Is Gordon Brown really all that?

Talk about a week being a long time in politics. If Gordon Brown had the courage to match his opportunism today would mark the beginning of the second week of an autumn ’07 general election campaign.

Phew, say Lib Dems and Tories

And both the Lib Dems and Tories would be more than a bit worried for a very good reason: neither party is yet ready to face an election. Why should they be? After all, we’re just half-way through the full Parliamentary term.

Of course, party politics being the Neverland it is, both Ming Campbell and David Cameron have felt compelled to declare resoundingly, ‘Bring it on’, in order to avoid the charge of unmanly cowardice. What does it say about the political health of a nation when we expect politicians to tell untruths?

It would have been declared a major gaffe, or be pounced on as running scared if either Ming or Dave had told it as it is: “Look, we’re just not ready yet. The manifesto’s only half-written, and we’ve still got to find candidates for some potentially winnable seats (let alone all the others). Give us another year, then we’ll be good to go.”

But Gordon, rather kindly, chose not to put us on the spot. As is often the case in politics, the right decision was taken for entirely the wrong reasons. Gordon wasn’t bothered that springing a snap poll on the public while the main opposition parties are under-prepared was in any way a tardy way to behave in a supposedly mature democracy. He was concerned that he might not win. Something tells me that concern is one he needs to get used to.

Gordon - from zero to hero and back again?

I only caught a glimpse of Gordon’s press conference today, via The Guardian website. Given that this extract, focusing on the reason for delaying an election, is one the Prime Minister will have practised, it is dreadful stuff - waffly, insincere and dull. True blue Tory Danny Finkelstein has drafted the text Gordon should have used, and made a much better job of sounding both statesmanlike and believable - here’s how it begins:

Yes, I considered calling an election. And here's why. There are two options for a new Prime Minister. Asking voters for their trust in advance, or waiting until new policies have had a chance to work. I have been thinking about both these possibilities.
The polls were a large part of this. They have shown that people are enthusiastic, keen to back my vision for change. And that made me think hard about the idea of winning a fresh mandate which might make it easier to get Parliamentary backing for some of our most controversial ideas, ideas like reform of the Lords.
But the polls have also been volatile. They show that, quite understandably, the enthusiasm is accompanied by uncertainty. That uncertainty reflects the fact that people want to hear the arguments and see the change before they vote.

Gordon’s recent performance has recalled to my mind an article I wrote on this blog last year, looking at the often-forgotten part of the Gordon biography, the years 1992-94, when he went from being the obvious successor to John Smith to obvious bridesmaid to Tony Blair:

For all the controversy of the so-called ‘Granita Pact’, when Mr Blair and Mr Brown are supposed to have reached concord that Mr Blair would be the modernising candidate, there is one simple reason why Mr Brown sat on his hands: Mr Blair would have beaten him.

To understand why this was so, let me quote from Nicholas Jones’s excellent 1996 tome, Soundbites & Spin Doctors:

Aware of criticism that his delivery could be stilted and that he sometimes had a wooden appearance, Brown went to inordinate lengths to inject vitality into his answers. During a hectic round of interviews in the week of the 1992 autumn spending statement, a television studio technician observed the care with which he practised what was obviously the key sentence of his reply, repeating it a dozen times before deciding which words should get more emphasis. Such assiduity had its disadvantages: once he had memorised a soundbite, Brown had a tendency to keep repeating it whatever the subsequent questions. Some programme editors grew reluctant to accept his contributions, claiming they were predictable and repetitive. For a time, producers on the BBC’s One o‘Clock News were told to do their utmost to find other Labour voices: Brown was considered to have become over-exposed.

The appointment of Charlie Whelan as his press officer in January 1994 curbed the worst of Mr Brown’s media obsession. But John Smith’s untimely death triggered a leadership contest at the worst possible time for Mr Brown. As Mr Jones records:

… although [Mr Whelan] had gone some way towards repairing the damage to the shadow Chancellor’s reputation, the leadership contest reopened the debate about Brown’s addiction to soundbites. As the party started assessing the value of the likely contenders, there were powerful voices in the Labour hierarchy who said Brown was too lightweight to become leader.

A lightweight leader addicted to soundbites, eh? Up with that, Labour would never put.

Matthew Parris put his finger on it (as so often) last month when Gordon was riding high:

I keep saying this – but the man hasn’t got the ghost of a plan. Not an idea in his head. Anyone with ears to hear could guess as much from his speech and media interviews on Monday. “Citizens’ juries” across the country to advise the Government on policy? Spare us. Why doesn’t he advise the Government? He’s the Prime Minister.
What leaps from Mr Brown’s interviews is not the intellectual colossus that some of my Fleet Street colleagues describe, but an ambitious school bursar with a powerful ego, a good head for figures and a big gap in his brain where a creative political imagination ought to be. Mr Brown interviews like a frightened man, desperate to bore and bulldoze his way through 15 minutes without saying anything.

The Tories made the critical mistake in the summer of underestimating Gordon Brown’s tactical shrewdness. Until last week, he had inflicted grievous punishment on them for their complacency.

Labour has made the critical mistake of believing the hype about Gordon, imagining he can carry all before him on the assumption the country is as docile as the party. The last week has exposed the limits of Gordon’s prowess.

The expectations' see-sore

It all changes so, so quickly.

Five months ago, David Cameron was riding high, following some pretty decent local election results. Tony Blair, New Labour’s election talisman was soon to depart, and be replaced by the ever-grumpy, and supposedly vote-haemmorhaging, Gordon Brown.

And then Mr Brown took over, and confounded the Tories’ worst hopes.

Though most people would be hard-pressed to name anything significant that he’s achieved as Prime Minister - I’m afraid I don’t count being on watch during crises over which you have little or no control (foot-and-mouth), or for which you are partly responsible for (Northern Rock) - he has successfully managed not to be Mr Blair. And, frankly, that’s all the country wanted, just as Margaret Thatcher’s replacement with John Major lifted the Tories almost 17 years ago.

The media has, as is their wont, over-interpreted this mood of relief, and ascribed to it more significance than it deserves. The ‘Brown bounce’ is likely prove to be just that: a temporary and limited surge in Labour’s popularity which owes much to the Prime Minister’s current novelty value.

However, the media’s exuberance appears also to have gripped New New Labour’s high command, which has refused to kill off speculation that a snap election will be announced in a matter of days. As a result, serious politics has taken a back-seat while the parties take pot-shots at each other during this phoney war.

Perhaps Mr Brown was hoping the Tory party conference in Blackpool this week, should it prove a disaster, would help make up his mind. If so, he’ll have been sadly disappointed - whatever you think of the Tories, it’s clear they’ve had a good enough week.

By which I mean, they haven’t fallen into their usual traps of publicly displaying either chronic disloyalty to their leader, or self-indulgent rants from barking mad regiments of retired colonel-types taking their prejudices for a walk. Even if they did make the mistake of letting Liam Fox remind everyone exactly why all Lib Dem and Labour supporters would just love him to become Tory leader.

The Tories have, therefore, successfully achieved just what Mr Brown did in the summer: they have countered the low expectations set for them by the media, such as the risible headline The Observer splashed on its front page, Cameron faces poll meltdown. (If editors of the supposedly more serious newspapers are ever kept awake by their falling circulations, and wonder why the public chooses to shun their product, they would do well to ponder the dumbed-down, hyped-up sensationalism of their front pages.)

All of which leaves Mr Brown in a quandary: damned if he does call an election, and damned if he doesn’t.

Because, make no mistake, to go to the polls now is a huge gamble. How will the public react to being forced to endure a month’s politicking followed by a trip to the polling station in cold, damp, miserable weather?

Some polls suggest the electorate is up for it, ready, willing and able to bound down to their nearest polling station, and mark their cross. Well, perhaps. But Mr Brown should know better than to trust polls which ask hypothetical questions: after all, if they were at all a useful predictor, he wouldn’t now be enjoying his currently high popularity ratings.

I won’t be foolish enough to predict the result of a November election, if one happens - but I will predict that turnout would be down, which in itself would scarcely amount to a ringing endorsement of Mr Brown’s mandate to govern.

Even if he wins, he must win big enough - at least a majority of 40, or his credibility will take a real bashing (and he will find himself at the mercy of the left-wing Campaign Group of Labour MPs). It will only take the smallest of swings away from Labour to see Mr Brown’s majority vanish, and with it his authority and grip on his premiership.

And as for the ignominious prospect of defeat, joining the ranks of the shortest-serving Prime Ministers of this country… well, that thought is the one which is doubtless paralysing Mr Brown even now. To squander a majority of 69 for the sake of the personal hubristic vanity of winning an election in your own right - suddenly all the warnings which the Blairites had whispered in the years leading up to Mr Brown’s accession would seem eerily prophetic.

Which is why Mr Brown might still decide to flunk it, to decide against calling an election, and ride his luck at least until the spring. The whispers I’m hearing from Team Brown is that they have yet finally to make up their mind. The current favoured option is 8th November, announced next week. But who knows?

There would be lots of good reasons for Mr Brown to postpone. Yet it would be seen as a climb-down, an humiliating admission, rooted in careful calculation, that he can’t win at the moment. In an instant, political momentum would swing away from Mr Brown, and towards his opponents.

At which point, the media and the public might just begin to think: for a country-before-party, ‘big tent’-loving statesman, Mr Brown doesn’t half seem to devote an unseemly amount of time to promoting his own personal political interests.

Reshuffle predictions - how did I do?

Well, not too bad. Five ‘direct hits’ (right person, right job) and 12 ‘indirect hits’ (in the cabinet, but in a different job).

Caroline Flint, Hilary Armstrong, Lord Kinnock and Liam Byrne were the ones I tipped for the top who didn’t make it.

Prime Minister: Gordon Brown
Deputy PM: Jack Straw No-one appointed (though is Straw de facto)
Chancellor: Alastair Darling
Home Secretary: Alan Johnson Jacqui Smith (well, no-one else saw that one coming either)
Justice Minister: Jack Straw
Foreign Secretary: David Miliband
Health Secretary: Caroline Flint Alan Johnson (a safe choice)
Education Secretary: Hilary Benn Ed Balls (children and skills) and John Denham (university and skills) - I’ll be interested to see how long it is before Balls’ tone-deaf touch lands the Government in hot water.
Work & Pensions: James Purnell Peter Hain
Culture Secretary: Hazel Blears James Purnell
Defence Secretary: Peter Hain Des Browne (a lucky survivor)
Environment Secretary: Douglas Alexander Hilary Benn
International Development: John Denham Douglas Alexander (who will combine running Labour’s election campaign with promoting the interests of the Third World. Hmmm.)
Trade & Industry Secretary: Hilary Armstrong John Hutton
Leader of the Lords: Lord Kinnock Baroness Ashton (shame, it would have been fun to see Neil back in the thick of things).
Communities & Local Government: Hazel Blears Ruth Kelly
Devolved regions: Jacqui Smith Des Browne, Peter Hain, Shaun Woodward (A mistake, I thought, not to bring these roles together.)
Transport: John Hutton Hazel Blears
Commons Leader: Harriet Harman
Chief Secretary to the Treasury: Ed Balls Andy Burnham
Chief Whip: Andy Burnham Geoff Hoon
Duchy of Lancaster: Ed Miliband
Without portfolio: Liam Byrne

When opinion polls go bad

For the last few months, no opinion poll of voting intentions worthy of the name has been complete without the inevitable tagged-on question, ‘And how would you vote if Gordon Brown were Labour leader?’ To which the answer of Labour-inclined voters has invariably been: less likely than if Tony Blair were still Labour leader.

Anthony Wells, at the indispensable Polling Report website, has recorded the figures of the pollsters’ beloved anticipatory question. None of the 26 polls conducted since David Cameron became Tory leader have projected a Labour lead on the presumption that Mr Brown succeeds Mr Blair. The average Tory lead in the nine polls conducted in 2007 would suggest Mr Cameron should be some 10.5% ahead the moment Mr Brown formally moves into No. 10.

This has led to all sorts of silly speculation in the media that Mr Brown is a vote loser for Labour. And it has sparked an amusingly unmerited degree of triumphalism among Tories, who somehow imagine they will cruise to a general election victory merely by virtue of having elected a leader who manages, in contrast to most of his colleagues, to look and sound relatively normal.

Yesterday’s opinion poll in The Observer, showing a 3% Labour lead just as Mr Brown accedes to the premiership, has poured a bucket of cold water over the heads of those who, rather foolishly, had taken too much to heart the pollsters’ misleading findings.

As opinion pollsters will be the first to point out, their findings present only a snapshot of public opinion. Moreover, the question they ask to solicit the public’s views is a hypothetical one: how would you vote if there were a general election tomorrow.

Those who are asked the question (1) know there isn’t actually a general election tomorrow; and (2) have not been subjected to a month-long election campaign which will, in many cases, alter their voting intentions before they finally cast the only ballot that actually counts. This inevitably distorts the findings in quite unquantifiable ways.

To add, as the newspapers who commission the polls insist the pollsters do, an extra layer of hypothesis - how do you believe you will vote in an imaginary general election when a man who is not yet Prime Minister becomes Prime Minister - is a step too far.

The public which answers this question knows full well that what they are really being asked is: what do you think of Gordon Brown? And those who are sceptical about him will take the pain-free opportunity to voice their objections in their answer. This, too, distorts the findings in quite unquantifiable ways.

Finally, you must factor in the statistical fact that opinions polls can only predict with 95% probability to within a margin of error of +/-3% the headline figures which the newspapers will brandish on their front pages with cast-iron certainty. So the Observer poll which I’ve used as evidence in this article may just as well point to a Tory lead of 3% as it does a Labour lead of 3%. Or it could be one of the 5% of opinion polls which is complete bollocks outside the margin of error. You pays your money, you takes your choice...

Like many observers of the British political scene, I expect Mr Brown to enjoy a poll bounce over the summer, and that Labour will continue to be tied with, or build a small lead over, the Tories. How long this lasts will, rightly, depend on the success or failure of Mr Brown’s government.

In part, this will be because Labour has, contrary to all the pundits’ predictions (including my own), accomplished a bloodless transfer of power. It will also be because the media, believing their own rogue polls, and the Tories, believing their own anti-Brown propaganda, have so far lowered expectations of our PM-to-be that he cannot help but clear the low hurdles he has been set.

Indeed, so successful has this ‘dampening down’ strategy been, it’s almost tempting to believe that Mr Brown, a man of native political cunning, may secretly have commissioned some of those polls himself.

Reshuffling the decks on the Titanic

Everyone else is playing the 'who's up, who's down' game ahead of Gordon announcing the new membership of Team Brown... so I thought I'd join in:

Prime Minister: Gordon Brown
Deputy PM: Jack Straw
Chancellor: Alastair Darling
Home Secretary: Alan Johnson
Justice Minister: Jack Straw
Foreign Secretary: David Miliband
Health Secretary: Caroline Flint
Education Secretary: Hilary Benn
Work & Pensions: James Purnell
Culture Secretary: Hazel Blears
Defence Secretary: Peter Hain
Environment Secretary: Douglas Alexander
International Development: John Denham
Trade & Industry Secretary: Hilary Armstrong
Leader of the Lords: Lord Kinnock
Communities & Local Government: Yvette Cooper
Devolved regions: Jacqui Smith
Transport: John Hutton
Commons Leader: Harriet Harman
Chief Secretary to the Treasury: Ed Balls
Chief Whip: Andy Burnham
Duchy of Lancaster: Ed Miliband
Without portfolio: Liam Byrne

How now Brown cowed

So, who did leak the story of Gordon Brown’s approach to the Lib Dems? Iain Dale reckons it was Paddy Ashdown who spilled the beans to Guardian editor Alan Rushbridger:

The interesting thing here is that the whole thing is Paddy Ashdown's fault. If he hadn't leaked the offer to Alan Rusbridger on Tuesday evening, the whole sorry series of events might never have come to light.

Fellow blogger (and former lobby journalist) Paul Linford repeats the allegation here. These are the only two places where I’ve seen this rumour spread, and in neither case do they substantiate why they believe it was Paddy wot leaked it.

To me (and, come to that, the BBC’s Nick Robinson) it seems pretty clear the only person with something to gain from leaking this news was Team Gordon. So why heap the blame on Paddy?

What should Ming have done?

I have to admit my first reaction to yesterday’s Guardian story - reporting that Gordon Brown and Ming Campbell had discussed Lib Dems taking up cabinet positions in Mr Brown’s first cabinet - was horror. Nor was I as convinced as fellow Lib Dem bloggers appeared to be that the story was nonsense peddled by shit-stirring Guardianistas.

As further details have seeped out - like a stranded oil-tanker leaching effluence - I’ve reflected a little more on the chain of events, at least as far I can trace them from the press reports, and thought: what would I have done if I were in Ming’s shoes?

Apparently, Ming and Gordon met on Monday, following a letter sent by the Lib Dem leader to explore further what our Prime Minister-in-waiting intends for his proposed constitutional convention. The party leaders do meet from time to time - as is quite proper - to discuss such matters behind closed doors. It was, let’s remember, following Ming’s meeting with David Cameron that the silly suggestion that Greg Dyke run for Mayor of London on a joint Lib Dem / Conservative-sponsored independent, anti-Ken ticket was first broached.

At their Monday meeting, Gordon raised with Ming the possibility of some senior Lib Dem peers - Lords Carlisle, Lester and Baroness Neuberger, for instance - taking junior ministerial roles. Now I guess Ming could have dismissed this out-of-hand, said it was absolutely impossible, no-go, no way. Perhaps, and with hindsight, it would have been cannier.

But it doesn’t strike me as that unreasonable for the party leader to want to think it over, to take soundings from others in the Lib Dems. This, it appears, is what Ming did.

And those soundings left him in no doubt that the Lib Dems would not contemplate any kind of approach from Gordon, which in any way smacked of ‘coalition’ - at least not until there’s a deal on the table which sees considerable progress towards achieving key Lib Dem policies.

It is characteristic of the love of hyperbole of Nick Robinson, the BBC’s political editor, that he could describe these shenanigans on BBC Radio 4’s Today as “breaking the mould of politics in this country”. Nonsense. Ad hominem (or ad feminam) changes are inevitably temporary. Structural change - to our political institutions, our voting system, and so - is an essential pre-condition of any attempt to transform Britain’s political torpor.

The question then remains: who leaked these discussions to the press? I think it’s pretty clear it wasn’t the Lib Dems, as the party (including senior figures, like Vince Cable and Nick Clegg) were clearly caught on the hop.

So it was a henchman in Team Brown. This could be someone who wanted to kaibosh the deal. Or it could be a mischief-maker, keen to show-off Gordon’s ‘big tent’, and willingness to stretch out a bi-partisan hand - only for his endeavours to be snubbed by those petty partisan Lib Dems. Either way, it shows Gordon and his acolytes in a poor light, willing to sacrifice serious discussion of important issues in order to win a day’s headlines.

The lesson that should be drawn from this is quite clear: Ming cannot trust Gordon (or at least Gordon’s friends) to keep private discussions private. Which means any chance of a post-election deal between Labour and the Lib Dems is now an even more remote possibility than it was before.

Gordon may have scraped a battle victory by firing on the Lib Dems while our backs were turned. But he may not be smiling after the next election when he’s lost his majority.

That Broon meme

With thanks to James Graham for 'tagging' me (why is the 'blogosphere' so afflicted with such infantilising terms?):

2 things of which Gordon Brown should be proud.

1. Giving independence to the Bank of England.
2. Having been on watch during a broadly benign economic cycle.

2 things for which he should apologise.

1. Bank-rolling the Iraq war without a murmur of dissent.
2. An obsession with centralization, targets and complexity which has undermined public services and made the lives of the poor much harder.

2 things that he should do immediately when he becomes PM.

1. Introduce fair votes for all local and national elections in the UK.
2. Scrap ID Cards, and strengthen Freedom of Information.

2 things he should do while he is PM.

1. Oversee a comprehensive decentralization to local communities of power over public services and the taxation necessary to pay for them.
2. Vigorously oppose protectionist interests wherever they exist, and unashamedly press for free and fair world trade as the best means of lifting the poorest out of poverty.

My turn to tag: Jonathan Calder, Cicero, Alex Wilcock, Andy Mayer, David Rundle, and Liberal Review.

Lucky, lucky Gordon?

Our current Prime Minister has long revelled in the soubriquet, ‘Lucky Tony’. The BBC’s political editor, Nick Robinson, today suggests that this mantle has now been passed to his successor, Gordon Brown.

His rationale is simple: this week’s latest shambolic performance by the Labour Government could have happened in seven weeks’ time, getting the new Premier’s tenure off to the shakiest of all possible starts.

Well, perhaps. I think Mr Robinson rather underestimates the incapacity of this Cabinet, and their potential for conjuring future folie des grandeurs.

For while it’s a tad tricky to feel sympathetic towards health secretary, Patricia Hewitt - who would happily climb a step-ladder on the peak of Everest all the better to talk down to us - the rather hapless Ruth Kelly is perhaps a little more deserving of pity. Handed the poisoned chalice of making Home Improvement Plans work, she is being forced to sup long and hard no matter the taste is bitter.

Meanwhile, the Government minister actually responsible for the HIPs fiasco, Yvette Cooper, is tipped for a big promotion in Mr Brown’s first cabinet, together with her husband, Ed Balls, a man who manages to make Ms Hewitt seem human.

Lucky Gordon? Really?

He is fortunate in one regard, however - Prime Minister Brown will have an unparalleled opportunity to re-mould his ministerial team as he wishes. Labour party leaders are usually hemmed in by two constraints when assembling their cabinet.

First, the need to reward political rivals in order to show their magnanimity and to unite the party. But Mr Brown has no rivals - enemies, you betcha, but not rivals.

And, secondly, Labour leaders have to construct their first cabinet from those elected by the Parliamentary Party to the shadow cabinet. Look at Team Tony c.1997 - how many of those would have been there from Mr Blair’s personal choice? However, this party rule, rather quaintly, applies only to the first cabinet. After that, the leader can do as she or he wishes.

So Mr Brown has a free hand, made even freer by the voluntary redundancies of those other two clunking fists, the Two Johns, Prescott and Reid.

Of course, this is itself a double-edged sword - his allies will expect their reward, but he cannot possibly avoid disappointing some of the 308 Labour MPs who coronated him.

And yet, as has become painfully obvious these last few months, there are precious few Labour MPs of real standing, who are also cabinet material. That Mr Brown is the sole leadership candidate after 10 years as Chancellor is a very real tribute to his talent and resilience. It is also a damning indictment of the paucity of quality within this Government. The lack of a viable alternative has assisted him in making it to the top of his party; conversely, it might not help him to stay there.

He’s going to need all the luck he can get.

A dose of sunshine for Lib Dems everywhere

It’s a sunny day, and I’m nicely rested after a few days’ holiday - so let’s celebrate some positive stories.

First up - Ming Campbell’s challenge to Prime Minister-select Gordon Brown to a televised debate was a cute way of (i) giving the Lib Dems a fresh angle on a stale story at a time when our bipolar media traditionally eschews giving the party any air-time; and (ii) highlighting just how little we know (or expect) of the Labour Party’s newly-minted leader’s views across the whole gamut of national and international issues he will be leading this country on.

It was also a real advance on Ming’s previous attempt to grab a headline, when he rather lamentably called for a snap general election, having apparently confused the UK’s parliamentary system with a presidential system - as noted by Lib Dem blogger Jonny Wright here.

Secondly, it’s good to see the Lib Dems taking a lead in the campaign to stop the Labour/Tory alliance in the House of Commons from watering down Freedom of Information legislation, with a new petition today launched to defend the public’s right to know what our Parliamentarians are up to. James Oates’s Cicero’s Songs blog has the full roll-call of dishonour of those 96 Labour and Tory MPs who are happy to create one law for our legislators and another for the rest of us.

This rather squalid episode has cast a revealing light on the mindsets of those MPs who clearly feel they have something to hide, and that their affairs exist on a higher plane than everyone else’s. It’s times like this we can, and should, feel proud to be members of our party, the only one which truly understands how destructive sectional interests - whether of class, wealth, ethnicity or nationality - are to society.

Finally, last week saw a bit of negative publicity among some sections of the media about Ming Campbell’s leadership of the Lib Dems. Clearly now Gordon Brown has been acclaimed leader by his own party, the media is anxious to have another personality-fuelled tussle to fixate on - anything to avoid actually having to report the dull daily grind of politics. Sorry, but it bores me: it’s Heat-style journalism for Guardian readers.

But I did see some poll figures which did intrigue me. They were by Communicate Research for Newsnight - and clearly they did not fit the programme’s agenda at the time, or else were too complicated for them to feel able to report.

What they show is that the Lib Dems have become a much more credible political force in the eyes of the public since 2002 in virtually every regard. In particular, it is fascinating to see the Lib Dems are apparently the party most people see as being trustworthy on immigration. Which suggests there is a liberal vote out there into which the Lib Dems need to tap more loudly than we have in the past. It’s only fair to note that the party’s rises are paralleled by the Tories’ recovery - but forgive me for sticking to the good news for the Lib Dems on this blog.

What is also interesting is that the Labour Party’s figures, while dipping, have not collapsed. This appears to back up what has been found in the last few years’ local elections - each time a rout has been predicted for Labour, each time they have (just about) avoided imploding. Their support has proved - in the circumstances - to be pretty resilient.

So, there you have it - a dose of optimism for a Tuesday afternoon.

Yawn.

I go away for a few days, return to Blighty, only to discover it’s the same old, same old…

1. Tony Blair is still Prime Minister, despite having announced his resignation three times (and counting… ooh, I can’t wait for the tear-wrenching speech he’s got lined up for us on the 27th June), while Gordon Brown broods testily in the wings having clocked up 13 years as a bitter understudy.
2. Two of my former Lib Dem city council colleagues in Oxford have, finally - as predicted here, here, here, here and here - decided to place their talents at the disposal of the Tory Party, following their brief sojourns as Independents. Defections are sometimes hailed as signifying political watersheds, even at the parochial level of local government. More usually, they are about clashing personalities and over-hyped egos. As a party member whose time and money has helped give them the platform to become yesterday’s proverbial fish ‘n’ chip wrappers (though I assume H&S legislation nowadays disqualifies the Oxford Mail’s pages from actually being bespoiled in this way), I have scant time for their to-be-short-lived grand-standing. Still, I’m sure they’ll have fun defending the views of the party they have joined to the Oxford residents who rejected those views at the ballot box when last they had the chance.
   
3. An unholy alliance of 96 Labour and Tory MPs has ganged up - again - to force anti-Freedom of Information Act legislation through the House of Commons, exempting Parliamentarians from its reach. The words ‘self-serving’ and ‘hypocrites’ spring to mind.

Still - good to be back…

Wither John Reid?

I’m rather surprised at the positive spin the media are giving John Reid’s bombshell announcement that he will quit when Tony Blair resigns the premiership. (It seems Dr Reid is such an ultra-Blairite that he feels compelled to follow his leader, and pre-announce his resignation, too.)

‘Reid’s resignation boosts Brown’ trumpets The Guardian: “Gordon Brown's path to a radical rejuvenation of the cabinet was cleared yesterday when the home secretary, John Reid, his great rival, shocked Labour politics by announcing he was quitting the front bench altogether.”

The BBC’s Nick Robinson is also in eulogising form: “If Gordon Brown wants a Tony Blair-style "new dawn" to usher in his premiership, John Reid's resignation is a symbolic first step - and there may well be more to come.”

Now I’m no fan of Dr Reid, the current holder of New Labour’s ‘Most Authoritarian Home Secretary Since The Last One’ title - a baton originally wielded by Jack Straw, subsequently handed on to David Blunkett, and then Charles Clarke, before it was prised out of his cold dead hands. Dr Reid’s über-macho, attack-dog style portrays politics at its most tribally, snarlingly, unthinkingly asinine.

And yet… Dr Reid is one of the few heavyweight politicians New Labour has at its disposal, with a wealth of accumulated cabinet experience, and pretty popular with the public (loathe as I am to admit it). For the media to count his loss as a victory for Mr Brown strikes me as a tad peculiar. If anything it reveals the essential truth of one of Mr Brown’s key weaknesses: his inability to work in harmony with enough of his colleagues. Indeed, if he hadn’t antagonised such a substantial proportion of the current cabinet, he would have become Prime Minister long before now.

Dr Reid’s decision to camp outside Mr Brown’s tent reminds me of Kenneth Clarke’s refusal to serve in William Hague’s shadow cabinet way back in 1997, after he was first defeated for his party’s leadership. Many observed then that this would help Mr Hague to remodel the Tories, and to distance his party from the calamities of John Major’s administration. In reality, it denuded his shadow cabinet of a politician of real stature, and diminished Mr Clarke in the eyes of many Tories, who felt he had thrown his rattle out of his pram.

Dr Reid’s decision might be politically (and personally) expedient for Mr Brown in the short-term. But it won’t aid his number one cause: to get New Labour re-elected. That’s a consequence Tony Blair would have seen quite clearly - which is why our current Prime Minister is a proven election winner, and why our next Prime Minister won’t be.

The case for fair-minded journalism

How does the media come out of Gordon Brown’s 1997 decision to scrap dividend tax credits, the so-called ‘pensions scandal’?

On one level, they will claim vindication. After all, it was The Times’s two-year battle to publish the advice of Treasury officials which sparked this week’s controversy, with Mr Brown’s credibility once again placed in the full glare of publicity. Only after being ordered to do so by the Information Commissioner, under the aegis of the Freedom of Information Act, did the Treasury hand over the documents showing the possible ramifications of the move, including an immediate £50bn fall in the value of existing pension funds.

So why am I asking the question at all?

It was prompted by Ken Clarke’s interview on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Monday, during which he observed:

They had an extraordinary honeymoon period, the first two years of the Blair Government they could do no wrong. … All Conservatives did actually protest strongly about it, but we were being ignored. We were an unpopular Government - even the right-wing press were rejoicing in having brought us down - and all new governments have a honeymoon period, and they had a remarkably long one.

Now we should be wary of cutting the Tories too much slack on this. The Tory Governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major presided over the infamous pensions mis-selling scandal in its peak years, 1988-94, at an estimated cost of £13.5bn, severely undermining public trust in private pension plans.

In their early years as HM Opposition they were also regularly predicting that Mr Brown was about to plunge the British economy deep into recession, a claim which, from the party that brought us ‘Black Wednesday’, looked a tad desperate. Nor was it clear, at that stage, quite what a devastating effect Mr Brown’s pensions raid would wreak. It is, then, perhaps understandable the press greeted the Tories’ forebodings with a pinch of salt.

But, still, Mr Clarke has a point: the media was just not interested. Not interested because stories about pensions were regarded then by the media as dull-dull-dull. And not interested because the media regarded Tony and Gordon as shiny-shiny-shiny. No matter that “All that glisters is not gold.”

As it’s holiday season, allow me to neologise my own proverb: If salt is to be pinched, ‘twas well they are equal pinchings. Trustworthy journalism requires sceptical rationalism, the willingness constantly to challenge and inquire into all sides of a story.

It’s a task for which much of the media, with an attention span which makes a goldfish look like a chess grandmaster, is singularly ill-equipped. If there’s one thing the media dislikes it’s nuance, complexity, shades-of-grey; they much prefer a single, simple narrative.

At the moment, that means Mr Brown is getting it in the neck on every possible pretext. The timing of the ‘pensions scandal’ outcry is partly of his own making, of course. Had the Treasury released the documents requested by The Times two years ago the story would have created scarcely a ripple.

The media is eager for Mr Brown to be challenged for the Labour leadership: if he is ‘coronated’ there’s no story. To encourage a plausible pretender to the throne - whether Messrs Miliband, Reid or Hutton - the media must contrive to make Mr Brown less electable. Which is why ordure is being heaped high upon Mr Brown’s head: in the eyes of the media, he can do no right.

I shed no tears for the Chancellor. He has deliberately evaded enough fair criticism during his tenure for some unfair criticism to be mere karmic retribution.

I do not, though, buy Polly Toynbee’s typically over-simplistic rant in The Grauniad that this is a low-down dirty trick conspired across the right-wing press. Their agenda is borne of boredom, not malevolence. But that knowledge should not make us any less sanguine about the power of the media to debase national debate by failing to treat political protagonists even-handedly.

Let’s look at two examples. David Cameron has suffered a couple of bad-news stories in the last month. First, it was revealed he used a private jet to travel 90 miles, from Oxford to Hereford, in spite of his supposedly green credentials. Then, secondly, he was found guilty of breaking Parliamentary rules by using his taxpayer-funded House of Commons office to raise money for the Tory Party. Mr Cameron’s defenders will argue that both these are non-stories: he carbon offsets all his travel, and has apologised unreservedly for his improper fundraising.

Whatever one might think of the rights or wrongs of either of these issues, one aspect is I think indisputable: swap the name of Gordon Brown for David Cameron and both stories would have achieved far greater prominence. Is it too much to ask for the media to treat these two imposters just the same?

Civil political discourse requires civil political journalism. If the choice we will face is the over-excitable hysteria of the right-wing versus the self-righteous defensiveness of the left-wing media commentariat - with the blogosphere playing the role of an amped-up mini-me - we can hardly expect enlightenment.

Never go back

It was on this day, 30 years ago, that James Callaghan’s Labour Government survived a vote of no confidence, with a majority of 24, thanks to the votes of the 13 Liberal Party MPs.

The dying embers of a Labour Government, led by a Chancellor-turned-Prime-Minister with no mandate from the British people, propped up by the third party in return for a few meaningless concessions… it could never happen again, could it?

Incidentally, Gordon Brown could do worse than try and learn a trick or two from Mr Callaghan's easy, relaxed, honest interview style.

How Mr Brown flunked his big moment

For a little while now, I’ve felt Gordon Brown has been maligned. That’s not to say I agree with him - don’t be silly - merely to suggest he’s been under-estimated by armchair pundits. Mr Brown has been a formidable Chancellor, one of the two dominant politicians of his generation. To think that he might be bested by the smart glibness of David Cameron was, I felt, wishful thinking on behalf of his opponents.

Today, I’m less sure.

I still think it’s a rash commentator who writes off Mr Brown. The fairest assessment of the budget - stripped of all spin and counter-spin - is Hamish McRae’s verdict in the Indy. It deserves to be read in full, but here’s the conclusion:

... the fact remains that the British economy has performed remarkably well in the past decade. There are of course concerns, including the fact that it has become even more of a two-tier economy, with the super-competitive London, the South-east and East Anglia, and the rest. You could argue that he inherited this competitive advantage, that it had very little to do with him. You could argue that at the margin the additional complexity he has loaded on to the system has undermined some of that competitiveness. But he has understood intellectually how competitive advantage in the present global economy is achieved and sustained. I don't think the next 10 years will be as easy as the past 10 but meanwhile he has a right to take some of the credit for what, in economic terms, has undoubtedly been a successful decade.

It’s an assessment most of us could sign up to, though perhaps lets Mr Brown off the hook a little too easily when it comes to public service investment: having starved the public sector in his early years, he then glutted it in his later years with scant regard to value-for-money. Billions have been wasted in the time it’s taken New Labour to understand that resources and reform go hand-in-hand. And still they try and control everything from the centre.

But still - Mr Brown has, by any objective standard, avoided disaster and achieved modest success. Few Chancellors can boast such a claim, let alone one who’s served a decade in the post, however impatiently.

To imagine that, having waited so long to ascend the premiership, Mr Brown won’t have a programme for government carefully devised - one which will be consciously and cleverly designed to take the wind out of puffed-out Tory sails - is to ignore the evidence of his past behaviour, from making the Bank of England independent to this week’s 2p basic rate income tax cut.

However, however, however.

Mr Brown screwed up his budget big time. He made a hash of it in a way which should disturb his fellow Labour MPs, and which gives those, like me, who have defended his tactical shrewdness, real pause for thought.

Let’s ignore the rights or wrongs of doubling the starting rate of income tax, while cutting the basic rate - a move which will leave many of the poorest in society poorer still. I think he made the wrong choice; but I’m a political opponent so I would say that, wouldn’t I. No, the worrying thing for Labour was how badly Mr Brown presented his budget coup de théâtre.

Simon Carr, again in the Indy, brilliantly contrasts Messrs Blair and Brown’s rhetoric and what their styles say about their respective personalities:

Blair's personal style is a search for the best consensus he can make on his own terms. Thus his reaction to a hostile question is: "Where I agree with you is this." This instinct has mutated in the aftermath of Iraq: "There are those who disagree with me and I don't disrespect them for that," he is inclined to say. It's one of his attractive traits. His speeches, likewise, assume the presence of an intelligent interlocutor who disagrees with what is being said, and with whom Blair argues. You can sense the respect by the fact that the interlocutor isn't presented as ridiculous or vicious. Why would he alienate half of the voting population?

Gordon Brown's speeches reveal a very different internal process. There is no real interlocutor in his speeches. His view of the enemy (he views the Tories as enemies) reduces them to caricatures motivated by malice, cruelty and greed. No reasonable person would characterise half of the British electorate in those terms. But then, everything in the speech is Gordon: every portrait is a self portrait.

Yes, this sort of speech-making seems to be the direct result of his personal relations in professional life. Successful, argumentative, engaging speeches need more than one hand. They are a collaboration. They require that the speechmaker has the substance to hear his work criticised and chopped about. To have his ideas challenged and to accept the validity of other points of view. This is not the way the Chancellor operates, if recent reports be true. It is, as they say in the Civil Service, "outwith his grasp".

Imagine how Mr Blair would have presented this week’s budget.

He would not have tried to sneak past the abolition of the 10% starting rate of income tax by hurriedly muttering it, sotto voce, so that only David Laws for the Lib Dems spotted its significance. He would not have left his 2p tax cut to his final line, producing it like a rabbit out of the hat, hoping to distract and astonish in equal measure.

No, our current Prime Minister would have been open and upfront, something like…

“Seven years ago, Mr Deputy Speaker, I announced to this House that I was introducing a starting rate of income tax of 10p in the pound. The reason was quite simple: to cut taxes for the poorest in our society. This, for me, was a realisation of what New Labour thinking is all about. Putting money back in the pockets of those who have least, giving a helping hand to those who need it most.

“I do not under-estimate what a difference this reform has made to those with lower than average incomes. But, equally, I recognise that our tax system is open to criticism from those who say it has grown too complex. So the challenge today for our party is this: how can we simplify the tax system, and ensure that low- and middle-income households pay less tax?

“Today, I am delighted to inform the House how we shall meet that challenge. We will scrap the 10p starting rate, and use the proceeds to cut the basic rate of income tax by 2p in the pound. We will increase tax credits for the poorest. As a direct result of this measure, the whole country will be better off, and perpetually bathed in the sunshine of my bountiful iridescence.”

Okay, okay, so I made the last bit up: the whole country won’t actually be better off. But you get the idea. Mr Blair is actually rather more transparent, rather less spun, than the Chancellor.

The concept of ‘narrative’ has perhaps been over-sold in recent years. But all it means is that you should be able to distinguish a beginning and end to an argument, recognise its ideological sweep, perceive an underpinning philosophy.

Mr Blair’s speeches have a compelling narrative: they take you on a journey, even if you want to wind the window down half-way there because you feel sick. Mr Brown’s speeches take you hostage: gagged and bound in the boot of the car, he lets you out, disorientated and resentful, only once you’ve arrived at his pre-arranged destination.

Mr Blair’s the kind of politician who, if he were actually a magician, would tell you how he did the trick. Mr Brown takes pleasure in secrets, in concealing from us what he knows and we do not.

Mr Blair has an instinctual, simpatico sixth sense. Mr Brown an analytical, brooding tone deafness.

The budget was Mr Brown’s career-defining opportunity to show he could match, even surpass, Mr Blair’s sureness of touch. He flunked it.

Labour, party of social justice: RIP

Talk about a double whammy.

First, Labour’s Lyons Review flunks the prospect of wholesale reform of Council Tax, instead opting to tinker round the edges with bands that will make no difference to the vast majority of income-poor residents who suffer under the current system.

Then, Gordon Brown decides to double the starting rate of income tax, ensuring anyone who earns under £15,000 pa will be worse off. As Will Howells notes, this is some U-turn from the Chancellor who once proclaimed the importance of the 10p rate for the poorest in our society.

Badly done, Gordon, badly done.

The art of spurious opinion polls

I’m a self-confessed opinion poll-geek, as regular readers may have garnered. But I have had my fill of ‘what if’ polls making psephologically spurious claims to predict what might happen if/when Gordon Brown faces up to David Cameron and Ming Campbell.

The latest (I’m sure you’ve seen) dominates today’s Grauniad front page - the headline screams, Brown v Cameron - exclusive poll puts Labour 13 points adrift. The question which prompts this hyperbole asks how the public might vote if Mr Brown led Labour, the Tories are led by Mr Cameron, and Sir Menzies leads the Lib Dems.

Astute readers will have noticed a small flaw: one of these people currently does not lead his party. What ICM are in fact asking is: how well do you think Gordon Brown might do a job he’s not currently doing? To read anything into the answer, other than that the Chancellor currently suffers a PR deficit, is plain silly.

Opinion pollsters often defend their claim to represent a science by pointing out (quite rightly) that all they can do is take a snapshot of public opinion; that they can’t predict the future. But they do their art no good by asking questions which seek to anticipate the future. Especially when they know such polling will be spun by newspapers with their own agenda.

Where have all the big beasts gone?

Adrian Hamilton makes a fair point in today’s Independent:

The New Labour government will soon be 10 years old. But what may well be most remarkable about this administration as it approaches its birthday is not so much its longevity but how little heavyweight talent it has at the end. Think of almost any cabinet since the Second World War and even the weakest of governments - the later Wilson administrations, John Major's and Jim Callaghan's - had some pretty formidable figures round the table. You might think some overrated, others positively loathsome, but it is hard to deny that Tony Crossland, Denis Healey, Roy Jenkins and Dick Crossman from the Wilson government or Ken Clarke, Michael Heseltine and Chris Patten from Thatcher and Major's, were pretty formidable politicians, "big beasts" in the jungle that is Westminster.

Compare that with the present Cabinet and, if you exclude the PM and the Chancellor, it is hard to see a small duck never mind a large beast.

Of course, it’s a little too easy to look back in wonder and pick out exempla. Harold Wilson’s cabinets also included such yesterday’s men as Fred Peart, Michael Stewart and Richard Marsh (to name but three). Margaret Thatcher made space for dull worthies like David Waddington, John Moore and David Hunt.

But the point remains: the top three posts - Chancellor, Foreign Secretary, Home Office - were occupied by, inter alia, Jenkins, Callaghan and Healey (under Wilson) and Lawson, Howe and Hurd (under Thatcher). All except Lawson ran for the leadership of their respective parties, and, if successful, would have become Prime Minister.

Small wonder, then, that when Frank Field cast around for an alternative to Gordon Brown as Labour leader (in yesterday’s well-reported Grauniad article) he ducked naming an alternative until his last, four-word sentence: “Step forward, David Miliband.” If Mr Miliband’s your answer, a well-worn put-down is required: ‘What the hell was your question?’

But then if you look at this page - the current Cabinet - you see Labour’s problem: who else is there? (Which is all the more remarkable considering this Government was originally elected with over 400 MPs.)

Why this dearth of talent? Is politics failing now to attract the right calibre of candidates? Does the growing scrutiny of MPs’ lives filter out bright sparks with some vim and vigour about them? Has the increasing centralisation of Westminster politics overloaded cabinet ministers with tedious operational minutiae? Are our expectations unrealistically high?

Hard to argue with

The Economist's verdict on Gordon Brown:

... Mr Brown's larger difficulty is that he has failed to make the most of a long stint as chancellor in which he has been blessed with generally favourable economic conditions. For a politician with a reputation for thinking far ahead, his conduct of policy has made little strategic sense. Sharp tightening followed by excessive expansion is a bad way to run things. The chancellor's undesirable legacy will be a bigger state that is palpably failing to deliver value for money for its hard-pressed taxpayers.

Brown sauce

There are two explanations for the news that Gordon Brown has - apparently - been voted the 97th sexiest man by readers of NW (New Woman) magazine.

Either: it’s actually quite hard to name up to 100 famous men who could in any way fit the description.

Or: the magazine’s editors have found an easy way of conning the BBC into running some free advertising, just as they did last year with David Cameron’s first appearance in the poll.

And as regular readers of this blog will know, I take a dim view of any attempt to boost readership through such cheap ploys as polls about sexy politicians.