Analysis: Where did it all go wrong?
How has it all gone so wrong for Gordon Brown and Labour? It’s still less than a year since he finally took hold of the reins of power and yet almost ever since he did people have questioned just how strong a grip he has had on them.
Those of a more cynical disposition might argue that his old boss left at the perfect moment, almost leading his successor by the nose into the perfect political storm. Since Mr Brown has come to power the government has appeared to lurch from one crisis to another. And, while in the beginning most voters were willing to give him time to settle into the job and considered that he was doing adequately, they soon ran out of patience. The drubbing that Labour received at the polls yesterday should not come as a surprise. In fact, we should all have seen it coming a mile off.
We can go through the list of excuses pretty rapidly and discard them. Labour failed to get out its core vote? Nonsense, it lost the vote. Voters were angry about the loss of the 10p tax band and this was a protest against that. While this has some credibility many voters didn’t like a lot of what Tony Blair did and yet he still didn’t suffer a defeat on the same scale as Mr Brown. Many councils changed hands because of local issues, not because of a systemic failure of the current government to engage with voters. Undoubtedly this will be true to some extent. But it does not account for the number of seats lost at a national level, unless Labour councillors around the country were all guilty of doing such an abjectly poor job that the electorate decided via some sort of telepathic link to turf them all out in unison, which is beyond all credulity.
Here’s a phrase that’s been used once or twice before: “It’s the economy, stupid”. This commentator is forced to wonder whether this will be Mr Brown’s epitaph.
It has been Gordon’s handling of the economy that has seen him landed in this mess more than any other factor. He has looked weak for some time because of it to the point that rebellious MPs, such as Frank Field feel free to go on the attack. In the past MPs would have feared standing up to Mr Brown in the way that Mr Field did over the removal of the 10p tax band and Mr Brown’s reaction to the rebellion shows just how weak he himself feels he is.
The problem is there is nothing to do with the economy where Mr Brown can simply shrug his shoulders in a kind of “it weren’t me guv” way.
Moreover Northern Rock and then the phantom election revealed the flaw many of his critics said would make Brown a bad prime minister: his caution, his lack of decisiveness, his inability to react to situations and provide a solution.
The Northern Rock fiasco has damaged Labour’s credibility on the economy more than the party appears to have realised. While Alistair Darling and his prime minister have tried to blame the current economic uncertainty on the world economic slowdown, effectively shrugging their shoulders and telling us it’s not their fault, David Cameron and the Conservatives have been having a field day.
What is astonishing about the gains the Tories have made is that they have made them without actually offering any concrete policies. How much trouble must Labour be in if they can be pushed into third place by a political party that has given no firm policy commitments and the Liberal Democrats who, while perfectly pleasant, also still give the impression of being perfectly ineffectual?
For those less critical of Mr Brown it is still hard to look at someone who has been a huge figure in the political arena for the last 25 years. Even as a young MP entering parliament Mr Brown made an impact; the problem is that now he appears out of ideas and as if he is running out of steam.
Which brings us to the point that governments sometimes just run out of steam and the electorate occasionally just want a change. Worryingly, even some backbench MPs have said they are tired of being in government and have suggested a spell in opposition might not be such a bad thing. This is a fair argument to some degree but something makes me question whether the government would be this vulnerable under Tony Blair. David Cameron has managed to look younger, brighter and more in touch with people than his opposite number. So maybe it’s less about policy and more about personality. John Major’s views on this subject might be worth gleaning.
What made New Labour work was the relationship between Blair and Brown. Whatever the intricacies of their personal and working relationship they managed to keep Labour in power for the longest period in the party’s history. Brown may have wanted the reins of power, but maybe he simply wasn’t strong enough to hang onto them on his own.
Brown has said he will listen and learn but the problem is we have heard this from a Labour leader before and it was only a few years ago. While these local elections are probably not a good enough indicator of how a general election might turn out, David Cameron and the Conservatives must be mightily pleased. Brown, meanwhile, will have to pull off one of the biggest political comebacks in his career, and possibly political history, if he is to win a general election on his own terms.
