Another Voice

Wednesday, 2nd July 2008

I blame those who worked with Brown, knew what he was really like, but stayed silent

‘How the Guardianistas changed their tune,’ was the heading to a Sunday Times factbox published in the paper last weekend. The intention was to mock those Fleet Street columnists, erstwhile fans of Gordon Brown, who have turned against their former hero. ‘Only five more dreaming days until Gordon Brown’s coronation,’ the famously independent-minded and fiercely left-of-centre Brown loyalist, Polly Toynbee, was quoted as having written a year ago. ‘Brown’s first month looks like a striking success,’ Jonathan Freedland, always a thoughtful and progressive voice, had written a month later. Hopeful, trusting voices, both.

No longer. ‘On current evidence he is simply not up to the job,’ thought Mr Freedland on 18 June this year. ‘It is not just Gordon Brown who looks like a dead man walking,’ remarked Ms Toynbee (13 June), ‘Labour now looks like a party of zombies.’

All good fun. Those who execute U-turns in British media commentary must expect the same mockery as awaits any politician who does the same, and both Toynbee and Freedland have broad enough shoulders to shrug off the abuse. Elsewhere in that newspaper Simon Jenkins widens the attack to include a range of commentators who ‘were euphoric at Brown’s advent a year ago’, and ‘now dismiss him as useless’. ‘They carried him to power on a chariot of golden expectation. Now he is down in the polls they beat him senseless… It is politics as horror-movie.’

It is, in short, becoming fashionable among journalists to chart — in tones of surprise and shock — the rapid turnaround in the Prime Minister’s reputation among the media and political class.

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Margarita

July 4th, 2008 11:02am Report this comment

So, what's new? Circumstances change and success and failure come in cycles. In the cycle of the bull, journos will be quick to hail the leader as a hero. Comes the bear and he becomes a zero. Nothing personal in all this Gordon, but people who don't know you will be eager to tell you who you are.

andrew tarnowski

July 4th, 2008 1:43pm Report this comment

As craven a piece of writing as I have seen from a journalist. Mr Parriss admits that for years he and all the rest got Brown completely wrong, and thus reported him. So who's fault was it, says he, now that the truth is out? Well, not theirs, of course, but those around Brown who out of political or personal loyalty protected him. If you can't get it right, Mr Parriss, don't whine about your sources! It's your job to get the right information to the public, and if you fail, have the grace to admit it.
Andrew Tarnowski, Dubai

Alexander Pelling

July 4th, 2008 2:07pm Report this comment

Someone once observed that the qualities in others that most impress us are the ones we feel ourselves to lack. I am always reminded of this when I think of Mr Brown's books about courage.

EDWARD SYNGE

July 4th, 2008 7:03pm Report this comment

Atlast a really first class analysis.But didn't Tom Bower suggest this in his "biography"early last year?

Kenneth Perry

July 4th, 2008 7:16pm Report this comment

Mr Tarnowski is right. Craven indeed. Oh Matthew ,Matthew where art thou? You too have joined the Media Sin Bin.

Bob Trimmer

July 4th, 2008 10:49pm Report this comment

Brown was being over-praised relative to an unpopular Blair and relative to David Cameron who at that time had caused the Tory Party to virtually disappear in a fog of confusion. Northern Rock announced the arrival of a global credit crunch. Had it happened 6 months earlier it would have been on Tony Blair's watch. Doubtless he would have oozed concern and felt everyone's pain - but would it have been any different? Largely it has been Events, Dear Boy, Events.

simon woodruff

July 4th, 2008 11:21pm Report this comment

Andrew Tarnowski and Ken Perry - Matthew Parris has actually been alone amongst commentators in never falling for the illusions of Brown's supposed intellect and wisdom and has always thought the cupboard was bare. Check his articles from years ago and then you see that Matthew is the the one commentator who can actually write this article and it not be craven.

David Short

July 5th, 2008 12:57am Report this comment

If we are to have a man as prime minister heading a government elected by fewer than 23 per cent of British voters, I prefer Brown to Blair.

The lack of a certain sort of legitimacy is the same.

At least Brown isn't a snout in the trough man.

Richard

July 15th, 2008 8:18pm Report this comment

"On balance, and on the information available, going back over many years, there was only one reasoned and well-evidenced conclusion anyone could reach about Brown: that he was a politician of tremendous weight and stature with strong personal and moral qualities."

Er, no.

It was very easy indeed to rumble Brown a long time ago if you judged him by his actions rather than by Westminster tittle-tattle. It was obvious by 2000 / 2001 at the latest what Brown was doing to the economy (and to other areas of policy in which he dabbled while Chancellor). Obvious to me at least and, I suspect, to quite a large number of other people. (That's one reason why the present economic crisis does not have me worried sick for my family's security: for years I have been quite clear that real economic trouble was coming and planned accordingly.)

Rather more journalists - especially the so-called political commentators - should spend rather more time engaged in serious empirical reseach and analysis, and rather less time acting as nothing more than glorified gossip columnists. Polly & Co are not really that different from the 3am Girls. But at least the 3am Girls can be amusing.

Needless to say, this doesn't exculpate Balls-Up & Co, just as the utter hopelessness of Sir Ian Blair doesn't exculpate criminal behaviour in London.

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