Brown to Britain: "Crisis? Which crisis?!"

8 December 2007

When Jim Callaghan, the last Labour Prime Minister to lose a British general election, returned from an overseas summit in sunny climes to widespread winter turmoil back in Blighty, he was reported to have asked: “Crisis? What crisis?”.

The Brown government is being battered and bruised from all sides: barely has one crisis fallen off the front pages than another, usually of the government’s own making, pops up to replace it. In the past few days, the fundraising scandal which forced Peter Watt, Labour’s General Secretary, to resign and which threatens to bring down other senior figures, including Harriet Harman, the Labour party chairman, has taken centre stage; before that, it was the continuing repercussions from the loss of 25m personal details, thanks to the abject carelessness of Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs (HMRC).

The list of incompetence and error is as breathtaking as it is lengthy: the mounting potential bill for the Northern Rock crisis, aided and abated by official dithering; growing fears about the health of the British economy; continuing anger about huge and ill-thought through capital gains tax increases; the inability to count the number of foreign workers correctly; the clearing of illegal immigrants for Whitehall security work, including guarding the Prime Minister’s car; the unprecedented assault by former chiefs of the defence staff on the underfunding of the armed forces; continued tensions within the government following the shambolic cancellation of the planned general election. We could go on; but you probably get the point by now.

Amid all of this, Mr Brown flails away hopelessly; he looked puzzled, bewildered and out of his depth at this week’s monthly press conference. For a man who was so obviously in control of events while he was at the Treasury, the difference today is shocking. In his infamous BBC interview with Andrew Marr, that gentlest of inquisitors, explaining why the election was cancelled, Mr Brown declared: “I could have a mandate or want a mandate for competence but I want a mandate to show the vision of the country that I have is being implemented in practice.” The words, of course, are vacuous, meaningless political-speak. But what is as clear as a neon sign is that the Prime Minister has since demonstrated neither vision nor competence; and the public is rightly running out of patience.

Labour’s poll numbers make for grim reading for a party used to winning elections. A ComRes poll published on Tuesday shows Labour falling to 27%, against 40% for the Tories, who are enjoying their biggest lead in a generation. Other pollsters paint a similarly devastating picture. Populus found that the number of people thinking the government is competent has slumped from 56% in September to just 25% now. Only 20% now believe the government to be honest and principled. ICM found that Chancellor Alistair Darling’s net approval rating is minus 18 (it deserves to be lower).