Britannia Radio

SUNDAY  TELEGRAPH    8.2.09
  Gordon Brown's been shamed and scorned - and upstaged by Tony Blair
The insults that the prime minister has endured reflect the crumbling 
of Labour's reputation, says Matthew d'Ancona.

By Matthew d'Ancona

There was a time when a BBC presenter who called the prime minister 
of the day a "one-eyed Scottish idiot" would have been forced to 
apologise on principle for insulting the highest office of government 
and its occupant in the most brutally personal terms. But this was 
not why Jeremy Clarkson had to say sorry last week. The hand of the 
Top Gear star was forced by disability groups such as the Royal 
National Institute of Blind People, outraged spokesmen for the 
Scottish people, and - who knows? - barely-intelligible protests from 
the British Federation of Idiots and Half-Wits.

What nobody seemed to be saying was that Clarkson should mind his 
manners, at least a bit, when talking about Her Majesty's Prime 
Minister and First Lord of the Treasury. In fact, Gordon was lucky to 
qualify as a member of two minority groups - the visually challenged 
and the Scottish - or he might never have received an apology at all. 
And this, I submit, is a small sign of something rather bigger.

Last week, I wrote that the Government was electorally doomed and 
braced myself for a flurry of calls from Labour acquaintances. I was 
not disappointed. The phone did indeed ring, and the inbox pinged. 
What I did not predict was that most of them agreed with my analysis: 
the game was indeed up, these Labour soothsayers wailed. Today's 
Sunday Telegraph/ICM poll, which has the Government on a paltry 28 
per cent, will deepen their gloom. The parallels between 2009 and the 
dying years of the last Tory government are not precise: Gordon Brown 
is not John Major (he is a much more substantial politician), and 
Labour still has a healthy majority - unlike the last Tory Prime 
Minister, who lost his entirely in December 1996. But the parallels 
are becoming stronger by the day: I feel I know how this movie ends, 
and it is no chick flick.

First of all, as in the 1992-97 Parliament, it has become possible to 
say almost anything and level any kind of scorn at the PM - and the 
scorn is getting through. Mr Brown, we learn, is upset that 
cartoonists are making him look too fat (remember Major and his 
tucked-in underpants?). It is reported (and denied by Number 10) that 
the Prime Minister was "emotional" and "tearful" as he tried to 
persuade Labour rebels not to vote against Heathrow's third runway. 
Much the same was said, routinely, of Major: in October 1992, The 
Times published a controversial article that all but accused the then 
PM of having had a nervous collapse, inspired by rumours that he had 
wobbled badly on Black Wednesday. Then, as now, specific allegations 
were always denied by Downing Street. But the notion that the PM had 
gone quietly bonkers proved adhesive and toxic.

Second, Major was horribly overshadowed by his predecessor who had 
promised to be a "back-seat driver". Mindful of Margaret Thatcher's 
precedent, Tony Blair swore in public and in private that he would 
not do the same to Gordon: he resigned his parliamentary seat 
immediately so that he could never be urged, or tempted, to return to 
the top job. And yet, last week, he upstaged Gordon in the most 
spectacular fashion, schmoozing the Obamas in public as the main 
speaker at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington.

Imagine how Mr Brown must have responded inwardly to the pictures of 
Tony kissing Michelle, and the new President describing Blair as "my 
good friend", the man who "did it first and perhaps did it better 
than I will do". A conspiracy of the messianic? Oh, no. "Tony and I 
didn't coordinate here," said a beaming Mr Obama. "There is a little 
serendipity." I doubt that is the word Mr Brown would use.

Third, we have reached a point in the history of this Government, as 
the Tories did between 1992 and 1997, where whatever ministers do is 
instantly interpreted as wicked. In the Nineties, it was the arms-for-
Iraq affair, the collapsed Matrix Churchill trial, and the subsequent 
Scott Inquiry that - irrespective of its impenetrable intricacies - 
nurtured the devastatingly simple impression that the Conservative 
government was willing to allow innocent men to go to jail to protect 
it from political embarrassment.

At the heart of that scandal was ministers' deployment of Public 
Interest Immunity certificates, used by government to prevent 
disclosure of material in court that might damage the national 
interest. Seventeen years on, PII certificates are once again at the 
heart of a political and ethical furore, as David Miliband finds 
himself accused of covering up evidence of the torture of a 
Guantanamo detainee and former British resident, Binyam Mohamed - 
allegedly in response to threats made by the bullying US 
administration. Got the lot, hasn't it? Milibanana the Foreign 
Secretary playing the poodle to Uncle Sam and Aunt Hillary, 
obstructing justice to save the wicked torturers of Washington.

Except - whisper it quiet - Mr Miliband is quite right. In an 
extraordinarily sharp High Court ruling on Wednesday, Lord Justice 
Thomas and Mr Justice Lloyd Jones said that they had no alternative 
but to respect the Foreign Secretary's request for the paragraphs to 
be redacted. But the judges declared that they found it "difficult to 
conceive" the rationale for the US's objections to publishing the 
information. "Indeed, we did not consider that a democracy governed 
by the rule of law would expect a court in another democracy to 
suppress a summary of the evidence contained in reports by its own 
officials. relevant to allegations of torture and cruel, inhumane or 
degrading treatment, politically embarrassing though it might be."

In fact, all the relevant paragraphs have been made available to Mr 
Mohamed's defence counsel, thanks in large part to lobbying by the 
British Government. So his access to natural justice has not been 
curtailed. This was about publication and non-publication. There 
should always be a presumption in favour of disclosure. But - like it 
or not - there are other factors which a minister responsible for 
intelligence must consider. "The issue at stake is not the content of 
the intelligence material," Mr Miliband told MPs, "but the principle 
at the heart of all intelligence relationships: that a country should 
retain control of its intelligence information, and that that cannot 
be disclosed by foreign authorities without its consent."

Unpalatable as that principle sometimes is in its application, the 
Foreign Secretary was spot on. No intelligence relationship is more 
important to the UK than our links with America. That relationship is 
not based on threats, but unwritten contracts of respect and 
confidentiality, as essential as they are imperfect. "These cases are 
indeed illuminating, not only of the judgment of ministers but of the 
judgment of those who would aspire to be ministers," Mr Miliband said 
to his opponents. "It is your job to offer opinions; it is our job to 
take decisions."

Just so. To govern is to choose. But - as Major could tell Brown - it 
is also to be attacked, humiliated, suspected of the worst possible 
motives, and, in the end, treated with implacable scorn. You can say 
what you like, no matter how savage, about this PM; his immediate 
predecessor is making a fool of him; and his Government is assumed 
(wrongly) to be covering up torture. And there is absolutely nothing 
Gordon or anyone else can do about it. The dazzling chrome of 1997 
has been worn through, and now all that is left are shards of 
withered rust.
--------------------------------------------------------
Matthew d'Ancona is editor of 'The Spectator'