An edited version of this article appeared in The Independent on Wednesday 27 June 2007
At last, we will today have a new Prime Minister. He is a very different person from Tony Blair. Gordon Brown is much cleverer, more interested in detail and a strategic thinker. These qualities bode well, but it would be wrong to expect a major change of direction. Blair and Brown created New Labour together and shared a commitment to spin and highly centralised control. Brown like Blair, is a strong Atlanticist. Many of his policies, such as tax credits and Sure Start were copied from Clinton’s New Democrats. He is inspired and excited by the US alliance. He also announced his commitment to the replacement of Trident through press briefings and promised to reintroduce a proposal for 90 days detention for terrorism suspects despite Parliament’s battle to reduce the limit to 28 days.
Nevertheless, despite his record addiction to spin and control freakery, I am convinced that Gordon genuinely intends to try to change and be more consultative and less top down in style. He has reflected on why there has been such a terrible corrosion of trust in politicians and our political institutions and wants to change this.
In domestic policy, it would be easy to create a sense of new beginning by making a bonfire of bureaucratic targets and the excessive testing of children in school. This, together with a promise to halt constant re-organisation and the stream of central diktats would do much to raise morale in the public services. He might well also slim down the intrusiveness and cost of the proposed ID card system.
But Brown is fully aware that the greatest cause of loss of trust was the deceit used by Blair to get the country to war in Iraq and the suffering and further destabilisation in the Middle East to which it has led. He has said that the “War on Terror” cannot be won with hard power alone and he sent Ed Balls to support Jim Wolfenson’s efforts to encourage development in Gaza after the Israeli withdrawal. He is aware that Wolfenson resigned in disgust because nothing could be achieved and Ed Balls has said that Gaza was the most terrible place he has ever seen.
Brown was not consulted by Blair in the run up to the Iraq war. At that time, Blair was in one of his phases of pushing Brown to one side. Brown frequently invited me for a coffee after Cabinet meetings. We were both deeply unhappy. I would obsess over the Iraq situation and he over top up fees and foundation hospitals. He said little about the prospects of war in Iraq but did say, more than once, that he would not accept any job other than Chancellor. He knew there were plans in the Blair camp to push him out and he was clear that he would leave the Government if he was removed from the Treasury.
But then, as so often when Blair was in trouble, he called on Gordon for help. As Blair became more gaunt and troubled, John Prescott arranged dinner, and Brown helped Blair through the crisis of no second resolution by adopting the strategy of “blaming the French”. They spun very hard that Chirac had said he would veto any second resolution and this together with the Attorney General’s misleading legal advice got many reluctant Labour MPs into the lobby to vote for war.
So, it would be true to say that Brown was not party to Blair’s plans for the war in Iraq, but stepped in to support him when he was in trouble and raised no objection thereafter. We can be sure that he will have thought carefully about what can be done over Iraq. I would not be surprised if he were to announce fairly soon what the army want, which is a withdrawal of most of our troops from Iraq. I also think it possible that he will announce the establishment of an enquiry similar to the one Thatcher established for the Falklands so that we can “learn the lessons”. But I fear he is too fundamentally Atlanticist in outlook to be willing to shift UK policy sufficiently to make any significant difference in the Middle East.
The way forward involved full implementation of the Iraq Study Group Report. This surprisingly radical document proposed that the US should make clear that it is abandoning its plans for permanent bases in Iraq and wishes to negotiate a withdrawal. It also suggests that in order to gain the help of neighbouring countries and deal with the root cause of the troubles of the Middle East, the US should support the establishment of a Palestinian state on ’67 boundaries with East Jerusalem as its capital with a negotiated solution on the Palestinians’ right to return. There is no doubt that such a shift of US policy would transform the Middle East and this should become the core of UK policy. Brown should look for allies in the EU and elsewhere to shift Western policy in this way and should do all in his power to influence an incoming Democratic President in this direction. Brown has been close to leading Democrats and will be looking forward to a new Democratic President. But the Democrats have traditionally been more pro-Israeli than the Republicans and I doubt that Brown will have the courage to cease to put the relationship with the US at the core of British foreign policy.
Brown does care about International Development and is genuinely moved by goals for getting all children in the world into school and improving immunisation and therefore saving many children’s lives. However, he does not I think appreciate that Development has to cease to be a way of pleasing party and country with lots of well intentioned announcements and instead become the central perspective at the core of our foreign policy.
What Brown should do is shift UK foreign policy from an obsession with “the special relationship” to a commitment to seek partners to build a new multilateral system capable of strengthening the UN, making peace in the Middle East and make trade agreements that help the poorest. The UK should also shift its military focus to supporting UN peacekeeping efforts in the most difficult conflicts like Darfur and the Congo. Our foreign policy should centre on building a more equitable world order capable of reaching agreement on climate change and the threat to fish stocks, forests, spreading desertification and the displacement of millions of people. None of this is easy but without such a change, we are heading for increasing bloodshed and catastrophe. I would love to be proved wrong and to see our new Prime Minister begin to build such a role for the UK. I am afraid instead he will remain committed to the special relationship and try to make gestures towards a change of direction.
