Britain under Brown

Spectator, The, Oct 4, 2003 by Heffer, Simon

Simon Heffer says only the Tories can defend us against the revival of socialism planned by the Chancellor

It was, as we now all know, Gordon Brown's definitive statement of his intention to be the next prime minister. His speech at Bournemouth gave an impression of positive leadership to a party that feels it has not had such a thing for some time - or, at least, not had it in a form that it finds palatable. 'Labour values', as he told us all again and again, were back on the agenda: and a return to socialism, with all its contingent horrors of high taxation, centralisation, redistribution and anti-entreprencurialism, was back on the agenda too. There was a great vision being expounded here: one unpleasantly familiar to anyone over 45, but intoxicating to old leftists and young radicals alike. As he promised to do so much, one almost forgot on listening to Mr Brown that Labour had been in power for six and a half years already, and might perhaps have got round to quite a lot of this New Jerusalemism a little sooner. But then, of course, it has not happened only because Gordon has not - yet - been elected prime minister.

His speeches at every party conference are a little like the one he gave here on Monday. They pay homage to the trade unions, they share the suffering of the poor, they bang on about what Mr Brown, desperately straining to remain in code, calls 'var-lews'. Every year, especially during the glory days of the Project, he has reminded the old Left that he is still their man, that he still believes what they believe. The difference this year is that he, and they, sensed that the day might at last, after nine and a half years of organised hypocrisy, be approaching when the Project might have run its course, and old Labour would be back in power.

That, though, was not necessarily what Mr Brown was saying to his leader - who was absent from the platform, attending the funeral of the last leader of the House of Lords - on Monday. 'You mustn't think Gordon was just sending a message to Blair,' one old stager told me after the Great Performance. 'As far as he's concerned Blair's got the message, and he knows his time is up.' That is not, of course, what Mr Blair would have us believe, but it did not stop another delegate developing the theme. 'Gordon's bloody arrogant, but he's not so arrogant as to believe that when the time comes it'll be a coronation. The whole point of his speech was to remind the Johnny-come-latelys that he's the heir apparent.' Various parvenus' names are thrown about as candidates in a putative leadership contest: Peter Hain, Charles Clarke and, of course, Robin Cook. But few at Bournemouth seriously expect that, when the time comes, the next leader of the party will be anyone other than Mr Brown.

When exactly, though, will that time be? Although there is a nervousness among ministers about the Hutton inquiry, nobody expects the judge to sign Mr Blair's death warrant. Of far more concern are votes due in the House of Commons on top-up fees and, more alarmingly for Mr Blair, after any Commons debate on Hutton itself. It is a fair bet that the 139 rebels who turned on Mr Blair in the House on 18 March, as the war in Iraq was getting under way, will be joined by several dozen more who feel betrayed and deceived by what they have learnt since then. With the Tories and the Lib Dcms probably voting to a man against the government on such a vote, a defeat - unless it is made a matter of confidence - is not impossible. Perhaps it will be that Mr Blair will survive to lead his party into a third campaign and will secure a third victory; but to judge from Mr Brown's demeanour at Bournemouth, he docs not really expect either of those things.

We could be close, therefore, to discovering exactly what Gordon Brown's Britain entails. Labour without the 'New', Labour post-Blair, would be a version of something not seen since before the International Monetary Fund rode in in the autumn of 1976 and told Denis Healey how, in future, he would be conducting the nation's finances. It would be loved by Labour's hard core, the old leftists who never went away but who tolerated Mr Blair in the interests of victory. Now, they feel they can have at least one more victory, without Mr Blair and his Mandelsonian view of Britain. Mr Brown gave them the blueprint on Monday, and they loved every word of it.

'Pursuing Labour policies', a phrase used by the Chancellor on Monday, is a euphemism for a set of policies that have redistribution as their cardinal point, and the English middle classes as their principal target. 'It's because,' he told his enraptured audience, 'we never forget where we came from, and where we want to take Britain.' Mr Brown means this sort of thing both literally and metaphorically. Literally, he is from the lowland Scots manse, and his Values' (a word to which he is wedded) undeniably embrace a rigid presbytcrianism of which conventional Christian socialism is but a mild variant. There is none of the Thatcherite nonsense about the Good Samaritan only being able to do his bit because he was a successful capitalist; the elimination of poverty, especially for children and the elderly, is Mr Brown's constantly reiterated priority, even, it seems, if it means inflicting greater poverty on everybody else. He would not be proud of wealth in the way Mrs Thatcher was, seeing all the good it could do in individual acts of charity. He would prefer to find it distasteful, and would like to think that those who have too much of it would have the decency to feel guilty about their good fortune. As a cynic he knows this is unlikely, so the state will have to rectify the problem instead by imposing more taxation.