Brown’s fatal flaws

As prophecies go, it had none of the ritual majesty of the Sybil of Cumae’s pronouncements, none of the blood-chilling qualities of Cassandra. But it has, in its own way, come to pass nonetheless. Jonathan Powell, the chief of staff to Tony Blair, once told our former editor that Gordon Brown’s political career would be a ‘Shakespearean tragedy’. And with every day that passes the tragic quality of Mr Brown’s premiership is underlined.

A politician of formidable gifts, powerful intellect and great passions is, nevertheless, finding that he simply doesn’t have what it takes to make a success of the most demanding job in politics — as the events of the last two months have cruelly exposed.

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.