No escape, no excuses - and not a lot of hope. For those of us who wanted a Brown premiership, these are the days of ashes and of garment-rending. Behind the scenes, on both sides of the party, there are serious discussions going on about how to remove the prime minister. I confess that I am still a little baffled about what precisely has gone wrong with what we might call “best Brown” — the serious, clever, often funny and surprisingly graceful private man who has failed to translate himself into a popular public figurehead. Yes, there were mistakes: the 10p tax rate being by far the worst for ordinary voters, and the delayed election the worst in terms of tactics. But show me the leader who hasn’t messed up at some point. Yes, after 10 golden years, the problems hitting the economy are serious. It’s a perfect storm — the banking crisis, at least partly imported from the United States; the sharp fall in house prices; increasing debt; and the rising food and petrol prices.A perfect chancellor would have seen some of it coming sooner. Perhaps it would have been better to hold more money back for hard times. But almost nobody was against the desperately needed extra cash for schools and hospitals when Brown found it. Everybody wanted to let the good times roll. Turning round and pointing at Brown is a little childish. He is certainly not responsible for the most serious problems, the rocketing prices of oil, gas and most major foodstuffs. These are the inevitable result of booming middle-class populations in Asia meeting finite supplies of agricultural land, water and carbon. They are, in every way, a world-sized problem. Yet the story is written, the jeering headlines already yesterday’s news. Brown is the problem. One thing I am sure I got wrong. When one looks at the success and popularity of Boris Johnson in London, it seems obvious that Brownites underestimated the importance of style and swagger, certainly humour, in this celebrity and television-driven age. We thought people might find a non-flashy, dour, rather private man a refreshing change. We were mistaken. Excerpted from Jackie Ashley’s ‘The country wants a leader with style and swagger’ in the Guardian
