Cicero Policy Briefer

Issue 25, June 2008

Where now for Gordon Brown?

By John Rowland

Boris Johnson’s accession to City Hall and poor local election results were a bitter enough pill for Labour activists to swallow. Having to wash it down with a 17.6 per cent swing in Crewe and Nantwich to the Conservatives, gifting them their first by-election victory over Labour since 1978, was even worse. Disquiet about the 10p tax band, rising fuel and food costs, and increasingly tetchy industrial relations are not making it any easier for the Government to make the case that it has a grip on doorstep issues. For now, in public at least, the Parliamentary Labour Party is standing behind the PM, and he vows to fight on.

An interesting insight into what the Prime Minister is thinking appeared over the bank holiday weekend. It was reported in a newspaper that the Prime Minister had written a private note of sympathy to Chelsea captain John Terry after his fateful slip on a sodden Moscow pitch caused his wayward boot to marshal the ball just a few inches too wide, effectively handing Manchester United the Double. The Prime Minister reportedly wrote that leadership entails taking tough decisions, even if that means risking a fall: real courage is about the fortitude to get up and carry on. The implication, of course, is that Gordon Brown feels his pain as a courageous leader who has also been unlucky.

This is a nice narrative, but it doesn’t ring quite true. The parallel between John Terry’s world and Gordon Brown’s fails to convince completely, for the PM’s troubles are not just down to bad luck (though he has had a fair bit of that, if we’re honest)—but also a toxic and unlikely mix of hubris and indecision.

A telling episode in the Government’s alarming slide in form was the way it stood back from an early election last autumn. There was a febrile atmosphere at Labour Conference in September; Gordon Brown had made a good start and there was considerable speculation, stoked by the Prime Minister’s lieutenants, that there would be an early election to give him his own democratic mandate.

But both over-confidence and vacillation were on clear display in Bournemouth. The Brown coterie was apparently quietly briefing the press about an early election, even though there was no clear public commitment that they would make the final leap. The hope was that, in the face of this, the Conservatives would implode at Blackpool the following week making victory easy. In the end it didn’t work out like that—the Conservatives had a good conference, and, crucially, complications arising from liquidity problems at a certain north-eastern bank meant that the election was scuttled at the last minute. If the Rock had blown up two months later, we would have had an election.

So yes, bad luck was involved—but by stoking speculation about and then dithering over an election, the leadership made a rod for its own back. Indeed, in some respects Cristiano Ronaldo’s penalty at Luzhniki Stadium is a richer metaphor for what happened last year; brimful of confidence he ran up to the spot, stopped, changed his mind and took one of the most dreadful penalties I have ever seen. But the key difference is that Ronaldo is lucky, and his worst mistakes seem to be cancelled out by those of others.

On the other hand at least one blogger, an irreverent liberal who goes by the nom de keyboard of Guido Fawkes, thinks Gordon Brown is jinxed and afflicted by a Jonah effect. Guido notes, for example, that amongst other things, John Terry met Gordon Brown at a charity do a couple of weeks ago and that Google stock fell after he spoke at one of the corporation’s conferences! I am not pretending that this is an insight of great rigour, but it is an interesting observation. If the electorate begins to similarly feel that generally things always go against the PM and that despite his capacity for hard work and seriousness he is ‘jinxed’, then will Labour really want to fight the next election with him at the helm, or will they try to throw him overboard?

Last month, matters looked sufficiently bad that a major reshuffle seemed to be imminent—with a heavyweight political operator such as Jack Straw drafted in to stop at the rot at the Treasury. I continue to stand by this prediction. Gordon Brown will, in all likelihood, be given some time to try to regain the initiative. Some might argue that it will be akin to moving deck chairs on the Titanic—but perhaps, if done with deftness of touch, it could give Brown enough of a reprieve to start closing the yawning gap in the polls. The question is, can it get any worse for Mr Brown?

Knowing his luck, maybe it can.

John Rowland can be contacted on +44 (0)20 7665 9539 or click here to email.