Alex Massie Alex Massie

Gordon Brown’s Presbyterian Conscience

When a politician tries to make a virtue out of the fact that he was brought up in a household in which lying was frowned upon then, verily, you know he’s on his uppers. Equally, though I daresay that much of the expenses scandal does offend the remnants of Gordon’s “presbyterian conscience” it’s not immediately clear that asserting his own membership of the Elect is necessarily going to endear the Prime Minister to his twin congregations at Westminster and in the country at large, each of which is manifestly fallen…

Anyway, if Brown’s “presbyterian conscience” really is all he’d like us to think it is and if his bally “moral compass” was really fashioned from the values of the Manse and all the rest of it then one has to say that his actions as Chancellor and Prime Minister have largely confounded, nay betrayed, the very values that Brown claims to hold dear.

That is, no true presbyterian conscience could possibly countenance the level of debt Gordon Brown has landed on every family in the country. Indeed, such a reckless attitude to the public finances would be a matter for shame, not pride. It directly contradicts the old-fashioned Scots values of thrift and living within ones means. Not that it’s just a question of the national debt either: the massive expansion of public spending without any parallel increase in accountability or performance would also seem to offend the presbyterian ethic.

So too, one might also remember, does Gordon Brown’s attitude to welfare reform. Essentially, he and Tony Blair funked it. Frank Field was told to “think the unthinkable” and then, once he (perhaps foolishly) had, told that his recommendations were in fact rather too unthinkable. And so a dependency culture that is a glaring affront to presbyterian* values continues even after 12 years of this pious, prating ministry.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in