I blame Vince Cable
So Gordon Brown is already planning for the aftermath of electoral bloodbath on 4th June with a ‘ruthless Cabinet reshuffle‘? After the events of the past few months, a June reshuffle seemed to be the least we could expect, with a June General Election still a possibility until things just got too bad for a quick dash to the country for the verdict of the people. For Gordon already knows our verdict. Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! On and on like a jury of 20 million chiming in series.
The Prime Minister’s real problem is that he is now both an object of fun and a fearful monster: both the boy that had his head flushed down the toilet daily at school and the bully that tormented him. We laugh at his performance on You Tube, whilst worrying what he might do next to affect our jobs, our families, our security or our freedoms. As John Prescottconfirmed yesterday, Brown really does have the worst smile in the world, half gurning village idiot, half ogre. Just think if Shrek had married Donkey, rather than Princess Fiona. In the past, Labour politicians have been one or the other. In 1979, the electorate were scared of what might happen to the country with another five years of Sunny Jim. In 1983, we just couldn’t believe that bumbling Michael Foot could lead the country. Neil Kinnock of course managed to metamorphose from someone who was a scary left-winger into a politician who was taken less seriously than an opponent usually depicted in monochrome, with a pair of Y-fronts on over his trousers. Major got away with because the electorate saw the face of a benign, trainspotting uncle, rather than the man who hid behind his wisdom teeth, before re-launching himself as Thatcher’s anointed one. Sometimes he always looked like he’d jumped into one of Bert’s street paintings in Mary Poppins and emerged as Prime Minister. Come to think of it, Norma would have made an excellent Mary.
Until Brown achieved his long-held ambition to be Prime Minister, he was held in respect by many people, even political opponents, and affection by some. That all started to change eighteen months ago, when Vince Cable made his famous remarkabout Brown, saying ‘The house has noticed the prime minister’s remarkable transformation in the past few weeks – from Stalin to Mr Bean’. Now it seems the Prime Minister is trying to reverse the transformation, with some success, but for no good reason. Whilst the electorate might profess a liking for strong government, no-one likes a desperate dictator. Over the past couple of weeks, Brown has tried to assert his authority over his party and the country – on MPs expenses and the Gurkhas – and has failed miserably. There are only three reasons why he can have failed so miserably: he didn’t consult first; he did consult and no-one dared to challenge him or someone did challenge him and he ignored them. None of them look good, either for Brown or his cosy gang that have now turned on him publicly as well as privately.
Now Brown appears to the public as a pantomime villan appearing at X-Factor auditions with a sob-story. But his performance isn’t enough even to get him past the sobbing sisters of Cheryl and Dannii. We see his incompetence, we hear of his temper and knifing of colleagues. His choice of friends leaves a lot to be desired, if McBride and Draper are at the top of his Christmas card list. He’s stopped making policies he (and we) could believe in and started making pronouncements simply to wrong-foot or distract the opposition. But Cameron just sidesteps traps such as the 50% tax rate and last week the parliamentary Labour Party pushed brown into the elephant trap he’d made out of MPs’ expenses. Who knows why he came up with the policy of Gurkhas that he did. maybe he was buoyed by Woolas’s anti-immigration rhetoric and the BNP. What we do know is that he totally failed to read the opinion of the country or acknowledge that the British values of fair play trump any xenophobia.
It all feels just like the last two years of the Major government. MPs rebel to save their own skins or consciences, knowing that there will be no comeback because the prime minister’s authority is gone. Every day the newspapers bring another former minister despairing at what is happening. In dark corners, politicians and their friends in the media gossip about Brown’s alleged ‘psychological flaws’ and ‘hairdryer moments’.
And so when Brown comes to his much-trailed reshuffle, he will see that he has a very small hand to play and that most cards already lie discarded, rather than waiting in the deck to be drawn. He has very few friends and even fewer loyal colleagues. Many Labour members see the writing on the wall and want to retain enough standing to get a decent job after the inevitable voter-enforced redundancy in 2010. No-one wants to have their last months in Parliament associated with a dying and discredited regime.
So as the Prime Minister decides where to place the deckchairs on the Titanic, he finds that he cannot even rely on former loyalist Able Seaman Prescott to help him. The only question seems to be if anyone is brave or stupid enough to challenge him in the autumn, either as a stalking horse, or a real contender.
Related posts:
- Transparency Gordon? We can see right through you!
- Vince makes sense – again!
- And it’s too late baby, now it’s too late
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