Brown's bolus of wankers.
In his diaries on the fall of Margaret Thatcher, Alan Clark wrote that she had been brought down by a "bolus of wankers". With her fall, despite their subsequent re-election two years later, the Conservatives descended into the battles and in-fighting, mainly over Europe, which led to the landslide Labour win in 1997.Any historian will tell you that despite Marx's remarks, history tends not to repeat itself, although it does at times look strangely as if it is. Likewise, although it's difficult to come up with a better collective noun than Clark's for those currently doing their best to knife Gordon Brown when he's at his lowest ebb, it's probably already too late for Labour's chances to revive. Regardless, the money-grubbing being displayed by Cherie Blair, John Prescott and Lord Levy while Frank Field has decided to abandon the pretence of caring about the 10p top rate to just nakedly wield the dagger is doing the kind of damage which the Tories must be rubbing their hands with glee about.
As Michael White writes, much of the "revelations" in the serialisations over the weekend aren't new, or even that interesting. Prescott says that he told Blair to sack Gordon and Gordon to resign and fight him from the backbenches; neither did because as both they and Prescott doubtless knew, to do so would rip the party in half, and when it came down to it, unity was more important than their short-term gain. More damagingly, but not especially shocking were his comments that Brown could "go off like a volcano," and be "frustrating, annoying, bewildering and prickly." Quite unlike Prescott himself of course, the amiable working class lad who didn't do anything to damage the Labour party during his time in office. The real question is why ministers are then dispatched to defend Gordon from such remarks on his temperament: we all know about his moodiness, especially when Blair was coming up with another half-baked, hare-brained policy to throw to the tabloids, so why bother denying it and make Gordon out to be something he isn't? Again, if anything Prescott's memoirs add to the reasons to why Brown was right to feel aggrieved: he confirms that Blair reneged on a number of occasions to promises to stand down.
That ought to put Cherie and her comments on Brown's metaphorical(?) "rattling of No.10's keys over Tony's head" in a different light. Undoubtedly, it's her memoirs, apparently moved forward from their scheduled publishing in October because Cherie delivered her copy early, which isn't an entirely satisfying answer, which have the most potential for damage because she unlike either Prescott or Levy was closest (obviously) to both the prime minister and to Brown. One moment she claims Blair would have gone had Brown been willing to implement his precious reforms; the next she says that Blair was in fact determined to stay on because if he resigned prior to the 2005 election that history would decide he had been forced out because of Iraq. It's either one or the other. Most of the attention though has instead been drawn to the more interesting to the Scum demographic stories of the conception of Leo and subsequent miscarriage, which, almost unbelievably, was then used as the excuse why they weren't going on holiday instead of raising suspicions that something was about to happen in Iraq, a snippet that probably gives you more insight into the Downing Street spin machine than anything in Alastair Campbell's diaries. No one would begrudge Cherie putting her side across after the hysterical press coverage against her, but so far she doesn't actually seems to have done that; rather, she seems to be taken most with defending her husband. The serialisation is being stretched out over a whole week, suggesting it might well be another running sore just at the time when Brown doesn't need one.
The most shameless abuse has undoubtedly came from both Levy and Field, however. Levy appeared on the sofa that Brown had previously sat on last week, when Andrew Marr put across questions that previously might have been felt as below the belt; this week Levy was thrown the softest of balls, allowed once again to make his allegation that it would be "inconceivable" if Brown hadn't known about the dodgy loans, something which he has absolutely no evidence to back up and which is understandably making Downing Street furious. Here's the man who might well have offered "Ks and Ps" and whom the police thought should have been prosecuted, and he's the one currently raking it in despite his already overwhelming wealth and doing his best to disparage seemingly everyone formerly considered a friend.
It's the rehabilitation of Field which has been the most curious. Sacked after only a year, everyone assumes because Brown disagreed with his policies on welfare reform, he's spent the past ten years fulminating about how he's been right and everyone else wrong, becoming increasingly embittered, writing nonsensical, illogical and ignorant articles for CiF, and some thought even close to defecting to the Conservatives, who were starting to seem a more natural home. To his credit he noticed from the start the 10p tax rate debacle, but as the aphorism goes, even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day. It's one thing to be dignified and persistent in standing up for some of the most vulnerable who have lost out, even if in the past you've advocated being even harsher to some of the even more vulnerable on benefits, it's another to then postulate with apparent glee that your old adversary might shortly be heading for the knacker's yard, and that he should consult those he most loves over whether to continue in the job.
This ramshackle bunch, including Stephen Byers, another Blairite who knows what's best now that he can't tell any more lies about Railtrack, don't have much in common other than that they are almost all either yesterday's men or women, all now sucking the last teat of either infamy or wealth before their "star" wanes completely. If their stories or advice had all come at different times, rather than altogether where it can easily be constructed into a narrative of infighting and blood-letting, then they might have had little real impact. Instead, their collective strength has been to wound Brown just when he needs to be seen as recovering. Few people care whether Brown is "frustrating" or liable to "go off like a volcano" as long as he can be seen to be both competent, in control and strong. At the moment both he and those around them appear to be in flux, unable to move on while the vultures seem to be getting ever closer. This is half the reason why Cameron is ahead on every rating rather than because of any real huge difference between the two.
For Brown, it is something approaching a tragedy. As even Blair said, it was never ignoble to want the top job, even if it is slightly abnormal. It isn't, as his detractors state, that he's waited all this time and when he's finally got there he's found he's not up to the job; it's rather than he was both left waiting too long and that the tide itself has turned. He has made mistakes, on the 10p rate, not nationalising Northern Rock sooner and on the election that never was, but let's be sensible for half a second here: they don't even begin to compare with Blair's, especially the one which will now never leave either him or us alone for a long time to come. Brown himself noted that chancellors either failed or they got out in time, and it seems that for him it's been that he hasn't got out in time as prime minister itself. He most definitely has plenty to answer for, but his own bolus of wankers have even more to explain.
Labels: Alan Clark, bolus of wankers, Cherie Blair, death of Labour, Frank Field, Gordon Brown, John Prescott, local elections aftermath, Lord Levy, politics
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