This is the third in our series of posts looking at where it all went wrong for Gordon Brown. The first and second are here and here, respectively.
Assessing Gordon Brown’s biggest mistake is like trying to name Elton John’s worst record. There are so many to choose from. But set aside the strategic blunders – like the bungled election – and you have what I think has proved his undoing: his reliance on dodgy statistics. We call them “Brownies” here in Coffee House – statistics produced using a variety of tactics. Sometimes exaggeration, other times simple concoction. But each of them undermines his best hope of success: portraying himself as a hardworking, no-spin man of the people.
A few weeks ago, when I was in Basra, I heard another example – from Brown’s visit there during Tory party conference last autumn. The military were pleased to see him, and prepared to buy into the idea that he was a dour, but competent man who had no interest in showbiz but would get on with the job. When he announced that 1,000 troops would be back by Christmas, there was utter confusion: what on earth did he mean? The officers asked the MoD in London, who didn’t know. No10 didn’t seem to know either. Turns out it was a fake figure he’d cooked up with a few of his aides. The 1,000 who would be home by Christmas included people who would be in Kuwait, and others coming home on troop rotation who would be replaced. The military were flabbergasted: you don’t mislead the public on such issues, they thought. And Brown had done just that. From that moment, the military’s faith in Brown was shattered. He was regarded as a spiv, even worse than Blair.
Brown hasn’t realised that the financial chicanery which worked so well for him in the Treasury can’t be used in No10. No one believes his child poverty figures any more – one week he says a million are “lifted out of poverty” the next week it’s almost halved to 600,000. He speaks as if statistics speak for themselves, as if the electorate is a computer that he’s punching numbers into. “Low inflation” he says – and produces a CPI index to prove it. But no one believes him. Part of the reason strikes are back on the agenda is due to the collapse of faith in government inflation data.
Brown’s problem is that he believes his own hype: that he is responsible for ten years of growth. All he did was persuade some suggestible economics journalists of this, when, in fact (as the brilliant David Smith pointed out), since he took over British growth has been the worst in the English-speaking world. He lists facts like we’re supposed to be grateful. Highest employment, he says (80% of it thanks to immigration). The problem is that people are not stupid. They know vast swathes of our cities are on benefits, they can see prices going skywards. They see and experience higher street crime, and don’t believe data suggesting to the contrary. Brown’s statistics have ceased to wash.
And yet he uses dodgy figures as his first and last line of defence. It’s like, if he says them enough, they will be true. That we will believe Britain spends more on defence than China or Russia, that we’ve never had it so good generally. He has a statistic for everything, and believes they shut down arguments in themselves.
This dismays Labour people too: the Blairites hated how Brown would fight election listing off his greatest hits and telling folk they should be grateful. Brown is a one-trick pony, whose only trick has been rumbled by the audience. That is why they are getting restive in the stalls, demanding a new act.
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