Is 'serious' enough?

Last autumn was disastrous for Gordon Brown. He lead his troops to the top of the election hill, only to march them all the way down again without firing a single shot. Both commentators and the public turned against him.

This autumn, in contrast, has witnessed the renaissance of the prime minister. He has been widely lauded by commentators for identifying the strategy that seems to have taken the sting out of the financial crisis Ñ recapitalisation of the banks. Meanwhile, no less than 41 per cent of the public now thinks Mr Brown is doing well as prime minister: the highest figure since he bottled the election last year.

As a result all talk of the prime minister being deposed, talk that was commonplace during the summer, has ceased. Labour MPs who just a few short weeks ago were fearful that their political careers would be over if Mr Brown continued to be their leader, now hope that the prime minister will be able to restore confidence in his party just as successfully as he did trust in the banks. Labour may still on average be six points behind the Conservatives in the polls, but that is an awful lot better than the 19 point deficit of the summer.

But there is a more fundamental reason why Mr Brown now looks secure in office; he seems to be up to the job. The crisis of confidence that surrounded the prime minister in the summer did not arise simply because Tory charges of ‘dithering’ were resonating with the public. It arose because too many of Mr Brown’s colleagues feared those charges might actually be true.

This is why the prime minister’s perceived handling of the financial crisis has been so important. The government may not have always made the right call first time around Ñ for example, initially it hoped that HBOS could be rescued by marriage with Lloyds without the need for recapitalisation. But when the crisis hit its height the government found the magic Ñ yet also bold and risky Ñ bullet that ended the immediate panic. That hardly seemed the actions of a ditherer.

Yet perhaps there is a need for a little caution. In recent weeks the prime minister’s job has been more or less a single-track one: running the country’s finances. Little else has had to take priority or divert Mr Brown’s attention. It is, of course, a subject with which Mr Brown is very familiar. And while some have questioned the wisdom of the policies he pursued as chancellor, few ever doubted he was up to that job. So perhaps it is not Mr Brown that has changed in recent weeks but rather that the nature of his job has changed into one at which he is particularly adept.

However, of one thing we can probably he sure: the job of prime minister will move on once again. We have already seen how the death of a 17 month old baby in Haringey can come suddenly to dominate the political scene. Shortly the government will have to present its legislative programme for the coming year Ñ its last full session before it will be required to go to the country. Meanwhile, although doubtless the economy will continue to be an important focus of attention as the recession bites, the demands made by this phase of the downturn are likely to be different from those made by the financial crisis of recent weeks.

So the challenge facing Mr Brown in the coming weeks and months will be to provide effective leadership over a much wider terrain. To be successful such leadership will require three key abilities: a capacity to cope with the slings and arrows of daily misfortune, to ensure that across government decisions are taken in a timely fashion, and an ability to convince the public that the government has a vision and sense of strategic direction for the next four or five years.

As the recession bites there will doubtless be no shortage of bad news stories for the government in the coming months. When he was chancellor, during a time of economic boom, Gordon Brown was often accused of not being around when some other part of the government hit trouble. As prime minister, however, there is nowhere to hide.

What, however, a prime minister can do is to call in the help of lieutenants: senior ministers who provide the main line of defence when the political flak hits the airwaves, thereby providing some initial cover. One of the apparent weaknesses of Mr Brown’s government in its first year was an apparent lack of senior colleagues willing and able to fulfil that role. As a result Mr Brown was personally exposed when short-term travails befell his government.

The recent reshuffle only had a limited impact on the senior positions in Cabinet. Nevertheless, it did see the return to government of some experienced warhorses. Lord Mandelson’s appointment was of course the most striking, but the reshuffle also saw the return of Margaret Beckett to government, albeit in a relatively junior role. Mr Brown now has to be willing to trust his more experienced colleagues to provide him with day to day political cover Ñ and of course to listen to their advice.

One of the striking characteristics of the recent financial crisis has been the extent to which the prime minister has apparently been privy to the intentions of the chancellor. For example, hints that the pre-budget report would contain tax cuts came more from Mr Brown’s mouth than from Mr Darling’s. Mr Brown seems to have been more intimately involved in the determination of the government’s fiscal policy than by all accounts Mr Blair ever was.

Of course, close involvement in coping with the government’s main headache is defensible. But it is not a method of working that can be employed across the whole range of government business. One of the key reasons why Mr Brown was accused of being a ditherer was because he appeared to spend too much time second-guessing the detail of too many departmental decisions.

When priorities and demands other than the financial crisis press in once more, so Mr Brown will have to ensure he focuses on the big picture rather than the fine detail.

Following the move of his former strategy chief, Lord Carter, to the post of communications minister, the prime minister has reportedly revamped his Downing Street office as an open plan operation to ensure that decisions can be made more quickly. So here too there were signs in the reshuffle that there is an appreciation that things had to change. But Mr Brown now has to demonstrate he can actually make the new structure work.

Meanwhile, Mr Brown’s key political pitch as he has coped with the financial crisis has been to claim he is ‘a serious man for serious times’, thereby making a virtue out of his sometimes rather dour demeanour. To date that pitch has been effective. But it is not one that is likely to have a long shelf life.

As the recession bites, the public will be wanting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. The country will be hoping it will prove possible to move on from coping with crisis and instead begin to look forward to a more optimistic vision of the future. Rather than remaining ‘a serious man for serious times’, Mr Brown may well find he will need to portray himself as ‘a prophet with a vision of the future’.

Few would claim that Mr Brown lacks political purpose. He passionately wishes to overcome social disadvantage at home and abroad. He regards giving everyone the best possible education as the best way both to make Britain more competitive and to reduce class inequality. But what many have wondered is whether Mr Brown can communicate his vision to the wider public.

Again the devil has been in the detail. Mr Brown never seems happier than when firing off detailed statistics to demonstrate a point. But, alas, this style can leave listeners bamboozled and ordinary voters reaching for their remote control.

Yet recently there have been signs of improvement. In his conference speech Mr Brown spoke more from the heart, less from the head. He cajoled rather than harangued. Mr Brown will need to give us more of this new style in the months to come if he really is to turn his fortunes around.

John Curtice is Professor of Politics,

Strathclyde University.