Gordon Brown: Prime Minister. Tom Bower

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СКАЧАТЬ with Gavyn Davies, then an economist at Goldman Sachs, the American merchant bank, and husband of Neil Kinnock’s assistant Sue Nye, John Eatwell, a Cambridge economist who was advising Kinnock, and especially Peter Mandelson, the party’s new director of press and public relations, he heard the first arguments in favour of a reconsideration of Labour’s policies.

      Peter Mandelson, the grandson of Herbert Morrison, a prominent minister in Atlee’s government, and a former television producer, was attractive to Brown. He appreciated Mandelson’s vision for the party to ‘modernise’, although neither fully understood the obstacles to Labour’s re-election. Both were encouraged by a new self-confidence at the party conference in 1986 in Blackpool, not least by the first defeat of the extremists. Under Mandelson’s influence, Labour was distancing itself from the Attlee legacy to attract the middle classes. The red flag, the party’s traditional symbol, was replaced by a red rose, to suggest the abandonment of a strident socialist agenda, especially confiscatory taxes, although the party’s actual policies contradicted the impression. Brown returned to Scotland to fight the 1987 election pledging to abandon Britain’s independent nuclear capacity, close America’s military bases, halt the sale of council houses and repeal the Tory laws limiting trade union power.

      Labour’s certainty that the Tories would not win a third consecutive election should have been shaken in the new year. The economy improved – growth increased to 4.8 per cent – and despite violent picketing outside News International’s new headquarters in Wapping, Labour refused to condemn the trade unions outright. Three million were unemployed, but the opinion polls swung back in the Tories’ favour, showing Labour at 29 per cent, the SDP-Liberal Alliance at 26 per cent and the Conservatives at 43 per cent.

      In the early days of the election campaign at the end of May 1987, Brown and his party leaders were nevertheless optimistic. Mandelson’s coup of a glossy election broadcast by Hugh Hudson of Neil Kinnock and his wife walking hand-in-hand in visually stunning photography roused the party’s spirits. Kinnock’s popularity rose sixteen points overnight. The reports from Conservative Central Office of arguments among Tory leaders gratified Labour’s planners, convinced of their strength on health and education. Labour’s undoing started in the last week of the campaign. In a television interview, Kinnock was asked what would happen if Russia invaded Britain, unprotected by a nuclear bomb. He replied that guerrilla bands fighting from the hills would resist the invader. That strategy found few sympathisers in the Midland conurbations, London and the south-east. Portrayed as a leftist loony, Kinnock was also vulnerable on taxation. Roy Hattersley and John Smith had pledged to reverse privatisation and restore most social benefits. The cost of that, the Tories claimed, would increase income tax to 56 pence in the pound. At first Kinnock insisted that only those earning over £25,000 a year would face higher taxes, but under persistent questioning he admitted that those earning over £15,000 would pay ‘a few extra pence’. The newspaper headlines ‘Labour Tax Fiasco’ frightened the middle classes. Thatcher’s accusation that with Labour ‘financial prudence goes out of the window’ struck a mortal blow.

      Campaigning in Scotland, Brown was distanced from these misfortunes. The swing to Labour in his area suggested that there would be a rout of Tory seats. He did not believe the national opinion polls, and was heartened on election night by a BBC Newsnight exit poll predicting huge Tory losses and a ‘hung’ parliament. His smile disappeared long before his personal result came in. The Tories lost in Scotland but would be returned with an overall 101-seat majority. Brown won his seat with an increased majority of 19,589, practically 50 per cent of the votes cast. His personal pleasure was suffocated by the national result. ‘He was shaken by the defeat,’ reported a close friend the next morning. ‘He thought Labour would win nationally as it had in Scotland.’ Ten years later, Brown would claim to Paul Routledge that at the time of the 1987 election he had blamed Labour’s plans for high taxation for having ‘put a cap on people’s aspirations’. In reality he appears not to have contemplated lower taxation until long afterwards.

      In the autopsy of the defeat, the dissatisfaction with the party’s deputy leader Roy Hattersley was widespread. John Smith, popular, funny and fast at the dispatch box with a joke or a mocking aside, was expected to inherit the shadow chancellorship despite his poor grasp of economics. He encouraged Brown to stand for election to the shadow cabinet, impressed by the young man’s loyalty, hard work and use of leaked documents to discomfort the government. Brown was pleasantly unintoxicated by his status, arriving at meetings like an overgrown student with bundles of ragged papers spilling onto the floor. He was also noticeably devoid of the argumentative stubbornness that would emerge later. Smith’s endorsement was critical to Brown’s campaign in the election. Helped by Nick Brown, a northern England trade union officer also elected to parliament in 1983, he came eleventh out of forty runners, an unexpected success. John Smith was duly appointed shadow chancellor and Brown shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, the youngest member of Neil Kinnock’s new team. ‘He’s going to be the leader of the Labour Party one day,’ Kinnock told Tom Sawyer, a member of the party’s National Executive Committee. Kinnock regarded Brown as a kindred spirit against John Smith, of whom he was wary, although he judged both Scots to be reliable. The Scottish MPs were a group of experienced politicians, held together despite personal differences by a tribal brotherhood based upon ability. United by their hatred of Thatcher and not scarred by Militant, their principal shortcoming was provincialism. Everything was interpreted from a Scottish point of view, and as a result their contribution to the inquest into the causes of the unexpected election defeat was muddled.

      Kinnock ordered a review of the party’s whole ideology. Labour, he acknowledged, was unelectable without the support of the middle classes. The review of the economic policies was entrusted to Bryan Gould, a New Zealander and the shadow spokesman for trade and industry. Gould, an organiser of the recent election campaign and a member of Labour’s left wing, believed that traditional socialism remained the party’s anchor. Brown no longer agreed, and refused to participate in Gould’s work. His unease had emerged after forensic discussions about the party’s policies with Doug Henderson, John Smith and Murray Elder – all Scotsmen who would spend one week every August hill-walking and mountaineering in Scotland with their families. ‘Brown wanted a break from the past,’ reflected Gould sourly. ‘His idea was to be more congenial towards the City.’ Gould, more senior than Brown, was unwilling to accommodate Brown’s ill-defined opinions, and was encouraged to pursue his course by Peter Mandelson, whose patronage had promoted Gould’s importance in the media. ‘Peter gave me a very comforting feeling,’ Gould acknowledged, ‘introducing good contacts and placing my name in very good contexts.’

      The stock market crash on 19 October 1987, ‘Black Monday’, confirmed Gould’s conviction about ‘capitalism’s irreversible crisis’. Ideologically, Brown could offer no solution to Labour’s unpopularity in the polls or suggest an alternative to Thatcherism, apart from announcing that Gould’s intention to re-impose economic controls would guarantee electoral disaster. ‘Bryan’s being unhelpful,’ Brown was told some weeks later by John Eatwell. ‘His report to the party conference will recommend the renationalisation of some privatised companies.’ Brown agreed that Gould’s proposals, the springboard for his ambitions to be party leader, were reckless. He combined with Blair to urge Mandelson to abandon Gould. While Mandelson pondered, Brown and Blair took it upon themselves to frustrate the review.

      Busy preparing to dispatch his final report later that day to the printers, Bryan Gould was surprised when Gordon Brown, Tony Blair and John Eatwell entered his office in the Norman Shaw building unannounced. ‘We want all references to nationalisation and renationalisation taken out of the report,’ announced Brown. ‘You’re too late,’ replied Gould angrily. ‘You refused to sit on the committee and do any work, and now you want to interfere. No way. Go away! All of you!’ Gould stared particularly at Blair. His presence was inexplicable, since he, as shadow spokesman for employment, was not even eligible for membership of the committee. The report was dispatched and printed. Gould’s victory, however, was bittersweet. At the end of 1987 a series of unfavourable references to him appeared in newspapers. СКАЧАТЬ