SO GORDON BROWN bounced and what happened? More banks crashed. Oh, and he made an environmentally and electorally indefensible decision on a third runway at Heathrow Airport. Is everyone happy now?
I’m thinking especially of those of you who will be canvassing in half a dozen Labour seats in west London, explaining to residents why their lives are going to be blighted by terrible air quality and intolerable aircraft noise. “Business wants it”, you will have to admit on the doorsteps, just as business used to want child labour – still does, in parts of the world – and breadline wages and not having to bother too much about tiresome workers falling into unguarded machinery. What business wants, business gets, even in these desperate times – and even if it means Labour trashing its recently-discovered green principles.
The thing about Brown – I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it – is that he doesn’t understand the modern world. He doesn’t even seem to understand economics; he explained his slip in the House of Commons about saving the world by saying he actually meant he’d saved the banking system, and already that claim is looking pretty hollow.
In the past few days, ordinary people have watched in astonishment as the Government has poured yet more public money into a financial system which has been recklessly mismanaged for years, putting millions of jobs, homes and pensions at risk.
High street banks took unacceptable risks because they were able to do it; because this Labour Government assumed they knew what they were doing and didn’t want to limit their activities. Suddenly Brown is angry with the banks – he lashed out this week at the Royal Bank of Scotland, whose shares went into freefall – but we would all be sleeping better in our beds if he’d noticed what they were up to while he was Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Giving business what it wants is a large part of how we got into this mess and yet the Government is still listening to business when it comes to incredibly controversial decisions likes expanding Heathrow. It’s painfully obvious that the airport is in the wrong place, and that the environmental cost of expanding it is unacceptably high.
The larger point is that business thinks short-term, is hopelessly bad at estimating risk (to itself and to the planet) and simply refuses to engage with the notion of limited resources. In the current economic turmoil, it’s not even clear whether demand for business travel will carry on increasing as the aviation industry expects, which is another reason why the government should not have committed to a third runway. It has handed an electoral prize to Boris Johnson, who is saying what millions of Londoners want to hear, and missed a huge opportunity to reposition the Labour Party for the 21st century.
Brown is very much a last-century politician, and that’s why his famous bounce didn’t last. There was a time when politicians had the luxury of not worrying about the environment, but it’s firmly in the past. There was also a time when the Labour Party, terrified by its election failures, decided it had to be as close as possible to big business – and look where that’s got us. Labour doesn’t have to be anti-business but it does need to be clear-sighted about what happens if it’s too lightly policed;
I’ve written before about the consequences of failing to regulate rapacious utility companies, which are still charging energy prices that are way too high. Now the Government needs to announce legislation to prevent high street banks getting involved in high-risk finance; if banks are not willing to restrict their practices and make good judgements on behalf of the consumer, then the government has a moral obligation to step in.
Brown is lucky, although he may not appreciate it, in facing a lightweight opposition which should be even further ahead in the polls. Cameron’s decision to bring back Kenneth Clarke is a tacit recognition of that, but it means that both parties now have political figures who are enthusiastically pro-business and free trade – 20th century thinking, in other words – in key portfolios.
This isn’t a comfortable situation for Ed Miliband or anyone else in the Labour Party who understands the need to rebalance the competing demands of business, ordinary people and the environment, and it will be interesting to see how the Tories resolve the contradictions Cameron has created on Europe and green issues.
In this messy political atmosphere, the polls are bound to shift up and down for Labour and Brown may bounce again before the next general election. But the central problem remains: Labour has a leader who is still seeking solutions in the past, not the future.
