Brown delights Washington but fails to move the needle at home

General Election Betting / Chicken Dinner / 05 March 2009 / 1 Comments

Stateside plaudits will have cheered the PM, yet Britain remained unimpressed and he'll need a huge turnaround to even make the next general election as leader let alone win it.

This was a glorious week for Gordon Brown. A lifelong American admirer, to be only the fifth British prime minister to address both houses of Congress (Churchill, Attlee, Thatcher and Blair preceded him) must have felt like conquering a personal Everest.

As he skilfully blended flattery with suggestion in a 36 minute speech, Americas political representatives creaked to their feet a generous 17 times (19 if you include his entering and leaving the pulpit) to shower him with applause. Some even asked him to autograph their copies of the speech as he tried to leave the stage.

While he may have come close to overheating this American clap-o-meter, domestic glory remains improbable. Following the speech punters still see him as a three-legged donkey in the race to win the next election.

Betfair customers have Labour out at [10.0] to hold a majority following the next general election, the same as before the PM rose to speak. The Tories are at [1.57], while no overall majority is at [3.57].

And the speech didn't much alter Browns chances of leading Labour into battle either - you can get Cameron only in the Party Leaders market at 2.92, identical to before Brown's Washington words.

With Harriet Harman widely considered to be stirring up trouble in order to position herself as the next Labour leader (described by one senior politician as like fighting for a pile of ashes, so worthless will the leadership be once the public get to pass their verdict), the Washington trip should also be considered part of Browns re-election campaign.

He scored some points for looking statesmanlike, and a half a point for beating President Sarkozy to be first foreign leader to kiss President Obama's ring, but lost that half point by not being treated to the gala dinner they cooked for Blair, or the serenadings of Stevie Wonder and Elton John.

Any election heat he may have generated from his courageous and decisive bail-out plan in the early days of the economic crisis has since drained away as the economy has gobbled that multi-billion pound package without yet showing any signs of rising from its sick bed. Indeed, he even couched the current global Armageddon in terms of freak weather conditions: an economic hurricane has swept the world, creating a crisis of credit and of confidence, and pointedly bottled out of voicing his normal interpretation of where blame lies with the Americans.

For reasons of diplomacy and good manners it made sense not to ruffle feathers, but for the sake of his own political future he is soon going to have to find a solution that works, and explain, to the satisfaction of everyone, why he shouldnt be cast into the eternal wilderness for enabling the catastrophe in the first place.

While some of his speech sounded more Mariah Carey than FDR - "no power on earth can ever draw us apart", Brown's call is for a sort of global New Deal, with governments of developed nations working closely together to encourage and coordinate growth, rather than leave it to corporations with their offshore tax havens and contempt for regulation.

And America should lead and fund - the fight against climate change. No standing ovation from the Republicans for this last point. None either from the good voters of Britain either, who don't need 36 minutes of exhaustively crafted speech to make clear their list of demands to Prime Minister Brown.

Were those good people to take to the soapbox, they'd probably only need six words: Sort it out. And say sorry.

Comments (1)

1. desperatedan | 05 March 2009

   did the original New Deal work did it???