The Tories should fear the dynamic new team of professionals that Brown is assembling

Fraser Nelson

Wednesday, 5th March 2008

Fraser Nelson reviews the week in politics

Two recruits have joined No. 10 in the last week. One is Jennifer Moses, a former Goldman Sachs managing director and former head of CentreForum, a (surprisingly good) Liberal Democrat think-tank. Just last month she wrote a spirited article blaming Mr Brown’s benefits system for ‘huge financial disincentives to move from welfare to work’. Her new home is the No. 10 policy unit. She will soon be joined by David Muir, one of the most respected figures in the world of new media and advertising, who ran a division of the WPP empire and has co-authored a well-received book, The Business of Brands.

Any venture capital firm would be delighted with such a team of turnaround specialists. Yet what is striking about Mr Brown’s new recruits is that there is hardly a Labour party membership card among them: these are not the fanatical Brownite guerrillas of New Labour Mark One. Mr Carter has no ideological bent and Mr Heywood is considered a natural conservative. It is as if Brown Inc. were a company facing a hostile takeover, advised by Goldmans to hire a new management team. A common technique in the City, and in American politics — but not in Westminster.

So it is futile to argue, as many Conservatives still do, that nothing of any substance is happening in 10 Downing Street and that Mr Brown is a rather large Scottish bunny frozen in the headlights. He has a new machine, fundamentally different to that which so spectacularly mishandled the botched election-that-never-was and Northern Rock. The orderly Cabinet reshuffle which followed Peter Hain’s resignation and last week’s well-received welfare reform plans give a better taste of what the Tories might expect from now on.

The Conservative operation now perched in Labour’s old home of Millbank contains no former Goldman Sachs partners or chiefs. Indeed, one is hard-pushed to find many with experience of the 2001 election campaign, let alone wider industry. It is also losing, rather than attracting, stars. Oliver Dowden, Richard Hardyment and George Bridges have drifted away in recent months — all bright young men who, for whatever reason, did not see their future with the Tories.

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Christopher Chantrill

March 7th, 2008 4:22am Report this comment

The thing is: if Gordon Brown and his tip-top management team start legislating welfare and education reform where does that leave the Parliamentary Labour Party and the Labour client state? Isn't this government without politics?

Snouter

March 7th, 2008 8:36am Report this comment

One question: how does Brown pay for these people? Is it tax payers' money - or is it Labour party money? (I thought they were bankrupt.)

E Welshman

March 17th, 2008 8:23pm Report this comment

But it's still the inept Bottler that they are trying to groom. How many of them will have given it up as a bad job in 6 months' time?

David Bretagne

March 17th, 2008 8:48pm Report this comment

McBrown will need to retain some control (freakery) in order to prevent the unlikeable Balls from spoiling his party.

David Winkworth

March 17th, 2008 9:05pm Report this comment

brwon can assemble any team he likes - I will never ever forgive him for what he did to pensions and for funding the Iraq war

John Maynard

March 18th, 2008 10:17pm Report this comment

With the financial system teetering and the government bankrupt, no wonder there are suddenly a surfeit of "masters of the universe", and business consultant types looking for bolt-holes with Brown. Fraser Nelson should surely have realised by now that all of these "business geniuses" and investment bankers (!) with their superficial "solutions" and brilliant wheezes are much overrated.

Tony B

March 21st, 2008 3:26am Report this comment

The unfortunate thing about Politics these day with the hiring of consultants is that its the consultants that are already inside the door that are advising to hire them!! Soon there will be nobody in Politics with any actual real interest in Politics. Just what lobbyists,big business want.

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