Archive for the ‘Brown’ Category
Brown is Blair without the charm – and there ain’t much else left
Eight short months ago, Gordon Brown was surfing the high breakers of British politics like Patrick Swayzee in Point Break. The great and the grim of the business world lined up with the great and the gross of the chateratti to enter his big ministerial tent – Digby Jones and Julia Neuberger spring to mind. Tory MP Quentin Davies had been wooed across the floor. Tory losers like John Bercow and Patrick Mercer were pleased to serve as advisers at the Great Brown’s pleasure.
Then, splash, crunch. Isn’t life just like that? Right when it’s all going swimmingly, you catch one and it’s a swirling, white vortex – downwards.
How did things all go so wrong? Labour ministers have been told to blame Brown’s woes on the “global downturn sparked by American sub-prime crisis.” That is uncannily like the message we Tories were all told to get across during the early ‘90s economic crisis. Never mention the world “recession” without the antecedent “world”, party chairman Chris Patten incanted at every opportunity.
And there was some truth in that. There was a world recession. Except that ours was worse than most others because of mistakes made by Nigel Lawson in the late ‘80s.
In the same way, our current downturn is – and will be – worse than Europe’s because of Brown’s errors. He failed spectacularly to stash cash away during the fat years, so now the lean ones are upon us there is nothing left in the government’s pot. And under Brown, our economy has become even more skewed than ever to consumption and housing and away from investment and production.
People at last are beginning to rumble what a mediocre chancellor Brown in fact was. But there is more. For 10 years Brown benefited from not being Blair. He sniped across Downing Street at Blair and let his gofers hint that Brown was something different – the true soul and heart of Labour.
But any difference was style rather than substance. Now Brown is boss, that is becoming ever more painfully apparent. And yet that difference in style matters. Blair would emerge from each crisis with his self-deprecating, boyish smile – and you had to sort of smile with him.
When Brown smiles, he looks like he’s about to sink his fangs into your neck. Brown is Blair without the charm. And without the charm, there ain’t much else left.
Phillip Oppeheim
Tags: 
