Regular readers of this blog will know that I am not the founder member of the Gordon Brown fan club. Indeed, the Gordon Brown fan club at the moment probably has a staggeringly small membership (a mental image of true believers like Ed Balls and Tom Watson squeezing into a telephone box springs to mind). What is interesting, however, is the willingness of Brown and those around him to blame his travails on external events. Of course, when it comes to the election that never was, the Northern Rock fiasco, the magpie budget, the 10p tax piece of reverse redistribution (the list goes on and on) the finger of blame for Gordon Brown’s present troubles points squarely at one man… Gordon Brown.
But there is one factor that stands above all others in explaining his present predicament within the PLP. I call it the IDS syndrome – disloyalty on the way to the top job means that you can not expect loyalty from others when you have got to the top of the greasy pole. If you have not shown loyalty to others or given others a reason to show loyalty then you will not receive it from them. Think back to that Conservative nadir of Iain Duncan Smith’s leadership. Not only had he, in a moment of madness, been chosen ahead of two much more suitable rivals but, almost from day 1 there was a realisation that he didn’t have the backing of a sizeable portion of the Parliamentary party. Many MPs remembered IDS from his days as a high profile Maastrichtrebel – openly challenging the authority of a Tory Government and briefing against it at regular intervals. MPs recalled being Ministers in a Government being openly criticised by IDS. Their reckoning was that, given he showed an abject lack of loyalty to a Conservative Government in the ’92-’97 Parliament, he had far less of a right to demand loyalty when he was elected leader.
Gordon Brown is suffering from exactly the same problem. Read Seldon’s excellent two volume biography of Blair to understand quite how disloyal, in public and behind the scenes, Brown and his hangers on like Balls were to their own Prime Minister. Go back two years to that open mutiny organised by Brownites (the letter that accompanied the mutiny now makes for hilarious reading). You don’t have to walk far in Westminster before speaking to an MP, Minister or ex Minister who has been the victim of Brown’s personal tirades, bullying behaviour and occasional cold shoulder treatment. As Rachel Sylvester says in today’s Times, “There is little residual loyalty towards the Prime Minister among his Cabinet. ‘I don’t think Gordon would die in a ditch for me so why should I die in a ditch for him?” one minister said.” Brown forgot that the people he pushed around on the way up would hold some power over his future when he reached the top. If your means of ascent involve blatant, open and longstanding disloyalty to your Prime Minister, your colleagues and your Government it should probably come as little surprise when those same colleagues are unwilling to show loyalty in return when times get tough.
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serves the bastard right