- Joe Priestley

The king is in the altogether

Rector and son of the manse

The most remarkable thing about Gordon Brown is that he was ever taken seriously. Precisely what is it that he has that we supposedly need? But whatever his well hidden attribute might happen to be, there’s no doubt Brown was taken seriously, and some still are taking him seriously, in spite of the evidence.

Like most in the upper echelons of the Labour Party Gordon Brown has very little experience of work in the real world. The closest he came to it was the four years he spent teaching politics at Glasgow College of Technology after leaving the University of Edinburgh in 1975. His interest was politics; and at the 1979 general election he made his move and stood as Labour candidate in the Edinburgh South parliamentary constituency. He lost to the Tory Michael Ancram and spent the next four years kicking his heels as a journalist with Scottish Television waiting for the next general election to come around. When the time came he was eased into the safe Labour candidacy at Dunfermline East and in 1983 he was duly elected MP - and he’s been in parliament ever since, now as Prime Minister and MP for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath.

We’re hearing less of it now, of course, but after his appointment as Chancellor following Labour’s 1997 general election victory all the commentators were praising Brown’s brain. They sold him as a ‘genius’, as a ‘towering intellect’, and most everyone swallowed it, hook line and sinker. Conservative newspapers hailed his ’skilful management of the economy’, and the Tory opposition were overawed by this supposed ‘omniscient brooding presence’ on the government front bench.

Born in Scotland in 1951 Gordon Brown was fast-tracked at a Scottish fee-paying school and at 16 years he took up a place at Edinburgh University to study history. He says the biggest influence on his politics is his father, a Church of Scotland minister; “He taught me to treat everyone equally, and that is something I have not forgotten”. It’s fair to say that Brown must have been brighter than the majority of his peers but the counter to this is that he was socially advantaged; it was exceptional to be offered a place at university at sixteen, but then again he was fast-tracked at a private school.

Student life suited Brown and he made himself comfortable at University and stayed there for nine years. It’s said he’d have been there forever had the authorities not been made wary by his political activism which came to the fore during his last three years at Edinburgh where he held the post of University Rector.

It’s interesting that Gordon Brown and his entourage have spun a sort of mystique about his role as Rector at Edinburgh so as to give him a grand, all knowing, and almost aristocratic aura. They did a similar thing with his status as ’son of the manse’ and used it to suggest that it somehow made him more morally fit to govern. And of course the mass media lapped it up. How they loved to tell us, with due reverence of course, about the extraordinarily cerebral Mr Brown, ’son of the manse’, former University Rector. What they meant was that Brown was a glorified students’ union president and that his dad was a Scottish vicar, but that version didn’t go with the spin. They calculated that Brown needed frills - what does that say about him? To put things in perspective, recent rectors at Scottish universities have included Lorraine Kelly at Dundee, Clarissa Dickson Wright at Aberdeen, and John Cleese at St Andrews - which sort of brings Brown’s tenure at Edinburgh down to earth.

Political ambition

They say he’s a ‘towering intellect’ but he left very little behind at Edinburgh to prove it. The high point of his academic years was his editorship of the socialist ‘Red Paper on Scotland’; his university thesis, The Labour Party and Political Change in Scotland 1918 to 1929, which he wrote for his PhD (which incidentally he wasn’t awarded until 1982), is gathering dust on an out-of-reach shelf somewhere in the university library at Edinburgh.

In Brown’s early years in Parliament he shared an office in the House of Commons with another ambitious newcomer, Tony Blair. Oh to have been a fly on one of the walls in that office. Labour Leader Neil Kinnock saw Brown as an emerging talent and in 1985 he appointed him Shadow Spokesman for Trade and Industry. There Brown formed a friendship with another Scot John Smith, and when Smith took over the Labour leadership from Kinnock in 1992 he appointed Gordon Brown as his Shadow Chancellor.

During this period Brown was refining his political ambitions and tempering his socialism, and he began the lengthy process of spinning himself a persona fit for public consumption, which came together when he was crowned PM by TB. Prime Minister Gordon Brown: Prudence, tolerance, social duties, social responsibilities, new smile, new teeth, and new coiffure.

Brown had successfully distanced himself from the fiscal incompetence of previous Labour governments and nurtured an image that had him as a highly intelligent economist and a natural Chancellor. And by 1997 he and Blair were forming a government and everyone who was anyone was singing Gordon Brown’s praises, “He has the finest of minds.”

Post neo-classical endogenous growth theory

The defining moment of Brown’s political career came way back in 1994 in a speech he made when he was Shadow Chancellor during which he spoke in support of “post neo-classical endogenous growth theory.” Brown’s use of this jargon defines him perfectly. The highly intelligent Mr. Brown, he’s so clever he talks a language that hardly any of the rest of us can understand. That’s Brown’s spin: ‘Rector’ at the University of Edinburgh, ’son of the manse’, and dead brainy too. And the thing is most everyone believed him.

In opposition to ‘Post neo-classical endogenous growth theory’ theorists, I have my own theory. And it’s that anything can be explained to anyone provided the explainer knows his subject sufficiently well. When politicians resort to jargon they do so for one of two reasons. Either they don’t know their subject well enough to explain it in readily understandable terms, or they’re trying to impress. Post neo-classical endogenous growth theory is a fancy way of saying that improvements in the infrastructure have a positive impact on economic growth - Brown was out to impress.

Actually the speech in question was written by Brown’s right hand man (or is that puppeteer?) Ed Balls, prompting Michael Heseltine’s excellent quip, “That’s not Brown’s, that’s Balls’.” But that’s just a point of information. The real point is that Brown uttered the phrase not as a means of communication but as a means of creating an image, an image which the mass media has been only too happy to accept; Brown as genius.

Brown has sold himself as some sort of intellectual who’s an expert at managing ‘the economy’. The endogenous growth ‘thing’ was pure spin, and when he became Chancellor he continued to spin this intellect spin at every opportunity, the Treasury being the ideal vehicle for it. He’d stand at the despatch box spouting endless statistics entwined in convoluted language, the opposition would look nonplussed, the government would cheer wildly, and nobody had the faintest idea what he was talking about, Brown included. It was the perfect cover. He worked on the principle that if people could be persuaded of his genius they’d be more likely to interpret his inability to communicate with them as their inability to understand him.

Brown has advanced on the reputation of his superior mind. That he’s been so successful in this ploy tells us where his skill really lies - in convincing others that he is what he’s not. Brown’s good at pulling wool over eyes; it’s surely significant that his wife and his two brothers all work in public relations.

A formidable intellect

The inside-cover blurb of a recently published anthology of Gordon Brown’s speeches proclaims Brown a “.formidable intellect.” But then I suppose it would wouldn’t it? And while we’re on the subject of Balls, in 2002 the Guardian referred to Ed Balls as “.the intellectual in service to the most intellectual minister of all.” That’s Brown that is. But where is the evidence of Brown’s famed intellect, other than in people’s say so? Let his record speak for itself.

It doesn’t help Brown’s case that his most successful act as Chancellor was to free the Bank of England from his own interference thus saving us from the consequences of his meddling with interest rates. Somewhat less successfully he flogged most of our gold reserves when gold was selling at $280 an ounce - today it sells at $770 an ounce and its value looks set to grow. Smart move Mr Brown.

He ruined one of the best pension industries in the world, caused the wholesale closure of final salary pension schemes, and shattered the pension prospects of tens of thousands of people. He encouraged mass immigration to keep wages down.

He instituted a tax credit system that turned into a fiasco. He’s fiddled every statistic there is to fiddle, he saddled future generations with debt care of the Private Finance Initiative, he wasted billions on unworkable computerisation schemes. He presided over chaos in the NHS and transport system.

He sent our troops to die in Iraq and Afghanistan and then refused to sanction spending the funds to ensure they went properly equipped.

And Gordon Brown has the damned cheek to call himself a patriot. And just to prove it the ‘formidable intellect’ has recently called for “British jobs for British workers”! That’s the very same ‘formidable intellect’ that helped formulate the laws that made the expression of sentiments such as ‘British jobs for British workers’ illegal.

Unfortunately for Brown his ambition far outweighs his ability. When he was Chancellor he wasn’t so much hiding his talents under a bushel as hiding his shortcomings behind the statistics. It was easy for him to pretend to be someone else when all he had to do was talk equations, calculations, and forecasts. But there’s no hiding place for him now. And he’s crumbling before our very eyes. Have you noticed how the BBC has taken to telling us what he’s said rather than showing him telling us? Brown can’t string two words together - how the hell did he get to be Prime Minister?

But he’s not going to last. He can’t do the job; Prime Minister’s question time must be torture for him. It turns him into a quivering jelly. He is pitiful and embarrassing. Slow witted and inarticulate. It’s hard to imagine what degree of self deception it must have taken for Brown to convince himself he could do the job.

And Labour MP’s are guilty of the same self deception. The majority of them must have been aware of Brown’s shortcomings. Yet they went along with the notion of him as Prime Minister as if it was a self evident truth. If Brown really is the best man for the job it’s a terrible indictment of the rest of Labour’s MPs, and of course of those that voted for them.

Great clunking fist

Tony Blair labelled Brown ‘the great clunking fist’ and it’s a label that’s stuck. Brown likes it because it suggests the toughness that he so clearly doesn’t possess, and the press latched on to it because they like to associate politicians with toughness - it must sell newspapers. But Brown as ‘great clunking fist’ is just another absurdity in the list, following on from ‘hard man’ John Reid, ‘bruiser’ Charles Clarke, and ’straight talking’ David Blunkett. The mass media have attempted to portray Brown as a tough guy intellectual; it’s hard not to laugh. Great clunking fist indeed - is that the one with the fingernails bitten down to the quick?

And the media followed this tough-guy line in describing his performances as Chancellor in the House of Commons, sprinkling references to him with adjectives like ‘brooding,’ ‘fuming,’ ‘angry,’ and ‘intimidating’. Phew, you’d better not get on the wrong side of that Brown fellow - he might chew his nails at you!

How things change, ‘brooding Brown’ as Chancellor has been replaced by ‘bottler Brown’ as PM. He was rightly slated for lacking the guts to call an election when he had the opportunity earlier this month (Oct ‘07) when everything was in his favour. But he’s a frightened man. So frightened that now he has his hands on his ‘precious’ premiership he can’t bear the risk of letting go, even when, as the polls suggested, the risk was as small as it was likely to get. He’s going to hang on to the bitter end of this term; either that or he’ll be forced out by his own MPs as his credibility plummets.

But who was surprised by this? Brown has a record of bottling it. On a number of occasions he had both the opportunity and inclination to challenge Blair when all the signs were saying his challenge would succeed - but he bottled those as well. With Brown it’s not caution, like a rabbit caught in the glare, his indecision is brought about by fear.

The Prime Minister explained his decision against an election thus: “The decision I have made is because I want to get on with the job of change in this country and I believe I have got to show people that we are implementing the changes in practice and I believe that what we are really talking about now in Britain is the rising aspirations of British people.” You may think he’s talking nonsense, but that’s because he’s a ‘towering intellect’ and you’re not clever enough to understand him.

Brown is a fraud. His great clunking fist is a podgy mitt that’s never done a day’s work in its life and his intellect is a front behind which cowers a devious cunning. Now that he’s achieved his goal he’s not quite sure what he should do next - he hasn’t got a vision for this country because his vision extends no further than himself. It’s hardly the sort of leadership qualities that Britain needs, but perhaps it’s an indication of why we’re in the mess that we’re in.

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