In the world of British politics something truly amazing is happening. Gordon Brown, the incumbent Labour PM, has substantially rehabilitated his political standing, while Dave Cameron, the Conservative who had been presumed to be the next PM in about a year or two, has probably blown his chances this week. The story is pretty simple: Brown was a dead duck about six months ago. Polls had the Tories up by double digits until Brown had a successful party conference and then managed to handle the financial crisis in a manner that instilled confidence. In six months, Brown has gone from a guy in danger of losing his party's leadership into the likely bet to remain in Downing Street after the next elections. Things have gotten even worse since Cameron tacked hard to the right on fiscal policy, which even British businesses oppose due to the crisis and fears of a depression. If Cameron loses next year, it will be a really surprising comeback story for Gordon Brown. One wonders what would happen to the Tories in that circumstance: after a few election cycles of getting their asses kicked for moving further and further rightward, the party nominates a centrist modernizer who, at a critical moment, panics and swings to the right. Would the Tories retain Cameron and move more to the left? Curious.
I'm beginning to suspect that the Republicans will follow the Tory model and struggle about, moving further to the right and swapping out leaders willy nilly for the better part of a decade. Brown is not as slick as Tony Blair, to be sure, but he will probably be remembered more favorable by history. One of the interesting subtexts of the movie The Deal, which focused largely on the relationship between the two men, was that Blair was pretty much a cynical opportunist who was largely interested only in power, while Brown was truly interested in the ideals of the party. Blair got the job because of his flash and his youth and good looks, and his excellent sense of timing. But his ambition, that overarching desire to make his mark, was what led him to support a disastrous war waged by an incompetent American president and it eventually wound up destroying his reputation and legacy. The thing that elevated him also destroyed him. It's not particularly profound or original. Brown, meanwhile, has always been more low-key and idea-oriented. His weakness has generally been an inability to read the public's mood, and he's more of an ivory tower type (he is an academic, after all). But it turns out that British people like the idea of a quietly competent technocrat right now. Cameron's main problem has been his flopping all over the ideological spectrum: he's gone back and forth between the center and the Thatcherite dead-enders, and he's back there now. England would be crazy to elect him now, as fiscal austerity from the government is a terrible way to deal with lean economic times.
I'm not exactly a fan of Tony Blair. I think his ambition to be a world-historic politician led to the War on Terror and the Iraq War, two boneheaded ideas that we will have to mop up for decades. Blair has paid the price for his sins, although some of it was visited upon his successor. Tony ought to have known better. Why he thought he should hitch his star to that of George W. Bush I'll never know. Anyway, this is a bunch of rambling. Check out The Deal, which is a really, really awesome movie. It's part of a loose trilogy on Tony Blair along with The Queen and another movie to come. They're all written by Peter Morgan, who is one of the few writers of political stories that I feel actually gets the ins and outs of politics, and I usually feel like I've learned something after watching his movies. He's also the writer of Frost/Nixon, which I will naturally be seeing. If you're not a fan, you should be.
