Afternoon:
10°c
The moment has arrived: Gordon Brown has delivered his silver bullet — a stamp duty holiday for (some) homebuyers and incentives to help sell the growing stockpiles of untouched new-built homes.
I have lost count of the number of times ministers and aides have said “Gordon will come forward with a package of measures in the autumn,” in the hope that this invocation would stem the damage and turn the polls around. We'll see.
The remedies so far are not rash or foolish. They bear the hallmarks of his innate caution and the constraints of an overstretched budget. They can take the edge off the pain but not cure it. Anyway, there is more wrong with New Labour than can be addressed in this way. The Government's problems are not only technocratic but intrinsic: a decameron of failings and uncertainties that defines its decline and which any serious contender to replace Mr Brown must address.
It does not project faith in itself.
Alistair Darling's “it's worse than you think” comments exposed the scale of economic turmoil without a sense of reassurance. The immediate impact has been a further fall in the pound. There is some virtue in saying the situation is bad and confessing that the Government has lost faith. He must, however, respect the difference between candour and crassness: little is gained by becoming the Cabinet's Gerald Ratner.
It is the victim of internal inconsistencies.
A vital ingredient of political success is consistency and setting up expectations which can be fulfilled. Mr Brown arrived signalling “change” from the precepts of the Blair government but has delivered neither a change of direction nor a clear strategic path of his own. As a result he convinced neither voters on the moderate Right of the centre ground (the Blair-Cameron cusp), nor his natural allies on the centre-Left.
It does not know how to deal with Cameronian Conservatism.
A senior former No 10 strategist says simply: “Cameron is better than us because we talk about the mechanisms of government, he talks about people.” The Brownites' decision to paint the Tory leader as a Right-winger in stylish sheep's clothing has looked outdated. So has the over-reliance on the “1992 revisited” attack on Tory spending plans. As no one's sums presently inspire confidence, voters will be hard pushed to tell the difference. The real weakness of the New Conservatism is its tendency towards glibness and uncertainties about whether it has the means and serious intention to deliver a fairer society or simply improve on some Labour inefficiencies. That has so far gone untested.
It has lost sight of its own social message.
Mr Cameron hones in on anxiety about an uncohesive society; Mr Brown is stuck for a reply. He disliked the Blair focus on crime and anti-social behaviour so his Home Secretary is left out on a limb with her initiatives in these areas, semi-detached from the thrust of Government. In micro-policy, he remains opposed to any measures which would reward long-term cohabitation or marriage. Yet many people (including some senior ministers) think the Government should recognise and reward family arrangements which decrease the likelihood of social breakdown.
It is unsure about its own pitch for power.
The party's polling also shows it lagging more strongly in the South than elsewhere. That leaves Labour retreating to the heartlands and marginals of the North-West and Midlands as its battleground. Glasgow East and Crewe exposed the erosion of the party's base. Mr Brown's housing slump remedies will leave southern voters unsure of what they have to gain from another Labour government. Ministers who have sounded the alarm about “southern discomfort” feel sidelined. “It feels like we are ceding this territory without a battle,” says one threatened MP.
It is intellectually divided.
There is no agreed purpose to New Labour now beyond the attempt to remain in power and keep the Tories out. Two broad schools of thought contend for influence. One believes that Labour must take on the task of reordering society from the centre to prevent widening inequalities. The other emphasises greater personal responsibility and devolution of power (see Alan Milburn's public service plan for the Progress think-tank for the X-rated version). This tension should have been tested in a race to succeed Mr Blair. Failure to do so has left Mr Brown with an inadequate intellectual mandate and persistent ideological skirmishes — “flying kites” as Mr Darling put it: but kites with diametrically opposed purposes.
Turmoil at the top.
Mr Brown set out to create a “Cabinet of all the talents” and reinvigorate his inner circle. Even those who have been beneficiaries of this complain that he has reverted to a narrower base of trusties. He appointed Stephen Carter as principal adviser in a role bound to clash with the return of Jeremy Heywood, the most seasoned No 10 insider. Mr Carter now has the conference speech to show that he can bring his undoubted presentational gifts to bear on the PM. If he is unable to do so, it may well have a valedictory air and internal schisms will deepen — failure has few fathers.
Four terms is too long for most governments.
Emotionally, Labour is beginning to prepare for opposition. This is a rational instinct. Parties become tired and depleted in office, weighed down by their past decisions which cling like barnacles to their relaunches and initiatives. Many leading figures are already preparing quietly for life after government.
Labour does not know what to do about Gordon Brown.
Few people in or outside Labour now think the PM can lead Labour to a fourth victory, the original goal when he took over. The number of senior figures confident that he has a chance of securing a hung parliament is declining fast too — barring some major series of errors by the Tories in a long-distance race. So unless his autumn manoeuvres begin to close the polling gap, the question “Why go on with Gordon?” will return.
And finally ... a proxy battle to succeed him is under way.
The battle to succeed Mr Brown is already raging between the two most ambitious ministers, David Miliband and Ed Balls. Mr Miliband has privately assured the PM that he will not speak out further on New Labour woes until after conference. Mr Balls is effectively threatening his colleague by claiming that any more noises off would be “crazy, destructive and divisive”.
Mr Balls has a better chance of succeeding Mr Brown after the election. Mr Miliband's best chance lies in snatching it between now and next Easter, if the Prime Minister's decline looks terminal and he can muster a coalition to unseat him. So the Labour leader is beginning to look like a man keeping the seat warm for someone else.
Unless he can use the coming weeks to pull off a sense of reinvigoration and determination against forbidding economic odds, that is what his fate may turn out to be.
Reader views (4)
I have no idea where people get this idea that Ed Balls could ever become PM. Apart from his repulsive personality, he was one of the brains behind New Labour's disastrous economic strategy. I particularly remember his being interviewed in a Channel 4 Dispatches called 'Gordon Brown's Missing Billions' and he came across as arrogant and, well, a bit thick.
- David, Cambridge , UK, 05/09/2008 00:39
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New Labour have as much support in the country as ZANU and Robert Mugabe have in Zimbabwe. Their policies have both damaged their respective countries. Whilst Grace Mugabe shops 'til she drops in Europe, our Parliamentary representatives gorge themselves on their inflated expenses. The choice of Ed "who cares" Balls and his wife Yvette Cooper continuing their pigs in trough ways as PM scares me.
- Andy, Altrincham, UK, 04/09/2008 14:24
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Agree with Ruth. Care not one iota about this bunch of losers. What I do care about is how they have brought this country to its knees.
I care how Brown & Co are enacting a scorched earth policy that would have made the Nazis proud. Ruining this country for an incoming Tory government in the hope that four years of trying to put right this mob's stupidity and incompetence will see NuNuLab back in power again to reap the rewards as they did 11 years ago.
The most morally bankrupt and selfish government we have ever had. They must be so proud!
- Philip, Bristol, 04/09/2008 11:10
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The vast majority of voters in England can't be bothered with Labour's internal troubles. New Labour have shown that they are incompetent & cannot be trusted (economies of truth that surpass even Tony Blair e.g. the EU Referendum). We want a General Election. And we want it now, not in 2010 by which time New Labour will have completely destroyed the country.
- Ruth, Poole, UK, 04/09/2008 07:51
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