Four weeks ago the outcome of the British General Election 2010 appeared to most commentators and the majority of Parliamentarians as certain, with David Cameron having a workable overall majority in the House of Commons. It was also assumed that if the working majority was narrow Gordon Brown would remain as Leader of the Labour Party and of the House of Commons, as given electoral unpopular things that would be required, for many this is a General Election best to lose and then seize power again. This is why the Tory Party approach was to press the government to take severe measures before and thus have he double benefit of greater unpopularity in the polls and blame for the measures already taken. There appears to have been no calculation of a Liberal Democrat surge.
It is evident with any knowledge of what politicians say immediately before polling day and what then happens after is that the gulf is always wide. This time the politicians could not say we are going hit the pockets of most people hard other than in the most general terms, for to have been specific would have meant those affected would switch their votes to any Party which said they would be protected.
All the major Parties claim they will protect the poorest, the working family made redundant, those with a physical disability and the elderly but then they begin to attack a large chunk of the long term poor, the underclass- teenagers who carry knives to defend themselves, teenagers who get drunk at weekends, teenagers who get pregnant, illiterate teenagers, teenagers who do not work at menial jobs or jobs with no prospects, adults with mental problems who live on benefits, ex prisoners who live on benefits, illegal immigrants who are able to work in the black economy or who gets false papers and qualify for benefits.
There are attacks on the very rich who have caused the present crisis by their greed and mismanagement but apart from tokenism they are to be protected because the nation’s stability and possibilities of economic growth are dependent on giving as much freedom as possible to international entrepreneurs and speculators to make money from this their bases in these islands. The is much talk of encouraging business, a Tory mantra, but this means allowing more and more foreign investors to come in buy up our remaining manufacturing capacity and then use cheaper labour elsewhere to producing the goods at a profit upon which they will pay less tax by keeping their holdings outside of the UK. So we lose jobs and lose tax This means there are less public funds to pay for public services so we must attack public sector jobs, wages and pensions. The solution is the promotion of new industries and small businesses!
It was also always going to be difficult to impossible for Gordon Brown to persuade the British Public to stick with the Labour Party and with him personally. Before looking at the political reality of the man and the manifesto of his Party I readily admit that as a seasoned Labour supporter and Party member Gordon was never my particular cup of tea. In contrast I was a Tony Blair man because did not just bring Labour into office after nearly two decades struggling to make any impact but had a mass appeal which gave the Party the kind of majority which led some to forecasting that if the new government was able to take control of the economy, it could retain power for several decades.
Mr Blair hoped to create a centre left alliance with the Liberal Democrats which would see and an end of the worst aspects of Tory elitism and protectionism for the wealthiest supporters of international capitalism and the traditional monarchy and the powerful landed gentry. This has failed until now and now it could be that the tail will not only wag the dog but become the dog.
How far his new Chancellor and co architect of the new Labour idea, Gordon Brown controlled the economic direction of the new government and how far Tony had the final say in those early days we may never know, even when Tony publishes his memoirs and we also see those of Mr Brown. The truth of their political relationship and what was promised will be mentioned but continue to reflect how both want us and history to view them. However what is evident is that Gordon Brown has become the most experience, effective and influential politician in economic and trade matters our history.
Gordon Brown was born in Scotland on February 20th 1951 just before my 12th birthday and my subsequent move from preparatory to secondary level education. His father John Ebenezer Brown was a Church of Scotland Minister who died aged 84 in 1998 and his mother Jessie Elizabeth Souter, known as Bunty died in 2004 aged 86. Neither parent lived long enough to see him Prime Minister.
Gordon was an exceptionally gifted pupil who was brought out of the mainstream and placed in a fast stream experimental educational programme at the local High School, two years before the usual age, a development which marked up as well as something he felt to be unnatural and spoke against as early as his 16th year, when two to three years before most young men and women of his generation he was accepted at the University of Edinburgh to read History. He is only one of five British Prime Ministers who have not attended Oxford or Cambridge.
During an end of term Rugby match he was kicked in the head and permanently loss the sight in one eye and then nearly lost that in his second. As with David Cameron he gained a First Class honours degree but Gordon then attempted to gain a Doctorate which he only completed for the award in 1982. His subject was the Labour Party 1918 to1929 and while still a student he was elected the Rector of the University and edited the Red Paper on Scotland. Between 1976 and 1980 he became a Lecturer in Politics at the Glasgow College of Technology and then a journalist for Scottish Television until first elected to Parliament at the second attempt for Dunfermline East in 1983.
Within two years he became a front bench spokesman for Trade and Industry publishing a book on the life of James Maxton and the Independent Labour Party. He was quickly promoted to Shadow First secretary and then Shadow Trade Secretary 1987 and Chancellor in 1992, a position he held until 1997 when after the stunning labour victory he became the second most powerful man in the Government. For twenty five years Gordon has held key positions as Shadow Trade and economic Ministers and then in Government. He therefore remains and has been the most experienced and effective politician in this important subject in British political history, no less.
What he first became Chancellor I suggest it was he, based on the natural conservatism of the man from the manse who set Labour on its course of retaining political power by continuing with the inherited position until he was confident that Tony’s and the party’s political ambitions could be achieved without alienating international capitalism or creating economic imbalances. and in a position to persuade the majority to go with tax increases because of the overall prosperity, even though much of the prosperity was illusory with the sense of wealth achieved through the increase in the values of property, by credit and loans, cheap holidays abroad through cut price air travel and the development of wall to wall TV news and advertising.
When Gordon claimed that he had abolished the natural economic cycle of boom and bust everyone believed him, except Vince Cable of the Liberal Democrats and a handful of others. For the Labour Party the dream of decades of power seemed real until the decision to invade Iraq with the USA against the feelings of the majority of people in the UK and other European governments. I was in favour of the intervention as was the Tory Party, because, rather than despite, my background, as I wanted to see a move to a new form of world government in which there was intervention when rogue leaders and regimes set about ruthlessly exploiting their own people and those of their neighbours for personal ambition and gain. It was time for the powerful to take up the cause of the poor and the underdogs, the oppressed and the abused.
Unfortunately there were no weapons of mass destruction and worst still, the Americans in particular, did not understand let alone provide for what they had to do to make Iraq a better rather than a worse place. What could have created a better world, failed and Britain’s position and standing in the rest of Europe and large sections of the rest of the Earth world was severely damaged, some would argue irreversibly.
From a Party political viewpoint worse was to follow, because the failure of Iraq led supporters of Gordon Brown, if not Gordon himself. seeing this as an opportunity to seize formal power from Tony and to force him from office. However against the odds Tony led the Party into a third term, staying until he had served for longer than Mrs Thatcher with whom he hoped historians would compare their respective Premierships and impact on the development of Britain
As an outsider to the Westminster village the two men appeared very different personalities with contrasting approaches. Tony had great charisma, an ideas and concept man who was able to talk people into following his approach and to implement what his government was ruling to varying degrees, adapting the general according to local political and personal situations. Under fire from within and without you rely on others to do the dirty work to protect your position and you also tend to care less about how things are done as long as the result is close to what you have asked for. Gordon, in contrast, has always struck me as someone who pays attention to detail and needs to be in command of what is done. This is commendable trait but to be successful you also need be of one mind and while listening to advice and paying attention to indicators of public support, you have to back your own judgement and set of beliefs and inclinations.
For the first months of Gordon’s Premiership I was impressed as faced with the floods and an outbreak of foot and mouth he appeared fully in command, taking decisive action and then we had what I can only describe as the great dither over holding a General Election and gaining a mandate from the people to govern for a full term. There was every indication that there would be an autumn General Election and having marched up the hill the political troops were matched down again. This opened the way for a succession of attempts within the Party to replace him with a leader with the same mass TV appeal as David Cameron and Nicholas Clegg, especially as increasingly Cameron followed the Blair approach of appealing to centre ground of British politics, promising to maintain the overall level of public expenditure, praising the public funded national health service, opposing any return to grammar schools, and seeking to widen the basis of representation with more women candidates and those from ethnic and other minorities made sidelining the far right personified by Norman Tebbit. Nicholas Clegg struggled to make impact because of the way Prime Minister’s Question Time is organised with Labour and Conservatives ridiculing him and his Party.
Then there was the disaster of the abolition of the ten pence income tax rate which was a strong indication that Gordon had become out of touch with the core support of Labour movement although this was just part of the disenchantment as the country appeared overrun with new immigrants from central Europe, on top of those entering her country illegally, estimated about one in sixty five of the total population but concentrated in London and other major cities and towns, also fuelled by the number of students encouraged to take full paying places at the Universities and colleges of further education, and those invited here from the rest of the world to undertake work more cheaply than the growing underclass dependent on state benefits and a black economy of drugs, prostitution and petty crime.
The added problem was that increasingly manufacturing jobs were being exported to China, India, central Europe and other countries with political stability and a cheap working hard labour force. This has meant that no only were the underclass better off on benefits than taking the lower paid service and seasonal jobs but the rest of the working class were finding fewer and few opportunities for employment, no shipbuilding, no steel making, no coal mining, no car manufacturing, few other factory jobs and even the infamous call centres were being relocated in India.
And then the great disaster of the bankers and speculators and worldwide economic recession and which paradoxically enabled Gordon to retrieve his Britain’s and his own position. This cannot be disputed but nor cannot it mask his personal part in the situation being created in the first instance, Not can get away from the decision which alienated a large chunk of the working and lower middle class vote if such classes are defined by income by his decision to abolish the 10 pence tax band which made 5 million of lower earners worse off with those earning between £5000 and £18000 losing most. I still cannot understand how he made such a mistake given his attention to detail. The impact is that those in this range were significantly worse off than those on benefit who had their rent and council tax paid as well as medication, glasses and dentistry, etc.
There has also been criticism that he sold the 60% of the nation’s gold reserve at what has proved to be rock bottom prices with the price rising 400 fold since then.
The main criticism levelled against him, given his specialist background, is the failure to foresee the collapse of the banking system and where his decision to transfer monitoring from the Bank of England to a separate financial authority is also argued to have been an important issue. Thus coupled with the claim to have banished boom and bust his area of greatest strength also appears to be his area of downfall. But is it?
Before moving onto the manifesto a word on his personal life. Unlike Cameron and Clegg Gordon made his way from work and ability rather than background connections and wealth. He is therefore more of a man of the people than the other two and yet he fails to communicate what those who know him say is a warm and humorous personality, although I want effective leadership and management not niceness and humour.
As a young man with the mark of greatness upon him he had several relationships including with Princess Margarita, the eldest daughter of the King of Romania. He married comparatively late in life, to Sarah Macaulay and they now have two children. Like David Cameron he has known the greatest of personal losses after that of a partner and for some even greater, that of a child, with their first born a daughter only surviving for just over one week.
Understandably the experience has changed both their lives and for what only lasted a couple of days I had hope the experience which they both shared would have changed they way they conducted themselves during the weekly Prime Minister Question Time. Maybe, perhaps this will now change with the outcome of the General Election 2010. So next the Manifesto
It is evident with any knowledge of what politicians say immediately before polling day and what then happens after is that the gulf is always wide. This time the politicians could not say we are going hit the pockets of most people hard other than in the most general terms, for to have been specific would have meant those affected would switch their votes to any Party which said they would be protected.
All the major Parties claim they will protect the poorest, the working family made redundant, those with a physical disability and the elderly but then they begin to attack a large chunk of the long term poor, the underclass- teenagers who carry knives to defend themselves, teenagers who get drunk at weekends, teenagers who get pregnant, illiterate teenagers, teenagers who do not work at menial jobs or jobs with no prospects, adults with mental problems who live on benefits, ex prisoners who live on benefits, illegal immigrants who are able to work in the black economy or who gets false papers and qualify for benefits.
There are attacks on the very rich who have caused the present crisis by their greed and mismanagement but apart from tokenism they are to be protected because the nation’s stability and possibilities of economic growth are dependent on giving as much freedom as possible to international entrepreneurs and speculators to make money from this their bases in these islands. The is much talk of encouraging business, a Tory mantra, but this means allowing more and more foreign investors to come in buy up our remaining manufacturing capacity and then use cheaper labour elsewhere to producing the goods at a profit upon which they will pay less tax by keeping their holdings outside of the UK. So we lose jobs and lose tax This means there are less public funds to pay for public services so we must attack public sector jobs, wages and pensions. The solution is the promotion of new industries and small businesses!
It was also always going to be difficult to impossible for Gordon Brown to persuade the British Public to stick with the Labour Party and with him personally. Before looking at the political reality of the man and the manifesto of his Party I readily admit that as a seasoned Labour supporter and Party member Gordon was never my particular cup of tea. In contrast I was a Tony Blair man because did not just bring Labour into office after nearly two decades struggling to make any impact but had a mass appeal which gave the Party the kind of majority which led some to forecasting that if the new government was able to take control of the economy, it could retain power for several decades.
Mr Blair hoped to create a centre left alliance with the Liberal Democrats which would see and an end of the worst aspects of Tory elitism and protectionism for the wealthiest supporters of international capitalism and the traditional monarchy and the powerful landed gentry. This has failed until now and now it could be that the tail will not only wag the dog but become the dog.
How far his new Chancellor and co architect of the new Labour idea, Gordon Brown controlled the economic direction of the new government and how far Tony had the final say in those early days we may never know, even when Tony publishes his memoirs and we also see those of Mr Brown. The truth of their political relationship and what was promised will be mentioned but continue to reflect how both want us and history to view them. However what is evident is that Gordon Brown has become the most experience, effective and influential politician in economic and trade matters our history.
Gordon Brown was born in Scotland on February 20th 1951 just before my 12th birthday and my subsequent move from preparatory to secondary level education. His father John Ebenezer Brown was a Church of Scotland Minister who died aged 84 in 1998 and his mother Jessie Elizabeth Souter, known as Bunty died in 2004 aged 86. Neither parent lived long enough to see him Prime Minister.
Gordon was an exceptionally gifted pupil who was brought out of the mainstream and placed in a fast stream experimental educational programme at the local High School, two years before the usual age, a development which marked up as well as something he felt to be unnatural and spoke against as early as his 16th year, when two to three years before most young men and women of his generation he was accepted at the University of Edinburgh to read History. He is only one of five British Prime Ministers who have not attended Oxford or Cambridge.
During an end of term Rugby match he was kicked in the head and permanently loss the sight in one eye and then nearly lost that in his second. As with David Cameron he gained a First Class honours degree but Gordon then attempted to gain a Doctorate which he only completed for the award in 1982. His subject was the Labour Party 1918 to1929 and while still a student he was elected the Rector of the University and edited the Red Paper on Scotland. Between 1976 and 1980 he became a Lecturer in Politics at the Glasgow College of Technology and then a journalist for Scottish Television until first elected to Parliament at the second attempt for Dunfermline East in 1983.
Within two years he became a front bench spokesman for Trade and Industry publishing a book on the life of James Maxton and the Independent Labour Party. He was quickly promoted to Shadow First secretary and then Shadow Trade Secretary 1987 and Chancellor in 1992, a position he held until 1997 when after the stunning labour victory he became the second most powerful man in the Government. For twenty five years Gordon has held key positions as Shadow Trade and economic Ministers and then in Government. He therefore remains and has been the most experienced and effective politician in this important subject in British political history, no less.
What he first became Chancellor I suggest it was he, based on the natural conservatism of the man from the manse who set Labour on its course of retaining political power by continuing with the inherited position until he was confident that Tony’s and the party’s political ambitions could be achieved without alienating international capitalism or creating economic imbalances. and in a position to persuade the majority to go with tax increases because of the overall prosperity, even though much of the prosperity was illusory with the sense of wealth achieved through the increase in the values of property, by credit and loans, cheap holidays abroad through cut price air travel and the development of wall to wall TV news and advertising.
When Gordon claimed that he had abolished the natural economic cycle of boom and bust everyone believed him, except Vince Cable of the Liberal Democrats and a handful of others. For the Labour Party the dream of decades of power seemed real until the decision to invade Iraq with the USA against the feelings of the majority of people in the UK and other European governments. I was in favour of the intervention as was the Tory Party, because, rather than despite, my background, as I wanted to see a move to a new form of world government in which there was intervention when rogue leaders and regimes set about ruthlessly exploiting their own people and those of their neighbours for personal ambition and gain. It was time for the powerful to take up the cause of the poor and the underdogs, the oppressed and the abused.
Unfortunately there were no weapons of mass destruction and worst still, the Americans in particular, did not understand let alone provide for what they had to do to make Iraq a better rather than a worse place. What could have created a better world, failed and Britain’s position and standing in the rest of Europe and large sections of the rest of the Earth world was severely damaged, some would argue irreversibly.
From a Party political viewpoint worse was to follow, because the failure of Iraq led supporters of Gordon Brown, if not Gordon himself. seeing this as an opportunity to seize formal power from Tony and to force him from office. However against the odds Tony led the Party into a third term, staying until he had served for longer than Mrs Thatcher with whom he hoped historians would compare their respective Premierships and impact on the development of Britain
As an outsider to the Westminster village the two men appeared very different personalities with contrasting approaches. Tony had great charisma, an ideas and concept man who was able to talk people into following his approach and to implement what his government was ruling to varying degrees, adapting the general according to local political and personal situations. Under fire from within and without you rely on others to do the dirty work to protect your position and you also tend to care less about how things are done as long as the result is close to what you have asked for. Gordon, in contrast, has always struck me as someone who pays attention to detail and needs to be in command of what is done. This is commendable trait but to be successful you also need be of one mind and while listening to advice and paying attention to indicators of public support, you have to back your own judgement and set of beliefs and inclinations.
For the first months of Gordon’s Premiership I was impressed as faced with the floods and an outbreak of foot and mouth he appeared fully in command, taking decisive action and then we had what I can only describe as the great dither over holding a General Election and gaining a mandate from the people to govern for a full term. There was every indication that there would be an autumn General Election and having marched up the hill the political troops were matched down again. This opened the way for a succession of attempts within the Party to replace him with a leader with the same mass TV appeal as David Cameron and Nicholas Clegg, especially as increasingly Cameron followed the Blair approach of appealing to centre ground of British politics, promising to maintain the overall level of public expenditure, praising the public funded national health service, opposing any return to grammar schools, and seeking to widen the basis of representation with more women candidates and those from ethnic and other minorities made sidelining the far right personified by Norman Tebbit. Nicholas Clegg struggled to make impact because of the way Prime Minister’s Question Time is organised with Labour and Conservatives ridiculing him and his Party.
Then there was the disaster of the abolition of the ten pence income tax rate which was a strong indication that Gordon had become out of touch with the core support of Labour movement although this was just part of the disenchantment as the country appeared overrun with new immigrants from central Europe, on top of those entering her country illegally, estimated about one in sixty five of the total population but concentrated in London and other major cities and towns, also fuelled by the number of students encouraged to take full paying places at the Universities and colleges of further education, and those invited here from the rest of the world to undertake work more cheaply than the growing underclass dependent on state benefits and a black economy of drugs, prostitution and petty crime.
The added problem was that increasingly manufacturing jobs were being exported to China, India, central Europe and other countries with political stability and a cheap working hard labour force. This has meant that no only were the underclass better off on benefits than taking the lower paid service and seasonal jobs but the rest of the working class were finding fewer and few opportunities for employment, no shipbuilding, no steel making, no coal mining, no car manufacturing, few other factory jobs and even the infamous call centres were being relocated in India.
And then the great disaster of the bankers and speculators and worldwide economic recession and which paradoxically enabled Gordon to retrieve his Britain’s and his own position. This cannot be disputed but nor cannot it mask his personal part in the situation being created in the first instance, Not can get away from the decision which alienated a large chunk of the working and lower middle class vote if such classes are defined by income by his decision to abolish the 10 pence tax band which made 5 million of lower earners worse off with those earning between £5000 and £18000 losing most. I still cannot understand how he made such a mistake given his attention to detail. The impact is that those in this range were significantly worse off than those on benefit who had their rent and council tax paid as well as medication, glasses and dentistry, etc.
There has also been criticism that he sold the 60% of the nation’s gold reserve at what has proved to be rock bottom prices with the price rising 400 fold since then.
The main criticism levelled against him, given his specialist background, is the failure to foresee the collapse of the banking system and where his decision to transfer monitoring from the Bank of England to a separate financial authority is also argued to have been an important issue. Thus coupled with the claim to have banished boom and bust his area of greatest strength also appears to be his area of downfall. But is it?
Before moving onto the manifesto a word on his personal life. Unlike Cameron and Clegg Gordon made his way from work and ability rather than background connections and wealth. He is therefore more of a man of the people than the other two and yet he fails to communicate what those who know him say is a warm and humorous personality, although I want effective leadership and management not niceness and humour.
As a young man with the mark of greatness upon him he had several relationships including with Princess Margarita, the eldest daughter of the King of Romania. He married comparatively late in life, to Sarah Macaulay and they now have two children. Like David Cameron he has known the greatest of personal losses after that of a partner and for some even greater, that of a child, with their first born a daughter only surviving for just over one week.
Understandably the experience has changed both their lives and for what only lasted a couple of days I had hope the experience which they both shared would have changed they way they conducted themselves during the weekly Prime Minister Question Time. Maybe, perhaps this will now change with the outcome of the General Election 2010. So next the Manifesto
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