Gordon Brown's No Good Very Bad Day

By Steve Hynd

I'm watching the decimation of Labour's sitting councillor's in the local elections in England and Wales today with some interest. Tom Clark at The Guardian puts the depth of the debacle bluntly:

Making sense of the emerging election results for Labour is easy: they're dreadful. The BBC is projecting a 23% nationwide vote share – third place by a distance, a full five points behind the Liberal Democrats, and the worst since BBC records began. I'm not aware of a series of national vote shares going much further back, but I'd be confident in saying it is the party's worst showing since the second world war, and it may even be its worst since the first.

But although the Tories are picking up seats at every turn, they shouldn't be lighting candles on a celebration cake. A goodly bit of humility would be warranted. They've been badly damaged by the MP's expenses scandal too, if not as badly as Brown and Labour.

their vote share is poor – 38%. That is, for example, very similar to the 37% that Neil Kinnock chalked up in the 1989 Euro-elections, hardly an inspiring comparison for a party that believes it is on the very cusp of power, and a sign that voters are angry at the wealthy Conservatives who've asked them to fund duck islands and moat repairs.

Clark writes that picking up local seats so dramatically will boost Tory confidence of several upsets in a general election, but I'd note that party strategists would do well to remember that the UK has a history of protest voting for "the other guy" in local elections. It was a constant thorn in Maggie Thatcher's side that her parliamentary majority never translated into supremacy at the local level, for example.

Still, it's been clear for some time now that David Cameron would be the next PM whenever the general election was finally called. Today's disaster for Labour will hurry that day along, as will the litany of denunciations and resignations as Brown tries to reshuffle the deckchairs, and his cabinet. The Prime Minister refuses to quit though - if he's going he'll have to be pushed.

Now, for those American leaders who could care less, a final thought. George W. Bush's presidency was explicitly modelled after Thatcher's by his brain, Karl Rove - and history repeated itself as America's Blair, Barack Obama, swept the conservatives into the wilderness after years of rightwing excess, just as happened before in the UK. But Obama worries the hell out of me. Blair turned out to only talk a good progressive game and in his demands for presidential power, secrecy, continuing harsh laws in the name of fighting terrorism and his intent on doubling down on interventionist adventurism Obama reminds me all too much of the man now well known as Tory Blur. Then came Brown, a uncharismatic non-entity of a leadership figure...and it's highly unclear that the Dems in the U.S. have a man who could follow Obama except as a Brown to his Blair.

I suppose what I'm saying is - Dems should beware of the hubris of power and ignore the tendency towards a "not invented here" mindset to watch and learn from the rising and falling currents of political fortune as seen in the UK.

Update: James Joyner says Brown is on borrowed time : "The bottom line is that Brown isn't doing a good job of governing.  He's been holding on for dear life for a considerable period, hoping to ride out the rough patch, and things are only getting worse. " I think James is spot on. But Brown has already shown a gruff tenacity in clinging to power for so long despite setbacks galore. Maybe the question we should be asking is how come his opponents can't finish him off.