If Brown can’t learn to feel the electorate’s pain, it will be him who suffers

Fraser in his politics column, available online tomorrow, argues that in the current climate Brown’s lack of emotional intelligence will be less of a problem for him. This is one of those rare instances where I disagree with Fraser.

It is one of Brown’s great faults that he doesn’t do empathy or apologies. I think this is going to be a huge problem for him during a recession when politicians have to be able to do the ‘I feel your pain’ stuff if they don’t want to appear hideously out of touch.

Take Brown’s comments earlier today. Andrew Porter, a journalist who gives Brown a fair shake, reports that Brown was asked about rising unemployment and replied that the government was creating jobs insulating lofts. The Guardian has the quote as follows:

“We are expanding in a very radical way our insulation and draught-proofing central-heating provision for the elderly and other people in our country. We are training large numbers of additional people to do that work in insulation. That will be one of the employment programmes that will grow.” 

Now, this statement is factually accurate. But I suspect that a lot of the people who have recently lost their job or are worried about doing so, are looking for work other than this. Brown needs to become more emotionally literate, or people will come to see him as uncaring or detached from reality.