How Gordon Brown became 'The Gordfather'
one who has analysed some of the most colourful characters in British
life (see end note)
The portrait he paints here is of a deeply flawed man, who has
stopped at nothing to gain his ends and despite protestations appears
to motivated by no higher principles at all. It would be a fitting
end to his political career if he were to go down in history as a
failed and unelected leader of the Labour Party and a failed and
unelected prime minister.
Reading this provides a clear insight as to what has gone wrong with
Britain.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxcs
==================
SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 19.4.09
How Gordon Brown became 'The Gordfather'
Gordon Brown has long promoted himself as a man of principle. The
reality is very different, and, post-Smeargate, threatens to destroy
the Labour Party
By Tom Bower
Belatedly saying "sorry" was a wretched experience for Gordon Brown.
Any confession of regret is a self-inflicted wound, but Damian
McBride's embarrassing exposure of the Prime Minister's secret weapon
coinciding with the acquittal of Damian Green, the Conservative front
bencher, has devastated Brown's tools of trade.
Since 1997, Brown's muted tyranny has efficiently intimidated his
allies, political opponents and many of Westminster's inhabitants,
including its journalists and civil servants. Like a Mafia godfather,
Brown justified his vindictiveness by appearing to murmur, "This is
business, not personal".
But overnight, the spotlight on Brown's furtive ruses against his
enemies has crippled the Labour movement. To fair-minded but
uninformed Britons, the combination of McBride and Green arouses
suspicions about rottenness in Downing Street. The resignation of the
former MP Alice Mahon from the Labour Party after 50 years of service
prompted, she explained, by the scandal surrounding McBride - "I have
lost faith with [the party]" she said - further spurs these suspicions.
No one could have predicted the circumstances inside 10 Downing
Street when the Prime Minister heard Damian McBride's confession that
his vicious emails were about to be published. Autocrats need
henchmen and so, in Brown's instant calculation, McBride's sin was
not the authorship of lies about the Tory leaders, but his
carelessness to get caught. As usual, the Prime Minister sought to
avoid responsibility and fought tooth and nail to save his jackal.
"Juvenile," was Downing Street's first dismissive reaction.
Reluctantly, after 30 hours spent seeking to rescue McBride, Brown
announced a job vacancy.
The aftermath is incalculable, not least because the juxtaposition of
McBride's moral bankruptcy and Britain's financial bankruptcy is not
coincidental.
In Brown's world, power is more important than performance. Until the
"bust", Brown relied upon spending billions and distorting statistics
to retain power. In pursuit of a fundamentally flawed economic
policy, he trumpeted disingenuous statements about his "golden rule"
of balancing the budget to conceal Britain's growing debts and the
inevitable recession. Over the past months, that trusted ruse was
exposed, confirming Britain's unprecedented financial plight.
Desperate to retain power and win the next election, Brown's
loyalists took a small step from lying about the economy to discuss
lies about their political opponents. Brown's fear is that every
assertion he now makes in the run-up to the election will be greeted
by calls of "McBride". His discomfort will no doubt be witnessed
during the Budget speech this Wednesday, an event which Brown has
always used to resurrect his reputation.
Since 1997, the self-styled "Iron Chancellor" has promoted himself as
a Christian patriot imbued with competence, vision and principle.
Amid regurgitated soundbites about "prudence" and the "moral
compass", the son of the manse has emphasised his compassion and
values. Skilfully, he used the Budget to destabilise his opponents by
perfecting killer headlines. But, after 12 years, Gordon Brown's
cupboard is finally bare. Regardless of the guilt Brown and Alistair
Darling might try to heap upon US bankers, Labour's 12th budget will
undermine Brown's pledge to have eliminated "boom and bust".
Increased public spending - his habitual tool of self-congratulation
- is no longer possible because of Britain's financial instability.
Brown's long-term critics, like Charles Clarke, are greeting Brown's
Armageddon as inevitable but, with hindsight, even his erstwhile
allies recognise the origins of the Prime Minister's self-destruction.
Brown has never been able to cope with criticism. Witnesses to
Brown's reaction to defeat for the Labour's leadership in 1994
mentioned his volcanic temper, with him kicking a television set
broadcasting ITV's report of Blair's victory. Senior Treasury
officials after 1997 reported his volatile moods - smashing computers
on to the floor or kicking furniture - when the spotlight shone on
his weaknesses. Under attack, he dithered, withered and slunk into
the shadows. Sulking in his haven, the compulsive nail-biter plotted
revenge.
Brown's trademark has been to mercilessly rip his rivals' jugular
veins and, on God's honour, deny any responsibility. Admirers praised
the absence of Brown's fingerprints as the genius of Houdini and
McCavity. His quest relied on attack-dogs like McBride eager to spill
blood while the commander posed as the innocent saint. Until now, the
suspicious had lacked documentary proof of what insiders always
whispered about Brown's tactics.
Convinced about the need for utmost secrecy and feral loyalty after
his defeat for the leadership in 1994, Brown recruited anti-Blairites
to staff an alternative government in the Treasury to rival Blair.
Personal devotion was more important than competence. Instinctively,
the prodigy of Kirkcaldy, a grimy Scottish town, has mostly trusted a
small gang of Scottish admirers.
Meeting regularly in Downing Street or his isolated home in North
Queensferry, their banter reinforced his sense of isolation from the
English and especially the powerbrokers in London, a city he dislikes.
Brown's trust of the English political classes is limited to a
handful of devotees, in particular Geoffrey Robinson, Ed Balls, and
Charlie Whelan, a bolshie ex-communist and Brown's first media
jackal. Remarkably, that small group who first met with Brown in the
Grosvenor House hotel in 1995 remain trusted members of his cabal.
Linked by a solid omertà, they have never revealed the location of
countless bodies buried during their destructive ventures, and have
been rewarded for their loyalty.
Regularly drinking with Westminster's journalists, Whelan
enthusiastically gossiped about Brown's perceived enemies. Smearing
Chris Smith, Robin Cook, Harriet Harman, Frank Field, Alan Milburn,
Charles Clarke, Peter Mandelson and Blair himself served Brown's
purpose to retain power and destroy any rival seeking the crown. To
Whelan's eager audience, nothing and nobody seemed to be off-limits,
so long as Whelan's identity was not revealed.
Some might say that Brown was cowardly to rely on whispers rather
than outright confrontation to destabilise his opponents, but Brown
was also an overt bully. In 1998, Harriet Harman returned to the
Department of Social Security in tears after Brown's verbal bashing
and Jack Straw, then the home secretary, was reduced to
speechlessness by Brown's dismissiveness during a budget discussion
in 1999. Both would swallow their pride to retain political office.
Their example was copied by others.
The casualties were not just the politicians, but also their
policies. By holding the nation's purse-strings, Brown sabotaged
attempts to reform Britain's social security, education and transport
systems, and the NHS. Since 1997, in pursuit of Brown's undeclared
socialist agenda, billions of pounds have been wasted in nine
separate "reforms" of the NHS.
"The Tories weren't destroying the NHS," Derek Wanless, a former
banker hired to investigate flaws in the NHS, told Brown after an
intensive review in 2001. "They were trying to make it more
efficient. I don't think you understood the damaging consequences of
your policies. You're ignoring the human factor." Brown gestured his
disagreement. He seemed unwilling to understand that the NHS's
problem was not only about money but about delivery.
Criticism, in his opinion, is a conspiracy to destroy him. Successive
health ministers have had to balance their priorities - either pursue
reform and incur his wrath, or obey Brown and survive. Alan Milburn
opted for reform and was undermined by Brown's "spokesmen" until he
resigned, while his more low-key successor Patricia Hewitt survived
relatively unscathed - though was later rewarded with dismissal.
The same treatment was meted out to civil servants. To implement his
"vision" after May 1997, Brown progressively expelled every senior
official in the Treasury who challenged his decisions. Later,
unwilling to delegate power, Brown protected his position as Prime
Minister from challenge by promoting weak and malleable politicians
like Jacqui Smith, David Miliband and Alistair Darling to senior
cabinet positions. To avoid public explanation, he has either
attempted to avoid officials and ministers answering questions, or
dispatched underlings to the Commons to obfuscate on his behalf.
Brown's authoritarianism is directly linked to the continuing
diminution of civil liberties. His forlorn determination to detain
suspects for 42 days and his expenditure on ID cards is part of the
same mindset as spreading dirt about rival politicians. For normal
people, the culture of saying one thing and doing another is, to say
the least, puzzling.
Exactly two years ago, to launch his leadership campaign when his
ascendancy was guaranteed, Brown made a speech describing a new dawn.
His object was to draw a line over the damaging perceptions of sleaze
and spin in the Blair era. "Labour," he said, "must change the way we
govern." Denouncing celebrity, he pledged himself to build "a new
government" and a new country based on a "more vigorous debate". In
the new world, he wanted "to show people that when they have a view,
we're prepared to listen to them". He would win the next election by
"hitting the ground running" and sorting out health, education and
housing and introducing "a new style of politics".
Yet the return to Downing Street of Derek Draper, his former boss
Peter Mandelson, and Alistair Campbell, Blair's distrusted spokesman,
after last autumn's failed leadership coup, was acknowledged as proof
that Brown was addicted to his old culture. They were joined by
Charlie Whelan, dismissed from Downing Street in disgrace in 1999 and
resurrected as a senior trade union official supporting Brown.
The glue uniting the cabal is the lie which made New Labour electable
in 1997 and perpetuated its survival until now. Fashioned by Brown
and Mandelson, New Labour pledged not to increase taxation, to
restrain public spending, eradicate waste in social security, and to
introduce market-friendly reforms to education and the NHS. Brown
never intended to keep the pledges.
As a socialist, he intended to repeat the promises as camouflage,
while redistributing wealth and increasing the power of the state.
Those ministers who protested that he was contradicting the election
manifesto were targeted by Brown through Whelan to be humiliated by
whispers. The successful decapitation of Brown's Labour critics
encouraged McBride to use the same tactics against the Conservative
leadership. The cost to the nation of Brown silencing his critics
will take years to recoup.
Brown believes that spending money guarantees improvements. Billions
of pounds have been spent pursuing targets, mission statements and
"reforms". Sheer incompetence by Labour's ministers and their senior
civil servants, and some corruption, has resulted in colossal waste.
The examples are endless, not least the £34 billion wasted to equip
the NHS with computer systems. Brown's response is to produce more
"ideas" and debate "principles" with the Tories.
After years in politics he still cannot understand the human factor -
efficient management is more important than "ideas" - and that the
poisoner is eventually destroyed by his own toxin. Reluctantly saying
"sorry" is not an antidote to a career of spit, spite and dirty tricks.
-----------------------------------------------------
Gordon Brown, The Prime Minister by Tom Bower (HarperPerennial) is
available from Telegraph Books for £8.99 + 99p P&P. Call 0844 871
1516 or go to books.telegraph.co.uk
Tom Bower - A former Panorama reporter, his books include highly
critical unauthorised biographies of Tiny Rowland, Robert Maxwell,
Mohamed Al-Fayed, Geoffrey Robinson, Gordon Brown and Richard Branson.
SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 19.4.09
How Gordon Brown became 'The Gordfather'
Gordon Brown has long promoted himself as a man of principle. The
reality is very different, and, post-Smeargate, threatens to destroy
the Labour Party
By Tom Bower
Belatedly saying "sorry" was a wretched experience for Gordon Brown.
Any confession of regret is a self-inflicted wound, but Damian
McBride's embarrassing exposure of the Prime Minister's secret weapon
coinciding with the acquittal of Damian Green, the Conservative front
bencher, has devastated Brown's tools of trade.
Since 1997, Brown's muted tyranny has efficiently intimidated his
allies, political opponents and many of Westminster's inhabitants,
including its journalists and civil servants. Like a Mafia godfather,
Brown justified his vindictiveness by appearing to murmur, "This is
business, not personal".
But overnight, the spotlight on Brown's furtive ruses against his
enemies has crippled the Labour movement. To fair-minded but
uninformed Britons, the combination of McBride and Green arouses
suspicions about rottenness in Downing Street. The resignation of the
former MP Alice Mahon from the Labour Party after 50 years of service
prompted, she explained, by the scandal surrounding McBride - "I have
lost faith with [the party]" she said - further spurs these suspicions.
No one could have predicted the circumstances inside 10 Downing
Street when the Prime Minister heard Damian McBride's confession that
his vicious emails were about to be published. Autocrats need
henchmen and so, in Brown's instant calculation, McBride's sin was
not the authorship of lies about the Tory leaders, but his
carelessness to get caught. As usual, the Prime Minister sought to
avoid responsibility and fought tooth and nail to save his jackal.
"Juvenile," was Downing Street's first dismissive reaction.
Reluctantly, after 30 hours spent seeking to rescue McBride, Brown
announced a job vacancy.
The aftermath is incalculable, not least because the juxtaposition of
McBride's moral bankruptcy and Britain's financial bankruptcy is not
coincidental.
In Brown's world, power is more important than performance. Until the
"bust", Brown relied upon spending billions and distorting statistics
to retain power. In pursuit of a fundamentally flawed economic
policy, he trumpeted disingenuous statements about his "golden rule"
of balancing the budget to conceal Britain's growing debts and the
inevitable recession. Over the past months, that trusted ruse was
exposed, confirming Britain's unprecedented financial plight.
Desperate to retain power and win the next election, Brown's
loyalists took a small step from lying about the economy to discuss
lies about their political opponents. Brown's fear is that every
assertion he now makes in the run-up to the election will be greeted
by calls of "McBride". His discomfort will no doubt be witnessed
during the Budget speech this Wednesday, an event which Brown has
always used to resurrect his reputation.
Since 1997, the self-styled "Iron Chancellor" has promoted himself as
a Christian patriot imbued with competence, vision and principle.
Amid regurgitated soundbites about "prudence" and the "moral
compass", the son of the manse has emphasised his compassion and
values. Skilfully, he used the Budget to destabilise his opponents by
perfecting killer headlines. But, after 12 years, Gordon Brown's
cupboard is finally bare. Regardless of the guilt Brown and Alistair
Darling might try to heap upon US bankers, Labour's 12th budget will
undermine Brown's pledge to have eliminated "boom and bust".
Increased public spending - his habitual tool of self-congratulation
- is no longer possible because of Britain's financial instability.
Brown's long-term critics, like Charles Clarke, are greeting Brown's
Armageddon as inevitable but, with hindsight, even his erstwhile
allies recognise the origins of the Prime Minister's self-destruction.
Brown has never been able to cope with criticism. Witnesses to
Brown's reaction to defeat for the Labour's leadership in 1994
mentioned his volcanic temper, with him kicking a television set
broadcasting ITV's report of Blair's victory. Senior Treasury
officials after 1997 reported his volatile moods - smashing computers
on to the floor or kicking furniture - when the spotlight shone on
his weaknesses. Under attack, he dithered, withered and slunk into
the shadows. Sulking in his haven, the compulsive nail-biter plotted
revenge.
Brown's trademark has been to mercilessly rip his rivals' jugular
veins and, on God's honour, deny any responsibility. Admirers praised
the absence of Brown's fingerprints as the genius of Houdini and
McCavity. His quest relied on attack-dogs like McBride eager to spill
blood while the commander posed as the innocent saint. Until now, the
suspicious had lacked documentary proof of what insiders always
whispered about Brown's tactics.
Convinced about the need for utmost secrecy and feral loyalty after
his defeat for the leadership in 1994, Brown recruited anti-Blairites
to staff an alternative government in the Treasury to rival Blair.
Personal devotion was more important than competence. Instinctively,
the prodigy of Kirkcaldy, a grimy Scottish town, has mostly trusted a
small gang of Scottish admirers.
Meeting regularly in Downing Street or his isolated home in North
Queensferry, their banter reinforced his sense of isolation from the
English and especially the powerbrokers in London, a city he dislikes.
Brown's trust of the English political classes is limited to a
handful of devotees, in particular Geoffrey Robinson, Ed Balls, and
Charlie Whelan, a bolshie ex-communist and Brown's first media
jackal. Remarkably, that small group who first met with Brown in the
Grosvenor House hotel in 1995 remain trusted members of his cabal.
Linked by a solid omertà, they have never revealed the location of
countless bodies buried during their destructive ventures, and have
been rewarded for their loyalty.
Regularly drinking with Westminster's journalists, Whelan
enthusiastically gossiped about Brown's perceived enemies. Smearing
Chris Smith, Robin Cook, Harriet Harman, Frank Field, Alan Milburn,
Charles Clarke, Peter Mandelson and Blair himself served Brown's
purpose to retain power and destroy any rival seeking the crown. To
Whelan's eager audience, nothing and nobody seemed to be off-limits,
so long as Whelan's identity was not revealed.
Some might say that Brown was cowardly to rely on whispers rather
than outright confrontation to destabilise his opponents, but Brown
was also an overt bully. In 1998, Harriet Harman returned to the
Department of Social Security in tears after Brown's verbal bashing
and Jack Straw, then the home secretary, was reduced to
speechlessness by Brown's dismissiveness during a budget discussion
in 1999. Both would swallow their pride to retain political office.
Their example was copied by others.
The casualties were not just the politicians, but also their
policies. By holding the nation's purse-strings, Brown sabotaged
attempts to reform Britain's social security, education and transport
systems, and the NHS. Since 1997, in pursuit of Brown's undeclared
socialist agenda, billions of pounds have been wasted in nine
separate "reforms" of the NHS.
"The Tories weren't destroying the NHS," Derek Wanless, a former
banker hired to investigate flaws in the NHS, told Brown after an
intensive review in 2001. "They were trying to make it more
efficient. I don't think you understood the damaging consequences of
your policies. You're ignoring the human factor." Brown gestured his
disagreement. He seemed unwilling to understand that the NHS's
problem was not only about money but about delivery.
Criticism, in his opinion, is a conspiracy to destroy him. Successive
health ministers have had to balance their priorities - either pursue
reform and incur his wrath, or obey Brown and survive. Alan Milburn
opted for reform and was undermined by Brown's "spokesmen" until he
resigned, while his more low-key successor Patricia Hewitt survived
relatively unscathed - though was later rewarded with dismissal.
The same treatment was meted out to civil servants. To implement his
"vision" after May 1997, Brown progressively expelled every senior
official in the Treasury who challenged his decisions. Later,
unwilling to delegate power, Brown protected his position as Prime
Minister from challenge by promoting weak and malleable politicians
like Jacqui Smith, David Miliband and Alistair Darling to senior
cabinet positions. To avoid public explanation, he has either
attempted to avoid officials and ministers answering questions, or
dispatched underlings to the Commons to obfuscate on his behalf.
Brown's authoritarianism is directly linked to the continuing
diminution of civil liberties. His forlorn determination to detain
suspects for 42 days and his expenditure on ID cards is part of the
same mindset as spreading dirt about rival politicians. For normal
people, the culture of saying one thing and doing another is, to say
the least, puzzling.
Exactly two years ago, to launch his leadership campaign when his
ascendancy was guaranteed, Brown made a speech describing a new dawn.
His object was to draw a line over the damaging perceptions of sleaze
and spin in the Blair era. "Labour," he said, "must change the way we
govern." Denouncing celebrity, he pledged himself to build "a new
government" and a new country based on a "more vigorous debate". In
the new world, he wanted "to show people that when they have a view,
we're prepared to listen to them". He would win the next election by
"hitting the ground running" and sorting out health, education and
housing and introducing "a new style of politics".
Yet the return to Downing Street of Derek Draper, his former boss
Peter Mandelson, and Alistair Campbell, Blair's distrusted spokesman,
after last autumn's failed leadership coup, was acknowledged as proof
that Brown was addicted to his old culture. They were joined by
Charlie Whelan, dismissed from Downing Street in disgrace in 1999 and
resurrected as a senior trade union official supporting Brown.
The glue uniting the cabal is the lie which made New Labour electable
in 1997 and perpetuated its survival until now. Fashioned by Brown
and Mandelson, New Labour pledged not to increase taxation, to
restrain public spending, eradicate waste in social security, and to
introduce market-friendly reforms to education and the NHS. Brown
never intended to keep the pledges.
As a socialist, he intended to repeat the promises as camouflage,
while redistributing wealth and increasing the power of the state.
Those ministers who protested that he was contradicting the election
manifesto were targeted by Brown through Whelan to be humiliated by
whispers. The successful decapitation of Brown's Labour critics
encouraged McBride to use the same tactics against the Conservative
leadership. The cost to the nation of Brown silencing his critics
will take years to recoup.
Brown believes that spending money guarantees improvements. Billions
of pounds have been spent pursuing targets, mission statements and
"reforms". Sheer incompetence by Labour's ministers and their senior
civil servants, and some corruption, has resulted in colossal waste.
The examples are endless, not least the £34 billion wasted to equip
the NHS with computer systems. Brown's response is to produce more
"ideas" and debate "principles" with the Tories.
After years in politics he still cannot understand the human factor -
efficient management is more important than "ideas" - and that the
poisoner is eventually destroyed by his own toxin. Reluctantly saying
"sorry" is not an antidote to a career of spit, spite and dirty tricks.
-----------------------------------------------------
Gordon Brown, The Prime Minister by Tom Bower (HarperPerennial) is
available from Telegraph Books for £8.99 + 99p P&P. Call 0844 871
1516 or go to books.telegraph.co.uk
Tom Bower - A former Panorama reporter, his books include highly
critical unauthorised biographies of Tiny Rowland, Robert Maxwell,
Mohamed Al-Fayed, Geoffrey Robinson, Gordon Brown and Richard Branson.
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