Brown’s/Labour’s poll bounce, as Peter Riddell has pointed out in today’s Times, has largely come at the expense of the Lib Dems rather than the Tories whose poll ratings are largely holding steady.
The Glenrothes by-election could derail any Brown/Labour recovery if the seat is lost to the SNP. Expectations of a Labour victory, which were very low before the party conference season, will now be much higher, which means so are the political stakes for Brown.
Change is still triumphing over experience. For all the talk about Brown having successfully changed the political narrative with his “no time for a novice” conference speech, the public still want change and this is possibly the biggest obstacle facing Brown in his attempt to win Labour a fourth term. The latest Populus monthly poll for the Times (7 October) showed that despite the economic problems, 65 percent still agree it is “time for a change.”
Brown is benefiting from actually being able to take action whereas his opponents can only talk and offer bipartisan support in a crisis. Being able to act has made Brown look authoritative and strong – attributes that were once associated with him. But his return to form, if it can be called that, is largely because the financial crisis has allowed him back into his comfort zone - but this will not last forever. Brown cannot go on indefinitely playing Chancellor. This is his favourite role and the one he is most comfortable in. Eventually, when the financial crisis subsides, he will have to go back to playing Prime Minister and we all know after 18 months in the job he isn’t cut out for it. He is a prime example of a No. 2 not being cut out for being a No. 1.
The wall-to-wall, day-to-day financial crisis will not last forever and will instead be replaced by coverage of families experiencing the pain of recession. This will hurt Brown. For all he might be getting credit in the short term for his present handling of the credit crisis, he won’t get any credit but just blame when people’s experience of the ‘real economy’ involves falling living standards, rising unemployment and house repossessions. This is going to be the Conservative’s line of attack – Brown, well done on the banks but you haven’t done anything to rescue the ‘real economy’. Their strategy has been outlined by Tim Montgomery over at ConservativeHome.
Brown struggles to empathise with people. Unlike Blair and Cameron, he does not have high EQ (emotional intelligence) and struggles to find and use the required language. He is much more comfortable dealing with facts and statistics. When the ‘real economy’ takes a turn for the worse and people begin to feel real financial pain and hardship, Brown will not be able to comfort people with his technical jargon and barrage of ‘tractor statistics’. Cameron will have a clear advantage over Brown – in terms of empathy and not being culpable for the downturn.
Brown’s notorious propensity towards boasting and hubris will also come back to haunt him. For the past decade he has been telling us that he had ended boom and bust ("Under this Government, Britain will not return to the boom and bust of the past." Pre-Budget Report, 9th November 1999; "Britain does not want a return to boom and bust." Budget Statement, 21 March 2000; "So our approach is to reject the old vicious circle of the...the old boom and bust." Pre-Budget Report, 8 November 2000; "Mr Deputy Speaker we will not return to boom and bust." Budget Statement, 7 March 2001; "As I have said before Mr Deputy Speaker: No return to boom and bust." Budget Statement, 22 March 2006; and "And we will never return to the old boom and bust." Budget Statement, 21 March 2007). Well now the boom is over and has been replaced with bust. And even now Brown can’t help himself boasting that the rest of the world needs to follow his lead. Brown has framed himself as the ‘Pied Piper of Fife’ of the financial crisis. However, his triumphalism will come back to haunt him when the real economy takes a turn for the worse. The Tories are said to be cataloguing examples already.
On the subject of Brown’s quotes, one comment he made in his press conference on Monday (13 October) may come back to haunt him. The Daily Mail’s Benedict Brogan drew attention to this remark from Brown: "In future regulatory systems there will be both greater attention to issues of solvency and liquidity and probably a pro-cyclical attitude where in a period of growth you have got to lay aside more for the possibility that there will be contractions." Is this not an admission that the roof should have been fixed while the sun is shining? I’m sure George Osborne has been making this point…
Other comments Brown has made recently are also worth noting. He has called this the “Age of Irresponsibility.” Of course Brown was only referring to banking practices but it also lends itself to a description of Brown’s 11 years in office as the Tories pointed out during their conference. As does another Brown attack. He has condemned banks for hiding bad assets “off balance sheet” from regulators. However, Brown does just the same with the billions of pounds of Private Finance Initiative debt he has built up over the past decade. This debts/liabilities are not on the UK’s balance sheet!
When media coverage inevitably shifts from financial crisis to recession, the Tories and Lib Dems will be able to truly take the ‘bipartisan’ gloves off and attack Brown where he is particularly vulnerable; namely, that he was responsible for excessive, profligate public spending/debt; having presided over and encouraged an unsustainable housing boom despite saying in his 1997 Budget Statement that "I will not allow house prices to get out of control and put at risk the sustainability of the recovery;" having overseen the highest household debt in the G7 (178 percent of household income) and done nothing about it; and for having created the financial regulatory regime which has manifestly failed.
In short, Brown is still doomed!!!
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