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Thursday 4 December 2008

Brown must admit his errors

Brown and his critics must admit their errors

The PM should learn from his mistakes

Fortunately for the Prime Minister, we now have a body of evidence that allows him to sort out his successes from his failures, and points the way to the changes — ‘adjustments’ might be a more appealing word to him — that are needed. No matter what else is to be done about crime, more prisons are necessary simply to keep dangerous thugs off the street and prevent judges from using overcrowding as an excuse to release them into other people’s neighbourhoods. No matter what else is to be done about the millions who prefer the couch to the workplace, a tough-minded, Rudy Giuliani/Bill Clinton-style programme that makes it economically impossible to exist on benefits is an essential. No good to talk about luring people back into the active economy while paying them more to stay out of it than to enter it.

No matter what else is to be done about the failures of the education system, greater freedom for teachers to innovate (pace Ed Balls), for good schools to expand and failing schools to close, and for parents to select schools of their choice is a basic requirement. No matter what else is to be done about immigration, rapid deportation of illegal aliens is one component of a new policy, and insistence on English-language proficiency for all immigrants is another — whether the newcomers come from within or outside the EU. Whatever else is to be done about home-grown terrorists, a deportation programme — even one that violates EU law — is essential. No good to say Britain no longer has control over these matters while at the same time urging the nation not to worry about the further surrenders of sovereignty explicit and implicit in what Brown in an unguarded moment called the new ‘constitution’.

And whatever else has to be done to ensure Britain’s prosperity in a tough, competitive world, taxes have to come down, the tax code simplified, and the tax burden shifted from work and risk-taking to consumption.

We know how to do all of these things, as the studious Prime Minister well knows. It is often said that all that is lacking is the political will. Not so. What is lacking is a willingness by the Prime Minister to admit error, and to pursue his vision of a decent Great Britain by means other than those he has tried. The hand-to-hand combat of Prime Minister’s Question Time, and the cheers and jeers of backbenchers, discourage what are derisively called U-turns, and should instead be called the application of experience.

‘When I make a mistake, it’s a beaut,’ New York’s successful mayor of yore, Fiorello LaGuardia famously said. So, too, with Gordon Brown. If he will contemplate more than the cosmetic changes he has introduced to show that he is no Tony Blair, and ‘move on’, as the saying now goes, Brown would demonstrate that he knows just how to use his intellect in the service of his vision. Better that than putting lipstick on the pig of the failed policies of the past decade.

Irwin Stelzer is director of economic policy studies at the Hudson Institute and a columnist for the Sunday Times.

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