The Incredible Sulk


Even on my sick bed earlier this week I found it impossible to escape the coverage of Gordon Brown's much trailed announcement that the 'great man' was to finally retire from front line politics. 

So I found Daniel Finkelstein's piece refreshingly honest because there's plenty of evidence to confirm that Gordon really is a big baby, an incredible sulk to use his words.

And it's not just the constant feuding of the TB/GB years when special advisers like Charlie Whelan and Damian 'McPoison' McBride did their master's dirty work because there's a much better example, closer to home, in the shape of Robin Cook, the former Livingston MP with whom Gordon Brown had a long running feud for many years.

Now if you ask me, Robin was the better man by far because he at least stuck to his principles and resigned as Labour's Foreign Secretary over the Iraq War; Cook took a stand rather than feign loyalty while continuing a damaging war of attrition from within.  

Many people wonder why Tony Blair didn't just sack his old friend and be done with it and the answer as I understand things is that, on balance, the Labour leader felt that his chancellor's contribution compensated for all the tantrums and bad behaviour.

But the same thing cannot be said of Gordon Brown if you ask me, because if he felt that New Labour was being led in the wrong direction he was perfectly capable of triggering a leadership contest to settle the issue.

Yet strangely Gordon preferred to sulk and nurse his wrath for the best part of 10 years which speaks volumes about the innate character of the man.       


Good riddance to Gordon the incredible sulk

By Daniel Finkelstein - The Times

Why is it so hard to find something good to say about the former prime minister as he ends his Westminster career?

Three years or so ago, a Jewish charity asked me if I would agree to act as compère at a big charity event it was planning. The evening would raise money for good causes and celebrate the life of an important community figure who had recently died.

The organisers were excited to tell me that they had secured one of the country’s leading rabbis, and also Gordon Brown. I was happy to say yes. I was impressed that Mr Brown had agreed to come. Although I wasn’t surprised. He has always been a friend of the Jews.

Six months later, and three days before the event, I had another call from the organiser. He sounded deeply embarrassed, and reluctant to get to the point. I saved him the trouble. “I know what’s happened,” I said. “Gordon Brown has finally paid attention to the arrangements and said he is not turning up if I am compère. Am I correct?” Yes, he said, I was correct. I dropped out.

I thought I would tell that story at the beginning of this piece because every self-help book I have ever read (for research purposes only, naturally) says that I need to recognise that there are two sides to every story. So I just wanted to recognise at the outset that however strongly I may feel about Gordon Brown, he feels the same about me.

Because, you see, I have a bit of a problem. I like to be generous about people. It’s near the top of my short list of principles. And this is a moment for generosity. Gordon Brown is retiring from parliament after 32 years. Yet try as I might, I am having difficulty being generous.

It’s not too hard getting started. Mr Brown has had an extraordinarily successful political career. It is not enough just to say that he reached 10 Downing Street, although to do that takes great ability. He remained at the summit of politics — shadow chancellor, chancellor and prime minister — for 18 years, an inordinately long time. Having lost out to Tony Blair in 1994, he was the only contender for the party leadership 13 years later, an amazing piece of survival and a raw political triumph.

And during these years of dominance he did some important things — crafted a message for new Labour, resisted the euro, championed international aid, responded appropriately to the banking crisis. He was, for the most part, rarely less than formidable.

Yet having acknowledged all this I start to run out. I type: “Whatever else you might say about him, he was at least honest” and then I run up against Damian McBride and stop. Or I try: “You know, Gordon Brown was in politics, not so much for himself as for his beliefs” and then I remember how politics was diverted for a decade by his titanic personal ambition and I realise I need to start again.

I even (genuinely) came up with the sentence “I’m not saying he is the sort of person who is rude to their next door neighbour” when I remembered that he was.

So I think I had better just come out with it. Leave, just this once, the generosity to someone else. He seems to have plenty of friends. One of them can have a go.

The truth is that Gordon Brown’s behaviour during his years at the top was appalling. An outrage. The temper tantrums. The sulks. The shouting. The petty vendettas. The cliques. The bullying.

Oh, and I almost forgot, the throwing things. The secrecy. The denial. The distortions. The paranoia. The egocentricity. The childishness.

I used to think (I feel a little ashamed about this now) that my colleagues in the press were spending too much time chronicling the disputes between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Now I think perhaps we didn’t spend enough time on it.

Reading the memoirs and diaries of the Blair years it is obvious that Mr Brown’s impossible antics — which were worse than reported — had a serious and damaging impact on the governing of the country. It prevented the prime minister from exercising proper control over his government, its spending and its reforms.

And the idea that the dispute was a bit Blair and a bit Brown, six of one and half a dozen of the other, is quite wrong. The difficulties were entirely Gordon Brown’s fault. Tony Blair’s only failing was that he put up with it. The origin of the dispute was Mr Brown’s belief that he had been cheated of the party leadership by Mr Blair and Peter Mandelson. This was a delusion. Mr Brown had to withdraw from the contest in 1994 because he was going to lose. And he was going to lose because his fellow party members judged that Mr Blair would be more electorally attractive as leader and a better prime minister if he became one.

A judgment in which they were correct. Gordon Brown was entirely unsuited to the office of prime minister and was epically useless at it. His bitter struggle to become leader — bursting in on Tony Blair and screaming at him that it was time to go — followed by his hapless failure to do the job would be tragicomic if it had either been tragic or funny. Instead I think it was simply monstrous.

And as for the record? Well, we will all have our own views about the sagacity of his public spending, and I don’t think we should let politics intrude while I am being ungenerous about Gordon Brown. But I simply note with amusement that, last night, the clip on the radio illustrating the power of his budgets had him talking about his golden rule for balancing public spending over the cycle. It might just be worth mentioning that for all his droning on about prudence, he missed the target by £485 billion. As Jim Murphy innocently but accurately said of Mr Brown yesterday: “We owe him a huge debt.” There was also a clip of Mr Brown saying that he had “abolished Tory boom and bust” which is heading for the dictionary of quotations, but not for the reason he had in mind.

Even in Scotland, where his reputation is at its highest and his authority greatest, the picture for Scottish Labour after three decades of his leadership is hardly a good one.

Look, I am not arguing that Gordon Brown is all bad. That would be ridiculous. I’ve experienced his charm and there is no doubting his willpower and his work ethic. He doubtless cares. But I don’t think anybody should be allowed to behave as he has over 20 years and have the rest of us sit there and pretend it doesn’t matter.

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