ArmaGordon

tauringhuang.

Jul 31st 2008
From The Economist print edition

Are the stakes high enough to justify regicide?

Illustration by Steve O'BrienTHE word “fascist” was whispered by some discomforted observers at last year’s Labour Party conference: so triumphalist was the mood, so impregnable seemed the new prime minister, so confident his followers of smashing the Conservatives, snuffing out David Cameron and securing near-eternal power. That was then. The Labour conference this September will be a festival of existential angst—and thus, perhaps, of regicide.

The political costs of deposing Gordon Brown so soon after Labour ditched Tony Blair would be huge. Almost all Labour MPs endorsed Mr Brown’s accession; ousting him would make them look preposterous. His remaining allies point out, menacingly but fairly, that yet another prime minister with no personal mandate would probably feel obliged to hold a general election quickly. Thus a move against Mr Brown this autumn might necessitate a vote early next year—in the middle of an economic slump, with the party almost broke and Mr Cameron’s Tories, in all likelihood, still 20-odd points up in the polls. That prospect makes sparing Mr Brown, at least until next summer, seem prudent.

For all that, the knives are out again. The threat is not some chimera invented by a mischievous and hysterical media: like the plans for a snap election that helped to get Mr Brown into this mess last year, it is real. Some phlegmatic ministers argue that final judgment on him should be reserved, and that he may yet unleash a magical new economic strategy. But some of those admit they are outnumbered by the plotters. The cause of the mutinous fever is simple: less than a year after its moment of imperial hubris, Labour is contemplating not just defeat, but meltdown.

On current polls, Mr Brown is set to lead Labour to perhaps its worst election result since the second world war, a rout like that the Tories suffered in 1997. What was left of the parliamentary Labour party afterwards might retreat into unelectable pre-Blair left-wingery (though it might not). That understandably alarms Labour MPs who lack titanic majorities in their constituencies. It enrages the old allies of Mr Blair, who spent much of their adult lives turning Labour into an election-winning force and are understandably disinclined to go gently into another long night of opposition. And some think Labour could sink lower still.

In the ultra-gloomy analysis, the worry is bigger than Mr Brown. The culprits include Margaret Thatcher, the rise of the Asian tigers and the long economic boom over which Labour itself has presided. The problem, in other words, is the death of Britain’s old industrial economy and the re-ordering of its class structure. That has shrunk the block of partisan voters on whom Labour could formerly rely. The Tory base is less solid too; but with its elastic pragmatism, Conservatism is better suited to this new era of politics than Labour. Meanwhile, newly salient issues such as terrorism and immigration favour the right (which may help to explain the squeeze being felt by parties of the left across Europe). Worse, devolution has helped to engender strong nationalist parties in Wales and especially Scotland, able to humble Labour in what were once its heart of hearts.

With his chameleonic charm, Mr Blair managed to straddle this complex social landscape and build an election-winning coalition. Mr Brown, it seems, cannot. Under him Labour lost in London, lost in Crewe and, in the by-election of July 24th, lost in Glasgow East, hitherto an archetypal rotten borough. Mr Brown, the argument runs, may be steering his party towards annihilation, of the kind suffered by Britain’s Liberals after the first world war or the Progressive Conservatives in Canada in 1993.

These two Labour scenarios—terrible and apocalyptic—seem to be concentrating the minds of Mr Brown’s potential successors. An aspiring Labour leader who today is, say, 43 (like David Miliband, the foreign secretary) could afford to wait until after an election loss for the main chance—so long as he thought a subsequent Labour win might send him to Downing Street following a briefish spell in opposition. But a huge defeat might mean a decade or more in the wilderness, enough time for some unforeseen candidate to rise to the top, as Mr Blair and Mr Cameron did. So such a contender might hope that the party would forgive him an early and respectable defeat at its head and that, as in days of yore—before political leaders began to face the same sort of summary judgments as football managers—he might get a second crack at the premiership after a Tory interregnum.

So much for the Labour Party. There is another way to look at the Brown predicament, involving that quaint old consideration, the national interest. Here the calculation is oddly similar.

Speak for England?
When they began last autumn, Mr Brown’s troubles were bad for him and Labour, but a distraction rather than a disaster for the country. Although the government’s erratic policies and irresponsible borrowing have since made his plight a national issue too, Britain is not yet being wildly misgoverned. A putsch might mean months of self-indulgent ministerial introspection at a time of economic difficulty. So there is no urgent need for disruptive change. But the case looks stronger if Mr Brown’s leadership is indeed likely to ruin Labour—which would leave Britain (as in the early 1980s and for some of the time since 1997) without a sensible or substantial opposition. If so it might be better for everyone (except Mr Cameron) if he goes.

Is it—and will he? The fact that less than a year ago it was the Tories who seemed extinguishable should give Labour hope, and the assassins pause. The party is not ideologically fractured, nor threatened by a plausible centre-left rival in England as it was by the Social Democrats in the 1980s. So the actual probability of a Labour Armageddon may be low. But if even a remote danger is grave, as this one is, it can make sense to try to avert it. Thus the likelihood of ArmaGordon is much higher. Mr Brown has only an evens chance of leading Labour into the next election.