Earlier this week, even before the bolts were drawn back on the polling booths for the masses to take their revenge on the political class and the Cabinet went into voluntary liquidation, Gordon Brown was pictured head bowed, shoulders hunched, cross-fingered hands resting limply on knees. Behind and above on a red backdrop were the words “Britain’s Future”, and below that Labour and the party’s red rose logo. It was a graphic image of a stultified politics.
The posture was reminiscent of Auguste Rodin’s The Thinker, but the body language suggested a different image: The Defeated. Some of his closest advisors had privately conceded two weeks ago that the game was up for Mr Brown, that a new leader might not win the next general election, but could go down with head held high, not just having set out, or even put in place, a radical agenda, but with some vestige of a party and an electoral base left to build on. The Prime Minister had had his chance to show leadership, but 12 years in power steeped in the doctrines of “new” Labour had stripped away any innate core skills he might ever have possessed for firm leadership.
By the pre-Commons question time meeting with aides and with ministers bailing out around him, Mr Brown faced the stark reality. He could go and make way for a leader who could have a chance of restoring public trust in fresh government and fresh ideas. Or he could resolve to battle on in the faith that voters would come round to see him in a better light.
The judgment of many of those around him and in Parliament was that the time had come to admit that it was all too late. The expenses scandal demanded the reform of Parliament and more. But scepticism over whether Mr Brown was the right person successfully to do that reached a tipping point. Except with Mr Brown, whose immutable instinct was to soldier on in the face of a mounting clamour for an immediate election.
There are serious dangers in an election focused on punishment. Not least in giving the far right a further timely opportunity. Labour failed to make a case in either the local or European elections because its intentions and purpose are unclear and its belief in its leader is transparently shallow. The task now is to build on Labour’s policies, package them in a language that people understand and present them boldly to the country. Whoever the leader is.
