Napoleon is said to have asked of a well-qualified officer seeking promotion to general: “Yes, but is he lucky?” Had he been around at the time, it is doubtful that Britain’s embattled Prime Minister Gordon Brown would ever have attained the rank of staff officer in Napoleon’s army.
In the past six weeks, Brown has presided over the first run on a British bank in more than a century, the loss of detailed computer records of 25 million people and now, for the second time in two years, his Labour party is under police investigation for illegal political funding. Ever since he abandoned heavily leaked plans for a snap November election, Brown’s government has staggered from one unlucky moment to another. Now opinion polls show the opposition Conservatives well ahead while confidence in the government plummets.
Brown’s fortunes are unlikely to improve. And this time he will be the maker of his own misfortune. The economic downturn is already hitting UK tax yields and the government has been forced to borrow more and more in order to fund expensive — but largely ineffective — ”improvements” to health and schools. In his 10 years as the chancellor of the exchequer, Brown fostered the image of a dour and prudent politician who believed in good financial housekeeping. However, while he kept taxes low on incomes, he produced a range of “stealth taxes” which have steadily raised the total tax burden, taking the UK back toward the top of the European tax league. This is going to be laid at Brown’s door when the economic pips begin to squeak and the Labour government has either to borrow even more or raise taxes again.
Brown’s lack of good fortune is in strong contrast with his predecessor Tony Blair. Blair got away with everything including taking his country to war in Iraq on a tissue of lies and the “sale” of peerages and other honors to big Labour party financial supporters. Part of Blair’s ability lay in his charisma and the eminently plausible tone in which he explained himself. Even when you knew he was lying, it was sometimes hard to disbelieve him.
Brown has nothing of these talents. An awkward jaw movement while he speaks distracts from what he says; his manner is ponderous and his charisma zero. Add to this a far less adroit political spin machine than Blair built for himself and you have a political leader whose only defense is his record, and suddenly Gordon Brown’s record does not look very good at all.
The chances that the latest political funding scandal will bring the Brown government down look remote though big political heads may roll. It does mean, however, that the man who gained the office he so long desired and from which he was blocked by Blair, has to find some way to restore his political fortunes. If Labour’s unpopularity continues, the knives will be out for Brown in the hope that a new leader can win a fourth term in power in 2010. Brown is discovering that just as nothing succeeds like success, so nothing fails like failure.
