Opening thoughts
In what was billed as the most important speech of Gordon Brown’s political career, crucial to his chances of remaining PM, Gordon Brown delivered a speech that was all about re-introducing himself to his party and the British people. In many respects it was the speech he should have given last year – instead of his politicking, dog-whistle speech he gave ahead of his planned election (that never came to pass). That said, it is clear he feels that the British people have already judged him – harshly in his opinion – and thus are no longer listening to what he has to say. That being the case, he needed to reintroduce himself – asking for a second chance and for people to get to know him again. Whether it works is a moot point.
Perhaps, like Labour’s economic performance, his speech was a game of two halves. It started very strongly but then lost structure. Clocking in at 58 minutes, two-thirds of the way through it felt like it was a never-ending speech, and became quite mediocre despite its promising start and the odd decent soundbite. He also sought to address the criticism that he had no narrative for government by making fairness his raison d’être. Labour activists gave him rapturous applause at the end and standing ovations through-out – but that was to be expected given his current predicament what with all of the leadership speculation going on. They probably would have cheered him had he given the worst speech ever by a politician. Brown also took the attack to the Tories which cheered his party, though some of his statements opened him up to the charge of what has he been doing in government all these years, whereas other statements declared as fact were even misleading or outright fallacies. The Tories will no doubt look to exploit these.
The speech in detail
In a novel beginning – at least for British politics, though definitely not US politics – the PM was introduced by his wife, Sarah Brown, who spoke of her pride in her husband’s work. This was a clear attempt to humanise him – one of his failings and one of her ‘natural gifts’. It was an interesting innovation and a complete surprise to all.
Brown then entered the conference hall to the sounds of Jackie Wilson's ‘Higher and Higher’. Uplifting song, kiss to the wife, very warm reception from the Labour faithful and then straight to the point.
He said he wanted his speech to set out who he was, what he believed in and what he was determined to lead his country to achieve. It was at this point that I felt that this should have been the speech he gave at his first conference as Labour leader.
He said he did not get into politics to be a celebrity (a point he has made before – dig at Cameron and Blair and also shows his seriousness) or to be popular (that got a laugh from the conference hall). A common theme of Brown’s speeches is public service and again he said that he got into politics to serve the people. Nobody would doubt the Prime Minister on this point though he strangely followed it up by saying he did not come to London (read: Westminster) to become part of the Establishment. The left likes to think of itself as being anti-establishment but how a Prime Minister who for 10 years was Chancellor of the Exchequer can claim he is not part of the Establishment is beyond me.
The opening part of his speech was very good. He declared that he was not going to change who he was. In a good soundbite, he said that some had said he was too serious, but he said there was much to be serious about. This was Brown trying to tap into his early successes as Prime Minister last year when he won plaudits for emphasising his seriousness over others’ celebrity. Unfortunately for him, he is unlikely to get the same favourable hearing he received the first time he tried it.
He said he knew the difference between right and wrong but then, said he has refused to use his children for political gain because they were “not props, they were people,” a none-too-subtle criticism of David Cameron for being filmed and photographed with his children. It seemed a bit unnecessary. Clearly Brown has been stung by criticism that he can come across less than human and will have been urged to incorporate his children, but I cannot recall Cameron attacking Brown for not using his children. In any case, across the pond in the US, children are a feature of Presidential campaigns, as candidates seek to show support for family.
The media had been briefed prior to the speech that Brown would use it to admit his own mistakes during the past year. In the event we were treated to just one, a half admission of culpability over the 10p tax fiasco. Brown said he put his hands up yet failed to explain why he had made the mistake. He was more concerned with telling the conference that the criticism had hurt him because he had only ever wanted to be on the side of hard working families. There was no mention that the mistake began with him trying to out manoeuvre the Tories on income tax in his last Budget; that he had ignored Treasury advice that abolishing the 10p tax rate would hurt the most vulnerable; and his subsequent stubborn refusal to admit he was wrong until a backbench revolt on the issue was seriously destabilising his leadership. That would have been a proper mea culpa.
Nonetheless, he used this as the link to his big theme of his speech – 'fairness'. This was Brown’s attempt to address the criticism that he had no vision. As we will all remember, he claimed that he called off his planned general election last year because he wanted to set out his vision for the country. He has tried making aspiration and opportunity for all his overarching narrative but this has failed. Therefore, he has now taken a second stab at it – almost a year after pledging to set out his vision. ‘Fairness’ seems now to have become his raison d’être. However, I might be being uncharitable here given that Labour has traditionally championed fairness, but it seems to have taken David Cameron and George Osborne’s recent remarks saying that the Conservatives were the true progressives and the party of fairness for Gordon Brown to have suddenly realised what his vision was after all. Consequently, it looks like a response to Conservative political positioning rather than anything proactive. Did he not know he was about ‘fairness’ last year?
Showing his statist credentials, much beloved by the Labour party, and in a jibe at Cameron’s Conservatives, he said that those who called for less government would be judged on the wrong side of history. Throwing red meat to the party faithful, he even said: “those who don't believe in the potential of government shouldn't be trusted to form one.” David Cameron, Nick Clegg and myself would disagree with him.
Brown claimed Labour was still a “free market party” – in case all the anti-City statements from the Labour conference this year had led people to believe otherwise – but said it was important that people were only rewarded for “hard work, effort and enterprise.” He called this a ‘new settlement’ – one of the key phrases from his speech.
Brown said the government would have to make tougher choices in the future. He said that the government needed to make economies like families and ensure the money was spent wisely. This struck me like shutting the stable door after the horses had bolted. After all, this is the same PM/Chancellor who for 11 years had presided over profligate increases in public spending, much of it not spent efficiently nor wisely. With public debt higher now than when Labour came to power, despite 11 years of uninterrupted growth and public spending still increasing, the government ought to be tightening its belt but has not done so.
Brown then entered the ‘tractor statistics’ section of his speech, though this time round, mindful of criticism, he tried to humanise them. Each statistic was followed by a human story. So, “three million more people in work since 1997” became “three million more people in work since 1997 - that's not just a number, that's a life that's been changed - three million times over. That's the young woman laid off in the mid 90's who's now built a booming business of her own.” However, what Brown failed to tell conference, and repeatedly fails to tell people, is that 2 million of the 3 million jobs created have gone to immigrants. Brown then bizarrely claimed that he had created these jobs – “not by accident, by our actions.” I thought entrepreneurs created jobs whereas governments helped create business environments conducive for job creation. Perhaps he was talking about all the taxpayer funded public sector jobs he has created since 1997 that do nothing to increase Britain’s GDP?
Brown then returned to his recurring theme of ‘fairness’ saying Labour champions it not for good soundbites, photo opportunities and PR (more digs at Cameron) but because it was in Labour’s DNA, its soul.
He talked about unleashing a wave of social mobility and unlocking all the talents of all of the people – a phrase he has used before – but the question one must ask is what has he been doing for 11 years during which social mobility has got worse, not better?
Brown name-checked almost every member of the Cabinet, praising their work, but this affected the flow of his speech - not to mention adding unnecessary length, though perhaps he felt he needs all the Cabinet support he can get.
At this point his speech had lost momentum and had begun to drag. It was as if Brown had to say something about every issue area in case he was accused of not caring. He would have been best perhaps to have focussed on a few key issue areas. It was also at this point that the speech seemed to lose its structure and therefore it lost its way.
However, it picked up again temporarily when he went on the attack against the Conservatives. He said everything the government had done to promote fairness had been opposed by the Tories. He then gave the most bizarre retort to the Conservatives saying “we did fix the roof when the sun was shining.” If that was supposed to put the Tories in their place it flopped badly. The Conservatives have used that phrase to criticise Brown for not putting the public finances in order, saving money during the good times to help during the bad etc. The Prime Minister used his retort completely out of context and it just did not make any sense.
Then the BBC and Sky temporarily lost coverage of the speech – I think it was their way of telling Brown to wrap up his speech!!!
Brown continued with his attack on the Conservatives, misrepresenting their economic policies and misquoting george Osborne. He said the country could not trust the Conservatives to run the economy and in his best line which is sure to dominate tomorrow’s front pages, he said: “I’m all in favour of apprenticeships; but this is no time for a novice. “ It was a clever line designed to show his experience and the conspicuous lack of it on the Tory front bench. Interestingly, however, the BBC’s Nick Robinson said after the speech it might also have had a dual meaning. Brown might not only have been calling Cameron a novice, but David Miliband as well.
The PM repeated his criticism of the Conservatives as the party of spin and salesmanship, which is ironic given that he spends more on spin than even Tony Blair. Brown wants the country to see Cameron and the Tories as offering only superficial change, but I feel he is guilty as many are in the Labour Party, of portraying the Conservatives as they want them to be rather than as they are.
He then rejected the Tory analysis of a ‘Broken Society’ saying that the country had never been broken (this is not what Blair used to say as Leader of the Opposition – it was he, after all, who first coined the phrase), that “this is the best country in the world. I believe in Britain.”
The speech was in desperate need of being wrapped up but Brown had yet to praise the military (typically an after-thought from Brown) and talk about foreign policy so we had a few paragraphs on those. Two more boxes ticked off. Structure all over the place.
Finally, he brought his speech to an end. A one hour speech had been made to feel like 2 hours!!! He said that he knew what he believed and knew what he wanted to do – added just in case people still doubted what he was all about.
Final Thoughts
Phew! A decent speech, which began very well, had a few clever phrases and went some way to addressing the vision thing, but his speech lost its way in the second half and was far too long. However, it should be good enough to buy him some time, at least until the Glenrothes by-election. It will be interesting whether he gets a bounce in the polls off the back of his speech. Despite all the announcements, there was not much in the way of financial help for those ‘hard pressed families’. That said, even Iain Duncan Smith got a 4-5 point bounce in the polls after his ‘quiet man’ speech so at worst Brown should be looking to get that.
