Gordon Brown’s visit to the United States was not a great success. It was one of those visits which Prime Ministers are liable to make, when they feel in need of reminding the public of their authority. They may not have much business to discuss, but it will help their image for the voters to see them in the Rose Garden of the White House, exchanging chit chat with the President of the United States.

There was a time when these meetings were sufficiently rare for the President’s authority to reinforce that of the Prime Minister. Harold Macmillan had a successful meeting with President Eisenhower, which helped him to win the General Election of 1959. But the coinage of summit meetings has been debased. I do not read any comment, or meet anyone, to make me think that Gordon Brown’s Washington visit, or his speech at the Kennedy Centre, have strengthened or consolidated the Prime Minister’s position.

Indeed, the Prime Minister’s loss of public support seems to have continued since his return. It is the Labour Party which seems most disillusioned. Conservatives are rather surprised at the sudden decline of a Prime Minister whom they were accustomed to respect when he was a long serving Chancellor of the Exchequer. No doubt Conservative voters share the disillusion of the electorate as a whole, but they are not affected by the internal stresses and disputes of the Labour Party. Labour supporters are shocked by the suddenness of the swing in the polls, where Conservative voters are pleasantly surprised.

Certainly the Conservative Front Bench expected Gordon Brown to have a much longer honeymoon after he became Prime Minister, and feared that he would call a snap election, to win a fourth Parliamentary term for Labour. In the event, Gordon Brown decided not to hold a General Election in September or October of last year, though the Conservatives had feared that he would hold such an election and win it.

Whatever his reasons, Gordon Brown made the worst of this situation. He postponed the election to 2009 or 2010, and found public opinion moving against him. His early honeymoon was exceptionally brief; there was a surge in Labour polling figures which lasted for three months, after which the Conservatives went back into a lead which they have retained for the last six months. Current opinion polls suggest that the Conservatives would win a General Election outright.

The Labour Party is in disarray, just as the Conservatives had been in the 1990s. Gordon Brown as Prime Minister is a much less impressive Minister than he was as Chancellor. His whole mental apparatus seems to be less suited to the Prime Ministerial role. The public eventually came to lose confidence in Tony Blair, but Blair was an impressive Prime Minister in his early years. If he had not joined in the invasion of Iraq, Blair might not have lost his popularity. Even with Iraq, Blair was still able to win the General Election of 2005, if by a reduced majority. In 1997 and 2001, Blair had won by a landslide.

It does not now look as though Gordon Brown has the ability to lead Labour to a fourth General Election victory. He lacks the leadership qualities. Gordon Brown certainly does have personal advantages when compared to Tony Blair; he understands economic and financial policies much better; he has a better grasp of detail; he is a less superficial personality; he probably has a better understanding of his briefs. As against those advantages, Blair is a much better speaker. Brown can do the hard-slogging detailed parliament debate, but his big public speeches, particularly those he has given to Labour Party Conferences, are dreary and monotonous lectures, whereas Blair – and indeed David Cameron – give attractive theatrical performances. Brown is perhaps the master of the small print, where Blair is the master of the headlines, and the sound bite.

Unexpectedly, it is Gordon Brown’s greatest strengths which are now giving him the greatest trouble. For 10 years, Brown burnished his reputation as a prudent and successful Chancellor. In the last nine months that reputation has largely been destroyed by the world banking crisis, and by Labour Party resentment of the abolition of the 10p tax band. Labour Prime Ministers are not expected to concentrate on taxing the poor. There is no room now left for cutting taxes or for increasing social expenditure. There is a global threat of recession. Gordon Brown as Chancellor dominated government economic policy. Now he is a Prime Minister on the defensive. The next two years may be as difficult for him as the last two years of the Conservative Government were for John Major. The voters increasingly think it is time for a change.

Regards,

William Rees-Mogg
For The Daily Reckoning

Editor’s note: Former Editor of The Times and adviser to Margaret Thatcher, William Rees-Mogg now sits as an independent peer in the House of Lords. This was first published in The Fleet Street Letter

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