WHEN Gordon Brown faced the cameras in a highly charged Downing Street press conference on Friday afternoon, he delivered many grandiloquent phrases about resilience and duty and not leaving a job half done. They were self-serving, but at least they were true to our understanding of the Prime Minister's character. What simply didn't wash was when he claimed to be putting the country's interests before that of his party. This was nonsense, and Mr Brown knew it.
All through this crisis there have been two considerations in Mr Brown's mind – first, his personal survival in the premiership and the securing of the best possible place for himself in the history books; and, subsidiary to this but always a close s
econd, what was in the best interests of the Labour party to which Mr Brown has devoted his adult life. The concept of 'the national interest' is being used by Mr Brown as a justification for clinging on to power at a time when his authority is so damaged he cannot even put his first choice as Chancellor into the Treasury.
Mr Brown's familiar pitch to the voter – that he is the man with the macroeconomic knowhow to steer Britain through the recession – no longer carries the weight it once did. Yes, his actions at the G20 summit in setting the pace on united action to shore up the global banking system and stimulate the Western economies was statesmanship of the first order.
But, ungrateful as this may sound, that is in the past. The global mechanisms that will hopefully prevent a recession turning into a depression are already in place and operating – as far as one can tell – relatively well. Britain's ability to influence is now minimal. The primary threat to the country now is the crisis of confidence in the political system and the belief that Mr Brown is in office but not in power. This is a combustible combination.
In an attempt to give an impression of momentum, Mr Brown has set up a council of ministers to bring forward plans to restore the people's faith in democracy. And yet his claim to be the man who can salve the country's wounds on this most contentious of issues is unconvincing at best. Mr Brown opposes the one single policy that could do more than anything else to convince people that their vote actually counts – the introduction of proportional representation in elections to Westminster.
Here in Scotland we are now familiar with PR in voting for councillors, MSPs and MEPs – it is only when choosing MPs that we use the antique first-past-the-post system. In our town halls and at Holyrood, the result has been a positive one. Many of the old political fiefdoms have been broken up and the parties – and the electorate – now know that every vote does indeed count. Politicians can no longer afford to take huge swathes of the electorate for granted. Mr Brown however, continues to see this as a reform too far – presumably not on a point of principle, but because it would mean Labour surrendering the chance of unfettered power.
If Mr Brown truly put the country before the party, his course of action would be clear. He would not, as some backbenchers are urging, announce he will stand down in the autumn, allowing Labour to pick a new leader at its annual conference and have the anointed one slip seamlessly into Number 10, the second Prime Minister in a row to get the top job without having to go to the country. No, he would simply ask his driver to take him the short distance up the Mall to Buckingham Palace and seek an audience with the Queen and ask her to dissolve Parliament. Mr Brown would then lead Labour into a general election and let the people deliver judgement on what they think of his capabilities to lead.
That would be the action of a man who genuinely put country before party. Mr Brown might honestly believe that the nation's interests are best served by the Labour party being in power and that the best interests of the country and the Labour party are indivisible. But that is to deny democracy. The people should decide.
