Is Brown the new Major?

There are plenty of people looking at the current state of the government and the current political situation and drawing comparisons with the dog days of the last Conservative government. In these comparisons Brown is analogous to Major. I can see why the comparison is drawn but I think it is a false analogy. The situation Labour finds itself in is in many ways unique, and uniquely different to the Major government. Also I think that in a lot of ways the government’s predicament is being overplayed by the media.

John Major ascended to the premiership in 1990 having worked his way up in government from the whips office through junior ministerial rank up through Chief Secretary, Foreign Secretary and Chancellor. His ascent through the party did not however come with certain knowledge of his style, views or approach. This was an asset in the heady atmosphere of November 1990 and the leadership election but as things turned sour in the mid-1990s it became a massive hindrance. Conservatives felt that they had been sold a Thatcherite and received a Heathite. This was massively unfair and the circumstances of the 1992-97 Parliament would have forced leaders to be conciliatory and highly centrist in any case. John Major just happened to be most comfortable in that centrist conciliatory position. John Major was consequently derided as a weak PM buffeted by events, but in many ways this is unfair as the Parliamentary mathematics were not conducive to the kind of actions that would have been perceived as ’strong’. The Parliamentary situation post 1992 would have been a nightmare for any government a bare majority at the start of the Parliament was rapidly eaten away by death and defection. By the close of the Parliament the government was acting effectively as a minority administration.

Gordon Brown came into the premiership in entirely different circumstances, having been the second most powerful person in the government for a decade. Gordon Brown was extremely well known, all his strengths and weaknesses were on display. The leadership passed from Blair to Brown like an inheritance without a contest. So far so dissimilar to the Major experience. The Parliamentary situation is different, the government has a healthy majority which is unlikely to be much impacted by death or defection. Brown can therefore afford to take courses of action denied to Major who had no majority to speak of. However Brown is making mistakes that are souring the position that he is in, this is a factor of his character. Tony Blair likened him to a ‘clunking fist’, this was intended to compliment Brown’s heavyweight credentials. However it brings to mind a lumbering, lolloping creature unable to bend with the prevailing wind. This inflexibility and stubbornness was well known prior to his assumption of leadership. It is proving to be a huge problem for Labour now. Brown is a supertanker politician, he turns only slowly. Blair by contrast was a smaller faster more manoeuvrable vessel. Brown is also proving to be a very slow decision maker. This should have been no surprise, during his Chancellorship most of the difficult decisions were put off by reviews. Gershon, Barker, Adair Turner all conducted reviews by Brown. Brown is now reviewing like crazy as PM, this is no surprise as there are more difficult decisions to be taken. Labour are now in the position where they were sold a decisive leader and have received an indecisive one.

The problem is deciding whether Labour’s issues are worse than the problems for the Conservative government under Major. A lot of the Conservative problems were to do with circumstance and a lot of the Labour problems are to do with the guy at the helm. That is not to say that changing the helmsman as some suggest would make things better, the public would probably look unkindly on a party that elected unopposed a leader one year and deposed him the next. The Labour party are staring a bad defeat in the face under Brown however they have nowhere to go, changing leader would in all likelihood not make much of a difference and the brooding presence of Brown would be left on the backbenches. Labour needs to find a means of compensating for Brown’s weaknesses until the next election. It may claw back some votes and minimise the scale of the defeat. The comparison with Major is overdone, John Major was basically a decent politician in dire circumstances, Brown looks increasingly like a dire politician in basically decent circumstances. The consequences for Labour could be worse than the consequences were for the Conservatives.