Clarke is right: Brown must do better. But how?
Things are collapsing around Gordon Brown. First, last weekend, Alistair Darling broke ranks and took his own brutally honest line about the economy; now Charles Clarke, writing in the New Statesman and in BBC interviews, has called for him to raise his game dramatically within months, or else step down. In a way I take Darling's intervention more seriously because it signals division right at the top of government about how to handle the economic storm currently buffeting Britain. Clearly Darling thinks the government has failed to show it feels people's pain or that it really gets how tough things suddenly feel for almost everyone. He's decided to let them know he's aware of the full measure of their difficulty whatever his boss might say. This reminds me of Norman Lamont back in the early nineties, the way he felt cheesed off by having to take the brickbats for an economic policy he never really believed in but which was imposed on him from Number 10. Darling must feel much the same thing. But back to Darling later.
Charles Clarke's warning is stern, dire, grim - all those things. And I agree with him completely that Labour, rather than lapsing into fatalism, ought to do something urgently to try to avoid a crushing defeat at the next election. He's right that things cannot go on like this - or if they do, that Labour risks not only being in opposition but being politically annihilated. I think he may feel, like me, that Labour's whole future is at stake. It sounds OTT, I know, but it's not. Gordon Brown could be the last Labour Prime Minister unless he does something to shore the party up now. But the question is, what should he do? John Humphrys said in his radio interview with Clarke this morning on Today that his proposals were woolly, and he's right: Clarke has offered no hint of any actual policy change or initiative that could restore the government's standing, only saying it needs to improve its performance and, by means of an analysis of the Blair years in his New Statesman article, implying heavily that Gordon Brown is to blame for almost everything that went wrong in Labour's first decade. That's not good enough. Those who agree with Clarke's concerns, like me, have a duty to say what the government should do now - not just talk about personalities.
The government needs to become more political, more ideological, and less managerial. Whatever one thinks of Tony Blair, his government without doubt shifted public debate to the left. Not in any old-style 1970s sense of stirring up militancy (though there are some hints of that in the public sector) or a desire for nationalisation, but by bringing state-funded and state-sponsored welfare services to the centre of people's concerns, together with personal rights at work. If you're in any doubt about that, look at the things David Cameron says: he knows he'd be against the grain of British opinion if he made Thatcherite noises about privatising things, cutting provision and making people work harder. What many people thought Brown would offer was a more intense focus on these themes - a more bread-and-butter, traditional home-front Labourism - than we'd had under Tony Blair in his last years, together with the application of clear principles favouring the less well off and the deserving. But after a few months they found out that was not what they were getting at all. Quite apart from his ditherings over the non-election, Nothern Rock and all that, what has damaged Gordon Brown is the widespread perception that he's lost his moral compass, or perhaps never really had one. That's why the 10p tax band muck-up - Brown's last act as Chancellor - was his first and worst mistake as PM.
The way to recover is to rediscover the principles Brown's supporters thought he had. He would do well to put less emphasis on foreign and security affairs and on the terrorism and civil liberties agenda - he should leave those things to his ministers. Nor should he bog himself down in the detail of financial management he's used to from the Treasury. His job is to give to all the government's work the social theme of equality and fairness. There's an economic war on, he should be telling the public - there's no point in his pretending times aren't tough, or in my pretending he can wish away the "economy, stupid" mess he's in. But to put it in crude political terms, he needs to blame the rich, the banks and big firms for where we are now, so as to deflect blame from himself; he needs to align himself clearly with ordinary people, and the Conservatives with those same rich people, banks and firms.
So: a windfall tax? I don't know about that, but he should publicly comment on energy firms' pricing policies and use the threat of intervention to influence them. He should be financing additional public spending through taxes on the better off - and must never repeat the blunder over the 10p rate. He needs to do more to help those threatened with repossession - though in my view he should have done more for them instead of the stamp-duty sop he gave to first-time buyers, as though they really exist and as though it'll make any difference. It won't. Something he could have done for those at risk of losing their homes is to set up some sort of "mis-lending" Ombudsman to whom people can appeal if they think they were lent too much, too recklessly - and to make an order by him binding on the courts so that they cannot order possession. He should publicly call on firms to ensure social equality in their price structures - the poorest, using meters and keys to pay for their energy, should pay no more than others, for instance - and punish firms if they don't come into line. And he should help the public finances by raising the ceiling on national insurance contributions so that progressively, the better off start to pay a fair share of their incomes in social charges. An imaginative solution is needed to Britain's pensions crisis - it needs to be developed now. Young people's lives could be made fairer and brighter by changing student finance so that debt is repaid by public service, and housing supply could be increased by raising both council tax and inheritance tax on second homes.
In a way I'm inviting him to put on a big red wig and become Barbara Castle for the next eighteen months: not everyone would like it, but then by trying hard to be liked by everyone so far Brown has brought himself and his government to the brink. A stiff dose of passion and purpose would be risky, but risk-taking is what's now needed.
Will he do anything like this? I doubt it. I think he's to cautious and too tactical a politician for that. I'm not sure he's capable of making the weather, except in a bad way. In which case, Clarke's right - Brown should go. I can't see him doing that either, though.
As for Alistair Darling, Brown may be tempted to swap him with David Miliband, thus neutralising the man who's behaving in the most threatening way at the moment. But could that possibly work? If I were Miliband I'd find a way - any way - of plausibly turning that down and leaving the government, and that would potentially set off all sorts of bangs.
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