Brown's fatal flaws
As prophecies go, it had none of the ritual majesty of the Sybil of Cumae's pronouncements, none of the blood-chilling qualities of Cassandra. But it has, in its own way, come to pass nonetheless. Jonathan Powell, the chief of staff to Tony Blair, once told our former editor that Gordon Brown's political career would be a 'Shakespearean tragedy'. And with every day that passes the tragic quality of Mr Brown's premiership is underlined.
A politician of formidable gifts, powerful intellect and great passions is, nevertheless, finding that he simply doesn't have what it takes to make a success of the most demanding job in politics — as the events of the last two months have cruelly exposed.
The latest funding scandal is only the most recent misfortune to attend the Brown premiership, after the debacle of the missing discs, the continuing reverberation of the Northern Rock collapse and the revelation that illegal immigrants were employed by the state in sensitive security positions. For those inclined to be moved by pity, the spectacle of a government buffeted by these crises might inspire sympathy, and an acknowledgement that any administration can be unlucky, and no definitive judgment should be passed on ministers just because events conspire against them. But, as the Independent columnist Steve Richards, himself a Labour sympathiser, has pointed out, accident-prone politicians aren't accident-prone by accident. Labour's current misfortunes and Brown's present woes flow from deep flaws in his approach to the task of leadership. Just as Shakespeare's heroes fell because of flaws inherent in their character, so Gordon Brown is paying for mistakes he has made, errors which reflect deep weaknesses in his own leadership style.
The Prime Minister has always liked to operate through a tight cabal, restricting information and power to a limited circle of trusted figures chosen more for their loyalty than ability. As our political editor revealed last year, Mr Brown would only allow a very small number of political allies and officials to speak, or act, on his behalf. When he moved to No. 10, Mr Brown appeared, briefly, to appreciate that this Nixonian approach of trusting only a tight circle of blood brothers wouldn't work and he tried to create a more broadly based administration, the so-called Government of All the Talents. But the Government of All the Talents has become an administration which treats ministers like servants, with No. 10 slapping down any department that steps out of line, or dares to innovate, and unattributable briefing used to undermine those who have fallen from favour by presuming to think for themselves.
This style of bunker government has its roots in the way Mr Brown organised his office in opposition and operated while at the Treasury. He ran an operation which secured its objectives by brutalising colleagues who stood in his way and which weakened the Labour party itself by continually ramping up internal opposition to Tony Blair. Mr Brown may feel he owes a debt to the political knife-fighters who helped him drive Mr Blair from office, but they are not proving half as effective in running the show as those whom they supplanted.
Senior civil servants openly share their concerns about how Downing Street now operates. Decisions which need to be taken promptly if the machinery of government is to function smoothly are delayed endlessly while the Prime Minister broods and tries to calculate where political advantage lies. This fatal subordination of good governance to political calculation was never more apparent than in the open manoeuvring around the party conference season over the question of an early election.
Mr Brown was in a uniquely strong position then because he appeared to offer change, competence and integrity. But the promise of change was undermined by the flagrant way in which Mr Brown and his ministers toyed with the electorate in September, debating where `the gamble' lay when it came to calling an election. The way in which Team Brown were revealing themselves as cynical manipulators of public opinion, treating voters as counters in some sort of game, reminded voters powerfully of the sort of approach to politics which was supposed to have departed with Campbell and Mandelson. When Gordon Brown eventually decided to call off the election, cynicism was compounded by weakness. And then when he tried to maintain that his decision had nothing to do with worsening poll ratings, the impression of cynicism and weakness was reinforced by a recognition that the Prime Minister couldn't bring himself to be honest with the British people when he came under pressure.
That fragility under pressure has been highlighted again and again since that fatal, Hamletic, moment when the Prime Minister's resolution was sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought. The Prime Minister's irascibility at the dispatch box, the defensiveness in his reaction to well-founded concerns from our most senior military men, the manner in which he tried to turn an apology for incompetence at the HMRC into a partisan attack on the Conservatives, all underscore that lack of breadth and ballast, that absence of strength and resilience, which a Prime Minister needs.
These weaknesses might matter less if the Prime Minister had a compelling vision, a narrative which could sustain him in office through the hard times, a reason why we should believe in him But as his Queen's Speech demonstrated, there is very little there. His education reforms amount to diluting Blairite radicalism while seeking to criminalise damaged teenagers whom the system has already failed. His housing reforms amount to creating two new quangos and not making the planning system any easier for those who want to build family homes. The theme of aspiration which is supposed to unite these policy areas is fatally undercut by the inept way in which the Chancellor is handling tax reform, penalising small entrepreneurs through changes to Capital Gains Tax.
There will be further dramatic twists certainly, further evolutions of the plot, further alarums and excursions before the curtain comes down, but for those of us watching the Prime Minister perform it is now clear we are witnessing a tragedy — and the bloodletting has not yet ended.
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