Leading article

Brown’s fatal flaws

1 December 2007

The Spectator on Gordon Brown's premiership

The latest funding scandal is only the most recent misfortune to attend the Brown premiership, after the debacle of the missing discs, the continuing reverberation of the Northern Rock collapse and the revelation that illegal immigrants were employed by the state in sensitive security positions. For those inclined to be moved by pity, the spectacle of a government buffeted by these crises might inspire sympathy, and an acknowledgement that any administration can be unlucky, and no definitive judgment should be passed on ministers just because events conspire against them. But, as the Independent columnist Steve Richards, himself a Labour sympathiser, has pointed out, accident-prone politicians aren’t accident-prone by accident. Labour’s current misfortunes and Brown’s present woes flow from deep flaws in his approach to the task of leadership. Just as Shakespeare’s heroes fell because of flaws inherent in their character, so Gordon Brown is paying for mistakes he has made, errors which reflect deep weaknesses in his own leadership style.

The Prime Minister has always liked to operate through a tight cabal, restricting information and power to a limited circle of trusted figures chosen more for their loyalty than ability. As our political editor revealed last year, Mr Brown would only allow a very small number of political allies and officials to speak, or act, on his behalf. When he moved to No. 10, Mr Brown appeared, briefly, to appreciate that this Nixonian approach of trusting only a tight circle of blood brothers wouldn’t work and he tried to create a more broadly based administration, the so-called Government of All the Talents. But the Government of All the Talents has become an administration which treats ministers like servants, with No. 10 slapping down any department that steps out of line, or dares to innovate, and unattributable briefing used to undermine those who have fallen from favour by presuming to think for themselves.

This style of bunker government has its roots in the way Mr Brown organised his office in opposition and operated while at the Treasury. He ran an operation which secured its objectives by brutalising colleagues who stood in his way and which weakened the Labour party itself by continually ramping up internal opposition to Tony Blair. Mr Brown may feel he owes a debt to the political knife-fighters who helped him drive Mr Blair from office, but they are not proving half as effective in running the show as those whom they supplanted.

Senior civil servants openly share their concerns about how Downing Street now operates. Decisions which need to be taken promptly if the machinery of government is to function smoothly are delayed endlessly while the Prime Minister broods and tries to calculate where political advantage lies. This fatal subordination of good governance to political calculation was never more apparent than in the open manoeuvring around the party conference season over the question of an early election.

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JC

November 29th, 2007 10:57am Report this comment

It's not Hamlet by a long chalk. Surely it's Henry VI and Richard II, all 13 hours of it. At the end of the BBC version Margaret is seen laughing atop a pile of corpses with the dead Richard in her arms. Seeing Margaret re-enter No 10 was.....well, Shakespearian. I suppose the real irony is that the RSC is doing all of these plays next year....as Hamlet said, holding a mirror up to nature.

Almyers

November 30th, 2007 11:16am Report this comment

King Lear, without the nobility

Robbie

November 30th, 2007 1:22pm Report this comment

It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. -- Charles Dickens (A Tale of Party Donations, 1859)

mat g

December 5th, 2007 12:01pm Report this comment

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bean-Ultimate-Disaster-Rowan-Atkinson/dp/B00005UWRX/ref=pd_bbs_8?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1196856001&sr=8-8

Nickford

December 5th, 2007 10:12pm Report this comment

It's not a disaster, it's a comedy and, for as long as it continues, the machinery of this 'statist' government will be severely hampered. Let's laugh and give thanks in the short term and work for better in the long.

Thomas Cussans

December 5th, 2007 10:36pm Report this comment

The key point about Brown is that, son of the manse or not, there is no integrity. There is only narrow party political calculation. It may have worked when he was chancellor. It transparently isn't now he is PM.

Combined with his disastrously inept public performances (which he can never change, however many deep-breathing exercises he does or however many times he practices his grisly smile) and his reliance on a narrow cabal of very nasty young thrusters, the result is an inevitable, Anthony-Eden style tragi-comedy.

His best bet is to pack it in now. He won't of course. The eventual tears will be all the more bitter.

Mr Cinders

December 5th, 2007 11:20pm Report this comment

It would be interesting to know which of your former editors was informed that Brown's career would be a 'Shakespearian tragedy': Johnson B, Johnson F, Lawson D, Moore, Chancellor, Lawson N? It has been obvious to many for quite a long time.

Madasafish

December 6th, 2007 11:30am Report this comment

It's not Hamlet.. there is nothing noble about it. More like The Simpsons without the humour.

Eats Wombats

December 6th, 2007 5:03pm Report this comment

I see we get a choice of endings. Capital!

Salvatore

December 13th, 2007 6:17pm Report this comment

I agree, and it's about time Brown was exposed.

Cameron needs to demand that Brown details in plain and easily measurable terms exactly how he is an effective prime minister, so that everyone can see that he either sets the bar for himself pitifully low, or that he fails to meet the standards he sets.

At present Cameron seems happy to let Brown avoid answering questions. If this continues, and he does not pin Brown down, people will be asking Cameron questions about his own suitability for office. That would be a pity.

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