BRITISH dailies are abuzz with predictions of Gordon Brown’s imminent political demise. According to polls, his personal popularity has plummeted to new depths while more and more members of his own party view him as a dead weight on Labour’s re-election chances. There are even rumors of an upcoming Cabinet mutiny as well as a possible leadership challenge by his youthful Foreign Secretary David Miliband, scheduled to occur while the PM is in Beijing watching the Olympics.
Horror of horrors, his predecessor’s specter has emerged to haunt him in the shape of a leaked memo characterizing Brown’s tenure as being one of “hubris and vacuity” while one of Blair’s former right-hand ministers Stephen Byers has poured salt into the wound calling the PM’s policies “more suited to a Sunday afternoon stroll.” Even Labour’s traditional allies, the trade unions, are giving him a hard time. So what awful deeds has Brown committed to warrant such blatant animosity and treachery?
Hmm! Let’s see. He hasn’t initiated any wars based on a pack of lies so far, and he hasn’t significantly raised taxes. He has, however, been unlucky in that since those heady days when he was anointed into office a year ago, the global economy has gone into free fall while Britain has been beset with terrorist attacks, floods and diseases afflicting livestock. Throughout, he coped rather well coming across as a solid pair of safe hands. So where did he go wrong?
Besides his biggest mistake of giving the impression he was about to call for an early election before reneging on that unspoken promise as soon as he realized there was a possibility he mightn’t win, Brown’s major fault is this: He simply isn’t glamorous enough for contemporary generations.
NOWADAYS, the European electorate is overwhelmingly attracted to style rather than substance. They want their leaders to possess the type of rock-star quality exhibited in lesser or greater measures by Blair, Italy’s President Berlusconi and the king of bling-bling France’s President Sarkozy.
They want their top man to be one of the international in-crowd invited by celebrities to vacation on exotic islands behind the walls of private estates. They want to be bowled over by their leader’s witty repartee, chiseled features with a hint of a tan, well-toned physique that speaks of hours of working-out, and, as an added bonus, trophy wife.
Brown is none of those things. He’s inherently principled and decent and one of a dying breed of old-school politicians who doesn’t court adoration at the expense of ingrained values. He’s a heavyweight intellectual who takes his job seriously, so seriously that he’s accused of being dour and brooding. He’s not interested in cruising around the Med in multimillion-dollar yachts with show-biz friends, flashing a Rolex-clad wrist or showing off how buddy-buddy he might be with the incumbent of the White House. Sadly, he is not a man of our time.
Don’t believe me? Just look at the way US presidential hopeful Barack Obama was feted in Berlin. Over 100,000 turned out to cheer on a foreign politician whose policies are still vague and only partly formed. It’s doubtful whether their own Chancellor Angela Merkel could entice such a crowd of visible well-wishers while the likes of John McCain or Gordon Brown would be fools to try. Hadley Freeman writing in yesterday’s The Guardian understands that many of Brown’s woes are down to his image problem. In an article titled “Brown should lose the jacket and find his mojo”, Freeman writes:
“For heaven’s sake, Gordon, take off your jacket!...Sorry Gordon, but you come from an older, some might even say nobler, age when leaders were meant to look patriarchal and aloof. Now we want them to look like they might be a laugh over a pint down the pub... Economy, schmeconomy; you know it’s really all about looks these days, bucko. Sort that out and the ratings will follow...”
Freeman has the right idea but methinks his advice is not only too late to save Gordon’s job he would pooh-pooh it anyway. His ambition was always to be a politician, not a pin-up; someone whose name would be etched on history alongside Clement Attlee, Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher, strong leaders of substance all. Instead, Brown may be destined to join the ranks of British prime ministers whose tenures were brief and whose names are almost forgotten. He spent the last years gently hastening Blair’s ouster into the wilderness but, in the end, the charmed and charming former prime minister once dubbed ‘Teflon Man’ for his tenacity may be about to have the last laugh, secure in his million pound homes paid for by his million-dollar paying appointments.
It looks as though No. 10’s next occupant will be a Blair clone either the silver-tongued, bike-riding Conservative leader David Cameron or David Miliband, a one-time Brown loyalist prepared to put loyalty on the backburner in favor of personal ambition. Both are slick salesmen. Both look the part. Either are candidates worthy of being embraced by the international “it” crowd and of receiving multiple invites to Crawford to break burgers with the leader of the free world.
In the end, we the people of fast, throwaway societies where values and morals are in danger of becoming relegated to museums and whose icons are scantily dressed, empty-headed inebriates, get the politicians we deserve. Brown may be the last of the best.
