Brown – the verdict so far
So how has it gone? The longest awaited handover of power since Churchill handed the baton to Eden has finally happened and we have had a month to see how Gordon Brown has done in practice.
Well the Cabinet is all smiles as is the Labour Party. And things have gone from bad to worse for Cameron and the Tories. But will it last?
So, to date, we have seen:
• Brown has overtaken the Tories in the polls for the first time since 2005. In three recent polls, Labour is 6-7 points ahead. This is a far bigger bounce than some had anticipated particularly given the fact that polls had regularly shown Brown to be far less popular than Cameron before he became PM
• One poll shows that one in five voters think more highly of Brown now than before he took over while with the same proportion thinking less highly of David Cameron
• A well planned and executed Cabinet and ministerial reshuffle
Brown has wasted no time at all in positioning himself as different to Blair in areas where Blair was unpopular and in ditching unpopular policies:
• Special advisers can no longer order civil servants around
• Less ‘spin’ with announcements more often being made to Parliament first
• Miliband and Malloch Brown, both sceptics about the Iraq war, are parachuted into the Foreign Office
• UK Foreign policy is now positioned as no longer totally subservient to the US
• A more ethical approach with new advice for Ministers
• No more supercasinos
• Possible reclassification of cannabis as a more serious drug
• Potential review of the licensing laws
• A more serious and less flamboyant approach in general
Brown has also sought to behave in the opposite way to which many have expected, particularly the Tories. So he has:
• Avoided being seen as tribal Labour by offering ministerial positions to Liberal Democrats and senior figures outside the Labour party in business, health and international affairs
• Sought to avoid being seen as a control freak by emphasizing Cabinet government rather than ‘sofa’ government and given power away to Parliament, local government and local authorities rather than keeping it at Number Ten – e.g. giving Parliament the right to vote over going to war, more Select Committee hearings on senior public appointments
We have also seen:
• A shift in the dividing lines of politics. Brown is positioning himself as the serious man for serious times against what Labour would describe as ‘Sham Cam’ Cameron’s more PR based approach
• A shift on the issues towards a focus on housing, children, families and education as the top priorities
• Two by-election victories with Cameron coming a cropper in Ealing
• Brown has relaxed a little as he finally has the job he has wanted for fifteen years and the principal cause of his angst and paranoia has now gone
• And luck has played a part too – no prosecutions over the loans for peerages affair.
In short, it is the classic honeymoon period.
It has also been a fantastic demonstration of effective politics in action.
Brown has taken his perceived weaknesses and tackled them head on. He has capitalised on the time for a change feeling among the population by positioning himself as different in style and substance to Tony Blair (even though the core new Labour approach is largely unchanged). Recent polls show that voters are seeing him as making changes and as adopting a different approach.
He has even exploited the fact that the Daily Mail and Paul Dacre like Brown and think Cameron is a lightweight. Is it a coincidence that Brown has scrapped supercasinos, is reclassifying cannabis and reviewing licensing laws when the Daily Mail has led campaigns to do just that? The Mail has responded just as Brown would want with its front page headline asking where Cameron is (Africa) while his constituency is under water.
But more tellingly, Brown has calibrated his whole approach to power so as to position himself exactly where he wants to be against David Cameron and made life extremely difficult for Cameron. Left wing? Brown says he is in favour of reforms to schools and hospitals and stamps on the idea that he is the ‘roadblock to reform’. Sceptical on Europe? Brown is positioning himself as a hard headed pragmatist on Europe and will try to present the Tories as eurosceptic headbangers who are not listened to in the capitals of Europe and therefore cannot defend Britain’s national interests.
So far, the view of the Brownite camp has been borne out by the facts. Their view on Cameron has always been that he lacks the depth and conviction required to be a strong opponent and to make the Tories truly electable. They feel that Cameron’s repositioning of the party through PR would only take them so far. It would distance them from their past, but it would not articulate their vision for their and the country’s future. The Brownites have always felt that their man has real substance, depth and conviction and that the country would realise this and Brown would compare well. We await to see if Cameron can prove the Brownites wrong.
But all honeymoons come to an end, as David Cameron has now discovered.
Has anything gone wrong and are there underlying problems that will be revealed later? Brown has annoyed some of his colleagues by offering jobs to Lib Dems and appointing figures like Mark Malloch Brown and Digby Jones into Ministerial positions. Some of these external appointments will work, but others will not and this could store up trouble for the future.
Some of his rhetoric has not been matched by reality. Cabinet government? Was the Cabinet really fully consulted on the end of super casinos?
The end of spin? The announcements of other ministers are made to Parliament first, but Brown is not afraid to leak them himself in advance when it suits him. Similarly it is rich for the new government to talk about the end of spin as they are only ‘ending’ it because it looks good.
Housing – yes it is seeking to tackle a major social problem and it does present a major issue for David Cameron as Tory councilors and activists are busy campaigning against new housing developments up and down the country. But is it a good idea to major on new housing developments, some on flood plains, when the UK is facing the worst floods since 1947?
PMQs have also not been a huge success as Cameron has managed to wrong foot Brown on several occasions.
On Europe, while the Tories have their problems, it is Brown who will have to defend the government’s stance on refusing a referendum on the EU constitution.
And the other big unanswered question is whether Brown’s style of working will emerge over time as a problem. So far, it has not, and while the different nature of the job has been sinking into the Brown team over the last month, they say that he has been preparing for this job for over a decade and that he is relishing it and meeting the new challenges. But only time will tell.
But overall, Brown’s first month has been more of a success than he and the Labour Party could ever have hoped. Labour is looking more united and more confident than at any time since before the Iraq war. Not only is there a new PM, but there are no more TB/GBs, no Blair/Brown fissure in the party any more. And as PM, Brown has the great advantage of not having to worry about Gordon Brown next door. Indeed there is nobody in the Cabinet with their own strong rival power base.
Brown’s bounce in the polls will fade over time. But his first month has meant that Labour has a real chance of a fourth term and Brown has a chance of winning his own mandate. There is still time for Brown’s honeymoon to end, for him to make mistakes and so still time for the Tories to re-establish a lead. But it is going to be much more difficult for the Tories than they had imagined under Brown. It is distinctly possible that they – and many others – underestimated him and believed too many things that the arch-Blairites had said about him.