Let the battle start

Oct 10 2007 by Rob Merrick, Liverpool Daily Post

I BELIEVE Gordon Brown can bounce back from his rapid and remarkable slide from master political strategist into red-faced blunderer.

But, at the same time, the fiasco of the general election that wasn’t guarantees that his Prime Ministerial style can never be the same again.

What died at the weekend, along with a November 1 poll, was Mr Brown’s carefully-crafted – but extraordinary – image as a father of the nation, somehow floating above party politics.

For three months, the man once known as “Red Gordon”, succeeded in persuading some of his old political enemies that he had changed into a new type of leader – above all, a moral one.

Junior Tories were appointed as his advisers, as if someone who had waited 13 years to get to No.10 was now going to listen to Conservative advice.

We had the rub-your-eyes spectacle of Margaret Thatcher coming to tea and Mr Brown suggesting she “perhaps” could have done more about unemploy- ment. All 3.1m of it. This charade – not too strong a word, I think – culminated in the Prime Minister not even mentioning the Tories in his “son of the manse” party conference speech.

Clever politics, of course, but it could not last. How could it, when Mr Brown – far from being above party squabbles – has spent a lifetime trying to grind the Tories into the political dust?

Now, after failing to bang down the lid on the election bottle until it fizzed over, the Prime Minister is exposed as the calculating politician he is – and that they all are.

The Tory taunt of “Bottler Brown” – journalists were given Newcastle Brown bottles with Gordon’s smug smile on the front – has a limited shelf-life. No-one likes a boaster.

What will endure is the impression that the Prime Minister, in trying to trump the Tory conference by jetting to Iraq to announce a troop withdrawal, can spin like Tony Blair.

Furthermore, not a single person will believe Mr Brown’s claim that he would have scrapped the election even if on course for a 100-seat majority. No sign of a “moral compass” there.

It all adds up to normal politics resuming – with Labour pitting its commitment to schools and hospitals against the Tories’ eye-catching tax cuts.

That is a battle Labour has won before – and which it can win again.

GORDON BROWN is not the only one in trouble. What price Menzies Campbell to survive through to the next election, now it is 18 months away?

Unhappy Liberal Democrats could not unseat their under-performing leader when an election was just weeks, or months away. It’s not any more.