He mentioned the D-word

[Albus]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/04/gordonbrown-globalrecession

Gordon Brown didn't want to use the word 'depression' today. It's his great unconscious fear

For the second time in as many months, the pressures of prime minister's questions forced Gordon Brown to utter important words that he deeply wishes he had not said but which may, nevertheless, cast some light on his real private thoughts. When a man makes a mistake of this kind twice in such short order as Brown has done, his words should, I think, be taken seriously.

Two months ago, Brown famously boasted to David Cameron that Labour had saved the world. What he intended to say, it was instantly insisted on his behalf, was merely that Labour had saved the ailing banks rather than the world. Even that claim now looks a bit of a stretch. But the "saved-the-world" claim appeared to articulate something genuine about Brown's political mood at the time.It was seized on instantly – "There it is, it's on the record," Cameron jeered – and has repeatedly been hung round Brown's neck ever since as proof of his hubris and insensitivity about the nation's deepening problems.

The theatrics of Brown's latest remarkable comment were very different to what happened on December 10. At today's PMQs (audio), Cameron began by asking Brown to reiterate his commitment to free trade. Cameron's question, it was immediately obvious, was a preparatory set-up to allow the Tory leader to attack the disjoint between Brown's traditionally pro-free trade views and his notorious "British jobs for British workers" line in 2007.

Brown reacted, though, with his familiar impassioned attack on protectionism. It was, he said, "the biggest danger that the world faces." The G20 summit in London this spring would, he said, discuss the trade problem and restart the stalled Doha free trade round. "It is also absolutely clear," he concluded, "that we should agree as a world on a monetary and fiscal stimulus that will take the world out of depression."

For those of us who are honed in the art of listening out for nuances of expression in politics, this was a bombshell moment. It was the sort of thing we wait for years in the hope of noticing. Here was the man who fought so hard for so long to avoid even using the word "recession" – when he did, last October, it was uttered inside a lead-lined Brownian boa constrictor of a sentence – now almost blithely volunteering the use of the infinitely more chilling word "depression". What's more, unlike the save-the-world moment in December, Cameron didn't even seem to notice, choosing instead to plug away at his pre-planned theme rather than seizing on the remarkable gift that Brown had just offered him.

So, once again, did Brown mean it? I suppose it is just possible that this was a deliberate act by Brown to get the D-word out there. Yet Downing Street emphatically says not. The use of the word was apparently a slip of the tongue. That is, of course, pretty much what they also said when Brown claimed to have saved the world. The point then, of course, was that the earlier remark, however unintended it may have been, also rang true. And the same thing can be said about today's comment.

This does not make it deliberate. It is hard to think of any tactical advantage that Brown might gain from talking about the economic crisis as a depression. If you can come up with one, let me know. In the meantime that leaves the likelier explanation, that Brown used the word by accident but also because it is on his mind. And so it should be. If this recession, as Brown often says, is not like any of the other inflation-driven postwar recessions, but a recession sui generis, then it follows that the slump of the 1930s is the event that haunts him. Brown's recent speech at Davos and his weekend interviews show this to be the case.

I think the simple truth is that Cameron manages to get under Brown's skin at PMQs. Cameron annoys the prime minister, whose contempt for the opposition leader grows more obviously visceral by the week. Riled, Brown starts saying things he doesn't mean to say. The "save the world" comment was a revelation of his great unconscious hope. The "depression" mention exposed his great unconscious fear – that a repeat of the economics of the 1930s may trigger a repeat of the politics of the "low dishonest decade" too. That is not Brown's fear alone. It ought to be Labour's and the people's fear too. It is certainly my own.