Prime Minister Gordon Brown Probably Didn’t Want to Go Home

Prime Minister Gordon Brown must have wished that he could just stay in Washington, and not go back to London. The joint session of Congress, which he addressed, gave him either 17 or 18 standing ovations, depending on who was doing the counting. Of course his critics pointed out that Tony Blair received a couple of more! But for the Prime Minister this was the best moment he’s had since he took over from Tony Blair more than a year an a half ago.

To be fair Brown had a 3 month political honeymoon at the beginning and a good couple of months last fall when the economic and financial crisis first hit Britain, and he successfully argued that as a former Chancellor of the Exchequer for ten years under Blair he was the man to steer Britain through the crisis.

But since roughly early December Brown’s popularity and that of his Labour Government have been tracking downward at a steady pace in every public opinion poll. The problem has been really twofold. After gaining early support for his “expertise” in financial and economic matters (he is also a Ph.D economist) the steep decline in the British economy has made the electorate fearful and impatient, especially about rising unemployment. Second, and more recently, Brown’s years as Chancellor are now being seen as a liability rather than an asset. In fact, the general growing view is that Brown participated no less even lead the failure of this Labour Government to exercise good oversight over Britain’s banking and financial industry so in some way is complicit and even responsible for the crisis. Further, there are even his own Cabinet colleagues who are calling for Brown to apologize (some of them have even apologized themselves) for his and the Blair government’s mistakes. To that Brown says no, there is no need to apologize because the origins of the current crisis were really in the United States and that Britain is suffering the consequences.

What is also plaguing Brown, and not President Obama at this point, is the problem of leading an “old” government plagued by the accumulated problems of nearly 12 years in power. Although Brown himself has been Prime Minister for less than two years, he was a part of this Labour Government for the other nearly 10 and as such has to carry the burden of what might be called geriatric politics. Governments age as do humans, and in terms of political longevity, Brown government is really equal to a senior citizen with all the aches and pains of old age. Out of ideas and out of first line political leaders, and indeed the further burdened of inevitable accumulated mistakes, scandals, etc, the Labour Government is suffering the same kind of symptoms and troubles that older governments always suffer beginning somewhere after four or five years and which get progressively worse.

Public opinion polls in Britain are now settling down to a historically familiar pattern showing the opposition Conservatives a dozen or more points ahead. It is likely that Brown will not call an election until he must, which is not for another 16 months unless he has the good fortune, as he did at the beginning of the crisis last fall, to get a sudden boost in popularly. But the odds are that Labour will soldier along and hope its losses are not too great in the next election, leading to not too a long stretch in opposition.