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Sunday 7 September 2008

Politics

Brown cares more about faction fights than the betrayal of 25 million citizens

Gordon Brown's attempt to control everything means he controls nothing

Mr Brown is being compared to a swimmer surrounded by sharks who, instead of dealing with the situation, asks who sent the sharks. A remarkable example is the witch hunt to find the ‘Whitehall knight’ who recently had lunch with Sue Cameron of the Financial Times and inspired a wonderfully acerbic report on how Mr Brown is regarded by the civil service. I am told Mr Brown is reasonably confident he has now narrowed the group of suspects down to three.

This gives a worrying sense of Prime Ministerial priorities. One can lose the personal details of 25 million Britons with impunity — but there is to be no hiding-place for civil servants who gossip with journalists during lunch. The message is going out that those who take on No. 10 will be identified and destroyed. But it is precisely this attempt to control which is leading to lack of control. Mr Brown’s danger radar is blipping red with disloyal insiders. It seems not to be scanning the political horizon of the outside world, which is perhaps why accidents seem to be coming out of the blue.

Mr Brown is behaving at the start of his premiership in the same way that Lady Thatcher did at the very end of hers. ‘What are they doing now?’ she would ask despairingly of her Cabinet: the battles had become so intense that the government itself was divided into them and us. In the same way, Mr Brown seems to regard his Cabinet members as human shields who exist to take bullets for him when there is bad news. This is why the beleaguered Mr Darling will stay, for now. His battered body is good for a few more bullets yet.

It is as if Mr Brown has spent so long as a factional leader that he has not grasped the organic unity of his government. If a member of his Cabinet takes a hit, he has not escaped: his reputation also suffers. His skills in fighting internal wars with rival Labour factions may have swept him to No. 10 — but they are not fit for purpose now that he has got there. Yes, the Treasury could be run on a tight leash — not so an entire government.

If the Prime Minister has not yet grasped this, his colleagues have. One could see the grim realisation in the drained expression of those on the Labour benches as they listened to Mr Darling on Tuesday. It was more than a bad day at the office for the Chancellor, far more than a humiliation for the Prime Minister. This was the day when the government’s reputation for competence died.

More articles from: Fraser Nelson | this section

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