With a colossus-like Gordon Brown still striding around the globe, tributes being paid by world leaders and nobel prize winners alike, it would only seem right that the Sunday political commentators hail the great unelected one.
But for some reason it isn’t working out like that. The scale of the the Brown bounce depends on whether you believe the Independent on Sunday’s ComeRes poll, which has the Tories 11 points in the lead and heading for victory or the Sunday Times YouGov poll which has them at just five points ahead. But there is, on the face of it, every reason to marvel at the Prime Minister’s astonishing comeback.
John Rentoul does his reasonable best. As he points out, governments can win elections in downturns and polls can be wrong, as the election of 1992 showed. But his endorsement is not exactly ringing:
Already the scales are more evenly balanced than they have been for most of the past year.
For the second time in three weeks, Rentoul’s colleague, Alan Watkins, is deeply critical of Brown. What on earth can the Prime Minister have done to this elder statesman of British journalism? Surely even the most thuggish of the Brownites wouldn’t have been daft enough to rough up this old gent of the liberal intelligentsia? Two weeks ago Watkins explained why Brown didn’t deserve to win the next election, this week he predicts victory for Cameron, despite his shadow chancellor’s difficulties. Now he says:
The last three Conservative Prime Ministers who attained office for the first time around were all surrounded by doubts. Edward Heath was regarded as outgunned; Margaret Thatcher, an inexperienced woman; John Major sure to lose because of the recession.
Iain Martin provides a fascinating analysis of why neither Labour nor the Tories are ready for an early election. In passing he notes Brown’s impeccable Democratic Party contacts book, but suggests the veteran PM has more to learn from the novice President-elect than the other way round.
The most surprising dissident is Andrew Rawnsley of The Observer, the chronicler of New Labour. His analysis is pretty balanced, recognising the breathtaking nerve of Gordon Brown in ripping up the rule-book of prudence. But he is not prepared to condemn George Osborne for “talking down” the pound when it was already in a state of freefall. For Rawnsley, Osborne is playing a long-term strategy, waiting for the Prime Minister to tumble from the tightrope he has strung for himself over the chasm of the economic collapse.
Martin Ivens, the on-form political commentator of the moment, notes the chilling inhumanity of the Brown’s performance at PMQs on Wednesday – failing to show any genuine empathy over the death of Baby P and wrongly criticising David Cameron for scoring political points (which he wasn’t). How does this socially awkward individual who finds it so difficult to give a straight answer to a straight question manage to command such respect on the world stage? I do wonder myself sometimes. Maybe he has really good interpreters.
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