Brown Admits Mistakes

Even Gordon Brown admits that the Blair years have been full of mistakes. Embarking on his own leadership campaign (surely, the most one-sided race since Roadrunner last led Wile E. Coyote through Acme Canyon), Brown has hinted at a review of ID cards, admitted that mistakes have been made in Iraq and vowed to end the cult of celebrity.

The Telegraph reported on the launch of Brown's leadership campaign (see: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/05/12/nbrown12.xml) where he distanced himself from the spin and image obsession of Blair's New Labour and said that he "had never believed that politics was about celebrity."

Of course he didn't.

You might be churlish enough to think that the reason Brown wants to end the cult of personality is because the man lacks one of his own, that it has been Blair's persona that has carried the Labour Party through the last couple of General Elections and that the party is going to struggle to win a fourth successive election with Gordon Brown at the helm. But, as shadow Chancellor George Osbourne pointed out on a recent edition of The Politics Show (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/politics_show/6640417.stm) Brown has not been adverse to using spin himself.

For example, announcing the last Budget as being a tax cutting exercise when figures reveal that the drop in income tax was more than matched by rises in a hundred other taxable items. Or his announcement that his government would build 100,000 environmentally friendly homes when the same announcement was made a year ago by housing minister, Yvette Cooper.

The problem Brown is going to face is a simple one. I don't know about you, but I can't help but think of Dad's Army when I think of the Labour Party. Tony Blair is Private Joe Walker, the black-marketeer. He's a likeable enough bloke, but you wouldn't trust him with your rations (or your sister) for fear that he'd sell them off. Brown, on the other hand, is Private James Frazer - the wild-eyed, tight-fisted Scot who makes regular pronouncements of doom. One you might not trust but you'd vote for him believing that his dealing might be dodgy but he'd get things done (even if experience would suggest otherwise). The other? You wouldn't even sit next to him in the pub, let alone let him make your decisions for you.

The Telegraph also highlights an interesting issue about the Brown/Blair relationship. According to an updated biography about Blair due for re-release soon, Brown spent last Summer fearing that Blair had reneged on his deal to stand down and allow Brown take over the reins and consequentially indulged in “sulks, tantrums and rages.”

Blair might have had his faults, but at least he didn't act like a toddler when he didn't get his own way. Is Brown really the man we want representing the UK on the World Stage?