Standing on the Shoulders of Midgets

You know it’s just about all over when almost everyone in the cabinet has to go on television or radio or face a newspaper interview to defend their leader. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen such a sustained defence of a Prime Minister like we are witnessing at the moment. Although the naivety of David Miliband saying that it was important for the PM to immerse himself “in the detail” tells you much of what is wrong with Gordon Brown’s watch. He doesn’t understand what it means to be a leader and his Foreign Secretary and the other young ministers are just too inexperienced to hold down such important jobs. So desperate are the PM’s spin meisters that they even had Brown appear on ITV’s Good Morning – in which he talked of his two little boys, just as I predicted a week or so ago.

This morning William Hague called the government, “uncaring” in an interview on Adam Boulton’s Sky News show, which is clearly not true. There’s nothing uncaring, in one respect, about the way that Alexander, Miliband, Balls and Co are behaving. They care desperately about what is going to happen to them in a post Tory win scenario and they're getting increasingly edgy. The fact is that they might be out in the cold for a while if the blood letting, that seems inevitable, causes the Labour party to fracture. Did you hear Frank Field on the BBC’s Any Questions on Friday? Chilling.

Meanwhile the spectacle of Levy (Lord-at-a-price) Blair (Mrs) and Prescott (handyman) doing the rounds of TV and radio shows and having their memoirs syndicated in the papers is almost unbelievable. To think these ‘so called’ Labour supporters have all put the boot in against their own party, for their own personal gain, makes a mockery of the former socialist party’s principals. While none of them have delivered a fatal blow against Gordon Brown they have collectively kicked him while he’s down.

We’re told that Gordon is going to have a mini Queen’s Speech this week that will get things back on track for his government; unlikely on two counts. Nobody is listening to him any more, he’s lost the political megaphone and his previous image of safe hands for the economy is unravelling – of course it’s all the fault of the global situation, but frankly that’s not cutting any ice with anyone. “It’s all Brown’s fault”, is what you hear up and down the country from people in every walk of life. The other problem, one that’s actually more worrying, is the fact that Brown & Co are having to spend so much time defending themselves that they are losing sight of what it is they’re there to do. Government is supposed to be about governing, not desperately sticking fingers in an increasingly leaky dyke.

Twenty-five years ago I was on a plane somewhere over America when I picked up a copy of Time magazine with Ronald Reagan’s picture on the cover. The lead article was about Reagan’s style of managing his team. He said, “Surround yourself with the best people you can find, delegate authority, and don't interfere as long as the policy you've decided upon is being carried out.” It’s the total antithesis of what Gordon Brown is about and it’s why he can’t hack it. As a No.2 his power was based upon tripping people up on the detail, as a No.1 it’s his Achilles heal. He just doesn’t have what it takes to be a leader and the more that the young guns defend him it only highlights what’s wrong with his leadership.