Gordon Brown: Der Untergang

Fully Democratic voting systems deliver 36% of the power for 36% of the votes. This is boring for career politicans, but it’s also predictable. Most European politicians have to exercise skills to work together in the national interest more than once every 36 years plus remembrance day. As the only way to more power is to win more votes, they have to work harder with the public, and are generally more respected for it.

As it is in the UK, ninety years of cruising around in the belief that 36% of the vote entitles our political masters to 100% of the power has scarce prepared them for an hour such as this. Although they are being uncharacteristically soppy-stern and polite, they don’t seem to know how to talk with each other, rather than at each other. One optimistic hope is that they will learn, and this will be good for us all. The problem has been acknowledged since the 1860’s, and the kind of solution we need an open secret since the Royal Commission of 1908-10. They can hardly say they weren‘t warned.

And as the great Poker Game in the Sky grinds on around Westminster, first man down is Gordon Brown. How will historians see him?

Two interesting counterfactuals could be run:

• What if John Smith had lived another ten years?
  
  
• What if Brown had cut and run in 2007 to establish his legitimacy?

To Brown’s credit, probably, is his performance as a very British iron chancellor. His staunchest opponents will have to grudgingly admit he held his nose and did what probably had to be done about the credit crunch, and competently. His tax credits scheme was a way of redistributing income without raising income tax. He generated shedloads of cash to throw at education and health after thirty years of cuts. Yes, there’s a comparatively high peacetime public debt, but everyone’s got one of those coming out of recession, whilst economic historians will point out that as a proportion of GDP it’s actually lower than for most of the tweniteth century.

Brown was a Roundhead at Tony Blair’s Cavalier party. When Blair and Brown met at the Loch Fyne Fish Restaurant, or wherever, they carved up the next 13 years of the governance of Brtain between them. The process was probably much swifter and easier than what has been going on since last Thursday, and considerably more lasting.

However, as Blair swigged the champagne, Brown gagged on his Irn Bru. Therein lies tragedy.

Once Brown had gotten over the joy of playing with the real levers of power at Number 11, he probably hated the party, but hung on in there for the joy that lay ahead. How sad that it was so joyless when he got it. Nobody knows at what point Blair and/or Brown bricked up the corridor from Number 11 to Number 10, but his estrangement from his ertswhile dinner companion was disastrous. Brown, as a man of genuine rectitude, probably found it hard to believe what some of his less puritanical colleagues were up to.

But Brown was a genuine conviction politician. I remember his appearance at the Lambeth Conference. He obviously knew and owned the Millennium Development Goals without cue cards. He actually belived in that stuff.

Colleagues from all over the world, who believe the English to be clever but devious, were impressed by his obvious sincerity and passion. Not quite English. Scots, in fact.

Too passionate, not emotionally intelligent enough? How about what they are already calling Bigot-Gate? Other politicians suggest they would never call a voter anything as rude as “that woman.” When the great bin of emails is emptied out on the day of doom, and the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed, I believe it will show other politicians have, in fact, called voters, and their colleagues, considerably ruder things and got away with it. But not with the microphone on.

And after all those complaints about Tony Blair’s addiction to spin, it’s ironic and sad, in some ways, that Brown’s “Lion in Winter” style was such a rat sandwich to Fleet Street, if not all the British public.

Blair danced for us and we tried to dance, with all the finesse Btits bring to that activity. Brown wept for us and we would not wail. He’s almost certainly done the decent thing politically. I think history will be kinder to him than the Sun. Let’s see who’s next.

Is it the Sun wot will win it?

Brown doomed. Official. The Sun has decided to support the Conservatives for the next election. For overseas readers, the Sun is a British end-of-the-pier newpaper that can be good fun and surprisingly cleverly written, the front page of which occasionally captures a national mood crudely but effectively. It has a capacity to annoy all sorts of people, but can be immensely entertaining, if rather right wing, sexist, and celebrity-obsessed.

Much wry comment could be made about the Sun. Some say it’s only what most other UK newspapers except the Financial Times really are, but they are far too snobbish to take responsibility for being as crude and vulgar. The Sun is generally good natured. It also seems to believe its readers are people who don’t think for themselves and will therefore follow its advice, sheeplike, about how to vote. As much as I’d like this not to be the case, it may be right.

Like the rest of Fleet Street, it probably overclaims its readership in order to prop up its dwindling advertising income, but they all do, and business is business. So come in, Gordon Brown, your time is up. A brave face was put on this yesterday by Labour politicians, of course, but according to conventional wisdom the writing is now on the wall.

I’m not sure, myself, that the Sun does win or lose elections. The Sun, historically speaking, trims its views pragmatically to match whoever it thinks will win. I suspect it follows as much as leads public opinion. And, of course, in these days of collapsing newsprint, it will be interesting to see exactly which part of fractured public opinion it follows. My hunch, for the little it’s worth, is that the age profile of people who actually vote could be weighted towards elderly. I rather doubt the Labour party has the will or the wherewithal to connect with voters under 30, so the election may well be decided by the kind of people who still read the Sun. I wouldn’t be so sure about the 2015 election. On the day the value of UK advertising on the internet overtook the value of TV advertising, it may be the writing is also on the wall for the Sun. Could Gordon Brown thus get the last laugh after all, but too late to save his government?

Blowing bubbles in Hard Times?

Are we Bishops out to get Gordon Brown? Heck no. All my Lords of Canterbury, York, Winchester, Durham and London meant in what they said at Christmas was exactly what they said. Desperate attempts by the Daily Telegraph to turn their sermons into a party personal campaign are ridiculous. No wonder DT’s readership has dwindled to under half what it used to be.

But what about Gordon Brown and the economy? Like most colleagues in funny hats, I have a great personal respect for the Prime Minister. His words at the Lambeth Conference were brilliant and impassioned, showing deep personal understanding of, familiarity with and commitment to the millennium development goals. They were entirely ignored by the UK flock of Salaried Hacks, who were trying to portray him at the time as all washed up and about to resign. In the flesh, he seemed nothing of the sort, and so it has proved. He wasn’t and he didn’t.

In bigger terms, Labour government since 1997 deserves credit for at least trying to adress many significant issues, often long term problems and trends around which predecessors failed. It’s striven nobly to use the fiscal system and other means to tackle Child Poverty and help pensioners. Having gotten us into the hole in Iraq, it’s trying to dig us out. It’s talked the talk on development, globalization and the environment, and sometimes even walked the walk.

At home, HMG has tried to address questions of social cohesion, although some of its initiatives here smack of boy scouts helping old ladies across a road they don’t need or want to cross. Education and, even more, healthcare are areas where it’s poured money in, although there’s still chronic doubt about bangs per buck. On Civil Liberties, the record is dubious, but, in fairness, this area of governance has been a chronic tidal race between ideals and pragmatism for all our rulers these past 500 years. Let’s be kind and draw a tactful veil over transportation and penal policy, both disaster areas. Since the days UK penal policy was transportation, all governments have been clueless about both.

On the Economy? By the wisdom of the world and curent economics Labour has played up, played up and played the game — and reaped many benefits for us all. It was a bit hilarious to see politicians on all sides clambering over each other as they turned on a sixpence last autumn about the need for tough regulation of financial institutions, after years of loud boasting about the virtues of low to zero regulation. However, it would be unfair to suggest our politicians were greedier or naughtier at the party trough than anybody else’s.

Fact is, We’re all in this mess together — The Church of England, the Bank of England, the Labour Party, the Conservative party, the owners of newspapers, and indeed everybody else in Britain with a house, or a pension, or money in a bank, is implicated up to the eyeballs. To look ahead in hard times, we need to address the “meta” level. As we all stand around the bonfire of the Vanties, trying to warm our hands, some “meta” questions strike me:

1. We need a reboot not a bailout, as the man said. It’s time to think different. The fantasy that the answer to one housing Ponzi is another is profoundly barmy. Debt fuelled growth is problematic. It makes everybody feel good for all the wrong reasons. The wealth is like fairies in Peter Pan — fine as long as you believe it really is wealth, but every time a house is undersold, a fairy dies. It’s certainly no substitute for hard work, added value, goods and services. Borrowing to bailout has to be paid for by future taxation. If we must borrow heavily off our children, perhaps even our grandchildren, as the UK did to defeat fascism in the 1940’s, at least let it be for a rational and worthy cause, not just more of the same.
2. Rich and Poor — the gap has widened, though the government has sincerely tried to reduce child poverty. This is exactly the global problem highlighted by the Pope at New Year. It’s right on the button and nothing like unique to the UK. But what do we do about it? What about the losers? What about savers? What about pensioners struggling with bills and taxes, often on fixed savings-based incomes for which they’ve worked damned hard, and which now seem so inadequate? MP’s read their post and know exactly who I mean — it matters that the poor are not forgotten.
   
3. Has our economic effort gotten out of balance? Not enough manufacturing, design and R&D — too many bubbles blown. Ingenuity that has been applied to repackaging debt as profit could now be applied to, er, what — the real world?
4. Was “more” in itself a sufficient object? — yes and no? It would have been, if we had a greater vision of how to invest it, perhaps. But then our greater vision would have been the sufficient object. So, logically, no. Sure we all need to feed outselves. There’s nothing wrong with growth, and lots that’s right with it, but it is not big enough to be the purpose of our civilisation in itself.

These concerns touch core traditional theology as well as secular economics. Christian theologians talk about social as well as personal regeneration. In the Christian Scriptures, Poverty and Justice are issues that will not go away, from the prophet Amos to the Letter of James or the beatitudes in Luke. The Old Testament principle of Jubilee, and its radical questioning of debt as an instrument of power speaks into this mess. It deserves serious contemplation, after years of being sidelined and thought unthinkable.