Gordon Brown: Prime Minister. Tom Bower

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СКАЧАТЬ I first met him,’ was Jimmy Allison’s judgement about a man accused of flip-flopping on major policies – the euro, nuclear weapons and Britain’s relationship with the United States. While Cook spoke impromptu on those issues, alternating between vehement opposition and support, Brown avoided extremes, courteously delivering written speeches based upon intellectual reasoning, only rarely being wrong-footed. His success increased Cook’s tetchiness. In turn, Brown became convinced that Cook, as he told friends, was ‘trying to destroy me’. No one regarded this apparent paranoia as serious, but there was a less attractive personality beginning to emerge. Success and publicity had transformed Brown into a man with an unqualified belief in himself, convinced that he was the best socialist, the best thinker, the best persuader, the best media performer and the best at everything else. The political truth was gradually defined as what suited Gordon Brown at that moment, and socialism was defined as those ideas that best served his interests. If his black-and-white judgement about Cook was challenged, a grim mood enveloped a man now increasingly consumed by hatreds. Only occasionally could he restrain his monochrome ambition.

      To help John Smith’s recovery, Brown accompanied him in regular ascents of Scotland’s mountains over 3,000 feet in height – known as Munro-bagging – occasionally with Chris Smith, the MP for Islington, and Martin O’Neill. Those walks inspired Brown to write a pamphlet, ‘Where is the Greed?: Margaret Thatcher and the Betrayal of Britain’s Future’. At heart, the pamphlet revealed an old-fashioned Christian socialist concerned to alleviate suffering, seeking a modern way to vent his spleen against the Thatcherite conviction that state interference was a principal cause of society’s faults. Only the state, he claimed, could redress the growth of poverty and inequality since 1979. Eager to win the next election, the ‘new realist’ despaired about the past decade of Labour history and the danger of following John Maxton into oblivion. His solution, using new words to promote old ideas, was a rehashed attack on ‘free market dogma’.

      John Smith sympathised, but was alarmed by his friend’s hyperactivity. During his convalescence he regularly telephoned Roy Hattersley, the deputy leader, and asked, ‘What’s Gordon up to?’ ‘Nothing,’ replied Hattersley, ‘but being loyal.’ To certify his reassurance, Hattersley invited Brown to lunch the week before Smith’s return. ‘What job would you like to do?’ he asked. ‘I think I’ll remain as shadow chief secretary,’ replied Brown, ‘to help John back to health.’ Brown’s restlessness for change and personal success did not appear to endanger Smith.

      In early summer 1989, Margaret Thatcher became personally vulnerable. The poll tax had provoked violent protests, and her antagonism towards the ERM was dividing her from Nigel Lawson and Geoffrey Howe, the foreign secretary. To reinforce her position, Howe was demoted to leader of the House and Sir Alan Walters, an enemy of Lawson, was recalled as her personal economic adviser, based in 10 Downing Street. Lawson was incandescent. The disarray among the Tory leadership was oxygen for an accomplished political debater blessed with sharp wit, and Brown deployed his invective in a masterful Commons performance. ‘Many lonely, sad and embattled people,’ he said, mocking Lawson across the dispatch box, ‘labour under the delusion that their thoughts are being influenced by the Moonies next door … I assure the right honourable gentleman that he is not paranoid. They really are out to get him.’ Lawson sat stony-faced as Labour MPs jeered, ‘Go on, smile,’ and roared their approval as Brown recited the wretched statistics about inflation at 6 per cent, interest rates at 15 per cent and a growing trade deficit which undermined the chancellor’s reputation. No Labour politician wanted to hear that unemployment had fallen to 1.7 million and that manufacturing output had increased every year between 1983 to 1989 by an average of 4.75 per cent. Brown feigned deafness to Lawson’s assertion that Britain’s managers had finally been liberated to earn profits because of real competition, the destruction of protectionism and the strangulation of the trade unions’ restrictive practices. Devotion to socialism, retorted Lawson, was restricted to Albania, Cuba and Walworth Road. Not so, replied Brown spurred on by a party cheered by their discovery of a potential leader; there was socialism in Sweden, France and Spain. And soon, they hoped, in Britain. Lawson’s misery fuelled his opponent’s morale. As the chamber emptied, the crowd followed Brown and John Smith to the Commons bar. Endless hands smacked the dark-suited back of the man who fellow MPs were convinced was the star of the new generation, the future leader who would expunge the miserable memories of Wilson, Callaghan and Foot.

      That evening, Brown was congratulated by Neil Kinnock. Confirming Brown’s potential to inherit the leadership, the Welshman offered two pieces of advice: ‘For credibility, you need to vote against the whip. And secondly, you’ve got to learn to fall in love faster and get married.’ Brown laughed. He had introduced Kinnock to Marion Caldwell, but had no intention of proposing marriage, despite her fervour. ‘Oh, there’s lots of time for that,’ he replied. Kinnock’s advice may not have been followed, but an unlikely source would possibly be more influential.

      Just before the summer recess, Brown was travelling with Michael Howard, the secretary of state for employment, on a train from Swansea to London. Howard recognised Brown as a fellow intellectual. Flushed by the Conservatives’ continuing supremacy despite their difficulties, Howard settled back in his seat and presented a detailed critique of Labour’s unresolved electoral weaknesses. The party, he said, would never win another election until it ceased alienating the ‘margins’. Brown listened silently as Howard lectured him about appealing to voters’ personal interests in taxation, schools and health. To overcome middle-class antagonism, concluded Howard, Labour needed to address the details of those individual issues rather than blankly preach socialism. On arrival in London, the opponents bade each other farewell. In later years Howard would wonder whether his free advice had helped Labour finally to defeat his own party.

      Brown was certainly anxious to learn during that summer. Americans had become his inspiration. The previous year he had met Bill Clinton in Baden-Baden, in Germany. Clinton was touring the world to meet other politicians before declaring his bid for the presidency. His big idea to roll back ‘Reaganomics’, with its greed and debts, was to introduce a ‘New Covenant’, reasserting the existence of a ‘society’ in America and declaring that citizenship involved responsibilities as well as rights. Brown found Clinton engaging, although intellectually muddled. There was nevertheless scope for a partnership between Clinton’s advisers and Labour’s ‘modernisers’, including Peter Mandelson and Geoff Mulgan, a policy adviser. One year later, Brown would spend the summer in Cape Cod, reading through a suitcase of books on which the airline had levied an excess weight charge, and seeking out Democrats to hear about their new ideas.

      He returned to Westminster anticipating excitement, but not the earthquake of 26 October 1989. Margaret Thatcher’s refusal to join the ERM and her protection of Alan Walters had humiliated Nigel Lawson. Insensitive to the danger, she allowed Lawson to resign, and then dismissed Walters. The prime minister’s relationship with Walters was an easy target for Brown’s derision: ‘It was the most damaging appointment of an adviser by a head of government since – I was going to say, since Caligula’s horse, but at least the horse stayed in Rome and worked full-time.’ Turning to the choice of John Major to replace Lawson as chancellor, Brown jeered, to the unrestrained acclaim of the Labour backbenches, ‘He has had the right training for the job over the past few weeks when he was foreign secretary – private humiliation, public repudiation and instant promotion.’ In the shadow cabinet elections in autumn 1989 he again topped the poll, and was appointed shadow spokesman for trade and industry.

      For the modernisers, especially Blair and Mandelson, Brown embodied their best hopes for Labour’s eventual success. Suggestions that he was a candidate for the leadership inevitably roused his personal enemies and political critics on the left to question the essence of the man. The sceptics sensed a lack of ruthlessness, judged his charm as weakness, and doubted his willingness to grasp the jugular in order to advance his cause. Perhaps, they speculated, he lacked a game plan eventually to win the leadership. Their doubts were reinforced by Brown’s notorious disorganisation, persistently СКАЧАТЬ