Brown's moral society

He didn't once mention him by name. But make no mistake, David Cameron was the real target of this afternoon's big speech by Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

For weeks, Cameron has been banging on about the "broken society," rightly calculating that social issues, rather than economics, will be uppermost in the voters' minds come the next general election, and believing this will give him the crucial advantage over a Prime Minister still perceived by some as no more than a dour financial manager.

Well, in this afternoon's speech, Brown made clear that if that's where Cameron wishes to stage the election battle, he will be there waiting for him. For this was a speech that was, more than anything, about society - and about Brown's vision of the kind of society he wishes to create over the next few years.

In policy terms, much of it was not new. To take one example, my wife is already in the middle of the nine months' paid maternity leave Brown re-announced this afternoon. But the way he weaved such initiatives together in a convincing overall narrative of his government's moral purpose was both new and potentially devastating for the Conservative opposition.

Central to the speech was Brown's own "moral compass" - something his predecessor was often justifiably accused of lacking. Without being at all preachy about it - New Labour still doesn't officially "do God" - the Prime Minister left no doubt about the importance of his own Christian convictions in determining Labour's future policy direction.

The speech was peppered with Biblical references, from ensuring all children are given a chance to use their gifts (the Parable of the Talents) to his pledge to "honour those who raised us" (the Fifth Commandment.)

This moral dimension is the common thread between, for instance, ensuring that young people from low income families will not have to pay to go to university, and ensuring that immigrants who sell drugs or carry guns will be thrown out and shops that sell alcohol to under-18s closed down.

All in all, I thought it was one of the cleverest leader's speeches I have heard. By not even mentioning the other two parties or their leaders, Brown once again succeeded in presenting himself as a national leader above petty party politicking, the personification of a new style of politics.

Most pleasing to me personally was his announcement that an elected House of Lords would be a Labour manifesto commitment. This is absolutely the right way to proceed with this vexed issue, as it will mean that under the Salisbury Convention, the unelected peers will have no alternative but to vote for their own abolition.

As to the great unanswered question - will there be an autumn general election? - the subliminal message of the speech was, surely, is that Brown is getting on with the job of governing. But at the same time, there are clearly people in Bournemouth who are continuing to stoke up the election talk - which may be real, or may just be a tactic to wind up the Tories and keep the unions and the left on their best behaviour.

It did not, to me, come over as an electioneering speech. But as I am not in Bournemouth and don't know what's being said behind the scenes to those journalists and bloggers who are, I can't be entirely sure that my instincts are correct.

What I am sure of, though, is that Brown knows exactly the ground on which he wishes to fight Cameron, and that he is absolutely confident of success.

Oborne tells it like it is

I was sadly unable to make last Monday's launch party at the Spectator offices for Peter Oborne's new book The Triumph of the Political Class, but he did send me a copy in the post, for which I was very grateful.

I have not yet had a chance to read it from cover to cover, and when I have done, I will post a full review here, but on opening the book, the following passage from the introduction immediately caught my eye.

"This book is based on my fifteen years' day-to-day experience as a reporter, and more recently political columnist, in the press gallery and lobby of the House of Commons. This is an incomparably privileged job, giving one front-row seats in the great political theatre of the day, as well as intimate access to politicians and their senior staff, many of whom I have come to know extremely well.

"After I had been doing this job for a number of years I started to gain a sense that something was wrong. I noticed that the reports of political events put out to the public through newspapers and the broadcasting media were in large part either meaningless or untrue. As I probed further, I gradually became aware that the conventional narrative structure which is used to give sense and meaning to British politics was extremely misleading.

"Though the public is always told that Tory and Labour are in opposition, that is not really the case. They are led to believe that the Liberal Democrats are an insurgent third party, but that is not the case either. It has come to seem to me that their strongest loyalties are to each other.

"For the greatest part of my time as a political reporter, the most bitter rivalries at Westminster have involved factional conflicts within individual parties rather than collisions of ideology and belief."

This is so close to my own experience of British politics during my time in the lobby as to be uncanny, but then again I have long shared Oborne's general analysis of the state of politics - and political journalism - today.

Although I do not quite buy Oborne's contention that Gordon Brown is as much a member of the "political class" as Tony Blair and David Cameron, I suspect that this, far more so than Alastair Campbell's self-serving Diaries, is the must-read volume for anyone who really wants to know how Britain is governed today.

Cheers Tim

Just time to say a belated farewell to Tim Henman following his final Davis Cup match on Saturday. Henman will of course be remembered primarily for not winning Wimbledon despite reaching the Semi-Finals on three occasions, but in my view he was a better player than many who did manage to win the prestigious title.

Many believe that Henman just didn't have what it took to win a major. One very senior BBC sports journalist once remarked to me that he thought the man "wasn't right in the head." I just think he was unlucky - for three reasons.

Firstly, he had the rank misfortune to arrive at the top of the game at the same time as the greatest grass-court player of all time, Pete Sampras, who beat Henman twice in the Quarter Finals at Wimbledon and once in the semis. Secondly, the decision by the Wimbledon organisers to reduce the pressure of the balls in an attempt to curb the domination by serve-and-vollery merchants mitigated against Henman's game. And thirdly, and most memorably, he was deprived of his best opportunity to reach a Wimbledon final by the rain in 2001, at a point where he had the beating of Goran Ivanisevic.

Many people seem to view Henman as another Great British Loser in the tradition of Eddie the Eagle Edwards. For my part, I think he was one of the foremost British sporting heroes of the past 15 years.

Back on the blog

Blog regular MorrisOx noted in a comment on the previous post - and in another over at Iain Dale's Place - that things had gone a bit quiet over here lately and inquired as to whether it was an "enforced absence."

It was, in fact, entirely voluntary. We've been away visiting a few old friends down south and enjoying a much-needed family holiday - our first as a foursome since the arrival of little Clara Eloise back in August.

I am not one of those bloggers who take the view that in order to keep a blog going you have to post something new every day - in any case I wouldn't be able to sustain that in view of my other commitments - so I hope readers will forgive the occasional barren patch.

For the record, I'll be blogging on Brown's big speech later, along with various other sporting and political matters which have caught my interest during my time away.

Who'll win the Cup?

Iain Dale won't be watching the Rugby World Cup - his light-hearted explanation of why brightened up my Saturday morning and is well worth a read - but as a huge fan of the oval ball game I certainly will be tuning in and even writing the occasional blog post on the tournament as it unfolds over the next few weeks.

So what of England's chances? Well, to my mind we've wasted the last four years since winning the 2003 tournament and frankly don't deserve to retain the Webb Ellis trophy. Talented young players capable of making things happen on a rugby field like Ollie Smith, Shane Geraghty and Tom Palmer have ended up on the international scrapheap while limited players like Jamie Noon and Joe Worsley prosper. It's back to pragmatic old England, 1991-style, and not even the introduction of an old rugby romantic like Brian Ashton as coach has changed that.

Of the other home nations, Ireland have gone off the boil of late but with Brian O'Driscoll in the side are capable of anything on their day, the Welsh backs look great on paper but their forwards simply don't cut the mustard, while Scotland are said to be in great physical shape - which they will need to be if they are to get out of a tough qualifying pool which also includes New Zealand.

If they play to their ability, New Zealand ought to win this World Cup comfortably. Against the British and Irish Lions two years ago they were awesome, although it has to be said that Clive Woodward's Lions were very poor. As a huge admirer of New Zealand rugby, and of the Land of the Long White Cloud itself, I wouldn't be displeased with such an outcome.

So do the Tories really believe in society?

Margaret Thatcher said society didn't exist. Now David Cameron's trying to mend it. No wonder he's so keen to shed the Iron Lady's legacy. This, by and large, is the theme of today's Newcastle Journal column looking back at the week's political developments.

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A week ago last Friday, a sudden flurry of excitement went around the Westminster village. Labour MPs were said to be rushing back from holidays, a spate of meetings in Whitehall were allegedly cancelled, and ministers’ diaries were supposedly cleared.

For some, rather excitable pundits, it all added up to one thing: Gordon Brown was about to call Britain’s first autumn general election for 33 years.

Well, I hate to say I told you so, but it didn’t happen, and with the opinion polls now showing David Cameron’s Tories back within touching distance of Mr Brown and Labour, it was never likely to.

The election rumours – recycled on a series of right-wing blogs and even the odd national newspaper – had the definite whiff of an attempt to wind-up the Conservatives. Indeed, over the past week. Mr Brown has done little else.

So on Monday, for instance, we saw the appointments of renegade Tories John Bercow and Patrick Mercer to become government advisers, on services to children with communication difficulties and security issues respectively.

Mr Brown hailed this as an example of the “new politics” of bipartisanship and cross-party co-operation. It was, by contrast, a transparent example of the “old politics” of point-scoring and mischief-making.

Never mind that, a few short months ago, Labour ministers were rushing to condemn Mr Mercer as a racist after some rather injudicious off-the-record remarks about blacks in the armed forces ended up in the papers.

Now he is apparently to be welcomed as the latest occupant of Gordon’s Big Tent. When it comes to putting one over on Mr Cameron, it seems anything goes.

But that was not all. The following day came an even more astonishing piece of chutzpah from the Prime Minister as he answered questions at his monthly press conference – one of the few Blairite presentational innovations to survive the handover.

As former Tory deputy leader Michael Ancram fulminated over Mr Cameron’s betrayal of the party’s Thatcherite legacy, enter Mr Brown to claim that he is the true inheritor of the Iron Lady’s mantle.

Margaret Thatcher, he said, was a "conviction politician" who had "seen the need for change,” adding only the slight qualification that he would have dealt with mass unemployment a bit differently.

It was all a far cry from the 1980s Gordon Brown who lambasted Mrs Thatcher’s handling of the economy, but again, who cares about that when it’s all in the good cause of embarrassing the Tories?

Was there a serious point to these apparently farcical games? Well, I suppose if it demonstrated one thing it was that politics are now starting to return to normal after the phenomenon of the “Brown Bounce” over the course of the summer.

I wrote in last week’s column that the underlying political narrative of the autumn would be whether Mr Cameron could come back, and the early indications are that the answer is yes.

The two main party leaders are now as close in the opinion polls as they are appear close in ideology, dancing an increasingly complex pas-de-deux around the political centre ground in pursuit of that winning advantage.

I would expect that between now and the election there will be more and more forays onto eachother’s ground and stealing of eachother’s clothes as each tries to convince the electorate that he is simultaneously both tougher yet also more caring than the other.

Mischief-making aside, the major issue of substance on which Mr Brown and Mr Cameron locked horns this week concerned the twin themes of young people and citizenship.

The Tory leader said school leavers and those going to college should take part in a voluntary six-week summer programme ranging from charity work to mountain climbing.

Cleverly, he dubbed the initiative a 21st Century version of National Service and claimed it would boost participants' pride in themselves and in Britain.

This was something of a political masterstroke in that it is the kind of thing that will appeal to his right-wing critics while also reaching out to those of a more liberal tendency concerned about social breakdown.

Meanwhile Mr Brown and his energetic Schools Secretary, Ed Balls, were out and about on Thursday seeking the public’s views on how childrens’ lives can be improved.

Mr Balls, whose department now covers children's health, sport, and youth justice as well as schools, says he will use the answers to draw up a “10-year plan” for childrens’ services.

One of the main vehicles for this consultation will be Mr Brown’s so-called “citizen’s juries” in which groups of people will discuss questions such as "How can we keep young people out of trouble?"

The initiative follows a controversial report earlier this year from Unicef, which put the UK at the bottom of a league table of children's well-being among 21 industrialised nations.

What this all demonstrates is that, for the first time in living memory, the next election is likely to be fought around issues other than that of the economy, with the theme of the “the broken society” increasingly to the fore.

Mr Cameron thinks he can make this the Tories’ new big idea. His problem is that, historically, “society,” as opposed to the individual, has been something that Labour people care most about.

Indeed, it was the Tories’ most successful leader of modern times – Mrs Thatcher herself – who famously declared that there was “no such thing as society.”

In the present-day context, that alone would explain why Mr Cameron is so keen for his party to shed its Thatcherite clothes – whatever Mr Ancram and other “blasts from the past” may think.

So can he do it? Can Mr Cameron turn what has historically been one of the Tories’ biggest weaknesses into an electoral strength?

It is audacious, certainly, and it will require a great deal more flesh on the bones before it can be considered a coherent policy - but with rising public concern about social breakdown, the opportunity is there.

Mr Brown, though, has one crucial advantage over his Tory rival as they do battle for the public’s support - that whereas Mr Cameron can merely say, he as Prime Minister can actually do.

He may have passed up what some saw as a good chance to secure his own mandate this autumn. But it is far, far too early to say that such a chance will not come round again.