MANY lurid – not to mention ludicrous – things have been said about Gordon Brown's personality since he became Prime Minister, particularly as an explanation for Labour's dismally poor poll ratings.
This goes far beyond saying Gordon fails the "pub test": would you invite him out for a drink after work? One London newspaper recently had its tame, in-house psychiatrist apply a DSM4 test on the Prime Minister – this being the standard diagnostic t
est for mental disorders. The daft result stated that the Prime Minister's personality showed signs of "cluster A" disorders. For the uninitiated, that refers to being paranoid and schizoid.
This line of debate is bogus and distasteful – and I say that as someone whose political leanings are very different from the Prime Minister's. But it is also woefully misleading as a political analysis. Labour's rock-bottom poll ratings, and the party's disastrous showing in the English local elections and the Crewe and Nantwich by-election, are not primarily the result of Gordon Brown.
The Prime Minister may have made a famous political cock-up by "bottling" a general election last November, and his proneness to U-turns is becoming alarming, even to me. But Labour's political misfortunes are systemic, rather than personality-driven.
In a nutshell, the voting coalition that Tony Blair put together for his three successive election victories has splintered beyond repair. Even if Gordon Brown learns to smile more, it will not change the fact that the social groupings who came together to give New Labour three majority administrations at Westminster have abandoned their temporary allegiance to the party.
The classic Blairite coalition of 1997 brought together aspirational middle-class professions (the so-called AB and C1s beloved of the advertising industry) with the C2s and DEs, the skilled and unskilled manual workers. Margaret Thatcher had already trailed in these waters. Her victories in 1979, 1983 and 1987 had been built on switching the C2s – "white-van man" if you like – from their traditional allegiance to the Labour camp.
But Blair went one better. Not only did he win back the C2s after the recession of the early 1990s, he got the upwardly-mobile AB and C1s (especially in the English south) to see New Labour as their "modern" home. He did this by ditching Labour's fixation with higher income tax and state intervention.
Recent polling data shows this set of alliances has exploded. Most importantly, the Conservatives in England have overtaken Labour in C2 voting preferences. In other words, the skilled working class and self-employed who put Mrs Thatcher into power have abandoned Gordon Brown. Even more dramatic is the fact that among the unskilled working class and unemployed, Labour and the Conservatives are neck-and-neck. It is one thing for Labour to lose the middle classes – it is political death if they lose their core vote.
In Scotland, the haemorrhaging of C2s and DEs is going to the SNP, rather than Tories. This shifting of the political tectonic plates helped to propel the Nationalists into power at Holyrood. However, the evidence from this year's English local elections is that the defection of the skilled and unskilled working class from Labour has become a stampede since the turn of the year.
As if Labour does not have enough headaches, some of these defections of traditional supporters are going towards the ultra-right-wing BNP. While the far-left vote in London imploded, following the risible split in George Galloway's Respect Party, the BNP actually won a seat on the London Assembly. In the north of England, where Tory support still remains weak, a worrying minority of white working-class voters are being attracted by the racist siren calls of the BNP.
Why is Labour losing the C2s and DEs? Quite simply, these are the folk being hardest hit by rising energy costs, the credit crunch and the housing crisis. Labour has been deluding itself by thinking that, because unemployment has remained low, the "feel-good" factor will still work in its favour. But while you might still have a job and a roof over your head, those rising gas and petrol prices are eating up your surplus income.
It does not help that the government abolished the 10p income-tax rate on the wife's part-time earnings at Tesco, or is planning to put up the road duty on the family's elderly second car. Becoming a one-car family again may not sound like poverty, but it is the death of working-class aspiration. If domestic gas prices go up by 40 per cent this winter – as well they might – Labour will be lucky to come third in next year's European Parliament elections.
But what about the middle-class AB and C1s? Curiously, the defection rate to the Tories in this group is nowhere near as bad as for the working class. Pre-Blair, the Conservatives normally polled over 50 per cent of ABC1s, but even David Cameron has not managed this. Partly, this is because the economic blizzard has not yet really affected the middle class. And partly it is because they have other alternatives – the SNP in Scotland and the Lib Dems in England.
Here is Gordon Brown's real political dilemma – and it has nothing to do with his personality type. Does he try to win back the working class by turning left – imposing a windfall tax on the oil companies, increasing spending, raising the minimum wage – and so risk alienating the middle-class wing of New Labour? Or does he try to keep the ABC1s onboard and risk the C2DEs jumping ship?
Put this way, it is obvious that Humpty Dumpty cannot be put back together. Labour has run out of ideas and stamina just as a global economic crisis has appeared.
Whoever puts together a new voting coalition will win the next election handsomely. If nobody does, we will get a hung parliament.
The full article contains 995 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
