Gordon Brown - My part in
his future downfall
(This piece was posted in May 2007)
I've been getting a bit of a critical drubbing of late on the subject of our new-born Prime Minister. There are murmurings of 'brilliant mind', 'wonderful strategist', 'tough on the big issues' and 'compassionate', the only bad news being that they're talking about him, not me.
An old and dear chum told me I was 'whacking' Brown too much last week (an appalling thought at the best of times) while two others said it was all getting a bit boring and why couldn't I lay off him. Well, as regulars will see this week, Silly Old Cammers comes in for a frontal assault - probably long overdue - but as those who persevere with this, my latest effort, ought to be able to discern, there are very good reasons for the seemingly gratuitous attack on the Dark Mind in Number Ten. It's just that I haven't laid them all out before in one place.
Now it goes without saying that both the Official Secrets Act (I'm being serious for once) and the ludicrous libel laws - under both of which our unfortunate Isle labours - have to be taken into account here. Thus I can say that Lord Gould is a brainless tit who left Secondary Modern with one O-Level, because (a) it's my opinion having met him (b) the educational bit is a matter of public record and (c) as he's not powerful any more, nobody's going to care - least of all him. What I cannot say is every last teensy detail of what I know about The Scottish Play. I make this point at the outset, because some of you may be shocked by the time you get to the end of the imminent fusillade. And while I hope there is no anger in here, the devastating nature of some of the observations and opinions may make one or two readers ponder on what exactly it is I can't publish about him. In which case, all I can say is "excellent".
From Blair to Brown: Culture Shock Put succinctly, Blair was the sniffy creative guy - all flash and gloss and no substance. Brown, by contrast, is the puritanical statistician - all numbers and detail and no ideas. Put these two together in Opposition, and you have a formidable team. Give them the country to run, and it'll run all over the place and spill over the sides. Blair should've gone into PR. Brown should be an academic. But liking the money and power, they rose to the top in Politics. Put them One and Two as Prime Ministers, and you have the subliminally sublime followed by the ridiculously rigorous. Somewhere judiciously in between would be nice, but in the meantime we have Brown: what are we in for?
The short answer is that nobody can say definitively. The longer answer follows, and will begin with a mind-concentrating thought. The thought is this: the Labour Party - even the New Labour Party - finds it hard to agree about anything. To then agree and organise something is several bridges further along the Rhine for this rag-tag army. Show-Conferences or not, there are as many factions on the soft Left as there ever were, especially now that huge acres of what used to be called the Right have been added. Consider this is turn: like him or otherwise, Gordon Brown is without any doubt the cleverest, most able thing to come out of Scotland since Porridge Oats. Ramsay McDonald was an educationally subnormal stickleback by comparison. This is a man whose intellect and discipline got him a First in Law, and the undying respect of just about everyone who taught him. His command of the minutiae of something he saw in an inflight magazine ten years earlier is awesome. As a recorder, thinker, intellectual and Presbyterian, I would hazard a not too wild guess that he has no equal in these our islands. So why, we must ask, did the eclectically anarchic Labour Party organise a movement called Anyone but Gordon?
Management Style The truth is, because Gordon is a bit of a twat. And if I'm about to lose you on account of that insult, please forgive me and keep going. To stun you into acquiescence right here and now, let me chuck in two bullet points:
* A reasonably close acquaintance in the middle orders of the Treasury (who has no axe to grind, and in fact began as a big fan of Brown) told me last year that Gordon doesn't do simple. He equates simple with simplistic - or 'flakey'. Very few if any apparatchiks in the bowels of the tax strategists and collectors had too much of a clue about what the Bejesus Gordon's tax changes meant - or indeed, how to enact them. So you can imagine what chance the ordinary (ie, underprivileged) taxpayer has: actually, you don't need to use any imagination at all - just look at the appallingly low take-up of his benefits, and you have all the answer you will ever need. The bloke is far too clever for his own good.
* A well-placed Libdem mole has been telling me for years what most Labour members detest about Gordon Brown: he thinks everyone else is a congenital idiot except (a) him and (b) all those in unreserved agreement with him. The electorate, of course, is even more stupid - but that's OK, because Gordy knows what's best for them. They are - every last man and woman - just waiting for a strong man to bring them back into the ways of the Kirk, and Gordon is Heaven-bent on being that very same man.
Spin - and yet, no spin It is because of Brown's innate complexity and need for total control that his Spin machine went into overdrive the minute the first focus group findings had landed on his desk late last year. The research told his Inner Sanctum three things: 1. You don't seem very emotional, and women think you're a bit odd 2. While financial journalists hail you as the Greatest Ever Chancellor, the voters have their doubts 3. Most of the electorate think you were up to your neck in all the Blair shenanigins.
Hence what we've been seeing all over the newscasts, podcasts and newspapers ever since: he's only got one eye (that's why he looks funny), while prudent he is also compassionate (look at his credentials from age eleven) and the whole Blair circus was never his style and anyway there'll now be a complete break with the past. So let's interrogate this a little. One eye or not (and he did suffer the most appalling angst as a result of that at a formative age) Brown's hesitant mouth/tongue thing and odd half-chilly grin all remain to haunt him. Observe:
I mean, no names, no pack drill here - but what is that all about? As to the rest of the 'odd' matter, a discreet veil must be drawn.
Let us move on to his record as Chancellor. Check this out: of seventeen Treasury forecasts made on Brown's watch, thirteen were wrong. Under his tutelage, the rich got richer and the poor poorer at a rate never equalled - including the Loadsamoney 1980s. He bunged in all the funds Blair needed for his illegal invasion of Iraq without so much as a murmur. And departmental waste hit new highs - notable at Health, where fully £22 billion were squandered on an IT system that was both unnecessary and utterly ineffective. In relation to Bread & Circuses, let us not forget that this was the era of leaking sans pareil. And in that context, all reliable sources are agreed on one thing: Gordon Brown was the Golden Colander, a man leakier than an ocean-going sieve. What's more, the leaks were always against his boss, and always of a despicable nature. As far as low blows go, all modesty allows me to say here is that Brown's accolytes aimed very low, but fell well below that standard. And all with Saint Gordon's approval.
Yes but no but yes but no but In the end, Brown's relentless campaign of Blair-rubbishing (and let's face it, there was plenty of raw material) paid dividends. Lest anyone imagines that the previous incumbent of Number Ten chose his own time to go, he didn't: the Brownshirts forced him from office. They did this with a combination of threats to blow up the whole Labour movement, and threats to leak even more stuff that Tony wouldn't want in the public domain. Eventually - against his better judgment - Blair threw in the towel. (And then got the Blairites to champion every last bit of pond life prepared to stand against his number two). It is for these reasons I have taken to calling Gordon Brown The One-Eyed Trouser Snake. Quite a few readers find it cruel and unfair, but for me it is the perfect soubriquet: he is the one-eyed man in the Kingdom of the Blind, he is a snake, and he is a dick.
Ah but, I hear you say - at least he is strong and decisive. Well unfortunately, this is a myth put about while Gordon's coronation was being prepared. In private, friends, enemies and biographers of Brown can agree on one thing: he is a very strong-willed man, but he is also an infuriatingly indecisive, brooding man subject to fits of depression when things aren't going his way. His agonising is, literally, agonising to watch: should I stab Tony in the back? Or should I stab him in the front? Are the Blairites out to get me? Or is it just that.... everyone's out to get me. This makes Brown suspicious bordering on paranoid, and almost childlike in his reverence for the old maxim, 'Those who are not with me are against me'.
But he likes his family.... Everyone likes at least someone in his or her family, and everyone except the Underclass loves their children. Hitler loved dogs, was charming to his secretaries, and liked his cousin so much she became his mistress and no, no, no - there is no parallel intended here. The point is simple: doting on your family means diddly-squat as a predictor of personality and behaviour in the broader circle of public life.
....and he's handing power back to the People Of course he is. That must be why all the key offices of State are as of today being run by (1) A young man to whom he owes a great deal and thus has no choice - David Miliband (2) his mates and proteges and (3) Alistair Darling, who barely creeps under the net as Homo sapiens, in that he has no spine and very little conversation.
I'm sorry if all this seems hopelessly cynical, but it's time more folks got real and became carefully discerning about media-made images. I do not doubt that Gordon Brown (who I genuinely believe means well) detests the idea of illegal wars, wants Community spirit and political involvement to increase, believes in loyalty and family life, is suspicious of the EU, dislikes the Americans and knows that Health and Education has been strangled by targets and drowned in bullshit for the last decade. But the idea that Mr Brown now suddenly accepts the principle of democratic decision-making on the big issues is laughable. The man is an arrogant control freak, the epitome of Those Who Know Better, the scion of everything and anyone deemed 'flakey'.
Surely he has the right ideas? In many ways he does, but none of the big ones are his. They were thought up by John Knox, Adam Smith, Dick Crosland, Clem Attlee and a host of other dead people quite some considerable time ago. In my view they're not so much ideas as principles - and Brown does have principles. In this sense alone, he ought to be an improvement on Moral Tone. But oddly enough, I do not think he will be: I believe there is every chance he'll be a disaster - for Britain, for civil liberties and for Labour - because he lacks Blair's flexibility under pressure, and he lacks the bravery to go for the bold solution. This he calls 'prudence'. Thus it must have been prudence that made him decide to wait until all the waters in Yorkshire had subsided, and then walk in rather than wade in with the derisory offer of £14 million, a sum smaller than that wasted every day by Patricia Hewitt while Minister for Health. This was the new, nicer, cuddlier Brown in action. Sorry, make that inaction.
Actions, words, volume etc While toiling at the sharp end of advertising research, I learned one lesson very quickly: research is about having the insight and experience to spot liars. From this came a conclusion I have never seen any reason to change: hear not what folks say, but watch what they do. A man with respect for the ordinary voter does not announce budget changes deliberately designed to hide increases, rename increases as cuts, and make him look good before taking over as PM. Most of Gordon Brown's budgets were an insult to our intelligence - especially the last one.
A man keen to sweep clean does not fire one (count them) of Blair's twits and then just shuffle the rest around. Most observers called his new Cabinet appointments 'astute'. Piffle - they were prudent at best, weak at worst.
A genuinely democratic man doesn't need a kitchen Cabinet surrounded by a broader Cabinet of nonentities. He doesn't need to promise Constitutions and increased powers to both the Lords and Commons.
A calculating man, on the other hand, knows precisely how meaningless all this window-dressing is in the ghastly reality of modern government.
A man at ease with self-deprecation doesn't reserve it for public platforms and media interviews.
An honest man does not give £8 billion towards an illegal war and then pretend it was nothing to do with him and he never liked the idea anyway. Honest men of integrity resign if that's how they feel. (Well, they used to). They do not lie persistently about real tax increases, slip through major clauses in the small print, produce risible statistics about Britain's economic progress and allow foul briefing to carry on unchecked against his boss while denying authorship.
A man keen to have a leadership election contest doesn't scare or buy off every contender until he's the only candidate left. A man keen to see people succeed by hard work on their merits doesn't shove a sitting MP out of the way and give him a gong in the Lords, thus freeing up a safe seat for one of his cronies. A compassionate man doesn't wait a week before visiting a disaster scene - and then offer one crumb of comfort before flying out again. Nor does he actively preside over a tax regime making the rich richer and the poor desperate. Nor does he bully ministries into letting people die rather than tackle the bigger problem of waste.
A compassionate man can fly to Africa, see children dying in their thousands and give an interview without using them to score points in domestic politics half an hour later. (This was, I'm afraid, the moment when I realised exactly how ruthlessly amoral Mr Brown is in his soul).
A social reformer who can see the wood for the trees doesn't watch the old have their dignity clinically removed by abusive care-home staff, and let them go gaga when drugs to stop this are freely available. He doesn't award the Health & Safety Executive massive budgets when (1) there is not a shred of evidence to even vaguely suggest they know which way round the sky and the ground go and (2) the last thing we need right now is even more idiots growing old and having to be cared for. Sorry, yes, I know that sounds heartless - but as long as New Labour continues on its path of egoistic profligacy and incompetent waste, it's the best thing I can come up with, and a good way to save money.
And above all, a man with a usefully brilliant mind reduces complexity to single-minded strategy, sets objectives and lists a hierarchy of priorities. He does not produce schemes nobody can understand, dither about priorities and then choose all of them at once, and then change everything the following year - or deny there's a problem for five years until it becomes critical. This is not brilliance - this is indecisive over-complication.
Fine, but we're stuck with him Now this view I concur with entirely. I'm reasonably certain that The One-Eyed Trouser Snake (TOETS) will go for a quick election - before any bad news starts filtering through, and before the lightweight Cameron stands a chance of finding his feet, or possibly nailing them to the floor in order to avoid simply floating away. Then in theory we will have until 2013 to watch a Brown government unravelling.
To my good chum who said he'd prefer Brown to the Cameroon, I accept he has a point. But to me this is like preferring vinegar to lettuce leaves: on the whole, I'd rather have a good, honest steak - and as an elector in the home of modern democracy, I think I'm entitled to something better than a nasty taste in the mouth or something nice and bright and green that does little for my hunger. I joke about Toets Syndrome, but it's real enough. And with no alternative available, my part in the Brownfall will be to carry on reminding people that they - and they alone - now have the power to rid us of this strange man. By answering questions in opinion polls. By voting in national, local and bye-elections. By demanding a Party system more in tune with real needs. By punishing any and all dishonesty in politics. By turning against the myth of Globalist inevitability. By making Communities real socio-economic units rather than mere lines in Brown's graph-paper mind. And hopefully, by reading lots of sites like this one, in order to achieve some kind of balanced view.
This doesn't mean me offering a balanced view. All social critique and satire starts from the assumption that those in power have a dangerously unfair advantage; the assumption ensures that sites like notbornyesterday will always go for the throat, always hunt for the facts, and always call an unpleasant, ambitious, confused and mendacious Prime Minister exactly that - rather than 'a brooding complex man with our best interests at heart'.
It is the nature of the beast, and those upset by it will unsubscribe. So be it.