Tom Harris didn’t much care for Dan Hannan’s speech setting about Gordon Brown. Fair enough, as a Labour MP you wouldn’t expect him to find it a hoot. But then he says this:
Well I don’t regard Gordon Brown to be the nation’s leader and I don’t think you should either. Similarly, Tony Blair was never the “nation’s leader” and nor was John Major. That job has been filled, very effectively, by Queen Elizabeth for some time now. Harris’s attempt to create a convention whereby it’s considered poor form to be rude about the Prime Minister – a mere MP for crying out loud – when we’re overseas is terrible guff. Pompous guff at that. By contrast the American President is head of state so there is at least some greater reason for the convention that applies in their politics.What was truly repugnant about his speech was the total absence of any sense of patriotism. Some Tories on the extreme right of the party share the problem of some Republicans in the States: they don’t regard the head of government to be the nation’s leader unless he or she is also a member of their little party. Gordon Brown isn’t just Labour’s prime minister; he’s Britain’s prime minister, and for any UK politician to launch such a disgraceful, personal attack on his country’s leader — in a foreign country — is nothing short of disgraceful.
But Gordon Brown is merely MP for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath and leader of the party with the most seats in the House of Commons. That’s not enough to insulate him from criticism, at home or abroad. And nor should it be. Indeed, one of the advantages of monarchy is that it puts politicians in their proper place and, in theory at any rate, prevents the growth of the kind of spawling, imperial presidencies we see in some countries that were foolish enough to abandon the monarchical principle. That is, France and the United States of America…
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