The fall of the masters of the political universe
Fraser Nelson 5:06pm
Every financial collapse in the City you can normally be traced back to a testosterone-sodden trading floor where young men believed a little too much in their own hype. Britain is in the unusual position that both our economic and political collapse can be traced to the same gang – the ones that Gordon Brown assembled in the Treasury. In my cover piece for today’s magazine, I detail the damage they did: to our economy and to the Labour Party.
At the heart of McBride’s fall was the hubris, the risk-taking. Imagine being so stupid as to put all those vile smears in an email sent from 10 Downing Street computer. But the risks the Brown-Balls-Whelan-McBride team took with the British economy were no less great. And far more significant. Imagine the sheer audacity required to tear up the system of banking regulation, and to invent a tripartite system based on nothing more than faith in your own brilliance. To have the central bank chase an inflation targeting, New Zealand style – and to do this on the sly, preferring not to share this secret with the British public or the City in a manifesto.
And, as CoffeeHousers hate me saying, Balls was brilliant. I was a business journalist at the time, and heard the reports. There he sat, this whiz kid barely 30 years old his own mammoth office, giving crystal clear directions to the civil service about the revolution he pretty much personally oversaw. They may not have agreed with him but, while Brown ummed and ahhed, Balls went at it with Napoleonic vigour. They liked him for his direction: there was never any doubt what to do. Balls wrote the five tests for UK Euro entry on the back of an envelope in a taxi in Washington (and for keeping us out of Brussels he has my sincere thanks). But for concocting his own ‘golden rules’ he has much explaining to do – because this was the beginning of today’s budget crisis. It detached state spending from tax revenues, allowing massive overspends even in the good years, when debt was supposed to be repaid. Balls broke this most basic of economic rules: pay down debt in the fat years.
And spin? The Treasury spin team was formidable, running rings around financial journalists – either rewarding them or alienating them as they saw fit. There they were, letting Britain get fat on a debt-induced bubble, and everyone was writing what a genius Brown was. I was on the business desk of The Times when Labour was first elected and the then economics editor thought differently, and started to say that this tartan emperor had no clothes. She was blackballed by the Treasury, stopped from even receiving press releases. The (then) editor of the newspaper had to write to the Permanent Secretary pointing out how outrageous this was. It was staggering, bullying behaviour: quite unheard of in financial journalism. But this was how Brown carried on: he brooked no opposition.
The events of last weekend make more sense when you put in the context of where Team Brown came from. From 1997 to 2007 pretty much everything went their way. And rather than being a poisonous influence in Team Brown, McBride was more of a Mowgli figure; found wandering the VAT department of the Treasury and then trained to hunt like the rest of them. Ed Balls would play dirty his own way: he’d collude with the chairs of select committees to bring down various government policies. But he was utterly of the pack, despite his hilarious protestations to the contrary.
What Team Brown did on their pitiless route to No10 was not the Labour Party way. To put this whole thing down as Labour spin is to misunderstand, fundamentally, what happened. Brown’s tactics are not Labour tactics – and this is why he succeeded. He was an omnivore in a party of herbivores. His plotted a course of sectarian warfare – and used Labour’s ethos of unity to defend himself against any counter-attack. It was the worst form of hyprocrisy, but it took him to No10. In his head, the end justified the means: his moral compass was better than anyone else’s. So the morally best outcome is his being in power.
It also chopped down more able Labour people than the Tories ever dream of doing. In my cover piece for this week’s magazine, I quote a former Cabinet member making this point:
“This is why Gordon may go down in history as the single-handed destroyer of the New Labour project. One of the ironies of it all is that he has been much more vicious in opposing others than anyone has in opposing him. Look at Labour’s history. Ever since Tony Benn’s 1981 leadership election, we have had the sense that division finishes you. So even when attacked, people have chosen not to respond because that makes the situation absolutely terminal. But Gordon has been absolutely cynical about it, he has not been bound by that code and everyone else has.”
This is largely why Labour stands so low. There are people in Labour that, if they had not been cut down, they could do a very good job denouncing the Tories as lightweights. Defeat them by intellectual arguments, not by insinuating that David Cameron is a toff with warts on his bottom or whatever McBride’s “absolutely brilliant” idea was.
Brown’s hit men never really came after Blair until the end. Their target was Blairism’s ability to regenerate. He wanted to cut down the choice agenda. Peter Oborne put it brilliantly, long ago. Fundamentaly, Blair believes in the market. Fundamentally, Brown believes in the state. The latter agenda died out with the last century: in every sphere of human endeavour, from watching TV to shopping, people want and seek choice and control. Brown has left Labour on the wrong side of history.
Is there time for the reformist, attractive-to-voters part of Labour to grow again? With McBride gone, it can try to reassert itself. But Brown has allied with the Unite trade union (Whelan being the middle-man), which is now Labour’s paymaster. There are already stories of Unite demanding safe seats for its men, and it already has one of its men as general-secretary of the Labour Party. Unite hates the Blair choice agenda, and will use its muscle over Labour at a very vulnerable time to cut down any vestiges of it. Labour is in danger of going back to the days where its future was decided not by debate but cabal and backroom deal. As a Labour privy councillor tells me in my piece. “We risk going back to the worst days of what Neil Kinnock fought against."
Brown’s combat skills were vampire-like. He has strength in the darkness, in the shadows, but he just can’t seem to be able to fight in daylight. If Labour had a proper leadership election (an idea Brown would call ‘divisive’) they’d have seen his shortcomings – and, who knows, maybe have changed their mind as the Tories did. In the end, they let themselves be bullied by a tiny but ruthless cabal. And the rest is history.
Previous
Jock
April 16th, 2009 5:19pm Report this commentIt turns out brilliant Balls is still just balls.
Fergus Pickering
April 16th, 2009 5:26pm Report this commentYou would have to have a heart of stone not to laugh. And laugh I do. I knew Robin Cook from school and he always said Brown was a shitbag. Right from the start. Robin could be pretty ruthless himself but atleast he was, for a politician, quite human. heavens above, he bet on horses and liked opera. Brown doesn't DO anything but politics and all the people round him don't do anything but politics. Let's really give the buggers a bad time, shall we,Fraser. You lot should have started a bit earlier, but better late than never. I always knew the guy was mad, bad and dangerous to know. But you lot, you wouldn't be told.
JohnOfEnfield
April 16th, 2009 5:31pm Report this commentBrilliant. No wonder they blackballed you! I can foresee a GE result with Labour coming third. Will they ever recover?
The Laughing Cavalier
April 16th, 2009 5:34pm Report this commentThe directions might have been clear but they steered us onto the rocks. What's so brilliant about that? I ask again, for the umpty umpth time, where's the evidence of this man's much-vaunted intelligence?
Roger Clague
April 16th, 2009 5:41pm Report this commentIts a bit late telling us all this now.
Brown did not have combat skills, he has had McPoison for 9 years.
BrianSJ
April 16th, 2009 5:44pm Report this commentFraser, the Brown operation is not Westminster Labour, but it is Scottish Labour, as well you know.And what that has wrought has been eloquently demonstrated by your good self.
At least they don't have to worry about their legacy. Ethelred the unready died nearly a thousand years ago and we still remember him.
Fragmeister
April 16th, 2009 5:47pm Report this commentBut as Balls is showing at the Department For Educational Cockups, he isn't always so good, is he? He's a fish out of water there.
GeoffH
April 16th, 2009 5:50pm Report this comment"I was on the business desk of The Times then and the then economics editor thought differently, and started to say that this tartan emperor had no clothes. She was blackballed by the Treasury, stopped from even receiving press releases."
You mean Patience Wheatcroft, an alumna of my old school QEGS, Tamworth and one of the few reasons I'm proud of the old place. Even if my career was much less distinguished.
Peter Wilson
April 16th, 2009 5:53pm Report this commentBalls wrote the five tests for UK Euro entry on the back of an envelope in a taxi in Washington (and for keeping us out of Brussels he has my sincere thanks)
Naively I always thought it was Brown that kept us out, either way I agree, it's their best achievement.
The irony being though that by doing so the electorate can have more of a say over Labour's economic policy than if it had been given away to the ECB. The economy being something that Labour are likely to lose on.
dexey
April 16th, 2009 5:54pm Report this comment"What Team Brown did on their pitiless route to No10 was not the Labour Party way." - and just what is the Labour Party way, Fraser?
This is new Labour, it is not the Labour Party. The Labour Party as I supported it in the '60's and '70's was a very different kettle of fish. In those days you could actually believe that there was aleavening of socialism and care for others in the Labour Party.
The only similarity between the two is that they both cock it up when they get into power.
james
April 16th, 2009 5:54pm Report this commentBrilliant stuff how they must hate you - I should watch your back though!
TrevorsDen
April 16th, 2009 6:01pm Report this commentWho was this Lady? I will write and nominate her for a peoples peerage. Indeed name all the good guys and we can all write and nominate them.
I won't be nominating the editor of the Telegraph by the way.
"There are people in Labour that, if they had not been cut down, could expose the Tories as lightweights" ---- what tosh! What rubbish!
Here are you trying to say that people who supinely lay down whilst Brown trod them into the dirt in the most humiliating way possible are 'heavyweights' in comparison to good decent and honest Tories.
Go wash your mouth AND brain out Mr Nelson.
Michael
April 16th, 2009 6:03pm Report this commentThank you for both articles, Fraser. They are very intuitive and perceptive, as all your writings usually are.
There is no doubt that Gordon Brown has been a very effective politician, but not for Britain, where we look for a measure of decency rather than the behaviour of a pitbull. His apology reeks with insincerity and I don't believe that the public really believe can ever be decent.
Lady Amelia
April 16th, 2009 6:05pm Report this commentGod I hope not!
Grumpy Old Man
April 16th, 2009 6:07pm Report this commentI thought Labour were so hell-bent on going fo(u)rth that they'd put Two Jags in charge of the May 2010 campaign.
Short the UK
April 16th, 2009 6:07pm Report this commentSpot-on Fraser. I don't think the elite really get that Brown is a psychopath who is devouring New Labour. Oborne, Guido and yourself get it, the rest are flapping in the wind.
Thank you
Chestcracker
April 16th, 2009 6:19pm Report this commentExcellent piece - as usual , Fraser. The tories should be able to come up with devastating election broadcasts. If Cameron does not win at least 2 terms and ensures/embeds some real changes in public services and our relationship with Europe, he would have failed.
RayD
April 16th, 2009 6:23pm Report this comment"She was blackballed by the Treasury, stopped from even receiving press releases."
Here's a radical idea. If the government has something to announce to the British People, how about putting it on a bloody WEBSITE, not on bits of paper handed out to favoured hacks. It's the 21st century for heaven's sake.
David H
April 16th, 2009 6:42pm Report this commentIf McBroon and McBalls get another term then Directive 10-289 is on the way. Then God help us all. To the trenches !
Sir Graphus
April 16th, 2009 6:46pm Report this commentWhile we're all boasting of our school alumni; Jack Straw went to mine.
I'll get my coat.
Madasafish
April 16th, 2009 6:46pm Report this commentI bty the Telegraph. It has become a lightweight paper full of idiocies... and idiots. I'm giving it up when teh sud runs out.
Ian C
April 16th, 2009 6:50pm Report this commentThe reason for the cabal keeping us out of the Euro was, as is now revealed by your commentary and putting it together, in order that they were free not to have to pay down debt in the bad years. It clearly had nothing to do with the merits or otherwise of Euro-membership. (I am still glad we are not in but the real motives now discovered rather sour the achievement and could add to weight to pro-Euro arguments at later date esepcially if we have a prolonged period of dep/re[c]ession - which is looking very likely).
Chris Rose
April 16th, 2009 7:04pm Report this commentFrom the start of this government, I have been concerned that members of the Press have been bullied, not just by the Brown people, but particularly by Campbell: "If you don't say/write what I want, I shall cut you off". Yet the Press has not reacted as it should have done. It could have united and stood up to the Government on this and won. The Government press operation cannot function if no one will publish.
Again and again we see with this government tactics which may be tolerated from a political party, but which are wrong when practised by a government department.
Surely a government department should not issue exclusive information? It should certainly never do so simply to bully. And if it does, there must be a way of the blowing the whistle.
Happy Homeworker
April 16th, 2009 7:08pm Report this commentThanks for this - an excellent commentary. At the time, all seemed to be great, but from my perspective in business all I could see was the government extracting more and more money from taxpayers and business. I expected the house price collapse long before it came and didn't understand why it didn't happen.
Instinctively I didn't believe everything in the garden was rosy, but in the absence of evidence, what are we to think? An independent blogosphere is an essential counterbalance to the control of journalists by government. It's a shame few of them had the guts to say years ago what they've all been saying over the last few days.
Keep up the good work.
Colin
April 16th, 2009 7:11pm Report this commentAbout time.
As Fergus Pickering says, "better late than never".
Tankus
April 16th, 2009 7:22pm Report this commentBalls stand you a few drinks ..eh ...Fraser ?
Hawkeye
April 16th, 2009 7:24pm Report this commentFraser Nelson said: "this is why he succeeded. He was an omnivore in a party of herbivores."
And that is why socialism is doomed to fail.
It can only work if everyone acts "according to their needs" rather than according to their desires. They can take advantage of the system because socialism lacks the checks and balances that other systems have.
If everyone was good, honest and impartial then socialism would work and we would have a utopia, but people are people. This is why it is the bounders, cads, scumbags and ne'er-do-wells who rise to the top of any socialist movement.
It is why top socialists can never be trusted.
Jenny
April 16th, 2009 7:35pm Report this commentI've been reading over Richard Littlejohn's archive and when you know that Brown, Balls & Co were denying people even press releases if they didn't like them you realise even though he often satirises Uncle Rich was understating the case of how nasty these people are and why so many journalists bent to their will.
How odd that Brown's premiership will eclipse Blair's - which was what Brown so wanted - but not in the way he ever imagined.
Biographers and playwrights will spend far more time over this spiteful man than they will Blair - and it won't be like that stupid Stephen Frears' film The Deal.
Ivy Eileen
April 16th, 2009 7:51pm Report this comment" the then economics editor thought differently, and started to say that this tartan emperor had no clothes".
I agree with GeoffH. This lady has to be Patience Wheatcroft, who consistently refused to follow the Fleet Street line of Brown being a genius and we were so lucky to have him.
Athesius the Facilitator
April 16th, 2009 8:09pm Report this commentYour piece is a good read Fraser: But I agree with some of the responses to this article that the press should have spotted this and shot Browns fox years ago. I could see it as could lots of others so what on earth were the press doing all this time. Waiting like little puppy dogs for the next press release I suppose. It does not make for good democracy Fraser.
bernerlap
April 16th, 2009 8:22pm Report this commentSuperb Fraser. Don't go for any walks in the woods, and keep well clear of the platform edge when you're in a tube station.
jonny
April 16th, 2009 9:15pm Report this commentMr Brown and his "cabal" could never have succeeded without the connivance of the media, particularly the Lobby. This connivance still goes on - as witness the Telegraph's recent atrempt to derail the McBride revelations. Sorry chaps - you journos are by and large gutless wannabes who will dance to the tune of whoever is in power, and quake in fear when the Campbells and McBrides of this world push you around. Thank Heavens for the independent bloggers.
Fernando
April 16th, 2009 9:44pm Report this commentAnother feature of these masters of the political universe, almost all of whom have no experience of private industry, is their awe of the super-rich.
I’ve worked in the private sector for nearly forty years and enjoyed it enormously. However, I’ve no illusions about its shortcomings and motivation. But Brown and more especially Blair seemed to suspend any critical faculties when approached by businessmen. Every threat or claim for special treatment has been taken at face value. Labour displayed a combination of complete ignorance, naivety and unseemly fawning.
The super-rich have done very well under Labour. The tax breaks for private equity companies and the ‘light and limited regulation’ of the financial sector are but two obvious examples. George Osborne’s proposal to require those with non-dom status to pay an annual levy was greeted with hysterics by Labour, who in response introduced a much watered-down scheme.
Contrast the treatment of the middle class with that of the super-rich. More of their income is taken up with tax and NIC. When the tax rate for large companies was reduced by 2% in 2008 it was increased by 3% for small companies. Final salary pension schemes have almost disappeared in the private sector.
I wonder if part of reason we are in the current financial and economic crisis is this awe of the super-rich, an unquestioning response to their requests and a desire not to be seen as anti-business at all costs.
molesworth_1
April 16th, 2009 9:56pm Report this commentBloody good post Fraser. Well worth £13-a-quarter.
TGF UKIP
April 16th, 2009 10:21pm Report this commentFraser, another brilliant demolition job on Brown, Balls and their rotten gang
Now can I suggest that there is another demolition job that sorely needs doing by a prominent and influential political journalist like yourself. And that is on O'Donnell as head of and proxy for the civil service.
The two stories twinning today are but part of it. As I recall in the Damien Green affair, O'Donnell was consulted over whether the police should be called in and it was his Cabinet Office which actually did summon the police.
That is now followed by his alacrity and determination to sweep "Smeargate" well and truly under the carpet. Mind you as I also seem to recall any of his other "investigations" (like Jowell) inevitably end up with a Persil degree whitewash.
More than time I suggest for O'Donnell and his Permanent Secretary cronies to receive the same sort of treatment as that you have doled out above to their political accomplices.
I would also suggest that while there is nil chance of Dave saying "boo" to O'Donnell, a senior Tory backbencher of impeccably responsible record should be primed to express serious doubt and reservations about O'Donnell and his impartiality in the discharge of his duties
Prodicus
April 16th, 2009 10:33pm Report this commentBalls,eh? So can we call the present debacle 'a neo-endogenous Labour Party catastrophe'?
Prodicus
April 16th, 2009 10:51pm Report this commentBrown is not an effective politician. He is a lousy politician. He is an effective 'capo di tutti capi' who cut his teeth in the Glasgwegian Labour Party, the cockpit of merciless politican corruption in these islands.
If he were an effective politician it would have been possible for him to stand for the leadership of his party. He could not do it. He had to make sure it did not happen.
If he were an effective politician he would speak English instead of nerdspeak and make some sort of human contact with the electorate, the 'little people' outside the village (and the cockpit). He cannot. He sends his people to do it for him. Even his party agents want him to stay away from marginal by-elections because he is a political liability. So he sends his wife to do for him a political job of which he is incapable.
He cannot even hold a cogent dialogue in the House of Commons which he avoids at all costs. When forced to appear, he postures, rages, hectors and bawls and will not answer criticism. He considers it intolerably impertinent that the Oppositon - or anyone - dares to question him.
Brown does not do politics. He does power.
And Balls is his prophet.
hadrian
April 16th, 2009 11:04pm Report this commentSo Ed Balls and his envelope are what have kept us out of Brussels, Fraser? Well, if this is what being 'out' of that totalitarian regime is like I'd truly hate to be in it! Actually he hasn't kept us out at all- the culture of advance by stealth and downright anti democratic haughty disregard for the popular vote means we're still stuck in the slurping mire of the EU project.
as for the Time Financial journalist black-balled by the gallant Mr Broon, one does so hope she'll make sure the boot's going in hard to the Balls and his master and cohorts. They deserve no mery at all.
ChrisH
April 16th, 2009 11:15pm Report this commentFraser,
A very thoughtful piece. Your work rate in terms of original thought and insight is really impressive and something that keeps me coming back to Coffee House when I've become slightly tired of the more populist blogosphere. Thank you, and let's get rid of this shower of sh*t before May 2010, before they've knackered the country completely
Bluebottle
April 16th, 2009 11:20pm Report this commentFor the last 12 years we've been governed by the Mafia.
It's as simple as that.
Hysteria
April 16th, 2009 11:43pm Report this comment@ Amelia
"God I hope not!" - a little cryptic even by your excellent standards my dear! To what do you refer?
Laura
April 17th, 2009 12:10am Report this comment'He plotted a course of sectarian warfare – and used Labour’s ethos of unity to defend himself'
In my mind these tactics originate from the Scottish Labour Party. All the Scottish Labour Ministers have this nasty tribal instinct whereas Blair etc from English Labour don't seem to.
Carol-Ann
April 17th, 2009 12:14am Report this commentFraser, it's alright journalists now saying there should've been a Labour leadership election. It's at the time journalists should not have allowed Brown to just become Prime Minister.
On the topic of elections, it's going to be fascinating how Brown holds up at the General as he's never actually fought an election where he is front and centre. In fact Cameron has the edge because at least he fought the Conservative leadership election.
TomTom
April 17th, 2009 12:22am Report this comment"What Team Brown did on their pitiless route to No10 was not the Labour Party way."
It's not the 'Labour Party' as a whole way but it is the way of Scottish Labour. The way Brown operates has all the hallmarks of the Scottish Labour party. Vicous, nasty, smearing and sectarian. Suprised you've not explored this a bit more Fraser considering you're Scottish and all. Steve Richards written a good piece in the NewStatesman a while back on why Brown will be the last leader of the Labour Party from the Provinces.
Carl, UK
April 17th, 2009 12:25am Report this comment"There are people in Labour that, if they had not been cut down, they could do a very good job denouncing the Tories as lightweights."
I agree with this statement. I know it's not fashionable to say so but I think Byers has actually come up with some good policy ideas. For example lifting the low paid out of tax and a version of Thatchers right to buy to help buyers onto the very expensive housing ladder. Sadly he was a disterous Minister and the press don't really take him seriously.
porkbelly
April 17th, 2009 4:02am Report this commentThere are so many parallels with Nixon - the retinue of ruthless political operatives, the inferiority complex-driven hunger for power, the paranoia, the sense that he is smarter than the rest even if they don't appreciate him, the loathing of "toffs", even the heavy-lidded dark-jowled mug. Nixon destroyed the Republican Party's reputation for a decade; perhaps Brown can equal his record.
Fraser Nelson
April 17th, 2009 10:22am Report this commentTomTom, I did thing about this aspect. While thuggery is something of a theme in Scottish Labour the team Brown assembled around him are all English (McBride too). So you can't really say that a team of tartan hit men staged a coup. Perhaps Brown's background in Scottish Labour made him more inclined to use such tactics, though.
Wily Trout
April 17th, 2009 12:30pm Report this commentMost of the well-known SPADs are ex-journalists. Presumably the obedient lobbyists were all queuing up for their turn.
Moraymint
April 18th, 2009 7:18pm Report this commentGreat blog Fraser, as usual. Whilst I despair at "the state we're in" right now, at least the blogosphere is absolutely skewering Brown pretty much wherever you look these days.
One wonders to what extent blogs like yours and others (complete with enthusiastic commentators like us) trashing Brown, represent a significant portion of society? Can/do we influence enough of the proletariat such that they eventually twig the fact that Brown has been the mother-of-all unmitigated disasters for this country?
We must keep up the pressure on the bandits at the heart of Government; it's a duty as far as I'm concerned.
Anyway, must finish yet another letter to my MP. Back soon.
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