He and the Prime Minister in London have not squabbled, as conflict suits neither for now: Brown does not want the English fed a story of warfare in his own supposed fiefdom, even if it is that no longer, and Alex Salmond has to persuade Scots he can run a sensible, grown-up administration if eventually he is to secure his life's aim of full independence.
By instinct Salmond is a social democrat who favours low business taxation and high personal taxes to pay for a peculiarly Scottish model of public sector munificence. However, he has spotted the monumental mess Labour had made of the basic business of governing (David Cameron take note). He has set about slimming down the endless departments and clearing the lines of communication between the long list of agencies which spend money like Highland spring water. Hard-pressed English taxpayers hoping for any of the subsidy to be returned back across the border in the form of a rebate will, sadly, be disappointed. He has plenty of plans to go on spending, but, he says, to better effect than incompetent Labour managed. We shall see.
When I talked to Salmond in Edinburgh he was relishing his rather brilliant start and preparing to publish a white paper on the constitution this week. Officials, still for the moment technically part of the UK civil service, have helped draft a consultative document which will lay out the options for more powers for the Scottish parliament and even independence. Salmond does not have the votes in the Holyrood parliament to secure a referendum on such matters so his game has to be a canny one: govern Scotland calmly and efficiently for four years, thus proving his good intentions. If he can thrash Labour at the next devolved elections, after that he must calculate he has his chance to break up the United Kingdom.
One usually brooding but now quite bouncy figure will be watching the publication of next week's white paper in Edinburgh with interest from his bolt-hole in North Queensferry, Fife. The Prime Minister has had his study in his Scottish home set up as a "virtual" Number 10, a command and control centre with computers plugged into the Number 10 system and all he needs to run the country from his "holiday". He will, with his fixation on micro-managing the affairs of his tribe, devote some time to securing the post of Scottish Labour leader in Holyrood for Wendy Alexander, sister of Overseas Development Secretary Douglas. She is the Prime Minister's prime hope for rebuilding Labour north of the border and avoiding a significant loss of Scottish Labour seats at Westminster. She is young, technocratic and bright but lacks the skills required to communicate with ordinary voters. Salmond is licking his lips.
The serious trouble in his own back yard is far from being Brown's only problem, even if one could be forgiven for thinking that all is as well as it could possibly be in the best of all possible worlds. Rather, it will never be any better for Brown than at this moment. An autumn of potential discontent lies ahead.
The market turmoil of the last week will feel distant, for now, to many floating voters. It is happening a long way away after the collapse of the US sub-prime mortgage sector. They ask: don't markets always go up and down? Is it real money at stake? The impact on investor confidence, on the ability of companies to borrow to grow and ultimately on the holdings of pension funds will hit home in time. The taps are being turned off in a great global credit squeeze; down river are British voters who will find life getting that bit harder quite soon.
In different circumstances, Brown would have an easy answer to this: a bit of a boost for government spending. Only a hard-line monetarist would deny the usefulness of injecting a bit of extra cash into the public sector to jolly the economy along through turbulence. Right now, he cannot do this. In October there will be a tough Comprehensive Spending Review, when the Government lays out its spending plans. After his largesse with other people's money following the 2001 election, when spending rocketed from £367 billion then to £555 billion this year, supplies are running low. Elsewhere, he has so many off-balance sheet commitments due to initiatives such as PFI that the total liability is headed for £1 trillion. In short, the Government wasted wagonloads of cash, and now has to rein in spending.
In these circumstances, how comforting is it to contemplate the following? The average unsecured debt for a Briton is now £10,300, UK consumer debt at the end of July stood at £1.3 trillion and our housing market is starting to wobble. If this is our honeymoon with Gordon, then heaven help us when he gets us home.
Abroad, he is being clever but not entirely straight when it comes to withdrawal from Iraq. Our mission has failed and, rather than leave, we wait, taking casualties every week, so that the Government can disengage but not in such a way that causes a public row with the Americans.
And on the small subject of Europe he has a date in his diary which he cannot shift, creating difficulties if he holds the mid-October general election his team are now considering. On October 18th, in front of cameras and surrounded by the fanatics who want this decisive next stage of European integration so much, he will sign away yet more British sovereignty without the referendum Labour promised in its 2005 manifesto. The denial of such a simple promise is not the best backdrop against which to go to the country.
Still, understandably the public enjoys the contrast with the Blair era. The pundits failed to anticipate the distaste now felt for the vulgarity of those years. It is this which gives Brown his best hope of keeping his act of mass hypnosis going.
The greatest threat to David Cameron is a growing perception that he exists in the past tense, that he "blew it". This is highly dangerous, although not yet fatal. Madly, the Tories are encouraging the public to write off their chances: in six weeks they have swapped wild over-confidence for an unwarranted deep depression. When the Tory leader returns from Brittany there is a chance to shake this view before it settles as collective wisdom in voters' minds. There is still an appetite for a clearly stated alternative to the Brown world view.
The new Prime Minister is best-placed to understand the problems facing the UK, said 51 per cent of those questioned in an Ipsos Mori poll published yesterday. Of course he should understand by now: Brown was the brains behind the creation of a fair few of the most serious problems now confronting the country. He needs an election tomorrow, never mind October. While Cameron's problems are severe, we should not forget that Brown is in just as much of a race against time as his rival.
Sunday 12th August 2007
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2007/08/12/do1202.xml
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