobs this year. Everyone hopes and prays that a deal can be reached but let us not talk up expectations about its impact in a way which only adds to the disillusionment with politics so many of our friends and neighbours face as they stare out from their homes at an uncertain future.
Can the G20 really relaunch Gordon Brown?
There are some international summits which have a long lasting impact and which almost define the most important moments and crises in the most difficult times. A few spring to mind: President Nixon and Chairman Mao in 1972; Reagan and Gorbachev at Reykjavik in 1986; the Belfast meeting in 1998 which produced the Good Friday Agreement; the European summit at Maastricht.
Barack Obama even claimed during the presidential elections that the Kennedy/Khrushchev summit in Vienna in 1961 was an important milestone on the way to ending the Cold War – not even JFK would have claimed that though!
But I suspect the summit which key advisers in No 10 Downing Street – perhaps even Gordon Brown himself – have in mind at the moment, as they plan the G20 in London, is the G8 meeting in Gleneagles in 2005, chaired by Tony Blair, which made crucial agreements on aid to Africa and climate change. As John Kirton, the director of the Toronto University G8 research group said at the time, “this is the single most successful summit in the thirty year history of this event.”
One of the reasons for this is that a key adviser to Tony Blair who played a major personal role in helping to secure the success of Gleneagles for the then Prime Minister was Justin Forsyth who is now Director of Strategic Communications for Gordon Brown. If anyone can help to make the G20 a success for GB (in both senses) it will be Justin.
There is though another reason. There have been a number of stories – some just blather from commentators, some badly briefed from Downing Street – suggesting that the G20 meeting can somehow be a relaunch for Gordon Brown’s premiership.
Superficially, this might seem like a reasonable ambition. Afterall, there will be lots of pictures of Gordon welcoming World leaders to London (including President Obama) and chairing the conference. Surely, the smiles and the seriousness of the situation can help improve the prime minister’s standing in the country?
There will be those, some now disgracefully enjoying their ministerial cars, who plotted the September 2006 coup against Blair who will remember that their plans were knocked off course for a year earlier because of the success of the G8 summit.
There will be those who really do believe that the meeting can have a beneficial impact on the global economy and that GB will get some credit for it.
And then there are those who simply believe this is the last throw of the dice for this government and if they come up with snake-eyes rather than double-six well so be it.
I am sceptical about the extent to which summits change the perceptions of publics about their leaders. The massive backroom effort that will go into writing and agreeing the communique following the G20 (and there will be a ‘global deal’ of some sort because diplomacy is actually about being a bit diplomatic and it is bad form to slap the host’s political face whilst you are still enjoying his hospitality) will go un-noticed by most of the public. The glad-handing and smiles for the camera are water off a duck’s back to all but the political commentariat. Politicians meet, they talk, they smile and they stand in a group for a photo – that will probably be the most most members of the public see of the G20.
We can hope that the impact on the global economy is more profound and more long-lasting. That the G20 stands for something more than anti-market rhetoric and produces more than hot air and high hopes.
But the impact that will matter in the short term in the UK will be the media’s reaction to the G20. They have the power to make this make-or-break summit or to break it – and the prospects of Gordon Brown and the Labour Government with it.
If they are over-spun, over-hyped or over-looked at any point then their verdict will be harsh and they will write that the fate of the Prime Minister is sealed.
Personally, I do not believe that failure at the G20 can hurt Gordon Brown’s premiership any more than success can help him. It is not that the die is cast but that the failure to show real ambition for radical reforms in standards for schools and performance in hospitals daily hampers Labour’s ability to make the case for its own re-election. The public will look at the G20 summit and say to themselves, “that’s what politicians’ lives are about – meeting and talking” and then they will go back to their own lives lived as patients and parents, neighbours and carers and wonder just how relevant is the G20 afterall?
Go for it Gordon
Gordon Brown will next week address a joint session of both houses of the US Congress. This is a tremendous honour for him and for Britain. When Tony Blair made a similar speech in 2003 it was a brilliant performance the impact of which was muted because of the death of Dr David Kelly the following day.
The Prime Minister should use his speech to make the case for continued intervention in Afghanistan; not just the social programmes and electoral registration but the tough, targetted military intervention that continues to benefit us all at home through tackling the Taliban who happliy hosted terrorist cells, the terrorists themselves who continue to plot ’spectaculars’ in our country and the narcotics industry that also deals in death.
He should argue for larger military commitments by NATO members – and a larger number of NATO members too.
Go for it Gordon. Don’t just make the easy speech about shared values but the tough one about shared military service, shared sacrifice and shared security.
…And the winner is…
In a workplace that I suspect these days doesn’t get many feel good moments, the decision by President Obama to invite Gordon Brown to be the first serving leader to be welcomed to the White House will have felt like manna from heaven. The winner is Gordon Brown.
Perhaps this is a reflection on the state of the special relationship, perhaps it is a ‘thank you’ for Britain’s continued military commitments in support of the USA in Afghanistan or perhaps it is preparation for the ‘Global Deal’ the Prime Minister hopes to secure at the G20 Summit in London. Whatever the reason, it is good news that Brown and through him Britain, is being honoured in this way.
The important thing now is that Gordon Brown uses the visit to make a point. For too long, in too many parts of the media and public life in Britain, there has been a hostility to the USA, sometimes bordering on the zenophobic. Anti-Americanism – especially during GWB years – became fashionable amongst a metropolitan elite who seemed to forget that peace in Europe was saved twice in the 20th Century by the courage and sacrifice of American troops and freedom was secured during the Cold War by their preparedness to do it a third time.
When I was in No10 I lost count of the number of times people said to me that they really wanted to see Tony Blair repeat the scene from ‘Love Actually’ where the PM attacks the US President in public.
Frankly, there are still too many people in politics and the media who believe a “Love Actually” moment would have been good news for Britain. Take ten seconds to think what we gain from our closeness to the USA in terms of security alone and the idea of following the script from that particular comedy becomes truely laughable.
Gordon should use the honour of being the first serving leader to visit the President to reaffirm Britain’s pride in the special relationship, to make the case for our continued military partnership against terrorism in Afghanistan and to publicly show our support for the only Superpower which has even been prepared to sacrifice the lives of its troops for our freedom. The USA is more than Britain’s most important bilateral relationship, it is our most important, most enduring and most effective alliance and one which we should celebrate whoever is in the White House.
And on the theme of winners good luck to Frost/Nixon tonight at the Oscars.
Afghanistan: NATO members must step up to the plate
There was an interesting comment by Britain’s First Sea Lord, Admiral Band, on the BBC’s Marr programme on Sunday. When challenged about the role and performance of the British armed forces in Afghanistan the first example that the Admiral gave for success was that ‘electoral registration’ has increased in Helmand province. Of course, that’s a good thing and, despite some elements of the media’s determination to paint it otherwise, Britain’s armed forces continue to do a vital and valuable job in difficult circumstances in Afghanistan: fighting the Taliban, building a functioning state, tackling the narcotics trade and reducing the threat that Afghanistan (and in light of the comments by their President today also Pakistan) becomes a haven for active terrorist organisations.
The reason the Admiral’s comments struck me though, is that often the terms of the debate about how countries engage in the struggle against terrorism is couched in terms of a choice between the use of ’hard’ power and ’soft’ power; between direct military engagement or nation-building. The remarks by the First Sea Lord, alongside the tragic death of another British marine, show that Britain is engaged in both. And both it must be.
Sadly, the campaign in Afghanistan has shown up one of the real strategic weaknesses amongst other NATO members at the moment. Too often too many NATO member states want to divide the response to arguably NATO’s most important operation in its 60 years of existence along these ’hard’ and ’soft’ options. The USA, alongside Britain and one or two other honourable European exceptions are expected to take on the ‘hard’ duties of military engagement. Europe is then left to lead on the ’soft’ diplomatic and humanitarian tasks of building schools and hospitals.
If NATO is to survive another 60 years large parts of Europe must stop freeloading; collective security is just that ‘collective’ and it is vital that every NATO member who wants to enjoy the benefits of it also contributes to the costs of delivering it; often, sadly, that cost is borne in the lives of our servicemen and women but it is made all the greater because so many NATO members are not pulling their weight within the Alliance.
The struggle in Afghanistan is not about a choice between ‘winning hearts and minds’ and winning the war. As the Admiral made clear on the BBC it is about both. You simply can’t expand electoral rolls, educate girls, build health centres without first establishing and then maintaining peace and security.
There is also too little done by NATO members to make the case for our military engagement in Afghanistan. When was the last time Gordon Brown, for example, made a speech setting out the case to the public for the security struggle which almost weekly claims the lives of brave British soldiers, sailors and airmen? Yet this struggle is about the collective security of every NATO member state because to be beaten by would-be terrorists in Afghanistan (or Pakistan) creates a real and present danger on our own streets.
President Obama is right to argue that significant increases in NATO force levels are necessary. They are. It is high time that every member of NATO stepped up to the plate.
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