British Premier Gordon Brown is emerging as a politically tragic figure. After waiting impatiently for 10 years to succeed Tony Blair, Brown discovered that his rival had handed him a poisoned chalice. Not only was a decade of high-spending socialist policies proving to have done little to improve the key health and education sectors but the long economic boom for which Brown, as chancellor of the exchequer and keeper of Britain’s finances, had readily claimed credit came to a shattering end.
Try as he might to blame international circumstances beyond his control, Brown has discovered the blame for growing economic troubles have been placed firmly at his door. Traditional Labour voters are abandoning the party as was demonstrated so dramatically in the socialist rout at the recent Crewe and Nantwich by-election. Blair won a second and third term of office, not because voters trusted him — the country well knew it was lied to over the Iraq invasion — but because there simply was no convincing alternative. Some will say that David Cameron, the new Conservative leader, is not a particularly attractive potential prime minister. However, compared with a stumbling and ponderous Gordon Brown, Cameron is a star. The latest polls show his Conservatives now enjoy a 26-percentage point lead over Labour, the highest ever recorded since political polling began.
Britain’s socialists have always championed the working class, yet in their years of power, Labour policies have often hit their traditional supporters hardest. Whatever the merits of the ban on smoking in public places and the continued government drive to stamp out smoking altogether, the reality is that the majority of smokers are working class. What improvements there have been in health and education have mostly taken place in middle-class areas. Britain’s poorer families are less educated and less cared for medically than when Labour came to power. Tax reforms that Brown himself introduced in his final budget abolished the lowest rate of income tax which has served to hit some seven million of the poorest families. With petrol and household energy costs spiraling, core Labour voters are now hurting badly.
Growing union unrest at low public-sector wage settlements not only threatens widespread industrial action but also the financial viability of the Labour Party, already in debt to the tune of $36 million and hugely reliant on union cash. In a revelation that underlines the tragedy of this beleaguered British premier, it has emerged that Brown has been making personal phone calls to many of the people who write or e-mail Downing Street protesting his policies. He called one astonished British Muslim to assure him that he was “concentrating” on withdrawing British troops from Iraq.
In different times, this sort of “reverse Majlis” would be engaging, underlining Brown’s basic decency, but today it merely seems to indicate his anxiety and desperation.
