The following article was published in the NZ Listener of 14 July.
In the ten years after
Gordon Brown and Tony Blair entered the House of Commons together in 1983, Gordon was always regarded as the senior member
of the duo - slightly the older, better grounded in the Labour movement, apparently with more substance than his more charming
but perhaps more superficial colleague.
Little wonder, then, that Gordon was first bemused and then angry that the Labour
Party "fixers" (and principally Peter Mandelson) decided at the last moment - and just in time for the leadership
election following John Smith's untimely death and my own decision to return to New Zealand - to back Tony as the preferred
leadership candidate. Gordon was persuaded to wait for his turn - something he was promised in return for not challenging
Tony's candidature.
The result was a ten-year wait - profitably spent, it is true, in a successful term as Chancellor
of the Exchequer - but a period of increasing frustration on Gordon's part and an increasing reluctance from Tony to keep
his part of the bargain. It was only when the post-Iraq opinion polls turned sour that Tony bowed to the inevitable and that
Gordon had his chance.
What will he make of it? The omens look good. The main thing going for him is that he is not
Tony. Despite Blair's extravagant gifts, as communicator and persuader, the British public has grown tired and cynical at
the glibness and the endless spin. They seem ready to embrace someone with perhaps less surface but more substance. They
want, at least for the moment, someone who says what he thinks and means what he says.
Brown also has the good fortune
to face in David Cameron a Tory leader who has made the Tories electable again but who looks better suited to fighting the
last war - against Blair - rather than a new battle against the more solid virtues of the new Prime Minister. There is already
a "Brown bounce" in the opinion polls as the British public suddenly see the dour Scot in a new light.
This
is not to say that Gordon will find that election success falls into his lap. More than anyone else, he is ineluctably and
correctly linked in the public mind with the Blair government and its record. He is as much identified with the government's
failures as is Tony. He will have a difficult task in convincing people that he can free himself of the Blair legacy; nor
will there be any shortage of defenders of that legacy if he succeeds.
And the truth is that what is known of him is
not without foundation. He does find it difficult to smile and to chat to people. He does demonstrate some of the characteristics
of a control freak. He is at times excessively cautious and calculating. And his record is not free from blemish, including
most memorably his determined support for British membership of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism long after its disastrous
consequences were becoming apparent.
I remain, however, optimistic about a Brown premiership. Here is someone who is
a much more authentically Labour figure than his predecessor, someone whom the voters will easily recognise and therefore
trust. Here is someone who has a better grasp of the fact that we would not bother with the messy business of politics if
it were not for the need to reconcile competing interests and allocate scarce resources, with the consequent inevitability
that some people must be disappointed - something Blair instinctively shied away from. Here is a Prime Minister who will
want to use power, as opposed to simply holding on to it, and to use it for purposes that will commend themselves to voters
who want a recognisably Labour government.
If he is to make that fresh start, however, he must do some difficult things.
He must draw a line under the Iraq disaster; the appointment as Foreign Secretary of the Iraq war sceptic, David Miliband,
is a good start but the most effective step would be to establish an independent inquiry into the origins of the war, and
set a timetable for the withdrawal of British troops. He must reaffirm the value of public service and the public sector,
and not turn always to the private sector for solutions. He must stop hobnobbing with the rich and powerful, something for
which his predecessor had a fatal weakness. Above all, if he is to make that essential connection with the British public
and to do so without Tony Blair's exceptional presentational skills, he must re-establish trust in the political process.
He can do that best by being his own man.
Bryan Gould
29 June 2007