http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/sep/09/gordon-brown-psychology-new-labourLabour is not doomed because Brown is weird and neurotic. Rather, what's unravelling is a self-styled "project", emblematic of the ease with which tiny cliques can now seize control of parties and what a dysfunctional mess the electoral system makes of our politics. New Labour was always built on timidity and contradiction, which only a fabulous political operator like Tony Blair could gloss over. Even he came unstuck, and it has been his successor's grisly fate to be all his party's contortions incarnate. Think of Blair, perhaps, as the Wizard of Oz to Brown's bumbling man-behind-the-curtain (a character who, in the film, utters a line that could be the current prime minister's epitaph: "I'm a very good man. I'm just a very bad wizard").
As Brown has faltered, so Blair has been retrospectively recast as a conviction politician, though we arguably saw him aflame with convincing zeal only once: post-September 11, and look where that got us. On the home front, let's not forget, he hunted for big ideas that amounted to fads, took refuge in his beloved "eye-catching initiatives" – and, on the legendary occasion when a Labour backbencher asked him to explain his philosophy, gave a stilted answer about increased investment in the NHS and a scheme for recruiting foreign surgeons that prompted guffaws from the around the Commons.
Which brings us to the probable next government, and another cabal in thrall to the New Labour playbook. A la Blair, David Cameron may be doing his best impression of a man with a plan – but the people forever accusing Brown of dithering do sometimes look very similar. Think back, for example, to the Tories' lack of answers on the fall of the banks, or their current attempt to pose as bold rescuers of the public finances, with no clear indication of what they might cut. The conclusion? Sooner than we think, there will be another leader – possibly Cameron himself – cloistered in Downing Street, biting his nails to the quick, with the voices of his aides in one ear and the latest poll findings in another, and no real idea of what he is there to do.
By then, we might have finally woken up to what was surely obvious all along: that underneath those "psychological flaws" was a malaise that was nothing less than systemic.
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