GORDON’s GIN TRAP

The star of the past political week is almost universally expected to be confirmed as our next prime minister in a little over three months’ time. Given that this is so widely assumed to be a foregone conclusion, you could be forgiven for feeling a little surprised that the Chancellor should pull such a dubious stunt in seeking to wrong-foot the opposition by his announcement of a two-pence cut in the basic rate of income tax as the parting shot of his last Budget.

As surely as the night follows the day, politicians and commentators immediately began the search for the classes of persons who would enjoy no benefit from the tax changes of which the 2p cut was the showpiece. And, rather to his own disadvantage, it was soon found that those who would be worse off were overwhelmingly members of that stratum of society that used to be referred to as those in “genteel poverty”; which is to say, not those subsisting solely on state benefit and chips but those in low-paid service jobs who cannot afford to get onto the property-owning ladder. They’ll all be voting for David Cameron, then.

Gordon Brown is inevitably hoist with the petard of the Blair governments’ reputation. He has to “sell” the government’s economic policies, just as his colleagues have to talk up their own achievements (if such they are). And of course the danger must be pretty high that Labour’s present, very hard-earned reputation for economic competence – a reputation conspicuously lacking under previous Labour governments – will start to unravel before the next general election, as much due to global conditions as to any loss of touch by the Chancellor or his successor.

I always assumed that, after Blair’s third election victory, he would shift Brown to the foreign office, the logical post for an heir presumptive. The next prime minister would only benefit from greater exposure on the world stage, becoming a more widely familiar figure ahead of taking over the top job. After all, can you name the present secretary of state for economic affairs in Washington? Neither can I. But we all know Condi, don’t we.

If Blair wouldn’t countenance Brown as foreign secretary – or Brown wouldn’t countenance the idea himself – purely because of differing notions on how to develop the policies over Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and the Middle East, then that reflects well on Brown. If he wouldn’t move because he wouldn’t relinquish control of the economy, then he’s made a big mistake. He could have had a blameless two years at the FO, becoming a formidable global player, while the slow worsening of the economy began to tarnish his successor. As it is, who except Brown’s creature (Ed Balls) would willingly go to the Treasury in a Brown government? The PM would be on your back on a daily basis.

Gordon Brown needs to shake off as fast as he can the reputation for government by gimmick, sound-bite, tabloid agenda and polling returns because it is damaging. Among those who may run for deputy leader is one who has introduced a new irregular verb into the political lexicon: to blear. This means to blah and blur on behalf of Blair and it is to be found in the observation “Hazel blears”. Members of the present cabinet do a great deal of blearing. While Sir John Major’s governments became irredeemably associated with “sleaze”, Blair’s are stuck with a reputation for blather as well as for “spin”. Brown is not noted among the public for straight talking, even if his bluntness is more evident to colleagues at Westminster. And he has no reason to thank whoever it was who persuaded him to start flashing that unexpected salesman’s beam in mid-sentence, a habit now as ingrained as Thatcher’s change of vocal pitch. It’s more likely to frighten people than to reassure them.

There is one factor about Gordon Brown that I have never seen mentioned in the press so I will (of course) raise it here. It is that he is Scottish. Not only that, he sounds Scottish. Blair was born in Edinburgh but his roots are English and nobody would think him a Scot. In the era of broadcasting, when the appearance and sound of politicians have gradually become available to everyone, there has only been one British prime minister who did not sound English. Ramsay MacDonald, from Lossiemouth, Morayshire, was the first Labour prime minister, briefly in 1924 and again in 1929. It was a period of parliamentary stalemate and these were minority Labour administrations. MacDonald found it impossible to sustain power and invited opposition leaders to form a National government, an act for which the Labour party never forgave him.

So MacDonald is an unhappy precedent for Brown. The only other Labour leader with a Scottish accent was Blair’s predecessor, John Smith. Whether the English electorate would have accepted him was never put to the test for he died suddenly while leading the parliamentary opposition.

Smith’s predecessor, Neil Kinnock, led Labour to two general election defeats. Kinnock is – and more importantly sounds – Welsh. I have always believed that Kinnock’s accent counted heavily against Labour in its English seats. Don’t let’s mince words here. The English hate the Welsh. When I come across this hatred (which is surprisingly often), I am always astonished by the way its irrationality – as baselessly absurd as all racism and prejudice – is matched only by its vehemence. The English hatred for the Welsh is exceeded only by the Scots’ hatred of the English. This at least has some historical justification. It is just as ugly and malign, though. I don’t think the Welsh entertain any feelings, one way or the other, for the Scots and all of course merely despair of the Irish.

Now, I suspect that Brown’s Scottishness will tell against Labour in English seats at the next general election. Indeed – and, as a rule, I eschew political predictions as a mug’s game – I would not be a bit surprised if Labour does not go down to a rather bigger defeat after two or three years of a Brown premiership than any pollster predicts now or will be looking for then. In the privacy of the ballot box, voters can express their prejudices without anyone being able to expose them. Why do you think people vote for the BNP in the numbers that they do? They don’t tell pollsters that they are inclining that way.

I really don’t want David Cameron to win the next election, if for no better reason than his youth. The great movie director Billy Wilder once said that he knew he must be getting old because he was older than the pope (who at the time was John Paul II). I have been wrestling with the disheartening sensation of being older than the prime minister for the past ten years. But to find oneself old enough to be the prime minister’s father would really take the biscuit.

On the other hand, I have never before known a time (or dreamed I would ever know a time) when a Labour government – "New" Labour in Blair’s glib marketing speak, but nonetheless a Labour government – was to the right of every parliamentary opposition party, including the Tories, on just about every issue. Really, they need to be turfed out of office for the good of the Labour party. For Brown to reverse that perception – widely held if not perhaps in the terms in which I have expressed it – would be a Herculean task. I have an awful feeling that, irrational though it be, Cameron’s cultured Englishness set against Brown’s son-of-the-manse persona will be enough to make it impossible for Brown to stay in office. But who knows? – perhaps Sir Ming Campbell’s very home counties version of Scottishness will be enough to hold onto the balance.