Defend yourself
Peter Hoskin 4:25pm
John Rentoul writes a typically-perceptive piece in the Independent on Sunday, doubting that Gordon Brown will ever seize back the political initiative. For Rentoul, Brown's major problem is that he's not engaging in "the drama of a dialogue in his own defence" - mainly because he hasn't identified a position to defend:
"If he was a 'change' from Blair, what had he changed to? Brown himself made a telling mess of answering that question on the BBC's Politics Show last weekend. 'The changes that we are making are to recognise that the world has changed over the last 10 years. We didn't have the environmental problems we have now. We didn't have the global restructuring; we have got it now. We didn't have the sense of rising aspiration.' In each case: oh yes we did.
If Brown is 'the change', he has not changed to something more left wing, as another howl of anguish from Polly Toynbee, keeper of the social-democratic flame, confirmed last week. This time she said that Brown's 'besetting sin' was 'cowardice' in not taking on the rich, and that, 'unlike Blair, Brown doesn't lust after lucre; he neither glamorises, needed, nor is in awe of wealth – but he is afraid of it.'
Both Toynbee and Progress offer Brown heaven-sent opportunities to define himself, to engage in argument and to dramatise his positions. Against Toynbee he could restate the case against a 'tax the rich' politics, which is a message that could recover some ground among the middle classes who think he disapproves of them. Against Progress, he could gain ground by disagreeing with its notion that Britain is suffused with a 'deep social pessimism'.
Of course, Blair was adept at characterising the position of his opponents in such a way as to make it easy for him to demolish their supposed arguments. But it was at least a device that recognised differences of view and sought to make the case for the course he had chosen.
Brown is not that kind of leader..."
It's just plain difficult to characterise Brown's politics, and thus the change he's supposedly engendered. His beliefs certainly aren't showing in any consistent way - sometimes he's espousing "change" and sometimes he's the "heir to Blair"; he oscillates between being an arch-centraliser and a rampant free-marketeer; and - perhaps most damaging - his Big Ideas come with a ten-year time lag. Brown needs to dig an ideological foxhole, but - for some reason - he can't get his hands on a spade.
And so, one question: any Coffee Housers have a clue what Brown stands for?
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Comments
Max Kaye
February 3rd, 2008 5:51pmMeanness of spirit. Envy. Jealousy. Control Freakery. Pettiness.
Now for his worst qualities....
Tiberius
February 3rd, 2008 6:40pmBrown stands for crushing individual freedom and the human spirit by stealth.
dexey
February 3rd, 2008 6:45pmself aggrandizement?
wonderfulforhisage
February 3rd, 2008 6:45pmMore importantly, what does Cameron stand for (other than focus group following)?
Alex R
February 3rd, 2008 6:52pmIronically, the person who has best enunciated what Brown stands for has been Michael Gove. Was in this speech somewhere. http://www.conservatives.com/tile.do?def=news.story.page&obj_id=140017
C Powell
February 3rd, 2008 7:35pmBrown stands for the belief that the State - the man in Whitehall - knows best: hence the central micromanagement, the authoritarianism, the desire to know everything about us, the refusal to leave us any private space - the nationalisation of private life, in effect, with ludicrous targets for how many steps we should walk etc., for instance. He believes that only the actions of the State - rather than those of individuals, families, local and voluntary associations - can make society or us better. He does not have a proper understanding of what the State should and can do - hence his refusal to fund the armed forces properly - and hence the failure of the State to help those who need its help. It is too busy bossily interfering where it shouldn't to provide any real help to those who need it. His is a ludicrous, harmful and out-of-date view (though all too attractive to the functionaries, bureaucrats, consultants etc who make money at the taxpayer's expense from this gravy train) but the challenge for the Tories is to provide an alternative coherent explanation of what the State should do, why it it needs to do less - much less - and how and, crucially, how this will help rather than harm those who need help in our society.
Ted
February 3rd, 2008 9:30pmWhen you said his big ideas come with a 10 year time lag I thought you meant, which is true, that his ideas date back to 1997. It's not that they won't happen until 2020 or so but that many ignore the Blair decade - Brown seems to have re-started the 97 clock, his vision is the one he had back in Major's days.
mark
February 3rd, 2008 10:07pmwell - let's see...... erm - no - got nothing - haven't a clue what he stands for
Sally C
February 3rd, 2008 11:22pmMy mother used to say 'If you can't say anything nice,don't say anything at all' Can't say anything nice....
Austin Barry
February 4th, 2008 7:48amBrown stands for precisely nothing, except the tatters of realised ambition. This is what happens when the pursuit of high office is an end in itself. Brown has nothing to give this country, except empty promises, and a persona of abject gloom. His is the face on the portrait in the attic.
mart
February 4th, 2008 11:51amAlthough it could lead to them being hoist by their own petard, the Tories probably have a fruitful line of questioning here. "We don't know what the government wants to achieve. The government itself doesn't know what it wants to achieve. We want to achieve (insert philosophical point, or - gasp - policy here)."