A false dawn

Gordon Brown has a number of key political challenges to satisfy simultaneously if he is to lead his party to a fourth consecutive election victory. As Lee’s outstanding book makes plain, the Prime Minister’s immediate political task is to distance himself from the unpopular aspects of the Blair legacy without falling into the hole Al Gore dug for himself. Brown’s task is much more difficult, however. No one thought Gore had much influence on US politics. No one could believe the same here, with Brown’s unparalleled imperial power over home policy.

The Prime Minister has also to deal with the Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath Question. This strategy coalesces around attempts to develop a new sense of Britishness. The scope of Brown’s ideas are to be marvelled at: a new kind of Britishness to emerge from establishing a new British enlightenment, no less. The vision is breathtaking.

The policy will fail as it is currently constructed. The Prime Minister and his lieutenants’ attempts to convince the weary English of their Britishness results only in a growing opposition that is becoming focused on demands for English independence. The chicanery of the operation can be seen when, for example, ministers promote the British way but have only English historical and constitutional developments on which to build. There is a particularly fine chapter where Brown’s speeches on Britishness are carefully analysed, showing that quotations from poets, authors and composers on the basis of their Britishness is only an extolling of Englishness.

A new British identity, if it can be established, will only result after first securing the identity of England and then seeing the extent to which it may overlap with a broader idea of Britishness. I admit that such policies involve particular risks for a Scottish prime minister.