POLITICS
Mr Blair's government is in danger of suffering a horrible fate
BRUCE ANDERSON
Gordon Brown and Robin Cook are both clever men. Mr Cook may not look like a foreign secretary and Mr Brown came to office young — the youngest chancellor since Gaitskell — and inexperienced. But when they were appointed, it was widely assumed that they would be up to the job. Both men have spent the last few weeks undermining that assumption.
Kashmir is an insoluble problem, because it involves an irreconcilable conflict between fundamental principles. Under the principle of self-determination, Indian Kashmir ought to be part of Pakistan. But there is also the principle of the integrity of states. India is a coalition of ethnicities and religions. It always appears fragile, yet has proved durable; but if Kashmir were allowed to secede, disintegration might fol- low. So the Kashmir question is one of great sensitivity, in a subcontinent where political leaders are quick to take offence and always scrutinise nuances through a powerful magnifying glass.
Mr Cook was briefed on all this by his officials, and seemed to have no difficulty taking it on board. But when he got off the plane, he simply disregarded the briefings and the warnings. Then Mr Cook had the nerve to tell us that it was all the Tories' fault for arranging a royal visit on the anniversary of independence, as if Kashmir would have been any less sensitive in 1996 or 1998. It is inconceivable that Mr Cook believes what he is saying; by offering such a pathetic excuse, he insults the intelligence of the British people.
Mr Cook's behaviour has been simultane- ously arrogant and frivolous. So has Mr Brown's. A few weeks ago, a 'fly-on-the wall' television documentary appeared commemorating Mr Brown's first weeks at the Treasury. It is almost always a bad idea to allow such programmes to be made; any wise politician knows that there is only one sensible way to treat flies-on-the-wall: swat them. Gordon Brown has many private virtues; none of them was captured on cel- luloid. Instead, he came across as charm- less, shallow and vain; it was is if he and his spokesman, Charlie Whelan, were compet- ing in an audition for the role of Mr Toad.
Mr Brown was shown treating the then Treasury press chief, Jill Rutter, with disre- spect. A new chancellor is entitled to pick a new press chief, and though Miss Rutter is an able civil servant, she may not be ideally suited to the job of press spokesman now. In earlier years, she had been John Major's pri- vate secretary when he was chief secretary and she was later seconded to the No. 10 policy unit. So perhaps Mr Brown and his political advisers thought that this compro- mised her impartiality. If so, that was silly of them, but parties that have been out of power for 18 years are entitled to a few fool- ish misjudgments in their early days. But they are not entitled to treat officials with disrespect as Mr Brown treated Miss Rutter; it is to be hoped that Robin Butler, Terry Burns and indeed the First Division Associ- ation have all made that point to Mr Brown, forcefully.
But Mr Brown was not just guilty of bad manners. While he was refusing to look at Miss Rutter, let alone listen to her, she was trying to teach him how to be a grown-up minister — and how to handle market- sensitive information. In recent years, most central banks and finance ministers have become much more ready to use the press to prepare markets for shifts in policy, to ensure that there is no overreaction. For some months now, Alan Greenspan has been signalling his intention to raise inter- est rates, and even the once secretive Bun- desbank briefed in advance of its recent rate rise. But in future it would be difficult for Mr Brown to mount a similar opera- tion; why should the markets believe him? There has not been an honest leak from the Treasury since the day that Mr Brown's team leaked the budget.
When Mr Brown and his politicos are confronted by difficulties, they display two worrying tendencies. The first is to retreat into the Chancellor's office, talk only to one another, and cut themselves off from the Treasury's collective wisdom. The second is to revert to student politician attitudes; `they think they are above markets,' as another minister put it. In that case, they have learned nothing from their first six months in government, for any chancellor has to deal with markets and can only do so if he retains credibility. Such tendancies led speculators in the gilt market at the expense of pension funds involved in normal hedg- ing operations.
On that subject, why has there been no investigation into the way the gilt market moved four weeks ago, on the basis of an inaccurate Financial Times story — that Britain was about to join EMU — which
came from a government source? In October 1990, Gerrard & National decid- ed that the government was about to join the ERM, and made a lot of money. That was on Friday; on the following Monday, DTI inspectors arrived at G & N's offices. The firm had made a legitimate deduction and was wholly exonerated, but the inquiry was equally legitimate. The only explanation for the DTI's failure to act this time can be the risk of exposing those whose inaccuracy helped the speculators. Peter Lilley is right to press for an inquiry and should go on pressing until there is one.
It has now become clear why that FT story was not authoritatively denied as soon as it appeared. The government's spin-doc- toring operation is now so out of control that nobody could be certain who had said what to whom. Mr Brown's political team all assured one another that they were not guilty, but not every member of that team was sure that he believed every other mem- ber. Equally, as Charlie Whelan's relations with Alastair Campbell and Peter Mandel- son are so poisoned, the Treasury won- dered whether No. 10 was trying to set them up. So chronic distrust led to farcical incompetence.
Another reason for the incompetence is that there are far too many spinners. In Bernard Ingham's day — he was always more of a pace-bowler — the line of com- mand was absolutely clear. Now there is no command, because everyone wants to spin. After six months, there is still no per- manent head of the No 10 policy unit; under this government, it is not policy which matters, only presentation. In the Blair administration, if you do not spend all your time dealing with the media, you are nobody.
What of Mr Blair himself; what has he been doing while his European policy went adrift and his ministers with it? He has been too busy to attend to such trifles; he has had far more important priorities, such as the pageantry for the Commonwealth Conference, and new criteria for appoint- ing Lord Lieutenants. It was when JiminY Carter was found working on car parking allocations for the Bureau of Indian Affairs that it became clear that his administration was doomed; Mr Blair should beware of a similar fate. His government is in danger of disappearing up its own spin.
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