For Whom the Bell Tolls...

Ouch! Steve Bell’s cartoon in this morning’s Guardian will make every Labour supporter wince.

Depicting the PM and Chancellor in underpants and oversized glasses a la John Major is a powerful reminder of what happens when Government blundering become habitual.

True, the guff-up at Revenue and Excise is the kind of curve ball that will always be difficult to deal with. And Northern Rock is one of those issues where a Government is damned if it does and damned if it doesn’t.

But it’s the Government’s self-harming tendency that needs sorting. Last Sunday’s papers were full of the quite unnecessary spat between Downing Street and David Miliband over No 10’s fiddling with ministerial speeches.

Obsessive centralisation and government-by-cabal are the frequently cited crimes. And Lord West’s ‘clarification’ of his position on pre-trial detention last week was simply a brilliant example of how to turn a slip into a stupid mistake.

If you’re going to have amateur politicians in government, make a virtue of their semi-independence, because they are bound to put their foot in it. Stamping on their independence also snuffs out their credibility. And what happens next time there’s a similar infraction? The term ‘loose cannon’ might have been coined for Digby Jones.

But the bigger problem is that the Government is beginning to drift. Take the issue of public service reform. The Government knows that the extra money put into public services in recent years has not delivered the kind of improvements that the public expects. The much tighter three-year Comprehensive Spending Review settlement means reforming the structures and workings of schools and hospitals is essential to make them perform better. But unsure how to position themselves in the post-Blair era, the Government dithers and turns inwards, failing to communicate its vision and set the ground for whatever course it eventually decides to take.

The good work of July to September has been erased and Gordon Brown is in danger of walking straight into the Conservatives’ trap. The Tories were initially wrong-footed by Brown Version 2.0 when he appeared to change tack, instituting a government -of-all-the-talents and shedding his reputation as the control freak’s control freak.

But old habits are creeping back. So then, what to do?

The immediate task for the Government is to reboot itself after the self-inflicted wounds of the past two months. Christmas is just around the corner and will offer a few weeks cover. The PM needs to take stock and accept that the Government’s current political narrative is dreadful. For the big danger is that it becomes a ‘paradigm shift’ not a temporary blip.

John Major was sunk after the fiasco of Black Wednesday in September 1992 and every other difficulty which followed had the worst possible interpretation put on it. The die was cast. It became impossible to draw a line under things and a self-fulfilling fatalism took hold and ultimately sapped the life from his government. The same is beginning to happen again.

One thing is clear, if Gordon Brown doesn’t want to emulate the career of John Major – a man he so effectively helped skewer a decade ago – he better get a move on. The cartoonists aren’t noted for their patience...