And there was, of course, the customary Brown’s-rabbit-from-a-hat trick – this time a £1bn bribe to council tax payers to make sure they don’t get a shock rise in April.Q Hang on. Isn’t that three weeks or so before the next general election?A Exactly You are catching on Fancy another? It’s your round.. Gordon Brown has been Chancellor for so long he could probably deliver a pre-Budget report in his sleep. But yesterday’s speech was unusually challenging, one that demanded a Chancellor who was alert to several dangers and opportunities. The economic context was darker than usual and the political background was even more multi-layered in its daunting and feverish complexity.
A wholly unleashed Mr Brown at this late stage in the parliamentary cycle would only harm his own ambitions. As far as elections were uppermost in his thoughts, he focused yesterday on the general election scheduled for next May. This was not an event to launch an overt leadership campaign.Even so, Mr Brown is a fertile politician. He has 10 ideas before breakfast relating to how a left-of-centre government in Britain should seek to win elections and build what he calls a progressive consensus. In the build-up to the 1997 and 2001 elections, those ideas were at the heart of Labour’s election appeal. Now that Mr Blair and Mr Milburn are planning next year’s election more or less without him, he sought to leave hints here and there of a distinctive Brownite agenda.He ticked several electoral boxes.
The next set of council tax bills will almost certainly be delivered during the election campaign. The high demands earlier this year provoked fury, not least from pensioners. The Chancellor therefore set aside a substantial sum of cash to reduce next year’s bills. He also announced other measures aimed at helping the elderly, especially those who are least well-off.
Other policies were targeted at those in work or who want to work, with the much-heralded extension of childcare, and more generous paternity and maternity leave.For much of the speech, Mr Brown established a dividing line between the Labour Government and the Conservative Party, not one that divided himself and Mr Blair. The Chancellor enjoyed himself most when he claimed that the Conservatives were planning cuts of £35bn, in contrast to Labour’s spending plans.But this was about more than the opening of the general election campaign. Beyond the familiar electoral tactics, the Chancellor proclaimed his view of a modern enabling state in which the Government plays a more active role in encouraging work and raising skills, while providing additional resources to allow parents more time with their families. Mr Brown called it a “family-friendly welfare state”, highlighting in particular the SureStart schemes, in which poorer families are helped with childcare, schooling, finding work and training. He announced a significant extension of the scheme.In spite of the breakdown of the relationship between Mr Blair and Mr Brown, this was a statement that in policy terms unites them, and more broadly brings the Blairites and Brownites together. Mr Blair was generous or politically foolish in allowing Mr Brown the platform to outline a progressive agenda yesterday while he was left putting the case for the more bleakly defensive Queen’s speech, but there was little in the statement yesterday with which he would disagree Mr Blair is also a believer in an enabling state. He cheered most enthusiastically when Mr Brown announced the expansion of SureStart schemes.But that does not mean that we are witnessing a remarkable rapprochement between the two Relations are dire and are likely to remain so.
Mr Brown regarded Mr Blair’s five-year plans unveiled in the summer as superficial and iniquitous in their impact on public services Yesterday, Mr Brown hailed a range of 10-year plans. His allies claim they are the product of much more detailed policy-making.More specifically, Mr Brown was furious when Peter Mandelson warned about the dangers of gloating over the economy. Mr Brown directly mocked Mr Mandelson yesterday, suggesting that even Michael Howard occasionally gloated about the successes in the economy On one level this is an absurd internal debate. The idea that a chancellor or any minister should play down progress in the economy is silly. It conjures up a Monty Python type election slogan – “Vote for us. The economy is not doing very well.”But there are serious tensions within the seemingly odd debate. Mr Brown believes that British voters will only come to accept Europe when they are more confident about their own country.
