The eight who know Britain’s future

Naming the likely winners and losers in a Gordon Brown government has become a favourite parlour game among the political class. Enthusiastic supporters of Tony Blair’s agenda are routinely tipped for a long spell in political Siberia. Anyone with a Scottish accent or an aptitude for statistics is tipped for the top. Brownite MPs have found themselves being asked what the future holds — as if they were keepers of a great secret. The blunt truth is that everyone is in the dark. Or almost everyone, anyway.

For all his talk in his recent interview with Andrew Marr of being ‘inclusive’ and forming a ‘government of all the talents’, the Chancellor is running an operation so tight that even MPs who have proved unquestionably loyal to him are being kept out of the loop. While there is undoubtedly a Brown agenda for Britain — a blueprint that will affect every one of us if, as expected, he succeeds Mr Blair — it is one that is known to a tiny group of people. The contrast between rhetoric and reality could not be more stark.

That such a group exists and is jealous of its power was disclosed almost by accident to The Spectator when we received an unsolicited and furious email from a senior official complaining about a quote from a Brownite source which appeared in the magazine. We could not have spoken to a real Brownite, the official said, because only eight of them exist. His words speak best for themselves.

The number of people who like to categorise themselves as part of the Brownite clan is indeed large and growing. But the group of people who can speak with any authority for the so-called ‘Brown camp’ (i.e., those who have authoritative knowledge of Gordon Brown’s personal thoughts, political strategy and policy ideas) is very small.