Jenni Russell has written in the Guardian a brilliantly considered demolition job of our prudent leader. The user comments are equally cutting and insightful.
After wanting this job so much, allowing this singular obsession to run rampant for a decade in office, he finally gets the keys to number 10. And everyone (well, many) hope that things really are going to get better. That Tony and his centrist policies have buggered off for good. Gordon will restore the red in Labour. PFI will get the boot. No more active involvement in illegal acts in foreign countries. The unquestioning deference for the wealthy will end.
All of these hopes really ignored the reality. Gordon Brown was the most powerful chancellor in recent history. He was instrumental in defining and leading the government for the previous 10 years. Even just the example of PFI and the Tube demonstrate how disconnected from reality people’s hopes were that Gordon would renew old Labour. Despite all the evidence that it was going to be a disaster, he pushed through the privatisation of the Tube, seemingly heavily influenced by a spat with Ken Livingstone. He was responsible for the enormous con of off-balance sheet recording of PFI debt (doing financial strategy for my MBA left me wondering huh? How on earth is that considered a sensible thing to do? We are liable for the debt, but it isn’t accounted for as a risk. It is like taking out one big Ocean Finance loan. And then not telling your partner).
Then there was the ridiculous non-election. The usual blame game was trotted out: it was the media’s fault for cooking up the fire-storm, ignoring the fact that the Labour party had spent nearly £1m in preparation, including booking advertising space.
There was the excruciatingly terrible Prime Minister’s Questions, where even Osborne could lay punches and Gordon sat there like a big dumb bear, wondering why people are goading and poking him with sticks. Cringeworthy.
And now, from mates working in the lobby, it seems the policy is “no news is good news”. The government media machine has gone into shutdown mode. The news beast had got used to the previous decade long conveyor belt of stories, and to stop feeding news outlets created a huge amount of frustration. It is a very naive, panicked and short termist approach to media management: news channels are still on air, column inches and newspaper websites still need to be filled. And a pissed-off lobby with no stories is certainly going to start coming up with their own (arguably, what they should have been doing in the first place). None of which will be controlled or favourable to the current government, and therefore their media machine will quickly have to switch to fire-fighting mode.
After a while of having switched off the constant chuntering of announcements of new policy initiatives or new spending, Gordon managed to keep his head down. But now he’s back with a vengance – first with the amoral abolition of the 10p tax rate, while the economic downturn is shining new light onto Gordon’s off-balance sheet accounting practices.
At a party celebrating my graduation (yay me!), many friends and family from all over the political spectrum were saying the same thing. Members (and ex-members) of the Labour party, a former Blairite MP (he’s no longer an MP, but I have a feeling he still considers himself a Blairite), small c conservative a-political types. Lefties who loathe the NuLab project. People who have zero interest in politics unless it impacts their wallet.
They said, well, Gordon Brown is a rubbish Prime Minister. Really rubbish. But even more depressing. There isn’t anyone else.
