Labour's 'King Herod'
Jonathan Powell's review of Gordon Brown's memoirs (My Life, Our Times) for the New Statesman magazine contains the following paragraph accusing the former Labour leader of a 'King Herod' strategy for killing off political rivals.
"It could be argued that Gordon’s greatest failure was the succession. He was so determined to win the crown that he adopted a “King Herod strategy”, killing off at birth any potential rivals who might challenge him, from Alan Milburn to Charles Clarke. In particular, it was his determination to stop David Miliband succeeding him that led to the victory of Ed, which led in turn to the rise of Jeremy Corbyn."
Powell also takes a dim view of Brown's pathetic attempts to rewrite history over his attitude to 'bankers', 'PFI' and 'non-endogenous growth theory:
"Gordon uses the book to try to reinvent himself as a left-wing socialist, praising Corbyn’s approach. He claims that his whole career was a battle against neoliberalism and globalisation and that he was only held back from more radical measures by Tony Blair. He now demands that the bankers be put on trial (which I suppose he could have done at the time). That is not quite how I remember the proponent of the private finance initiative and “prudence” between 1997 and 2007. It has certainly been a long journey from champion of neo-endogenous growth theory to the enemy of neoliberalism."
Now that is funny.
https://www.newstatesman.com/writers/316713
The fatal ambition of Gordon Brown
In his autobiography, My Life, Our Times, the former prime minister inadvertently reveals the real reasons he failed to live up to his great potential.
BY JONATHAN POWELL - The New Statesman
Gordon Brown was a big beast in an era when there were big beasts in British politics rather than the minnows and charlatans we have today. He was interested in ideas and concepts, not the fripperies of politics. He was tested by terrible tragedies: the loss of an eye as a teenager and, when chancellor, of his baby daughter soon after she was born. And what he has done since leaving office in support of primary education around the world is enormously commendable.
I see no point in re-litigating the Blair-Brown wars when all progressives need to work together in the face of the serious threat that the country faces. Though it is mildly interesting to see how the various battles appeared from the other side, in the end there were only a handful of people involved and even they don’t care much nowadays.
The publication of Brown’s autobiography, My Life, Our Times (Bodley Head), is, however, an opportunity to stand back and assess his time in politics as a whole. The book is circumspect in what it tells us about his childhood or any of his inner thoughts, but unintentionally it reveals all the tragic flaws that prevented him from reaching his potential as a great political leader.
His diagnosis is that he was the wrong kind of politician for his age. He was not cut out for a “touchy-feely era” and was unable to make the most of Twitter and other social media platforms. He believes that, as prime minister, it was his failure to communicate his success to the public that led to defeat. From the evidence of his autobiography, it is clear that the problem was not Twitter but that while he had a high IQ, Gordon was almost entirely lacking in EQ – emotional intelligence – which is an essential component of political leadership. His account of his encounter with Gillian Duffy in the 2010 election illustrates perfectly his tin ear; for him, the fault lay with one of his aides, who had failed to turn off the microphone, rather than with him, for calling Duffy a “sort of bigoted woman”.
He attributes many of his difficulties to the right-wing press, particularly the Murdoch titles Every media slight is recalled in detail, from the MPs’ expenses scandal to Barack Obama’s gift of a pack of DVDs (which, he tells us, didn’t even work on British DVD players). Having such thin skin is fatal for a prime minister. The one exception from his complaints about the media is Paul Dacre, the editor of the Daily Mail. The friendship between the two men was one of the most curious in politics.
Reading the book suggests a different diagnosis for his failure, at least to me. First and most important was Gordon’s inability to take responsibility. This is the primary test of leadership. The book is a series of mea non culpas, in which someone else was always to blame. The loss of the 2010 general election, for example, was his predecessor’s fault: “Well before Tony Blair left office, public support was moving away from us.” He doesn’t even accept that the election was lost: “Perhaps I am alone in thinking that the most remarkable aspect of the general election result in 2010 was that only ten million people voted for Tory austerity, whereas 15 million voted for parties with policies to keep the economy growing.” Labour was out of power because of Nick Clegg, not because of Brown.
The most striking example is his attempt to distance himself from decisions about Iraq. “I ask myself over and over whether I could have made more of a difference before the fateful decisions,” he writes. But he didn’t want another battle with Tony and he let himself down by not asking harder questions. He should have barged his way into the discussions. But his get-out-of-jail-free card is a secret US document that he claims he has discovered. It shows that “key decision-makers in America were already aware that the evidence on the existence of WMDs was weak, even negligible… It is astonishing that none of us in the British government ever saw this American report.”
According to his description, this was an internal document commissioned by Donald Rumsfeld to identify gaps in US intelligence on Iraq, which was released in 2011. I have asked the key foreign policy and intelligence officials in the Bush administration and none of them has heard of the document. All deny that any such information was hidden from American or British leaders. A senior US intelligence official involved in vetting the case for Iraqi WMDs said, “It would be highly improbable that the department of defence would have intelligence that Iraq does NOT have WMD. How would they prove a negative?” The problem with Iraq is that we got it wrong. There aren’t undiscovered documents that exonerate us.
Perhaps this unwillingness to take responsibility is explained by a comment he made to a friend in 2004: “I’ve tried not to be too exposed.” Gordon deliberately tried to avoid being associated with difficult decisions in government. But I think the explanation goes deeper. Robin Cook told me that he put it down to the influence of Gordon’s father, a minister in the Church of Scotland. Gordon writes that his father “did not need to say anything when he disapproved of my bad behaviour; his frown told me everything”. In his desire not to earn that disapproval, he took to avoiding responsibility. Unlike George Washington, he would have said: “Father, I cannot tell a lie. Tony Blair chopped down the cherry tree.”
Brown’s second flaw was his propensity to nurse a grudge indefinitely and let it eat away at him. While I was reading the book I had a series of disturbing nightmares. On the last night I sat bolt upright in bed with a vision that encapsulated the book: the howls of rage of a Minotaur trapped in a labyrinth of its own recriminations. This theme runs throughout the book – John Reid messed up Afghanistan, Alan Milburn was “disingenuous” and “vacuous” in his disagreement on health policy, Tony had “the biggest and best flat in No 10”.
The main problem appears to be the collapse of his relationship with Tony Blair. When they entered parliament in 1983, he told Tony that no great friendship among the senior ranks of politics had ever lasted. He wanted them to be different but he now thinks that Tony concluded that a breakdown was inevitable. Gordon’s gnawing disappointment and feeling of betrayal drips off every page of his book: he had helped Tony broaden his appeal in the party and Tony had always told him he was the senior partner, and the taking away of the leadership from him was “incredibly unfair”.
Gordon had his brother keep a diary so that he could record the promises that Tony made at the time. He doesn’t seem to have considered that whatever was said between them in 1994, the reason Tony was increasingly unwilling to hand over the leadership to him might have been his refusal to co-operate in government and his attempt to oppose every reform that Tony tried to introduce.
It is important for Gordon to demonstrate that the differences between them were over policy, and policies that are now unpopular such as tuition fees and the euro – but in reality, it was a clash of personalities. He identifies the breaking point as an argument over the euro in 2003 but it started long before because of his outrageous behaviour. Every page of my diaries from the period began: “You won’t believe what Gordon did today.”
Tony had been discussing moving him or even getting rid of him altogether years before. The breakdown of the relationship was a tragedy. They could have been the Lennon and McCartney of politics, as Gordon approvingly notes, but instead it was Yoko Ono and the break-up of the Beatles from the beginning. The surprising thing is how much the government was able to achieve despite the split at the heart of it.
The third flaw was indecisiveness. The best example of this is the on-again-off-again 2007 election. Gordon still denies that he ever thought of calling one: “I had never wanted an early election.” He claims that he did not read a note proposing the idea that his aide Spencer Livermore produced for him at the beginning of August 2007. He now writes that he did see the polling favouring the Tories, which he denied at the time. He thinks that his mistake was to allow his aides to speculate publicly about an election, though he gives the game away when referring with approval to the launch of the “Not flash, just Gordon” billboard campaign, a precursor of an election.
The real problem was that he could not make up his mind and dithered until the last minute about whether to go for an election and then denied to the public that he had ever thought of having one. In my view, he probably reached the right decision – Theresa May has found out the cost of calling an unnecessary election in a similar position – but his denial that he had ever considered the idea gave the public a glimpse into his soul from which he did not recover.
The final and perhaps most surprising flaw was his lack of any programme as prime minister. Gordon had more time than any previous incumbent to prepare for office, to put together a team and to decide what he wanted to achieve. He kept telling Tony that he had a series of great ideas but he couldn’t tell him what they were in case he stole them. In the end, the emperor had no clothes. When he came to office, he had no ideas and there was apparently little he wanted to do.
Gordon’s explanation is that Tony made him wait too long and the public was tired of him by the time he got to No 10. It is true that there are de facto term limits for British prime minsters but that does not extend to chancellors becoming prime ministers. Perhaps the problem was that he never fought an election to become leader of the party or prime minister, just like May. Unless you have to run and prove yourself, you arrive in the top job undefined and unready.
Gordon did all he could on coming to office to distinguish himself from Tony in small things. He claims that he abolished the order in council, which allowed Alastair Campbell and me to issue instructions to civil servants, as a way of ending sofa government. But he seems to have missed that Robin Butler, who was the cabinet secretary until 1998, later made it clear that introducing the order in council in the first place was a mistake and made no difference to anything in the running of No 10. Gordon complains of the series of “events” that distracted him on first taking office, including floods, pestilence and developments in Northern Ireland. But a successful prime minister needs to have the ability to move the agenda forward, despite the crises.
It is clear that Gordon should not be blamed for the 2007-08 economic crash. It was, after all, a global crisis caused by the US sub-prime market. It is also clear that he did good work in gathering world leaders at the 2009 G20 meeting in London and chivvying them into agreement. In the end, however, I think history will give more credit to the Federal Reserve’s Ben Bernanke, with his deep knowledge of the Great Depression, and Timothy Geithner, then the secretary of the US treasury, for saving the world economy, because the rescue had to be American, just as the cause of the crash had been American.
It could be argued that Gordon’s greatest failure was the succession. He was so determined to win the crown that he adopted a “King Herod strategy”, killing off at birth any potential rivals who might challenge him, from Alan Milburn to Charles Clarke. In particular, it was his determination to stop David Miliband succeeding him that led to the victory of Ed, which led in turn to the rise of Jeremy Corbyn.
Gordon uses the book to try to reinvent himself as a left-wing socialist, praising Corbyn’s approach. He claims that his whole career was a battle against neoliberalism and globalisation and that he was only held back from more radical measures by Tony Blair. He now demands that the bankers be put on trial (which I suppose he could have done at the time). That is not quite how I remember the proponent of the private finance initiative and “prudence” between 1997 and 2007. It has certainly been a long journey from champion of neo-endogenous growth theory to the enemy of neoliberalism.
Gordon describes the book rather portentously as “the second draft of history”. I think it will instead be the raw material of history, along with all the other memoirs and accounts of those times. My guess is that history will be kind to him about his time as chancellor and the many achievements of the government, from Bank of England independence to tax credits, but less kind about his time as prime minister and about how he got there.
Whatever his flaws, Gordon Brown was a towering political figure. Now the need is not for recriminations but for all progressives to put the past behind them, come together to fight Brexit and stop the collapse of the economy and, perhaps, even our political system. Let’s draw a line under the past once and for all.
Jonathan Powell was Tony Blair’s chief of staff from 1995 to 2007 and is the author of “The New Machiavelli: How to Wield Power in the Modern World” (Vintage)
Gordon Brown was a big beast in an era when there were big beasts in British politics rather than the minnows and charlatans we have today. He was interested in ideas and concepts, not the fripperies of politics. He was tested by terrible tragedies: the loss of an eye as a teenager and, when chancellor, of his baby daughter soon after she was born. And what he has done since leaving office in support of primary education around the world is enormously commendable.
I see no point in re-litigating the Blair-Brown wars when all progressives need to work together in the face of the serious threat that the country faces. Though it is mildly interesting to see how the various battles appeared from the other side, in the end there were only a handful of people involved and even they don’t care much nowadays.
The publication of Brown’s autobiography, My Life, Our Times (Bodley Head), is, however, an opportunity to stand back and assess his time in politics as a whole. The book is circumspect in what it tells us about his childhood or any of his inner thoughts, but unintentionally it reveals all the tragic flaws that prevented him from reaching his potential as a great political leader.
His diagnosis is that he was the wrong kind of politician for his age. He was not cut out for a “touchy-feely era” and was unable to make the most of Twitter and other social media platforms. He believes that, as prime minister, it was his failure to communicate his success to the public that led to defeat. From the evidence of his autobiography, it is clear that the problem was not Twitter but that while he had a high IQ, Gordon was almost entirely lacking in EQ – emotional intelligence – which is an essential component of political leadership. His account of his encounter with Gillian Duffy in the 2010 election illustrates perfectly his tin ear; for him, the fault lay with one of his aides, who had failed to turn off the microphone, rather than with him, for calling Duffy a “sort of bigoted woman”.
He attributes many of his difficulties to the right-wing press, particularly the Murdoch titles Every media slight is recalled in detail, from the MPs’ expenses scandal to Barack Obama’s gift of a pack of DVDs (which, he tells us, didn’t even work on British DVD players). Having such thin skin is fatal for a prime minister. The one exception from his complaints about the media is Paul Dacre, the editor of the Daily Mail. The friendship between the two men was one of the most curious in politics.
Reading the book suggests a different diagnosis for his failure, at least to me. First and most important was Gordon’s inability to take responsibility. This is the primary test of leadership. The book is a series of mea non culpas, in which someone else was always to blame. The loss of the 2010 general election, for example, was his predecessor’s fault: “Well before Tony Blair left office, public support was moving away from us.” He doesn’t even accept that the election was lost: “Perhaps I am alone in thinking that the most remarkable aspect of the general election result in 2010 was that only ten million people voted for Tory austerity, whereas 15 million voted for parties with policies to keep the economy growing.” Labour was out of power because of Nick Clegg, not because of Brown.
The most striking example is his attempt to distance himself from decisions about Iraq. “I ask myself over and over whether I could have made more of a difference before the fateful decisions,” he writes. But he didn’t want another battle with Tony and he let himself down by not asking harder questions. He should have barged his way into the discussions. But his get-out-of-jail-free card is a secret US document that he claims he has discovered. It shows that “key decision-makers in America were already aware that the evidence on the existence of WMDs was weak, even negligible… It is astonishing that none of us in the British government ever saw this American report.”
According to his description, this was an internal document commissioned by Donald Rumsfeld to identify gaps in US intelligence on Iraq, which was released in 2011. I have asked the key foreign policy and intelligence officials in the Bush administration and none of them has heard of the document. All deny that any such information was hidden from American or British leaders. A senior US intelligence official involved in vetting the case for Iraqi WMDs said, “It would be highly improbable that the department of defence would have intelligence that Iraq does NOT have WMD. How would they prove a negative?” The problem with Iraq is that we got it wrong. There aren’t undiscovered documents that exonerate us.
Perhaps this unwillingness to take responsibility is explained by a comment he made to a friend in 2004: “I’ve tried not to be too exposed.” Gordon deliberately tried to avoid being associated with difficult decisions in government. But I think the explanation goes deeper. Robin Cook told me that he put it down to the influence of Gordon’s father, a minister in the Church of Scotland. Gordon writes that his father “did not need to say anything when he disapproved of my bad behaviour; his frown told me everything”. In his desire not to earn that disapproval, he took to avoiding responsibility. Unlike George Washington, he would have said: “Father, I cannot tell a lie. Tony Blair chopped down the cherry tree.”
Brown’s second flaw was his propensity to nurse a grudge indefinitely and let it eat away at him. While I was reading the book I had a series of disturbing nightmares. On the last night I sat bolt upright in bed with a vision that encapsulated the book: the howls of rage of a Minotaur trapped in a labyrinth of its own recriminations. This theme runs throughout the book – John Reid messed up Afghanistan, Alan Milburn was “disingenuous” and “vacuous” in his disagreement on health policy, Tony had “the biggest and best flat in No 10”.
The main problem appears to be the collapse of his relationship with Tony Blair. When they entered parliament in 1983, he told Tony that no great friendship among the senior ranks of politics had ever lasted. He wanted them to be different but he now thinks that Tony concluded that a breakdown was inevitable. Gordon’s gnawing disappointment and feeling of betrayal drips off every page of his book: he had helped Tony broaden his appeal in the party and Tony had always told him he was the senior partner, and the taking away of the leadership from him was “incredibly unfair”.
Gordon had his brother keep a diary so that he could record the promises that Tony made at the time. He doesn’t seem to have considered that whatever was said between them in 1994, the reason Tony was increasingly unwilling to hand over the leadership to him might have been his refusal to co-operate in government and his attempt to oppose every reform that Tony tried to introduce.
It is important for Gordon to demonstrate that the differences between them were over policy, and policies that are now unpopular such as tuition fees and the euro – but in reality, it was a clash of personalities. He identifies the breaking point as an argument over the euro in 2003 but it started long before because of his outrageous behaviour. Every page of my diaries from the period began: “You won’t believe what Gordon did today.”
Tony had been discussing moving him or even getting rid of him altogether years before. The breakdown of the relationship was a tragedy. They could have been the Lennon and McCartney of politics, as Gordon approvingly notes, but instead it was Yoko Ono and the break-up of the Beatles from the beginning. The surprising thing is how much the government was able to achieve despite the split at the heart of it.
The third flaw was indecisiveness. The best example of this is the on-again-off-again 2007 election. Gordon still denies that he ever thought of calling one: “I had never wanted an early election.” He claims that he did not read a note proposing the idea that his aide Spencer Livermore produced for him at the beginning of August 2007. He now writes that he did see the polling favouring the Tories, which he denied at the time. He thinks that his mistake was to allow his aides to speculate publicly about an election, though he gives the game away when referring with approval to the launch of the “Not flash, just Gordon” billboard campaign, a precursor of an election.
The real problem was that he could not make up his mind and dithered until the last minute about whether to go for an election and then denied to the public that he had ever thought of having one. In my view, he probably reached the right decision – Theresa May has found out the cost of calling an unnecessary election in a similar position – but his denial that he had ever considered the idea gave the public a glimpse into his soul from which he did not recover.
The final and perhaps most surprising flaw was his lack of any programme as prime minister. Gordon had more time than any previous incumbent to prepare for office, to put together a team and to decide what he wanted to achieve. He kept telling Tony that he had a series of great ideas but he couldn’t tell him what they were in case he stole them. In the end, the emperor had no clothes. When he came to office, he had no ideas and there was apparently little he wanted to do.
Gordon’s explanation is that Tony made him wait too long and the public was tired of him by the time he got to No 10. It is true that there are de facto term limits for British prime minsters but that does not extend to chancellors becoming prime ministers. Perhaps the problem was that he never fought an election to become leader of the party or prime minister, just like May. Unless you have to run and prove yourself, you arrive in the top job undefined and unready.
Gordon did all he could on coming to office to distinguish himself from Tony in small things. He claims that he abolished the order in council, which allowed Alastair Campbell and me to issue instructions to civil servants, as a way of ending sofa government. But he seems to have missed that Robin Butler, who was the cabinet secretary until 1998, later made it clear that introducing the order in council in the first place was a mistake and made no difference to anything in the running of No 10. Gordon complains of the series of “events” that distracted him on first taking office, including floods, pestilence and developments in Northern Ireland. But a successful prime minister needs to have the ability to move the agenda forward, despite the crises.
It is clear that Gordon should not be blamed for the 2007-08 economic crash. It was, after all, a global crisis caused by the US sub-prime market. It is also clear that he did good work in gathering world leaders at the 2009 G20 meeting in London and chivvying them into agreement. In the end, however, I think history will give more credit to the Federal Reserve’s Ben Bernanke, with his deep knowledge of the Great Depression, and Timothy Geithner, then the secretary of the US treasury, for saving the world economy, because the rescue had to be American, just as the cause of the crash had been American.
It could be argued that Gordon’s greatest failure was the succession. He was so determined to win the crown that he adopted a “King Herod strategy”, killing off at birth any potential rivals who might challenge him, from Alan Milburn to Charles Clarke. In particular, it was his determination to stop David Miliband succeeding him that led to the victory of Ed, which led in turn to the rise of Jeremy Corbyn.
Gordon uses the book to try to reinvent himself as a left-wing socialist, praising Corbyn’s approach. He claims that his whole career was a battle against neoliberalism and globalisation and that he was only held back from more radical measures by Tony Blair. He now demands that the bankers be put on trial (which I suppose he could have done at the time). That is not quite how I remember the proponent of the private finance initiative and “prudence” between 1997 and 2007. It has certainly been a long journey from champion of neo-endogenous growth theory to the enemy of neoliberalism.
Gordon describes the book rather portentously as “the second draft of history”. I think it will instead be the raw material of history, along with all the other memoirs and accounts of those times. My guess is that history will be kind to him about his time as chancellor and the many achievements of the government, from Bank of England independence to tax credits, but less kind about his time as prime minister and about how he got there.
Whatever his flaws, Gordon Brown was a towering political figure. Now the need is not for recriminations but for all progressives to put the past behind them, come together to fight Brexit and stop the collapse of the economy and, perhaps, even our political system. Let’s draw a line under the past once and for all.
Jonathan Powell was Tony Blair’s chief of staff from 1995 to 2007 and is the author of “The New Machiavelli: How to Wield Power in the Modern World” (Vintage)
"It was one character: yours." (09/11/17)
Daniel Finkelstein has always struck me as a very reasonable and decent person, but The Times columnist pulls no punches with this hard-hitting assessment of Gordon Brown's execrable new book - My Life, Our Times.
'The Fink' is not wholly unkind to the former Labour leader and Prime Minister and gives him credit for standing firm in the face of the global banking crash, though he does nail Brown's character in the following paragraphs:
"You had the ability to demonstrate intellectual grip, and showed it during the banking crisis, but that’s not enough when weighed in the balance with everything else.
"Your method of ruling through fear and your desire to crush any opponent — real or imagined — destroyed Tony Blair’s government and then ate your own. Alan Milburn, Ruth Kelly, David Miliband, James Purnell: these people were your allies, or should have been, for goodness sake. Yet you feuded with them, humiliated them or chased them out of politics altogether.
"And when you’d gone, having scorched the landscape, no wonder there was nothing left except Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell. Oh, and Tom Watson of course. There will always be him."
Gordon Brown has, of course, been virtually silent in recent about what the Labour Party has become under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership which is very odd if you ask me, because politically speaking it's light years away from what Brown stood for in the 1990s.
The problem all along, Mr Brown, was you
daniel finkelstein - The Times
Gordon Brown’s self-pitying memoirs persist with the delusion that he was cheated out of greatness by Tony Blair
When someone publishes their memoirs it is a moment for historical reflection, for the making of judgments and the placing of cards on the table. Yesterday Gordon Brown published My Life, Our Times. So, allow me.
That row, Mr Brown, that you had with Tony Blair? The one that split Labour modernisers and hampered the government for more than a decade? The one that drove out of politics some of its best people? The one that fatally weakened the centre and right of the party until the left was able to take over? That row was your fault.
Gordon Brown has written a memoir that tries to redefine his time in power - TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER JAMES GLOSSOP
It wasn’t Tony Blair’s fault and it wasn’t six of one and half a dozen of the other. It wasn’t understandable in the circumstances or just one of those things. It wasn’t tittle-tattle or irrelevant. It was all you, and it was all unnecessary and it all mattered.
Let’s deal with the nub of the point. Tony Blair did not trick you out of the leadership when John Smith died in 1994. In your book you say: “I had no doubt I could and would win”. If this statement is true, it is delusional.
Every serious historical account — except yours — agrees that the momentum was with Mr Blair. A BBC poll of Labour members before your withdrawal from the leadership contest indicated 47 per cent support for him, with 15 per cent for John Prescott and only 11 per cent for you. And the row you were having over spending promises with the unions back then means that they wouldn’t have come to your rescue either. So if you had challenged Mr Blair you are one of the very few people, now or then, who thinks you would have been the victor.
If indeed you did think that. But did you? Really? Surely if you did, you would have gone ahead and stood, wouldn’t you?
It is probably true, as you write, that during your exchanges Mr Blair said all sorts of emollient words about giving you control and standing down in a second term. But does it occur to you that his motive might not have been to steal your birthright but merely to try to stop you heavying him? Or he might have seen you were a bit down and wanted to pep you up? You can get quite cross, you know you can, and the whole thing was probably quite socially awkward. He was always weak when it came to dealing with you.
So he didn’t owe you anything. He became the candidate because your associates in the modernising camp and beyond thought he would be more attractive to voters. And they were right.
In any case, your suggestion that Mr Blair’s broken promise about standing down destroyed a perfectly good partnership doesn’t survive reading any other participant’s memoir or diary.
It wasn’t 140 characters that led to your political downfall: it was yours
From the beginning of his leadership you behave extraordinarily badly. Sulking in meetings, swearing down the phone, exploding either about or to Mr Blair’s advisers, engaging in an absurd feud with Peter Mandelson that led to his downfall. If Mr Blair had ever intended standing down, and wasn’t just trying to be nice, has it struck you that by the time you were actually in a second term, all these tantrums might have put him off?
He probably drew the conclusion that however clever, studious and socially committed you were, and however formidable you were at the dispatch box as chancellor, you were not temperamentally suited to being prime minister. And again he would have been right.
In the opening section of your book, you accept this up to a point. You argue, essentially, that Abraham Lincoln and Clement Attlee didn’t have to put up with constant demands to give their views on soap operas and pop stars, talk about their feelings, or let the cameras in to film the family having Sunday lunch. And they didn’t have to use social media. Perhaps, you seem to be saying, you might have done better in their day when you didn’t have to blogpost on Faceogram or whatever it is these young people get up to.
Well, it does matter whether a political figure can communicate with voters using the techniques of the day. And if you weren’t willing to do that — felt these nonsenses were beneath you — then you shouldn’t have hounded Tony Blair until you made him quit. You had a perfectly good political partner willing to be filmed eating cornflakes or whatever, and you insisted you didn’t need him or any of his people. But in any case, the idea that Twitter was your big problem is absurd. It wasn’t 140 characters that led to your downfall, it was one character: yours.
Having spent years trying to lever out Mr Blair on the ostensible grounds that you stood for a different kind of modernisation, when you finally succeeded you hadn’t the foggiest idea what that new and distinct agenda was. And people sensed that. You regret your inability to persuade voters at the 2010 election that we should have gone on increasing public spending but reject entirely the thought that this might not have been a good idea.
Your flaws destroyed Blair’s government and then ate up your own
More important than this is that a combination of burning intensity, excessive focus, extreme partisanship, a tendency to feel sorry for yourself and frequent moments of seeming paranoia are not qualities any of us want in a national leader.
You had the ability to demonstrate intellectual grip, and showed it during the banking crisis, but that’s not enough when weighed in the balance with everything else.
Your method of ruling through fear and your desire to crush any opponent — real or imagined — destroyed Tony Blair’s government and then ate your own. Alan Milburn, Ruth Kelly, David Miliband, James Purnell: these people were your allies, or should have been, for goodness sake. Yet you feuded with them, humiliated them or chased them out of politics altogether.
And when you’d gone, having scorched the landscape, no wonder there was nothing left except Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell. Oh, and Tom Watson of course. There will always be him.
Just before you became prime minister, a few days before you took possession of No 10, I had lunch with Philip Gould, the great Labour pollster and a lovely man who only wanted the best for you. And he told me he had his fingers crossed. “Gordon knows he will have to change now.” The moment he said that, I realised it would be a fiasco, the whole thing. Because people don’t change.
So I should have known that in your memoirs, as in Downing Street, you’d just plough on, giving us the same old stuff on you and your row with Blair. But all I’m saying is that even if people buy your book, I don’t think you’ll find many who will buy your version of the past.
daniel.finkelstein@thetimes.co.uk
It wasn’t Tony Blair’s fault and it wasn’t six of one and half a dozen of the other. It wasn’t understandable in the circumstances or just one of those things. It wasn’t tittle-tattle or irrelevant. It was all you, and it was all unnecessary and it all mattered.
Let’s deal with the nub of the point. Tony Blair did not trick you out of the leadership when John Smith died in 1994. In your book you say: “I had no doubt I could and would win”. If this statement is true, it is delusional.
Every serious historical account — except yours — agrees that the momentum was with Mr Blair. A BBC poll of Labour members before your withdrawal from the leadership contest indicated 47 per cent support for him, with 15 per cent for John Prescott and only 11 per cent for you. And the row you were having over spending promises with the unions back then means that they wouldn’t have come to your rescue either. So if you had challenged Mr Blair you are one of the very few people, now or then, who thinks you would have been the victor.
If indeed you did think that. But did you? Really? Surely if you did, you would have gone ahead and stood, wouldn’t you?
It is probably true, as you write, that during your exchanges Mr Blair said all sorts of emollient words about giving you control and standing down in a second term. But does it occur to you that his motive might not have been to steal your birthright but merely to try to stop you heavying him? Or he might have seen you were a bit down and wanted to pep you up? You can get quite cross, you know you can, and the whole thing was probably quite socially awkward. He was always weak when it came to dealing with you.
So he didn’t owe you anything. He became the candidate because your associates in the modernising camp and beyond thought he would be more attractive to voters. And they were right.
In any case, your suggestion that Mr Blair’s broken promise about standing down destroyed a perfectly good partnership doesn’t survive reading any other participant’s memoir or diary.
It wasn’t 140 characters that led to your political downfall: it was yours
From the beginning of his leadership you behave extraordinarily badly. Sulking in meetings, swearing down the phone, exploding either about or to Mr Blair’s advisers, engaging in an absurd feud with Peter Mandelson that led to his downfall. If Mr Blair had ever intended standing down, and wasn’t just trying to be nice, has it struck you that by the time you were actually in a second term, all these tantrums might have put him off?
He probably drew the conclusion that however clever, studious and socially committed you were, and however formidable you were at the dispatch box as chancellor, you were not temperamentally suited to being prime minister. And again he would have been right.
In the opening section of your book, you accept this up to a point. You argue, essentially, that Abraham Lincoln and Clement Attlee didn’t have to put up with constant demands to give their views on soap operas and pop stars, talk about their feelings, or let the cameras in to film the family having Sunday lunch. And they didn’t have to use social media. Perhaps, you seem to be saying, you might have done better in their day when you didn’t have to blogpost on Faceogram or whatever it is these young people get up to.
Well, it does matter whether a political figure can communicate with voters using the techniques of the day. And if you weren’t willing to do that — felt these nonsenses were beneath you — then you shouldn’t have hounded Tony Blair until you made him quit. You had a perfectly good political partner willing to be filmed eating cornflakes or whatever, and you insisted you didn’t need him or any of his people. But in any case, the idea that Twitter was your big problem is absurd. It wasn’t 140 characters that led to your downfall, it was one character: yours.
Having spent years trying to lever out Mr Blair on the ostensible grounds that you stood for a different kind of modernisation, when you finally succeeded you hadn’t the foggiest idea what that new and distinct agenda was. And people sensed that. You regret your inability to persuade voters at the 2010 election that we should have gone on increasing public spending but reject entirely the thought that this might not have been a good idea.
Your flaws destroyed Blair’s government and then ate up your own
More important than this is that a combination of burning intensity, excessive focus, extreme partisanship, a tendency to feel sorry for yourself and frequent moments of seeming paranoia are not qualities any of us want in a national leader.
You had the ability to demonstrate intellectual grip, and showed it during the banking crisis, but that’s not enough when weighed in the balance with everything else.
Your method of ruling through fear and your desire to crush any opponent — real or imagined — destroyed Tony Blair’s government and then ate your own. Alan Milburn, Ruth Kelly, David Miliband, James Purnell: these people were your allies, or should have been, for goodness sake. Yet you feuded with them, humiliated them or chased them out of politics altogether.
And when you’d gone, having scorched the landscape, no wonder there was nothing left except Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell. Oh, and Tom Watson of course. There will always be him.
Just before you became prime minister, a few days before you took possession of No 10, I had lunch with Philip Gould, the great Labour pollster and a lovely man who only wanted the best for you. And he told me he had his fingers crossed. “Gordon knows he will have to change now.” The moment he said that, I realised it would be a fiasco, the whole thing. Because people don’t change.
So I should have known that in your memoirs, as in Downing Street, you’d just plough on, giving us the same old stuff on you and your row with Blair. But all I’m saying is that even if people buy your book, I don’t think you’ll find many who will buy your version of the past.
daniel.finkelstein@thetimes.co.uk
Labour Own Goal (04/03/16)
For five long years during the 2010-2015 Westminster Parliament, Ed Miliband spent much of his time telling voters that the last Labour Government was not responsible for almost wrecking the UK economy, following a near fatal collapse of the banks.
Yet the new Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, launched an unexpected attack on his own side the other day, in a speech to the British Chambers of Commerce, which was less about economic or fiscal policy and more to do with settling old scores inside the warring Labour Party.
Here's an extract of what Jezza told British business leaders:
"But it wasn’t government that was the problem in 2007 and 2008, when the banking sector nearly drove the entire economy to the point of collapse.
“The New Labour approach was to opt for ‘light touch regulation’ of finance – and then sit back and collect the tax revenues."
Now according to Jeremy Corbyn government wasn't the problem, just government policy under the then Labour Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, who had of course been Chancellor of the Exchequer for 10 consecutive years between 1997 and 2007.
No doubt the Conservatives will be rubbing their hands with glee at the sight of the Labour Party rubbishing its own record in government.
Who knows, Gordon Brown may come out fighting defend his 10 years spent as Labour 'Iron Chancellor' even though his old attack dog, Damian McBride has joined Team Corbyn as a special adviser.
Who knows, Gordon Brown may come out fighting defend his 10 years spent as Labour 'Iron Chancellor' even though his old attack dog, Damian McBride has joined Team Corbyn as a special adviser.
Pointing the Finger (01/11/17)
The slight problem is that the former Labour leader is making his pitch about 10 years too late if you ask me, because these comments would have made much more sense while Gordon was still Prime Minister and had the chance to back up his words with decisive action back in 2008.
The other glaring omission is that perhaps the most glaring example of a 'reckless' banker was the chief of the Royal Bank of Scotland, Fred Goodwin, who apparently became 'Sir Fred' and a knight of the realm after the intervention of none other than Gordon Brown.
So it sounds a bit like 'pots and kettles' to me after all these years with the politicians of the day pointing the finger at reckless bankers when the same politicians were responsible for regulating the banks.
Gongs Away (03/01/15)
Here's a report from the BBC highlighting ten 'great' Britons who have declined the offer of an honour from Her Majesty the Queen.
A decent bunch if you ask me and it's good to know that there are still plenty of people out there who are prepared to reject the establishment, class-based values on which the honours system is still based.
Where 'Lollipop Ladies' get the relatively lowly British Empire Medal while the former boos of the Royal Bank of Scotland.
Ten Great Britons Who Declined The Honours List
The MBE medal
Thanks to the biannual honours list, the British have a unique way to celebrate achievement in all walks of life. Anyone can be nominated, providing there’s enough support, and they get to meet the Queen and have a nice day out at Buckingham Palace and take home a medal, or possibly a Dukedom. It’s all very nice.
However, there are people who feel that accepting such an honor is in some way being pinned and mounted by the establishment, like a prized butterfly. Or that taking the award (which it’s perfectly possible to turn down) would in some way acknowledge that their best years are behind them.
Naturally, the whole acceptance/refusal process is fairly closely guarded, so here are ten notable Brits who have reportedly decided that a pat on the head from the Queen is not for them:
1: John Cleese has the unique distinction of having turned down both a life peerage (barony) and a CBE, saying he felt the honor was “silly,” and to prove it, jokily adding that he “did not wish to spend winters in England.”
2: Smash Hits magazine always used to jokingly refer to David Bowie as ‘Dame David,’ which may have, in some indirect way, lead to his nomination first for a CBE, and then a knighthood. He turned them both down, presumably on the grounds that it was a reinvention too far for his chameleonic career.
3: The painter LS Lowry deserves a special mention on this list. His distinctive paintings of working class Manchester factory workers may sell for millions now, but he never wanted to be seen to rise above his station, declining first the OBE, then the CBE, then a knighthood, then the Companion of Honor (twice). He holds the record for turning down the most nominations.
4: The playwright and author Alan Bennett also turned down a knighthood and a CBE. I guess, once you’ve turned one down, it must feel like you have to keep saying no, or risk looking flighty.
5: Kenneth Branagh, fresh from Academy Award nominations and acclaimed as the Great British Actor of the moment, turned down the offer of a CBE in 1994. Quite right too. He was just getting started at the time.
6: More recently, Paul Weller turned down the same honour in 2007, although for someone as obsessed with the twin forward engines of youth and modernism (the youth cult, not the art movement), it’s not really that much of a surprise than he knocked it back.
7: A slightly more surprising rejection came from the always-agreeable Jim Broadbent, who turned down an OBE in 2002. I can’t imagine what it could have done for him that being astonishing in all of those films could not, but you can’t deny he’s earned it.
8: Meanwhile, back in 1986, Roald Dahl turned down the same honor, despite being one of the best children’s authors Britain has ever produced, and a fighter pilot in the war. Another deserving winner, if ever there was one.
9: Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders were both offered OBEs in 2001, and decided against taking them. Maybe Jennifer felt Edina wouldn’t approve.
10: John Lydon, who as Johnny Rotten outraged the British establishment with the Sex Pistols song “God Save The Queen,” released in the Queen’s silver jubilee year, has reportedly turned down the offer of an MBE. Which makes you wonder why anyone thought it would’ve been a good idea to offer it to him in the first place? Assimilation, perhaps?
Special mention must also go to Keith Richards, who has bitterly complained about the knighthood given to Mick Jagger, as being precisely the kind of thing you don’t do when you’re in the Rolling Stones. One can only assume he’s had his chances and turned them all down too.
Never Trust a Ferret (24 January 2012)
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| A hunting ferret |
But what I most like about Janet is her 'spit in your eye' attitude - towards goings and public honours which she wrote about in The Independent on Sunday.
Like me, Janet wouldn't cross the road for an OBE or a knighthood - and ridicules people that do - the kind of people who pee their pants just waiting in the queue.
Like me, Janet has not time for Sir Fred 'the Shred' Goodwin - who 'looks like a ferret' she says and that's a good enough reason for mistrusting him in my book.
But of course Sir Fred wasn't mistrusted - quite the opposite in fact.
Because as everyone knows Sir Fred was actively courted and fawned over by senior figures in the last Labour government - which did 'bugger-all to deal with banking excesses' - according to Janet.
And you know what - she's absolutely right - here's what Janet had to say in her newspaper column at the weekend.
Politicians are jumping over each other to demand that the disgraced former RBS chief Fred "the Shred" Goodwin should be stripped of his knighthood. Why? What difference would it make? I can see that the ritual of public humiliation might turn some people on, but this futile gesture won't help the huge number of folk fruitlessly looking for work or trying to pay bills. It won't build a single affordable home, fund a crèche or keep a library open. Ed Miliband is the latest lemming to demand Fred's head on a platter, telling anyone who'll listen that Gordon Brown should "never" have handed out the accolade in the first place.
Goodwin is an easy person to loathe. He's a bit common, looks like a ferret, and has never publicly graced us with a full apology. He still lives in a posh house with mega-security in a swanky part of Edinburgh. What do Dave, Cleggy and Ed want? That he should walk down Whitehall in sackcloth having custard pies chucked at him by angry voters?
There are plenty of people as loathsome as Sir Fred – our former prime ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, for starters, with their self-important charitable foundations and conspicuous lack of humility about their track records; their huge "expenses"; their trumpeting of their desire to "help" the underprivileged on a global scale; their refusal consistently to accept blame.
Taking away Goodwin's knighthood will not make any difference to the bonus culture or the deeply entrenched mindset in the City. The people who run our country have had more than three years to get cross about his gong, so why are politicians so incandescent with rage now? Almost certainly because they know they are powerless to prevent the steady flow of bad news on all fronts.
Unemployment is at a record high. The high street is in crisis, with liquidations every week. More young people than ever have been sitting around doing nothing for more than a year. There's the ever-present danger of a double-dip recession. The euro teeters on the brink of collapse. We seem to be blundering through a maze of misery, so (they seem to have decided) why not pick on an easily identifiable bloke and make him the scapegoat for all the current woes? Why not try and distract voters with a fall guy?
The truth is, Fred G was just one of many. The Labour government did bugger-all to deal with banking excesses. And when the crunch came, they still treated bankers as a special case. Ann Godbehere, the woman brought in by Labour to sort out Northern Rock's financial mess, was allowed to base her tax affairs outside the UK. And they appointed a new chairman, Ron Sandler, a non-dom whose £8m London house was owned by an overseas trust.
Labour chose these two key people to be in charge of billions of pound's worth of public money when we bailed out the bank – people who enjoyed tax breaks that were denied to ordinary people. So forgive my cynicism. I can't see that any politicians are committed to changing the way that bankers and tax avoiders operate. If they did, we would have signed up for the Robin Hood Tax, a levy on all financial transactions, a simple decision that would change charitable giving overnight and really help the needy.
Another thing about knighthoods is that they're worthless, a snobbish relic that reinforces our class-ridden, socially stagnant society. Terry Leahy, Philip Green, Stuart Rose and Richard Branson were all knighted for services to retail and various types of enterprise. In reality, they were already lavishly rewarded financially for their job. So why garnish their CVs with a gong? In the US, knighthoods don't exist, you are valued by your peers according to how well your business is doing. The US is a true meritocracy. We still believe titles carry clout.
When Simon Schama trashed Downton Abbey as "a steaming, silvered tureen of snobbery", he hit the nail right on the head. There's a nasty little corner buried in the British psyche that secretly aches for a gong, that can't help itself genuflecting to a title. Sir Mick Jagger sold out when he accepted one. Ditto Sir Bob Geldof. Sir Fred's title is an irrelevance, not worthy of a moment's concern.
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| A hunting Sir Fred Goodwin |
Arise, Sir Bonkers! (1 January 2012)
Yes, it's that time of year again - when the great British establishment hands out its honours and favours - to the 'great and good'.
Of course nowadays there's the odd school dinner lady - or occasional scout leader - thrown in to cover up what's really going on.
Me - I wouldn't cross the road to become a knight, dame, commander or member of the British Empire - courtesy of Her Madge.
But lots of people would - for reasons I don't fully understand - though I do wish I knew the difference between an MBE, OBE and a CBE.
I suppose I could find out if I was really that bothered - maybe it allows you to walk a gaggle of geese across Westminster Bridge - or something equally useful.
If I had my way I'd only offer an 'honour' to the kind of person who would turn one down - because that's the kind of person I truly admire.
So I had to laugh at the Labour party getting its knickers into a right old twist about - the honour conferred on Paul Ruddock - who was knighted in the New Year's honours list.
Sir Paul is apparently a merchant banker who made a mint out of various things - including the collapse of the Northern Rock Bank.
Now I don't approve of that - just as I don't approve of Sir Paul making big donations to the Conservative party.
But please - is this really serious?
Because Labour is the party that gave Sir Fred (the Shred) Goodwin his knighthood - after the personal intervention of Gordon Brown who went on of course to become Prime Minister - while Sir Fred went on to bring our biggest bank to its knees and helped wreck the UK economy.
So spare me the histrionics and mock outrage - not least because another big financial cheese was knighted this year - Sir Rod Aldridge - the former Capita chief which has made a fortune out of privatising public services.
But before Ron became Sir Ron - he donated £1million to Labour - without the party losing any sleep as far as I know anyway.
So it does make you laugh - even 'political', supposedly progressive people - my old chums from Unison Scotland - Matt Smith and Anne Middleton (regional secretary and deputy regional secretary respectively) - accepted some bauble or other - and OBE and MBE if I remember correctly.
A senior figure in the TGWU Scotland - Yvonne Strachan - did the same thing - before the once mighty and proud transport union turned itself into Unite.
Even Joan Ruddock - no relation to Sir Paul Ruddock apparently - has got in on the act - with the former labour MP and leader of CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) becoming a Dame - would you believe?
Me, I'm just happy the way I am.
Thankfully I don't need a gong or a bauble from the monarch - to make my life complete - or turn me into an even more rounded human being.
But if I get a letter from the Queen next year inviting me to become Sir Mark Irvine - 'for services to the fight for equal pay' - you'll be the first to know.
Of course nowadays there's the odd school dinner lady - or occasional scout leader - thrown in to cover up what's really going on.
Me - I wouldn't cross the road to become a knight, dame, commander or member of the British Empire - courtesy of Her Madge.
But lots of people would - for reasons I don't fully understand - though I do wish I knew the difference between an MBE, OBE and a CBE.
I suppose I could find out if I was really that bothered - maybe it allows you to walk a gaggle of geese across Westminster Bridge - or something equally useful.
If I had my way I'd only offer an 'honour' to the kind of person who would turn one down - because that's the kind of person I truly admire.
So I had to laugh at the Labour party getting its knickers into a right old twist about - the honour conferred on Paul Ruddock - who was knighted in the New Year's honours list.
Sir Paul is apparently a merchant banker who made a mint out of various things - including the collapse of the Northern Rock Bank.
Now I don't approve of that - just as I don't approve of Sir Paul making big donations to the Conservative party.
But please - is this really serious?
Because Labour is the party that gave Sir Fred (the Shred) Goodwin his knighthood - after the personal intervention of Gordon Brown who went on of course to become Prime Minister - while Sir Fred went on to bring our biggest bank to its knees and helped wreck the UK economy.
So spare me the histrionics and mock outrage - not least because another big financial cheese was knighted this year - Sir Rod Aldridge - the former Capita chief which has made a fortune out of privatising public services.
But before Ron became Sir Ron - he donated £1million to Labour - without the party losing any sleep as far as I know anyway.
So it does make you laugh - even 'political', supposedly progressive people - my old chums from Unison Scotland - Matt Smith and Anne Middleton (regional secretary and deputy regional secretary respectively) - accepted some bauble or other - and OBE and MBE if I remember correctly.
A senior figure in the TGWU Scotland - Yvonne Strachan - did the same thing - before the once mighty and proud transport union turned itself into Unite.
Even Joan Ruddock - no relation to Sir Paul Ruddock apparently - has got in on the act - with the former labour MP and leader of CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) becoming a Dame - would you believe?
Me, I'm just happy the way I am.
Thankfully I don't need a gong or a bauble from the monarch - to make my life complete - or turn me into an even more rounded human being.
But if I get a letter from the Queen next year inviting me to become Sir Mark Irvine - 'for services to the fight for equal pay' - you'll be the first to know.
