Morning:
8°c
HOW THE choreography has changed. In budgets past, Gordon Brown would hover imperiously at the despatch box, firing out statistics that purported to show how well Britain was doing. We were, he would declare each year, the envy of the world.
Instead, as it has now transpired, the UK's economic model was built on an irresponsible consumer binge, over-reliance on the financial sector and government fawning towards bankers.
It will be no surprise, then, if the present Chancellor, Alistair Darling, looks decidedly sombre for today's set-piece occasion. His likely proposals - which include a job-creation scheme reminiscent of the 1980s, a package of measures to boost the housing sector and "efficiency" savings in Whitehall - will probably be the best he can do in the circumstances. For he now faces the daunting long-term task of trying to claw back some of the tens of billions of pounds the Exchequer has doled out to save the creaking banking system from collapse - either through spending cuts or tax increases, or both.
How it must hurt. Throughout this past decade, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown disdainfully told their detractors, particularly those on the Left, that they had got their priorities wrong. Britain was getting richer and richer - so what were they complaining about?
As the global crash unfolded, as the scale of the culpability became too great to hide, the New Labour machine acted in time-honoured fashion. It tried to browbeat its critics, to dodge and weave, to play the media and to second-guess the opposition.
They could instead have started to analyse what went wrong, intelligently and with a little contrition. They could have asked themselves why, after so long in power with such large majorities, they had done so little to change the country. Why were they so weak at tackling inequality? Why were they so frightened of just a little redistribution? When Peter Hain broached the subject of the wealthy paying just a little more tax, Brown's people tried to destroy him.
Why were they all so mesmerised by the super-rich? Some feared the consequences of capital flight (always exaggerated). Others loved the idea of cavorting with these people. For Blair it was the villas, for Peter Mandelson the yachts.
And why have they always obsessed about the Conservatives? At the Labour Party conference of 1997, a young adviser by the name of David Miliband told me he believed the Tories remained a threat. I reminded him they were, actually, in meltdown, and suggested that Labour could, actually, remake the political landscape. Oh no, he replied, we have to remain ever-vigilant.
The actions of Damian McBride and his like, ever smearing and scheming, are rooted not in personality disorders but in political logic. The reason New Labour has always acted in a thuggish manner is because it was founded on an absence of ideals. It was created by Blair and Brown, by Mandelson and Alastair Campbell, as a vehicle for gaining power. Nothing more, nothing less. They had watched in horror as the Conservatives dominated the stage in the 1980s. They vowed they would do whatever it took to get to Downing Street.
Since 1997, their every working day has been based around the task of prolonging their term of office. It is what drives them all when they wake up in the morning. It fills in the hollow. Sure, we can all point to various changes for the better, but as a check list for 12 years of virtually untrammelled power, it is deeply disappointing. And they know it. Their anger is not manufactured; it is deeply ingrained and directed at anyone who criticises them. I would suspect - although psychologists would have a better understanding than I - that deep down it is directed at themselves.
What is so frustrating is that those few MPs, and the odd minister, who do have strong principles and deep ambitions to change Britain felt forced to hide them. They began to look and sound like automatons in order to avoid ritual humiliation at the hands of the Prime Minister's henchmen for speaking out of turn.
All that remains now is a fight for the scraps. Labour does still contain the odd radical, such as Jon Cruddas, the tireless MP for Dagenham and former deputy-leadership contender. He and his small band are trying to put some steel in his party's spine. Darling seems to be having some success in breaking out from Brown's shadow.
Meanwhile, Ed Balls, Harriet Harman, James Purnell, the two Milibands - all instrumental in the New Labour project - now protest their radicalism. In so doing, they provide perfect targets for Tory mockery. As for Brown, he has no money, or political capital, to spend. A Labour government now forced to cut public services will struggle to differentiate itself from its avowed enemy, the Tories. Even if Darling today announces higher taxes for the better off, it will be a desperate attempt to balance the books - and a sop to the backbenches - rather than the herald of any coherent new programme.
I was once excited about a party that contained people such as Robin Cook and Mo Mowlam, one man of conviction and one woman of charisma. Their untimely deaths, and the resignation of others, have left a front bench populated by the haggard and the hapless.
For example, I knew Jacqui Smith at university. I admit I wrote her manifesto in her (unsuccessful) bid to become student union president. She was pleasant and determined - a typical student hack. But impressive? It is now on her watch (and that of her predecessors) that civil liberties are regarded as a middle-class or Left-wing self indulgence.
Paradoxically it is only our unelected House of Lords that defends our democracy and human rights. This is the politics of the lowest common denominator, politics by tabloid. It buys a day's grubby headlines. What these people forgot long ago is that only political courage wins respect. Paradoxically, the only example Labour can point to of trying to lead, rather than follow, is Iraq - the worst foreign-policy disaster of the past half-century and more.
Darling will today try to put a positive gloss on his salvage efforts. What he will be unable to do is to give this government the moral compass it ceded when it made power its only principle.
* John Kampfner is former editor of the New Statesman. His new book, Freedom for Sale, is published by Simon & Schuster in September.
Reader views (5)
'you can all point to changes for the better'
Please enlighten us, the poor, beleaguered, ignored and downtrodden public living under this pathetic treacherous and totally incompetent'government' ... list them for us, we have obviously slept through them!
- Carver, newark,, 24/04/2009 23:34
Report abuse
What a disaster the Brown show has been. And he still does not want to go the ever un-elected fool! Why are the Houses of Parliament not deposing him??
- Makka, London, 23/04/2009 07:40
Report abuse
You are right John, I remember that the day after they won the 97 election, Blair announced "the campaign for the next election starts today", and they have carried in that way ever since. All of Brown's decisions/actions have been focused on retaining voters for his party.
- M Wood, somerset uk, 22/04/2009 17:24
Report abuse
How paradoxical that as the new labour project of the vaccuus Blair, Brown, Campbell and their ilk is finally consigned to the dustbin of history by a budget of desperation,we learn of the demise of Jack Jones - oh for the Healeys, Smiths and Gaitskells serious politics rather than the lavatorial pranks of the recently pubescent boys and girls of St Blair's high school
- Edmundb, Banbury, Oxon, 22/04/2009 16:21
Report abuse
Yes they are all in the wrong boxes; they should be in the ones six feet under.
- Mickyinlondon, london, 22/04/2009 11:33
Report abuse
