Gordon Brown has now been British prime minister for two years. This is hard to credit, partly because he has not fully emerged from the detachable Peter Pan shadow of Tony Blair, but mainly because he has not yet emerged from his own. He walks in a deep, impenetrable penumbra of his own making.
Luck has had something to do with this. The opportunity to strike a chord with the public has not arisen. He hasn't had a Diana moment, as Tony Blair did, or a Falklands moment, as saved Margaret Thatcher when her popularity was at a low ebb. But it's also a matter of temperament. Brown--one might say to his credit--would never have mourned Diana as the "People's Princess," nor, had he been prime minister when the British retook a small island in the South Atlantic Ocean, would he have told the nation to "rejoice."
Lacking populist instincts ought not to be considered a failing in a prime minister, even in the age of television, but trying for the common touch when you don't have it is an unpardonable folly. Brown's recent charm offensive, culminating in an attempt to smile himself into the people's affections via YouTube--grinning like a village idiot in love while discussing MPs' second-home allowances--has made even his most loyal supporters cringe. You cannot buy the love of an electorate.
The praise that Brown has received internationally for his handling of the banking crisis has been echoed only fitfully in this country. Economic competence wins over minds, not hearts. Thomas Carlyle called political economy the "dismal science." In the ten years he worked at Blair's shoulder, successfully keeping the books, ensuring that the City flowed with Klug, Brown was gloriously, triumphantly dismal--the only person in London, it sometimes seemed, not partying. This is what you want from a chancellor of the exchequer: the colorless efficiency of a chartered accountant. And Brown had the air of a man who'd been up all night entering numbers in a column.
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