Tonight:
4°c
It's fightback week in Brighton. “Fight: not bow out. Fight to win.” My mind wandered to Tony Blair delivering a similarly bellicose rallying cry many years ago.
A small boy behind me interjected: “Who's he going to fight, mummy?” Mr Brown knows exactly what he's up against. He is taking on a Tory leader Labour now regards as the likely winner of the next election.
So the terrors of a future Tory Britain were laid out: lost generations condemned to “cardboard cities” and a “heartless” leader unable to understand a world beyond the crunchy gravel drives of prosperous Britain.
Even the financial crisis was put down to the conservative excess of untrammeled free markets.
It's a bit rich (or maybe not so rich, these days) for Mr Brown, long-serving and very powerful ex-Chancellor, to discover that the economy has been in thrall to dark Right-wing forces for 12 years without us knowing about it.
“I've admitted my mistakes,” said Mr B. Alas, he never really does. I don't know about depression but a big bout of amnesia seems to have befallen the man who presided over capital gains tax breaks for private equity investors and generous treatment of those fly-by-night capitalist non-doms. He is far better at admitting others' mistakes: a retreat on John Reid's ID cards, a rethink of Tessa Jowell's late-night drinking liberalisation. These things come naturally.
At the heart of this speech is a significant new dividing line intended to define the battlefield in next year's election. If you are a top taxpayer, Mr Brown has effectively abandoned you to the Conservatives. The grand coalition of New Labour politics is at an end.
The demographic he is now firmly gunning for is the “squeezed middle” or those of “modest means”. For them, it would not be ”cost-free” to vote for David Cameron.
This is an argument of last resort. Labour strategists have worried for some time that voters have not yet started in earnest to compute what a Conservative government would mean to them. That means the Government early on in the election battle that it is the underdog. “If it's a referendum on Gordon and Labour,” says one rising Cabinet star, “We've already lost it hands down.”
The Sun reflects this view today by coming out for Mr Cameron: an early-bird endorsement so brutal that it has caused fury in Downing Street.
The Labour leader referred to the contest not being about him but about the interests of Britain and the “risks” of an alternative government under the dubious judgment of Mr Cameron.
Some of this is outright caricature to please a Labour audience, whose mood sways between self-loathing and the last squeaks of defiance . Hence the account of villainous Conservatives relishing cuts to the public sector out of genetic heartlessness. They probably twirl their moustaches while they're at it too.
More worrying for Camp Cameron as it shapes the leader's crucial pitch for power at his own conference next week, is the emergence of a coherent Labour claim that the Tories represent the interests of the better-off and will always err on that side.
Just as Dave preaches a new One Nation conservatism, Mr Brown is playing Two Nation politics. It's a potentially fruitful attack. The new Conservatives are naturally comfortable with upper middle Britain, adhering to their lavish inheritance tax break, which as the PM pointed out is an odd priority to defend in an era of a massive public finance deficit.
While Cameronians talk frequently about improving the lot of the poor, and of social mobility for the least well off, they have less of a feel for the lower middle class, who benefit neither from state largesse nor inherited security.
A lot turns on the poorly focused argument about what the middle class really is: Mr Brown staked his claim to this hotly disputed, motive territory.
Newspapers and politicians are alike in identifying its interests with whatever they happen to favour. Still, there is such a thing as appeal to a broad middle stratum of the electorate and Mr Brown has struggled to get it right.
He once claimed that “my wife comes from Middle England” as if it were Narnia, and only last week identified his own background as (vaguely) part of middle class.
The ideas he ventured this week were far from stupid but confused and — crucially — ill-costed. Better social care provision for the elderly (square on pro-Cameron territory of those valuable older voters) is an expensive proposition and it is hardly adequate to cite “reprioritising” as the solution.
I think the PM is right to raise the thorny question of how we should deal with vulnerable teenager mothers. It's a subject too long avoided by the parties, because it is difficult and divisive, But the solution he proposes is confusing and looks like it has emerged from the first available focus group.
Would it apply to any young mother who needs housing benefit, regardless of whether she had a supportive family behind her? “Search me,” says one leading Cabinet member. This one could unravel very fast.
In essence , this was a defensive foray.Because he pitched his case with more nuance than his usual tub-thumper, it is the harder for a challenger to set themselves up as a modern centrist alterative, so the decline continues with no end in sight, bar honorable defeat.
Lord Mandelson, the strange star turn of this conference, has his own way of appearing to help his boss, while pointing up what's wrong with him.
“I like a guy who doesn't take no for an answer,” he said last night. It sounded as if an awful lot of people wanted Gordon to go, while he insisted on hanging on.
Too much truth there for comfort, really.
Reader views (9)
Apparently all parties want to reduce the number of single mother teenage pregnancies.
OK, how about this; stop all benefits to the teenagers, starting (to be on the safe side and so there are no retroactive penalties) in ten months time.
I guarantee you within a year teenage pregnancies will have fallen by 80%.
But of course this won't happen because British politics begins and ends with shovelling money at people.
- Steve, London, UK, 01/10/2009 08:40
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For the first time in my memory, the Monster Raveing Looney Party should and could be a credibal opposition party!
the Lib Dems came out of the wendy house long enough to shoot themselves in the foot, the Labour Party wont come out of the Wendy house at all so if the Conservatives have any courage at all then they will win. With a bit of luck the ex TV presenters party will form an alliance with the Greens & Independants, and with the BNP cheering them on we might get a government that works with a sensible set of opponants keeping them in check.....
Maybe I have not come out of the wendy house either!
- Dene Wood, Grays, Essex, That little country by the sea that used to have, 01/10/2009 08:21
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He'll go.
It's all unravelling so fast now that when they get home the uncomfortable fact that their own futures are at stake (rather than just ours) means MPs will do him in.
Betcha.
- Tv, Hounslow, UK, 30/09/2009 14:33
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There are two "classes": working class and not.
I am proud to be working class; I am not proud that thousands of pounds of my income is given each year to those that have no intention of working and whose aspirations lie in appearing on Jeremy Kyle or X Factor.
There is no middle class: they are the true working class. And there is no upper class: they left the country years ago.
- Nobby Clark, Perth, the Scottish one, 30/09/2009 13:44
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Gordon Brown, answer this question please.
As Chancellor for many years you controlled the books.
Bring Govt income down to a normal person level.
Income GBP 400 per week, expenditure GPB 405 = misery.
Income GBP 400 per week, expenditure GPB 395 = happiness.
Please explain why you have overspent heading for Trillions?
- Macdangler, Wimbledon SW19, 30/09/2009 13:40
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Greg, what on earth are "our people" doing the other side of the planet in Afghanistan anyway? I'm far more concerned about the "insurgents" and "Taliban" HERE.
- Croyboy, Croydon, 30/09/2009 12:10
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Gordon Brown is being used as a handy 'aunt-sally' for all the problems of a world recession, greedy bankers and moslem terrorists. -The man may have his faults, but neither his party, or any other political party, has thrown up anyone else with convincing 'leadership qualities'.-Maybe I should blame Mr Brown for the Scottish weather?
- Huggy, Cumbernauld Scotland, 30/09/2009 11:28
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Given the choice between Gordon Brown (Labour Party) and a Dead Cat (Dead Cat Party) for the next PM , I am confident that the British electorate will do the sensible thing and vote for Dead Cat. After all a Dead Cat can't mess things up and worse than Brown has.
- Peter, Harrow, UK, 30/09/2009 10:46
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Gordon Brown says we are the insurgents now. At a time when our people are being murdered by Taliban scum, this was an unfeeling parallel to make and just about sums Brown up.
- Greg, Wigan, 30/09/2009 10:04
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