How different things would be if Blair had sacked Brown

Faceless Bureaucrat

Go Fraser!...

I always found it strange that Blair could never find it in himself to fire Brown – he was, after all, the Prime Minister.

I wonder what Brown had on Blair that ensured TB would never move against him?...

King Prawn

The big mistake was making the 'Granita Deal', whatever it was.

He should have fought Brown in the Leadership Election and gave Brown a thrashing. That would have left Brown on the margins of the Labour Party with not much chance of power

Trumpeter Lanfried

Blair always shied away from confrontation. He told people what they wanted to hear (as, for example, in Northern Ireland). This is why he earned a reputation for duplicity.

John Page

Blair came up with wheezes, but he had no 'intellectual bottom' and no 'follow through'. The notion that Brown implemented ideas like tax credits well is baloney. He has no instinct for good implementation whatever, because he lacks experience and the necessary feel for organisations and people. I'm afraid your source needs to get out more.

Ray

How different things would be if Blair had never been elected in 1997. But then, with echoes of what one of Hitler's generals once said about his Fuhrer, Blair was New Labour was Britain's destiny!

tolkein

The problem with sacking Brown (unforunately) was that would have split the Party. No top up tuition fees, no trust hospitals, no academies, nothing. Great for the Tories, not so good for Labour or the country. Even so, very few observers thought Brown would be this bad. I thought as a co-author of New Labour he had a great strategic brain. Turned out he doesn't. To repeat, if Brown had been sacked, there would have been civil war in the Party. It speaks pretty poorly for Brown that that's what Blair feared, but there we are.

john miller

Strange. Blair was great at ideas because he had one a minute. Doesn't mean the ideas were great. An NHS dentist online for everyone who needs one. Great idea. Never a prayer of working.

Blair went because he was past his sell-by date. Everyone who desperately wanted to believe in him had had to accept he was by then a mere shell of the con-artist he had been.

He didn't achieve anything because he never believed in anything.

His presence on the world stage now is thanks entirely to the Bush clan who reward their faithful British ex Prime Ministers appropriately (see Major, J)

The Labour Party would be in exactly the same position, if, by some miracle, Blair had clung on.

The harsh realities of a socialist philosophy are the undoing of every Labour government. This lot were just lucky that their timing was right.

And finally, always remember that if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

Arbie

King Prawn is right. The moment to put Brown right in his place was at the very beginning - trounce all comers and your authority is much stronger. Ironically, what allowed Brown to be such a pain to Blair is undermining him, because of the fact that he was elevated to the throne rather than conqueror of it.

Fergus Pickering

What Blair tried to do (and he said so) was to replace the Conservative Party with New Labour. He saw, correctly I think, the old Labour Socialism was dead and that Labour was doomed as a party Just as they had replaced the Liberals, so they would be replaced by the Social democrats (whatever they called themselves. So the party of the left chnhs and morphs but the party of the ight goes on being the Tories for ever. Blair's project was daring but doomed to failure. And now, very probably, Labour is finished altogether. The idea of that ridiculous fellow Miliband doing anything about it - his Guardian articke was, of course, entirely empty of content. It's Gotterdammering, folks. Jolly good, I say.

Athesius the Facilitator

Of course he should have sacked Brown but he was a weakling. But I think Fraser is wrong to suggest that the Tories would be devoid of ideas in welfare and education. You see Fraser Blair was all talk, and a policy isn't really policy till it's implimented. It's just an idea. Blair had the best opportunity of any PM (ever) to right the wrongs of this country and he blew it. So next time these two snake oil salesmen are mentioned in the same breath. Do not forget to say that they blew it and by the time the last of them leaves office, we will all know that this country is a worse place because of their mis-management.

GeoffH

The idea that Brown is good at implementation must, surely, be a joke.

Tax credits are so fundamentally flawed in operation that it is impossible to determine whether they really could have been a 'Good Idea'.

Actually, I doubt they were/are for all sorts of reasons, not least that they need an army of pen/button pushers to administer.

Therefore, given the state of education in this country, they can't work.

Drew

On the question of implementing Blairite reforms, I wonder if Brown's resistance was so effective because it worked with the grain of the unionised bureaucracy itself - which clearly had no intention of being modernised at all.

This might suggest that an incoming Cameron administration might be scratching its head mid-term about how the implementation of new reformist plans was proving so tricky, despite a united political will.

oldtimer

At the end of your article you say:
"Brown was dreadful at ideas, but implemented his very bad ideas very well. It’s no use having the right ideas, as Blair generally did, if you can’t implement them."

I do not agree with this. Brown is useless at implementation, witness his sale of the gold reserves and the chopping changing and mind boggling cost of his various tax credit schemes to name but two when he was Chancellor.

Blair had a goodly share of duff ideas too, witness the justification of the Iraq war on misinformation (to put it politely) and Scottish devolution to name but two.

In reality they are both bungling incompetents. The one thing that Blair had was the consummate ability to fake it.
The Jean Giraudox quote: "The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake it you`ve got it made" applies perfectly to Mr Blair.

Trumpeter Lanfried

It may not have been possible to sack Brown, but Blair should certainly have disciplined him.

He should not have been permitted to swear at the First Lord of the Treasury, or any other government minister or official. Nor should he have been allowed to sit in sullen silence throughout cabinet meetings, distainful of all discussion. Nor should he have been allowed to veto Blair's appointments.

An insistence on civilised behaviour would have rankled with him, but he could never have made it a resignation issue.

Rex Burr

John, For the past eleven years I have not had the impression that I have been living in a country ruled by a government applying a socialist philosophy.
I would rather characterise it as an incompetent government of no particular persuasion.

TomTom

So has has Cameron learned from this about leadership ?

Teledu

John Page is right in saying Brown was no good at implementation / lacked experience. Sadly I fear this is a trait that is common to leading politicians of all Parties and not just zaNuLabour and Brown.
As one who has wrestled his way through countless Tax Credit forms, I've wondered how a Tory govt. would slay this (and other) bureaucratic Leviathans.
If only our Politicians could be imbued with a sense that making things SIMPLE is the key to good implementation.
Why don't the tories grasp such a "radical" (but simple) notion?
Why don't they say - We'll increase the basic tax allowance to, say £15K pa but No Tax Credits, No claiming anything back (allowances/expenses etc) from your Tax payment. Obviously the basic rate of tax would have to be somewhat larger than it is now. But it's palpably simple and palpably fair.
Don't our Polliticians have gumption or nous?

Murray

The bizarre thing about the Labour party is why is everyone so afraid of that numpty Brown? Blair was too scared to fire him, nobody had the guts to stand against him for the leadership last year and now nobody is brave enough to get rid of him.

JR

As others have pointed out Blair and Brown are terrible are implimentation.

And I think you catagorise Blair love of the market (and effectively inentives) incorrectly. Yes he liked to use the market where possible in the delivery of public services. But he also believed in the power of the state to change people's behaviour in the social relm through sticks. Witness on the spot fines, ASBOs and countless other initiatives. That's not to say you can tackle things through playing with the market - as you've pointed ot in your post on alcohol taxs.

The knee jerk reaction and fetish for more laws and unenforcable social meddling with embody a Cameron government as well unforunatly I fear.

Philip Wright

Apart from Brown being a bully and Blair running away from confrontation I wonder if GB had any other hold over TB?

In 10 years as Chancellor Brown only ever really made 1 half-decent decision which was to gibe the B of E independence over interest rate setting. But even this was partly mangled by not allowing them real independence over the make-up of the MPC and the even more disastrous undermining of the regulatory system through the tripartite responsibilities, leading to the Northern Rock fiasco.

In 10 years in power Brown made so many mistakes that in any other organisation he would have had his marching orders. I don't know how many reshuffles Blair did of his cabinet, although these were mostly bungled, he had more than 1 opportunity to at least move Brown to another brief if he was not prepared to sack him. He could then perhaps have manoeuvered Brown into a corner where had to accept a sideways move or a demotion, or resign and glower on the back benches.

Regretfully as he did not take any such action not only were there 10 years of monumentally wasted opportunity and profligacy we now found ourselves with a fastly deterioriating economy with a numpty who is in complete denial that any of it is his fault and not the foggiest of how to get UK plc back on track. The very thought of another 2 years of the same vacuity, duplicity and stupidity is almost too much to bear. The fact that the Conservatives will trounce NuLabour is the only thing that gives any cause for optimism.

Max Kaye

Blair and Brown are two sides of the same coin. The coin in this case was not gold, but - as many could see from the start - gilded lead.

Fraser, perhaps your youth excuses your "respect for the Blairites". Even before 1997 most perceptive people could see that Blair was a charlatan, and Brown a duff.

The Chocolate Orange Intifada

Athesius - Blair is a weak man because of his vanity. He wants to be popular. He wants people to admire and adore him. He cannot bear to do anything to make himself unpopular. If we look back to his old headmaster's comments, Blair was always a little show-offy nit, looking for attention and praise. That's why his big ambition was to be Mick Jagger. Have you ever seen a photograph of him in his rock outfit in his failed rock group? An emetic to be treasured for those mornings after the night before.

Attention-seeking dressing up as an actor at school. Attention dressing up as a rock star. Attention dressing up as a barrister (did he ever have a brief someone actually paid for out of their own pocket?). Attention-seeking wearing various costumes as PM. I read that Alastair Campbell personally pulled the black floor-length astrakhan coat out of his suitcase for his visit to Russia. The way, way, way too tight jeans on Mr Bush's ranch in Texas.

He wants to be the focus of everyone's eye - see Diana's funeral.

Blair is one sick puppy and I am still shocked that he ever became the prime minister of what was then a great country.

Verity

Trumpeter - And he should also have been told to wear white tie at dinners in the City - the rude, self-regarding yobbo.

Tiberius

Very good analysis, Fraser, except I would say that Blair's knowing how to fight the Tories was merely a by-product of knowing how to con the electorate.

Ann

"I'm afraid your source needs to get out more"

Quite so, John - and oldtimer. It's mind-boggling that so many people still fall for the nonsense about either of these two charlatans having any talents whatsoever, except for lying. You hacks have had 11 years to find out what many us have been saying since late 1997 - for chrissakes, how long DO you need?

John

One sick puppy - that's it in a nutshell!

Fraser Nelson

oldtimer, at least the gold sale was executed - and against the advice of the Treausury. Blair would have never got that done against the civil service's will. The tax credit scheme, also, was implemented. Its inherent complexity meant it was (and is) a disaster but again the idea was enacted. Brown was the Gollum of Whitehall, knew every nook and cranny. He got his dodgy ideas out with the skullduggery and certinty of an Afghan opium smuggler. Blair's best ideas (trust schools chief amongst them) barely made it from No10 to Parliament without being perforated by concessions. That's the difference between the two.

Ian C

"Blair’s big mistake in his ten years was to be".......... in/part of, in business with, the Labour Party.

Brown was the reason the party backed Blair on Smith's death. Blair bought himself a comfortable ride with the Granita Deal. Now it will tear the Labour Party apart because it papered over the cracks with spin and applied only 1997, and with it 2001 & 05, election winning substance. Once that went it was always going to be over.

The charlatan will be recognising that now, and as Mrs T made the market based reforms common parlance Blair has stitched up the State as the solution to nothing, with Brown's help.

We will eventually thank him but in the meantime look at the mess he and Brown have created. What a circuitous route to getting the outcome the country has needed since Thatcher was deposed.

salieri

If history does regard the Blair memo as a valuable contemporary source, it will illustrate nothing more than the wounded amour-propre of one huckster hearing his successor proclaiming the need for change.

That Blair pronounced "après nous le déluge" should come as no surprise. Vanity need not be equated with sound judgement. His was vanity combined with even greater vacuity. The rot had already set in with the success of the Great Project - i.e. election and re-election, at any price.

Both con-men now have their 'legacy', and what a terrible one it is.

John Page

Fraser, you've changed the contrast now. Brown got to put tax credits through because they meant giving money to Labour voters, but they could never work (I have posted on this elsewhere). The Blair examples you've given were unpopular with Labour so he had to make concessions to get them through. (But I hold no brief for either of them.) Your source said Brown implemented his bad ideas "very well". Did your source name one policy Brown implemented very well?

Common sense

11 years of ecnomic growth, thank you on behalf of the british people that he was not fired.

DW

Fraser - Why are you trying to give Blair credit for ideas and Brown for implementation of his? They are both as bad as each other in policy and practice.

eg Brown and tax credits. They were introduced without being workable. There was no clear thinking and decisiveness from Brown. Civil servants involved went from crisis meeting to crisis meeting for months. This is no achievement - to implement something is also to make it workable, and they were never even near the mark. Instead the civil servants were required to cover up disaster after disaster.
As for Blair - he had plenty of crap ideas to throw at us - march off drunken yobs to the cash machine was one...also his idea to invade Iraq, which was so bad he had to 'doctor' the security arguments to get it through.
So, in my book, Brown bullied his way and still created bad unworkable policy, and Blair, though more personable, was short on truthful detail. Neither has anything to be proud about.

SBJ

What policy has Brown ever thought through????
What policy did he actually IMPLEMENT very well? Surely not the Bank of England's independence which, as we've discovered recently, means that they have been working to different criteria when it comes to inflation and interest rates than the rest of us. Whose fault is that?
The ten pence tax fiasco? That was an achievement? -
It's been one u-turn after another.
As for inheritance tax...I could go on.

Fraser Nelson

Common Sense, it was literally the slowest growth in the English-speaking world from 97 to 07, plus 80% of the new jobs were accounted for by immigration, I could go on. But if he'd taxed less, and reformed welfare more, we'd all be so much better off as a country.

DW, I think you're being generous to Brown. His tax credits were designed to fiddle the "poverty" definition, moving those just below the 60% income threshold to just above it. For most of the ten years, it did the job. I'm not saying it was a success, but he implemented what he intended to.

John & SBJ, I'm not saying Brown's ideas worked. But he got them enacted, he made the transition from his head (or Ed Balls' head) to the statute book which Blair repeatedly failed to do. His Treasury power grab with the PSAs: enacted very well. His debt concealment programme (PFI, IFF etc): implemented very well. His inflation metric switch, to have the media refer to some weird CPI Euro measure as "inflation" not the RPI the British public has known for decades. Implemented very well. And his main mission was that of a confidence trickster, to persuade people like CommonSense that he'd been an economic genius by providing the metrics they use to judge him. Implemented very well.

His cover was only blown when the Brown Bubble burst and the effects are felt everywhere. It took so long to rumble him because his plans - to build a Potemkin economy that would fool the media - were implemented very well.

Verity

Salieri - "vanity combined with ... vacuity." The Blair years summed up in four words.

Frank Pulley

Verity:

I could try four more: Three terms - same scam.

Surely they can't work it FOUR times, even in the UK, the most gullible electorate on Earth.?

Kiffa

Fraser: have you met Gordon Brown? What is he like? Clever, sensible, deluded? What do the people who work for him say he is like?
I wanted to ask George Osbourne, who very clearly disliked the man (or had been treated rudely by him), but didn't have the bottle.

Wily Trout

The poorer the quality of education, the more gullible the electorate. Hardly an incentive to improve the provision of state education. Blair and Brown have been reaping the harvest of decades of declining standards.

oldtimer

Fraser, from your replies at 6.56pm amd 10.31pm I think we have very different interpretations of what counts as success in the Blair/Brown years.

In the political world, which you report, it seems that getting something through the system - legislation, more power over rivals, winning elections etc - is of itself enough to count as a success. The fact that the end consequence of the implementation (for the rest of us) was somehow flawed or bungled or fooled the majority of the population for some years seems not to count.

In our personal or the business world bungling an executive action does not count as a success but as a failure. It will only count as a success if it delivers the intended result - am I or the business better off? I suspect that these differing perspectives account for the gulf that is evident between your views and many of those that have commented here.

Ian C

Fraser you say "It took so long to rumble him because his plans - to build a Potemkin economy that would fool the media - were implemented very well".

I would say that the worldwide fanatstic macro-economic environment were a major cover for this. It meant that the stealth and other new taxes levied were not felt as they would have been in less uniformly good times as they are now.

Do not also underestimate the effect of the parlous state of the opposition allowed this to happen. Now that Labour will have been in power for at least 12 years by the next election means that their spending plans, based on their tax structures will still be dominating the state of the economy for a while to come.

The point being that the opposition failed the nation in its political and social responsibilities by failing to get its act together. Were it not for the good environment we would have become very close to a becoming a Banana Democracy, like Italy and others. Some would say that we're not far from that now with the 'over-government' that has gone on in this time.

David Lucas

Blair may have churned out brain-stormed "ideas" - "lets do something about X" but they were rarely well-formed political ideas that could be implemented within the framework of law and institutions we live with, and tended to reap massive unintended consequences.

And he had reckless lack of concern for the damage he did along the way - it was with him all "eye-catching initiatives". Thankfully his follow-through was minimal.

As the chaos that followed Brown's budgets showed he had little more idea of the consequences of his actions in economics because he seems to have been to clever (ie arrogant) to consult on measures.

Property in SIPPs was the classic case study.

John F in Dorset

With all the opprobium rightly being piled onto him, does Blair get any credit for solving the Irish question?

Sellars and Yeatman claimed that every time England came near to solving the Irish question, the Irish changed the question.

However, this time time around, they came up against someone who changed his answers faster than they could change the question.

Frank Pulley

Willy Trout

Well said!

David Lucas

Dear "Common Sense". That would be 15 years of economic growth not 11.; 4 years of conservatives, 2 years of following Conservative spending plans, and a two-year lag for economic policy to show through.

Followed by increasing signs of uncontrolled wasteful spending, asset bubbles, structural deficits (followed by moving of goalposts on balance over the cycle, and huge off-balance- sheet debts) leading to hollowed-out, over-heated economy unready for a bust.

In short Gordon took a solid economy and rode it into the ground. Unimpressed.

Trumpeter Lanfried

John F in Dorset @ 12.07 PM: You ask, 'Does Blair get any credit for solving the Irish question?'

No. Because handing over government to a bunch of murderers who should have been hanged is not a worthy solution.