Burson-Marsteller

Sun, sea, sand and sedition

by David O'Leary on 25th August 2008 • The Cast Blog

August is normally a quieter time for Europe’s leaders, but not so this year. With the Olympics and Georgia on their minds, it has been a busier-than-usual month for many – not least Britain’s beleaguered prime minister, Gordon Brown, who has a further preoccupation – a challenge from one his most senior ministers.

Mr Brown’s summer started badly, following an annus horibilis for the government. Despite a promising start after taking over from Tony Blair last summer, he has faltered badly: the turning point was last September, when he used the Labour Party’s conference to build up speculation about an early election, only to pull back in the face of uncertain polling data.

Since then, Mr Brown has lurched from crisis to crisis – including the government’s loss of personal data, rows over anti-terror laws, rising inflation and falling house prices, and the collapse of the Northern Rock bank. Labour – leading in the polls a year ago – is now trailing badly and facing a general election defeat in 2010 (the latest possible date for a poll).

Meanwhile the Conservatives, starved of power since 1997, have started to be viewed as a government in waiting by the press and public under their young and PR-savvy leader, David Cameron.

Just twelve months ago, Mr Cameron was on the rack, seen as a policy-lite moderniser who was not conservative enough for his party and who didn’t know how to win (his main selling point in winning the Tory leadership). He was also inexperienced – and surely no match for the confident new PM, with ten years as Britain’s finance minister under his belt.

A year on, the tables have been turned: Mr Brown is in unpopular and losing real polls at local level and in Westminster by-elections. The nadir came on 24 July when Labour suffered a defeat in its 25th-safest constituency, a deprived area of Glasgow, losing to the Scottish National Party.

And his holiday, which began two days later, brought more problems. Mr Brown’s destination was Southwold, a modest, old-fashioned coastal town in the east of England – a choice criticised as a PR move, an attempt to show that he ‘felt people’s pain’ about the economic downturn. In his photo-op, Mr Brown looked stiff as he arrived in a jacket and shirt, like a man intensely uncomfortable with the idea of relaxing. By contrast, Mr Cameron looked relaxed in shorts and a T-shirt, walking on the beach. All carefully stage-managed; but he looked more natural.

Then came a more serious threat: murmurings within Labour about his leadership grow louder as David Miliband, the young, Blairite foreign secretary, wrote an article in the Guardian newspaper about his vision for Labour and Britain – a vision that did not mention Mr Brown once. It was a thinly-veiled attack on the leader, followed up with briefings from political friends in Tuscan villas and Spanish holiday homes.

The next day, Mr Miliband gave an interview to BBC radio in which he was less than unequivocal in his backing for Mr Brown, and nervously laughed off suggestions from listeners that he would make a better premier. Talk of an impending coup against Mr Brown at Labour’s autumn conference was rife, with the briefings continuing (including the leak of a memo in which Tony Blair was said to question his successor’s abilities).

Since then, the febrile atmosphere has calmed a little: Mr Miliband – although more telegenic and more personable than Mr Brown – is hardly loved by the Labour’s grassroots, and a poll showed that he would lose as badly as Mr Brown in a head-to-head with the Conservatives. Also, with another by-election in Scotland approaching, no-one seems to want to rock the boat and risk another embarrassing loss to the nationalists. Mr Brown is not out of the woods yet – there are other contenders who, while they may not win, may soften the blow of defeat.

Meanwhile, the prime minister has undertaken a ‘duvet days’ strategy – lying low and preparing for an autumn relaunch. However, he came unstuck when Mr Cameron went to Georgia to meet the country’s president, Mikheil Saakashvilli, before any senior member of the government. Mr Miliband was swiftly dispatched to Tbilisi (and his statement on Georgia’s membership of Nato swiftly contradicted by an ally of Mr Brown).

So it seems that the political wind is changing – not just against Mr Brown, but against Labour too. The prime minister says he can still win, and his fightback may begin with a reshuffle of his team (with all eyes on Mr Miliband).

Yet in policy terms Mr Brown needs to find a way to address voters’ concerns about high gas and electricity prices – his stated priority for the autumn. Policies such as a windfall tax on privatised utilities would be popular with Labour’s grassroots, but would surrender a hard-fought battle to be seen as ‘business-friendly’ as well as some of the all-important ‘centre ground’ of British politics.

Mr Brown also needs to fix his communication, with his ‘brand’ damaged by the ‘election that never was’ and the economic downturn. Relations with the press need to improve. Labour needs to communicate its achievements at a local level – for example, polls suggest that people are satisfied with treatment on the National Health Service and improvements to schools, but this does not translate into national perceptions.

Equally, he needs to define and attack Mr Cameron, who has been given a fairly easy ride by the press in recent months: is the Tory leader a right-winger with a hidden anti-European and public service-cutting agenda, or a slick salesman with no substance and no policies?

A fightback will not be easy, but the past year has shown the volatility in Britain’s political weather. Whatever happens, the next few months seem set to be stormy and unpredictable.

---