Gordon brown

Thursday

Peter Hoskin

Labour put “guarantees” at the heart of their campaign

Does Gordon Brown look like the kind of guy who can keep a promise?  Because that's the main question which stands in the way of Labour's election strategy, if Andrew Grice's revelations in the Indpendent are anything to go by.  According to Grice, Labour are going to repeat their trick from 1997, and focus on five or so pledges – what Downing St now calls "guarantees" – during their election campaign.  It's not certain what they'll be yet, but Grice reports that Labour MPs are being instructed to concentrate on the following policies in their constituencies: -- Training or further education will be provided for all school-leavers and a job or training for jobless young adults. -- Suspected cancer patients will receive their diagnosis within one week.

Wednesday

David Blackburn

Guilty as charged

Dreadful news, Douglas Alexander has been the victim of a cynical paraphrase. Talking to James MacIntyre, who’s given Paul Waugh a sneak preview, Alexander said that it’s really Peter Watt who’s responsible for that quote.   "Listen I have said that was not my view. It seems that Peter Watt himself does not seem certain what he claims I said. I would just ask you to weigh 20 years of working with Gordon against 20 words that were apparently paraphrased. But listen, he's got a book to sell; there are bigger and more important issues that we are focused on." Hmm... 20 gruelling years versus 20 cutting words? It’s a no-brainer Douglas.

Peter Hoskin

Getting around Gordon

Ok, ok, I get the message: you CoffeeHousers don't much care for James Purnell.  But this exchange between him and Nick Robinson, to be aired on Radio 4 later, is still worth a read: "I asked James Purnell how you could get radical policies past a reluctant prime minister. Here's his reply: James Purnell: The other thing that you could do is outflank and No 10, by trying to be more radical...you could just unilaterally go out and commission someone to review the system for you, and then the prime minister would be left with the choice of either firing you or pretending that they were into that idea all along. Nick Robinson: ...are you suggesting that cabinet ministers commission reviews without the full knowledge of the prime minister in advance?

Lloyd Evans

An energetic contest

At last, Cameron’s got it. He finally varied his tactics at PMQs today. Brown had no warning. That made the change doubly effective. First Cameron asked two easy-peasy questions about salt which the PM answered in his favourite strain of complacent pomposity. At one point I think I heard him say the nation’s supplies are so crucial that he may create a ‘salt cell’ in the middle of Britain so we never again run low on this vital condiment. Cameron then tossed aside the salt-pot and declined to ask a further question. Brown was unsettled by this. Realising the worst was yet to come, he waffled nervously through an answer to the next question from Dari Taylor (Lab, Stockton South) which focused on adoption and fostering.

Peter Hoskin

What a difference 13 years make

Hearing Cameron joke, in PMQs, that Labour would airbrush Gordon Brown out of their election campaign, I couldn't help but think of Labour's 1997 manifesto.  As you can see to the left, it proudly featured Tony Blair's face (and not much else) on its cover.  So: what chances that Labour use Brown's face on the front of this year's manifesto?  And, more importantly, how long before someone makes a spoof version of the 1997 cover with an image of the current Labour leader?

James Forsyth

PMQs is a contest again

Well, well another PMQs where Brown holds his own. He struggled for a long time after the election that never was, but in the past couple of months Brown has found some form. For the second week in a row, he had the best line: “He’s getting much redder than he is on his photograph”. Cameron did have one particularly effective moment when he asked Labour backbenchers whether they were putting Brown on their election literature. Only a handful did. In some ways this is all Westminster Village froth, few voters watch PMQs. But Cameron’s failure to win these clashes is bugging him. While Brown’s performances must be boosting his confidence before the three planned televised debates.

Peter Hoskin

Memo to Brown: before boldness comes unity

Stop sniggering at the back.  I mean, all I asked was whether Gordon Brown can be bold and radical.  The way things are looking, he certainly needs to be – and, according to Philip Webster's insightful account of yesterday's three-hour Cabinet meeting, the PM has called on his colleagues to think up as many "eye-catching" proposals as possible for Labour's manifesto.  One "senior source" says that the party "should have the most radical manifesto yet put to the electorate." Which is, of course, much easier said than done – a fact highlighted by another passage in Webster's report, which reveals: "Mr Brown said there must be no repeat of last week’s botched coup.

David Blackburn

Cuts and strategic dividing lines are indivisible

Daniel Finkelstein suggests an alternative analysis to that which prevails about the cabinet split. Labour’s aristocrats are divided not over style or substance, but the timing and extent of spending cuts. Finkelstein locates his argument in Labour’s repetitive history of poor financial management. Every Labour government runs out money and becomes riven by the prospect of retrenchment, a policy that is instinctively anathema to the left. The current episode dissents from the model in one regard: 'As Chancellor, Mr Brown spent money as if there would never be a bust — an absurd hypothesis. And now, as Prime Minister, he is blocking the measures necessary to put right this error.

Tuesday

Peter Hoskin

Getting the balance right

So what's happened to the Tories' policy-a-day blitz that was meant to fill all of January?  Tory announcements and speeches were happening thick 'n' fast at the beginning of last week, and, obviously, we had Cameron's speech yesterday – but it hasn't been quite as non-stop as we were led to believe.    This is intentional.  As James has already pointed out, the Tories were all too happy to let Labour scrap underneath the limelight last week.  And there's also a realisation that they may have been overdoing it previously.  Some Tories around Westminster are now talking more of one Big Announcement per week.   That sounds about right to me, and deals with some of the qualms I raised before Christmas.

James Forsyth

Turnbull savages chancellor Brown

Andrew Turnbull, who was permanent secretary at the Treasury from 1998 to 2002 and Cabinet Secretary from 2003 to 2005, has previous when it comes to criticising Gordon Brown. But his recent piece in the FT — ‘Six steps to salvage the Treasury’ — is one long barely coded attack on the PM. Take this line: “First and perhaps foremost, it [the Treasury] needs a strong ministerial team – a chancellor who wants to be chancellor for the full term rather than coveting the prime minister’s job.” Interestingly, Turnbull comes out in favour of the Tories’ plans to create an Office of Budgetary Responsibility. I know this is derided by some as yet another quango, but I actually think it will be an important reform.

Daniel Korski

The Iraq Inquiry should call Gordon Brown now

Alastair Campbell is before the Iraq Inquiry. As one of Blair’s closest aides, Campbell’s role in the run-up to the Iraq war was key. But I suspect the spinner-in-chief will be doing what he was originally hired to do: namely, protect his master by attracting the incoming fire. In this case, though, he will be helping Gordon Brown, not Tony Blair.   Because it is Brown’s role in the Iraq War, not that of Blair, that is the most obscure part of Britain’s modern history. As chancellor, Brown was the second most powerful man in government. He held the purse strings. If he had opposed the Iraq War, it is hard to see Tony Blair succeeding in persuading Cabinet, the Parliamentary Labour party or the House of Commons.

Monday

Martin Bright

Strange and Getting Stranger

It is just plain bizarre that Gordon Brown has announced that he will serve a full term if Labour wins the next election. He should be playing down his role in the forthcoming election (difficult I know, when he is Prime Minister) not reminding people that he will be around for another four years. It is also strange that he has written off the Hewitt-Hoon coup attempt as silly. This is the one thing it is not. It may have been unwise, badly organised and poorly timed. But the idea of giving the Parliamentary Labour Party the opportunity to save Gordon or the party was perfectly sound. Indeed, they were giving him the chance to give himself a partial mandate.

Peter Hoskin

Ed Balls says the same stuff, differently

The road to Damascus has nothing on this.  Ed Balls – in interview with the FT – has condemned the class war strategy, called for an end to Labour figures briefing against each other, and suggested that the government should be more "upfront" about spending cuts.  Hallelujah!  What a difference an attempted coup makes!  And so on and so on. But wait a minute.  What does the Schools Secretary actually say?  Worth looking at, that – because Balls hasn't so much changed his arguments as changed the way he makes them.  Take, for instance, what he says about class war: "'I’m totally against a class war strategy,' he says.

David Blackburn

It is immaterial who fronts Labour’s campaign

Divide and conquer, that is what preoccupies the Prime Minister. Later today, Gordon Brown will address the Parliamentary Labour Party to reassure them of the strength of his leadership and to invigorate the party by setting it on an election footing. How he achieves the former is anyone’s guess but he will realise the latter by investing Labour’s three election supremos: Mandelson, Harman and Douglas Alexander. In typical Brown style, these lieutenants’ roles are deliberately ill-defined. Who has ultimate authority? Who will be the attack dog? What is the difference between day to day running and managing an overall strategy? And which takes precedence? A pastmaster at internal intrigue, Brown will thrive as his actors compete – divide and conquer.

Sunday

David Blackburn

Hoon may strike again

David Miliband lacks the gumption to play Brutus, but does Geoff Hoon? The Sunday Times has obtained correspondence between Hoon, Brown and Blair illustrating that the then Chancellor overturned Treasury assurances that the MoD would receive additional funds for helicopters in Iraq and Afghanistan. Brown wrote: “I must disallow immediately any flexibility for the Ministry of Defence to move resources between cash and non-cash.” Once again we see the (supposedly) miserly Chancellor holding Blair to ransom at any opportunity, regardless of the consequences. Whilst Brown is a spectre of a Prime Minister, he was anything but as Chancellor.

Peter Hoskin

What’s Ed Miliband playing at?

There's that prism I mentioned: Ed Miliband writes an article for the Observer, which ostensibly backs Gordon Brown in the first paragraph, and it's written up as the first, tentative step on his own leadership campaign.  Thing is, that's probably also true.  The clue is in how far he steps off his ministerial beat*, to deliver an overall prospectus for the Labour Party: "Let's start, as our manifesto will, with what the country needs in the coming five years. It can't be about business as usual. We need to rebuild our economy in a different way from the past, with more jobs in real engineering not just financial engineering.

Peter Hoskin

A tale of two interviews

So, at the end of a hyperactive week in politics, we've got a pair of interviews with Brown and Cameron.  The PM chats with the News of the World, while Cameron appeared on the Marr sofa earlier. One general similarity between the two interviews stands out: neither is particularly confrontational. Rather than chiding Labour after Alistair Darling's admission yesterday, Cameron adopted a more conciliatory tone, saying things like: "If [the government] ... set out reductions that we think make sense we won’t play politics with it, we’ll say yes."  And, for his part, Brown only nods towards the "big choice" to be made at this year's election, and doesn't mention the Tories once.  Quite rare that, for Gordon.

Saturday

Fraser Nelson

Inside the Brown operation: the loathing, the cluelessness and the sulks

Remember Peter Watt? No one in Team Brown did either –and that, it now turns out, was a big mistake. As general secretary of the Labour Party when the Blair-Brown handover happened (and cash-for-honours was in the air) he was in a brilliant position to know what went on. And, after being abandoned by all of them, he has a motive to tell. His revelations are pretty explosive, but this jumps out at me the most - from Douglas Alexander, the man everyone thought was Brown’s little Mowgli raised by a fellow son-of-the-manse in the jungle of politics. This is what Alexander (the would-be co-ordinator in the election that never was) had to say to Watt in 2007: "The truth is, Peter, we have spent ten years working with this guy, and we don’t actually like him.

Peter Hoskin

Darling’s honesty is good news for the country – but tricky news for Labour

Well, well, well - Darling's Times interview, which James reported earlier, sure is a significant moment, and one which more than deserves a place on the spending cut timeline which I put together last week.  In fact, let's see what it would look like alongside a few of the most recent entries: 9 December 2009: Pre-Budget Report 2009 forecasts Public Sector Net Borrowing of £176 billion, and Public Sector Net Debt of £986 billion, in 2010-11. 10 December 2009: Alistair Darling puts in a bizarre performance on the Today programme, claiming that the PBR implies that departmental budgets would remain “pretty much flat.” 10 December 2009: The IFS works out that the PBR implies departmental budget cuts of around 19 percent over three years.

Friday

Martin Bright

Overestimating the Labour Party

I am forced to admit that I misjudged the nature of the Hoon-Hewitt plot. I credited them with having lined up some sort of serious Cabinet-level support (I have to say I assumed they had squared it with Mandelson). Whatever flaws you might attribute to the pair, they were once serious players in the New Labour world. But such is the collapse of confidence in the party that no one looks like they know what they are doing any more. I made the mistake of thinking that because Hoon and Hewitt were once part of a finely honed Labour machine, they were still at the top of their game. Daft really. But how about this for a conspiracy theory suggested by one reader? Hoon and Hewitt have no political future so perhaps it was a fake coup designed to bolster Gordon Brown's position.