 | 'What worries the Cameroons is the spectacular resilience of the Lib Dems at grass roots, even after the farcical bacchanalia performed by the third party's leadership in the past month. Drink, rent boys, sex and lies: Westminster gasps, but the voters could not care less.' Matthew d'Ancona in the Sunday Telegraph, 12 th February 2006. |  |
Gordon Brown's mood will not be improved by the news that George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor, is to meet Ben Bernanke, the new chairman of the US Federal Reserve, on Friday. It was certainly a coup for Mr Brown to secure the services of Mr Bernanke's predecessor, Alan Greenspan, as a Treasury adviser. But Mr Osborne has stolen a march on him by fixing a meeting with the new chairman before the Chancellor himself. New Tories, new Fed.
While Mr Osborne and his fellow Shadow Cabinet members enjoy their kiss-and-make-up summit with the Bush administration - Liam Fox was in Washington last week as a "sherpa" - Mr Brown will be brooding on the Dunfermline & West Fife by-election. This is not, of course, the first time that the Chancellor has experienced a political setback. But it is the first time that he and his gang have been unable (plausibly, at least) to blame Tony Blair. The constituency, next door to his own, is his home, and part of his fiefdom: he was heavily, inescapably involved in the by-election campaign. For the Chancellor's own neighbours to have overturned a Labour majority of 11,000 is deeply personal, and deeply symbolic. If the people of Dunfermline were indeed voting against Tony, it cannot be said with any credibility that they were calling for his replacement by Gordon.
For 12 years, Mr Brown has seethed at the edge of the stage as Mr Blair has basked - and sometimes squirmed - in the limelight. In the past week, the Chancellor has had his sharpest taste yet of how brutal life at centre-stage can be. With the apparent blessing of the Prime Minister, Mr Brown has been pushing himself forward, in preparation for what he hopes will be a smooth handover. Last Monday, the Daily Mirror devoted four pages to an interview headlined "How I'll renew Labour", in which Mr Brown set out his prime ministerial stall more openly than ever before. He is to be interviewed on the BBC's Sunday AM this morning. Tomorrow, he will deliver his first major speech on security and terrorism - an issue that has rarely commanded his attention in the past, but lies at the very heart of what he and the rest of us assume will be his next job.
And then, in the midst of all this intricate stage management, came Thursday's crushing by-election, putting Mr Brown's confident promise two days before to "Renew Labour" in rather bleak perspective. One of the Mr Blair's closest allies said to me recently that "Gordon will have to learn that becoming prime minister is a lot easier than being prime minister". The remark was meant cruelly, of course, but it was also a statement of fact. We are in a strange transitional period, in which Mr Blair, according to one senior minister, sees himself increasingly as a "commentator", while Mr Brown is serving a crash apprenticeship as acting prime minister.
This, I suspect, is not a uniformly pleasant experience for a formidable Chancellor who has prevailed so often as an unrivalled political intellectual and strategist, but is now getting a taste of how vicious and arbitrary life at the very top can be. This week, the Government faces three days of crunch votes over ID cards, the Terrorism Bill and smoking. After the debacle of the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill, there is no room for error: ministers were amused to find Mr Blair himself diligently entering the division lobbies last week. Thanks to the by-election, the Government whips have one less vote to rely upon: no small matter when you are on a knife-edge.
The depth of the barminess now afflicting some sections of the Labour Party was illustrated by an article in the London Evening Standard last week by Diane Abbott, in which she scorned the concessions offered by the Government over the Schools White Paper and its plan to give state schools true independence. "There are 101 scams that schools will use to cherry-pick children," Ms Abbott fumed. Only in passing did she mention that she herself sends her son to a highly selective private school.
A party that is capable of such spectacular double-think is in big trouble - trouble that may yet force Mr Blair's resignation. According to one aide: "There may just come a time when the Cabinet will say to Tony: 'Look, you can't get your legislation through'." But it is Mr Brown who will have to pick up the pieces. It is Mr Brown who will have to lead a party that seems to have forgotten how it won power in the first place. It is Mr Brown who must hope that - to use the jargon of political scientists - the people of Dunfermline were voting "expressively" (to make a point), rather than "instrumentally" (to speed a change of government).
If the by-election result was a humiliation for Mr Brown, it was a wake-up call for the Tories. The party's own feeble showing - a measly 2,700 votes - is neither here nor there. What worries the Cameroons is the spectacular resilience of the Lib Dems at grass roots, even after the farcical bacchanalia performed by the third party's leadership in the past month. Drink, rent boys, sex and lies: Westminster gasps, but the voters could not care less. There was an intimation of this in our ICM poll on January 29, which showed that the Lib Dems were down but definitely not out at 18 per cent, and that 80 per cent of voters said they were indifferent to all the scandals. At the time, I wrote that it "would be quite wrong to the think that the party is on the verge of extinction". If anything, I underestimated the rude good health of the Lib Dems.
This is Mr Cameron's first real test of nerve as leader. As a contender, he showed admirable toughness during the furore over his alleged use of drugs. Now, he will be told that he should abandon his central electoral project - which is to win over Lib Dem voters in the 100 or so key seats that the Tories must win from Labour. It will be said by the reactionary Right - the forces of predictability - that the capture of Dunfermline by the Lib Dems somehow undermines all that Mr Cameron has achieved since December 6.
The Lib Dems are not dead. What is dead is the so-called "core vote" strategy that has been tried twice by the Tories, has failed twice, and will doubtless be urged upon Mr Cameron again. But this is no time for flinching. Were the Tory leader to change track now, Labour's "flip flop" charge would stick to him like feathers on tar. That, though, is not the real reason why he should stick to his chosen strategy. The real reason is that nothing else has the slightest chance of success.
Return to home page