BusinessDay... the voice of business: The trials of Gordon Brown

The trials of Gordon Brown
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Kaye Whiteman  London on 23 April, 2008 02:00:00
 
It now seems that his stock, high when he took over last July, has sunk as the
British economy has run into trouble. Although he and his lack-lustre Chancellor
Alistair Darling, insist that the basis of the economy is sound, there are
disturbing comparisons to be made with the difficulties still prevailing in the
US after the sub-prime mortgage crisis - the burgeoning decline in property
prices; consumer gloom among retailers; the talk of domestic spending austerity;
the 'credit crunch'; the uneasy state of some of the banks. All this has soured
the political mood, and unsurprisingly it is being taken out on the government.
This combines with magnified criticism of the personality of Gordon Brown, who
seems unable to avoid the labels of indecision and lack of 'bottle', which have
led to a catastrophic slump in opinion polls, and in his standing in the
business community. Where once he was praised for his competence in his ten boom
years as Chancellor, he is now being blamed for all things that have gone wrong,
and what is worse, appears to have difficulty in taking the criticism. All of
which have led to rumblings within his own party, now focused on tax measures,
introduced in his last budget as Chancellor, which, since there was a year's
delay, are now found to have hit the poorest, which for many members of the
Labour Party goes against what they came into politics for.
London and the coming Upheavals
All of which creates an unpropitious scenario for the coming local council
elections at the beginning of May, which also include the mayoral election in
London. This is a spectacular context between two men who are both talented
self-publicists - the incumbent Labour mayor, Ken Livingstone, an acknowledged
populist bidding for a third term, and his Tory opponent, Boris Johnson, an
un-serious professional joker with a not very well hidden right-wing agenda, who
nonetheless might get by on his celebrity status.  Critics are portraying
Livingstone as scandal-worn and past his sell-by date, but he has enjoyed great
popularity, and if he loses it will only be because of a national swing away
from Labour.  And there are no indications that the Liberal Democrats, who in
the 2005 parliamentary elections benefited from Blair's declining popularity,
but who have changed their leader twice in the past three years, are really over
their crisis of leadership enough to have the true confidence of the country.
If the Conservatives succeed in winning London, combined with further local
election losses, Brown's position in the party is going to be even more
difficult, but he does not have to have a general election until May 2010. Prime
Ministers who go for the full five-year term are more likely to lose, and the
stress may become intolerable, if stories of internal ructions within 10 Downing
Street are to be believed. Some commentators are already beginning to smell
blood, and are making comparisons with Anthony Eden and Neville Chamberlain. So
there are, in the present febrile atmosphere, increasing apprehensions of
political upheavals to come.
Fragmenting UK?
There are indications that these may go beyond the purely political, although
politics is where the principal dramas are played out. First of all, there is
the increasing problem of the identity of the United Kingdom itself, and its
component parts. There is every sign that in a couple of years the issue of
Scottish separatism may come to a head, especially since last year the Scottish
Nationalists, who do have a platform of secession, have been in power as a
minority administration in Edinburgh.
Other factors may head this off, however.  There is an unwillingness in the
political class to face this possibility, or the idea that where Scotland goes,
Wales will not be far behind. Only Northern Ireland, with the Unionist ideology
of the Protestant majority will keep its fanatical attachment to the Union. The
big concern is the reaction this dislocation will produce in England, where
there is already an English nationalist tendency with distinct right wing
leanings based on the flag of St George. Many on that side of the fence, without
saying so, would apparently not miss the departure of Scotland from the union.
A chance for Commonsense?
These atavistic, reactionary emotions (I hesitate to say it is an ideology),
equally hostile to the EU in Brussels and all its works, are fully spelt out in
a St George's Day special issue of The Spectator, which has always been a
bell-wether of opinion on the English right. Indeed, some of the language used
is unusually disturbing. The scenario some see at the next election is of a
strong majority in England for the Conservative party, without any seats in
either Scotland or Wales, which would further encourage the fragmentation of the
union.
Traditional British (English?) commonsense may yet prevent such an
unprecedented move, as the vested interests against such a self-defeating
exercise are still extremely strong. The impact on Britain's international
position, for example, would be catastrophic, even if the divisions of the
United Kingdom have always existed in sport (except in the Olympics and other
athletics events, although it is there in the Commonwealth Games). But there are
still many ostriches around in the political class (already suffering from a
collective loss of reputation who cannot imagine such a turn of events.
'The Bubble Reputation'
This looming problem also piles on the agony for poor Gordon Brown, a Scot
trying his best to be 'British', at a time when Britishness is an increasingly
hollow concept. As one reflects on the tragedy that seems to be impending for
the hapless Prime Minister, it does seem to be a classic case of one who has
waited so long for a position he so coveted, that he has not been able to
articulate a sense of direction in the top job. Again the analogy of Anthony
Eden comes to mind, although it took a disaster on the scale of Suez to undo
him. But the present moroseness does arouse thoughts on what Shakespeare called 
"the bubble reputation" in his "all the world's a stage" speech in ‘As You
Like It.’ When you have ridden high in public esteem for so long, you find it
hard to take the fall. The fickleness of public praise is something Obasanjo and
Mbeki know well, and, I guess, George W Bush. What I do know is that Gordon
brown in his ten years as Chancellor was consistently advocating more aid for
developing countries, and in Nigeria, there has to be some gratitude to both
Brown and Tony Blair for having been the main international drivers of Nigeria's
debt cancellation in 2005.
Bio-fuel U-Turn
There are a few further thoughts on the food shortage theme of last week's
diary. First, the bio-fuel angle in the causes of the problem is dramatised by
the European Commission decision to back away from its target for 10 per cent of
road transport energy needs to be provided by bio-fuels by 2020, apparently
panicked by the current prospects of serious world famines. Secondly, one of my
readers has pointed out that it is dangerous to group all the recent
disturbances in Africa as food riots. Some are also fuel price riots - indeed
Cameroon was particularly so, but was fed by a deeper level of political
discontent, not unrelated to the familiar story of an elderly president trying
to amend the constitution to perpetuate his period in power. There was also a
sub-plot of battles between striking taxi-drivers and strike-breaking okada (or
the Cameroon equivalent).
One also notes that it is almost always fuel price increases that cause
problems in Nigeria, perhaps because food prices are more self-regulating. Which
brings me back to my particular theory, still un-proved, on the particularly
sensitive nature of the highly extraverted franc zone.