Managing
the Prime Minister’s Anger
By Michael
Faulkner – March 07, 2010
We are six
weeks away from a general election. According to the most optimistic
assessments the British economy is limping hesitantly out of recession with
growth at the end of 2009 at 0.1%. Even that tiny glimmer at the distant end of
the tunnel may soon disappear as, according to some of the more astute analysts
there is a real likelihood of a ‘double dip’ recession. Unemployment stands at
2.5 million and is likely to rise in 2010. Whichever party wins the election,
sooner or later there will be draconian spending cuts as the government
attempts to reduce the deficit resulting from the multi-billion bail-out of the
banks. Their profligacy and gross irresponsibility led to the great financial
crisis of 2008 and they are on life-support at tax-payers’ expense. They are
now behaving as though it is business as usual. Bonuses are back. They have
successfully resisted being broken up into smaller units and avoided a new
Glass-Steagal act which could have separated commercial from investment
banking. Now, barely two years after bringing the country to the brink of the
abyss, they are able to claim once more that they are too big to fail. As
always, the cuts will fall most sharply on those least able to bear them.
Education will be hit very hard with university funding in particular
drastically slashed. Thousands of school-leavers will join the dole queues,
almost certainly pushing the unemployment figures above three million. Local
government services will be decimated with the prospect of public squalor on
our streets and amenities long taken for granted disappearing overnight.
Municipal authorities are already competing with each other in cost-cutting
exercises to impose additional charges for the provision of amenities they have
a statutory obligation to provide. Of all the more developed European
economies, Britain, with its overblown financial sector, has fared least well
and worse is yet to come. It is true that the financial crisis has hit other
countries even harder. The Icelandic economy has collapsed. Within the Euro
zone Ireland faces a similar prospect as do the countries of the ‘southern
rim’, Greece, Spain and Portugal. So far, this country has not seen the levels
of working class resistance and industrial unrest developing in those
countries, but the distant thunder rumbling there could, before too long, reach
our shores.
This is the
stuff of real politics. But what has dominated the news over the past week?
Gordon Brown’s supposedly uncontrollable anger and his bullying of colleagues
and staff. This side of the prime minister’s character has long been the
subject of media interest and speculation. There is no doubt that he is a man
given to outbursts of rage and there are numerous accounts of volatile
exchanges between him and Tony Blair. Much of the news media is obsessed with
the personalities of professional politicians, particularly party leaders or
government ministers. This may be a matter of legitimate concern, but too often
it reduces serious political issues to the level of gossip and entertainment.
Even serious commentators sometimes slip into this mode. Leading journalists,
writing for serious newspapers, seem to assume that their much coveted access
to members of the power elite, guarantees that their observations and judgments
about the functioning of the political system will be of profound importance.
Rubbing shoulders with the powerful, extracting information from anonymous
high-ranking informants, sharing confidences with disgruntled cabinet ministers
– all this can give to the privileged correspondent a sometimes overblown
sense of his or her own importance.
On the 21st February The Observer newspaper ran a story, covering ten pages, dealing with
Brown’s ‘volcanic temper’ and its consequences. The paper carried the first
extracts from a new book which is to be serialised over coming weeks. The book,
aptly titled ‘The End of the Party: The Rise and Fall of New Labour’ is written
by Andrew Rawnsley, The Observer’s chief political commentator. It is the
sequel to an earlier book, published in 2000, which dealt with the New Labour’s
first term in office. Rawnsley is an experienced liberal journalist whose
regular column for the paper is well-informed and often informative. The book
is the result of three years of research and, based on what the paper has
published so far, there is no reason to doubt the accuracy of his revelations.
He has invented neither his informants nor the information they have imparted.
The accusation, levelled against him by Brown’s closest colleagues, that he has
concocted a farrago of falsehoods and invented testimony, is without
foundation. The denials by some that they acted as Rawnsley claims they did,
are equally unconvincing. More persuasive is the suggestion that the timing of
the book’s publication and the publicity given to it by The Observer, is mischievous.
That its appearance now will damage Labour’s chances – already very poor
- of winning the election, is beyond doubt. It can only benefit the Tories. Was
this Rawnsley’s intention? Probably not. He justifies himself with the claim
that ‘voters should know the full truth about the character of their leader.’
There is nothing in what he writes indicating sympathy with the Tories. It has
also been suggested that Rawnsley, like some other columnists, is an admirer of
Blair and, as such, is inclined to partisanship in the long-lasting feud
between him and Brown. Possibly. But how important is all this anyway?
Revelations of this kind about the behaviour of those in high office are
important, though not perhaps for the reasons supposed by those who reveal such
things. Without repeating too much of the detail contained in Rawnsley’s
exposure, it is nevertheless worth attempting to assess its import.
Rawnsley
says that ‘the character of men at Number 10 has had a profound effect on the
way we have been governed.’ What
about Brown’s character? It may be judged by his behaviour, which is frequently
abusive. He is foul-tempered and given to outbursts of volcanic rage,
accompanied by foul-mouthed invective. His staff are frightened of him. So extreme
was his bullying of those who worked with him that the cabinet secretary, Sir
Gus O’Donnell, felt compelled to warn the prime minister that his behaviour had
to change, telling him that ‘this is no way to get things done.’ Following the cancellation of the
general election originally planned for November 2007, Brown became paranoid
and when it was reported to him that confidential data with personal details of
millions of people had been lost, he grabbed his deputy chief of staff by the
lapels and shouted at him: ‘They’re out to get me!’ Other incidents reported
include an account of Brown, on being told some bad news, violently thumping
the back of the passenger seat of his official car with such force that it
shocked the protection officer sitting in the front seat; forcibly pushing a
female typist out of her chair and taking over the keyboard himself because she
was not typing fast enough for him; screaming abusively at his U.S. political
consultant and speechwriter, Bob Shrum, who Brown accused of interpolating into
one of the speeches written for him phrases plagiarised from a speech by Bill
Clinton. There is more of the same.
Can
anything be learned from this, or is it enough to conclude that it is about a
flawed individual and that such people should not be in high office? There is
no reason to doubt the truth of these revelations. A detail here or there may
be inaccurate, but the overall picture is clear and it is not pretty. The
luminaries of New Labour are not a pretty bunch. The prevailing culture at the
top during the Blair years was one of braggartly boorishness, as is clear from
the self-serving and egotistical memoirs of the likes of Alasdair Campbell. The
present chancellor of the exchequer, Alistair Darling, revealed that the
‘forces of hell’ were let loose on him by Number 10 in August 2008 because he
said, quite truthfully, that Britain was facing the worst economic downturn for
60 years. The character and behaviour of Brown or Blair is of concern, but it
is not the most important part of the story. More important is the nature of
the New Labour enterprise which they and their colleagues launched.
This column
has argued that the intention of New Labour was to dismantle the social
democratic foundations and heritage of the Labour Party and harness it to the
chariot of neo-liberal ideology in
the interests of global capitalism. This was not a betrayal of socialism. The
old Labour Party was not in any serious sense of the term a socialist party.
But the social-democratic commitment to Keynesian economic theory and practice
had produced the ‘mixed economy’ which alleviated the worst excesses of
free-market capitalism for thirty five years after the second world war. In
embracing neo-liberalism, the founders of New Labour, betrayed the labour
movement and the social-democratic tradition of the Labour Party. They
abandoned Labour reformism in favour of the de-regulated free market and all
that flows from it. For some, such
as Straw and Prescott, it was a betrayal of the old Labour tradition to which
they had seemed committed. Blair did not betray the traditions of the Labour
Party. He was always a pure opportunist, without principle and lacking any
affection for or commitment to the Labour Party. Brown spent ten years as
chancellor of the exchequer praising the great contribution to Britain’s
economic success of the bankers and financiers whose wise and sober operations,
he said, had ‘put an end to boom and bust.’ Along with the bankers, he has
never apologised for getting it so disastrously wrong. About these egregious
faults, as far as one can tell, Andrew Rawnsley says nothing.
We now face
a prolonged period of austerity which is likely to increase in severity. It is
to be hoped that, whichever party wins the forthcoming election, those expected
to pay for a crisis not of their making, will not take it lying down.