One year on...
- 27 Jun 08, 10:48 AM
It was not meant to be like this. Gordon Brown badgered Tony Blair to leave office so that Labour could be renewed. He entered No 10 promising change. There has been no renewal and the most obvious change is a collapse in support for his party.
On this unhappy anniversary friends will mutter, foes will shout about the prime minister's misjudgements ranging from 'the election that never was' to the 10p tax debacle.
Too few, though, will mention the economy or note that, across the channel, a politician with none of Gordon Brown's alleged flaws - the charismatic master of communications Nicolas Sarkozy is not faring much better. And yet even when it comes to the economy, apparently Gordon Brown's strongest suit, mistakes have been made again and again.
Last summer when the red warning lights were flashing on Wall Street, the chancellor was persuaded to deliver an inheritance tax cutting pre-budget report aimed not at the averting or ameliorating the crisis ahead but, instead, at winning an election that was never, in fact, called. He now regrets it.
As the credit crunch bit, fuel and food prices soared and the scrapping of 10p tax rate loomed, a gloomy budget did - well - almost nothing. The prime minister has told friends that he regards this as a "missed opportunity". The chancellor has told his friends that he could do nothing about the 10p tax problem because Gordon Brown was still in denial about it. As it was, weeks later an emergency statement conjured up £2.7 billion to help hard pressed families.
It is not that Gordon Brown, or indeed any politician, could have averted the economic crisis. It is not that there is that much more he could have done given there was no money. What insiders do accept, though, is that the PM has looked behind the economic curve and his government have made a series of tax decisions that have had to be amended or abandoned reducing confidence in the government's economic decision taking.
Team Brown curse their bad economic luck. They regret their economic mistakes. They hope that one day their man will be given credit for those long term decisions he likes to talk of so much - expanding nuclear power, speeding up the planning system and his recent efforts to improve the working of oil markets - all designed to make us a stronger economy in the long run.
They - he - must hope that in the words of that old election song "things can only get better" in year two...or, if not then, year three.
