Charles Onunaiju
27 June 2007
column
The well regarded British Chancellor of Exchequer or Finance Minister, Mr. Gordon Brown, who became the leader of his labour party few days ago, will today become the Prime Minister. He will succeed Mr. Tony Blair with whom he has shared personal friendship for the past 25 years and a rumour-ridden political partnership in the past ten years. Together, the two Scots reinvented their party that lanquished in opposition for eighteen years while the Tories or conservative party held sway in London.
Together, they pulled their party from near perpetual inelectability to star political attraction in Britain. From a traditional party of workers and their intellectual affiliates, both Messers Blair and Brown moved the labour party to one, at home with blue chip business elites.
The original mantra of the new labour party as articulated by the duo is the third way, an ideological invention derived from popular shift from the extreme left and right. Mr. Gordon Brown is reputedly the deeper intellectual of the duo but Mr. Blair is rightly the media performer who would suit the electorates, obsessed with the theartrics of the super information age.
So it was alleged that the two reached a gentleman understanding that Mr. Blair would take the first shot at the premiership and step aside after the first tenure for Mr. Brown to mount the saddle.
What happened later is that Mr. Blair hung to the job while Mr. Brown held sway at the exchequer, where he made an impressive mark. To start with, he granted the Bank of England or the Central Bank an autonomy in monetary policy, a move that is reputed to have enhanced the economy of the United Kingdom.
Mr. Brown is also well known to have crafted the five economic conditions for Britain's accession to the European single currency. Though far from been a Euro skeptic, Mr. Gordon economic conditions is well respected as well thought out stands apart from the rhetoric's of British E.U. bashers. In the past two years or so, the British appear almost inpatient to have Mr. Brown on the saddle. Mr. Blair has squandered a rare public trust and confidence.
He has lied to the British and exaggerated the threat of Saddam Hussien weapons of mass destruction and to most ordinary people, thoughtlessly joined President Bush in the war to topple Mr. Saddam Hussien and occupy Iraq.
Even though Mr. Blair has remained remorseless on the course of action that have bitterly divided his party and country alike, the war in Iraq is one single item that has hasten his exit. Mr. Brown has never openly dissociated himself from the war and even recently flew to Iraq to confer with British troops their, he may however retrace from Mr. Blair's audacity of impunity.
At the conference, where he assumed the leadership of the party Mr. Brown admitted that Iraq had been "a divisive issue for our party and country" and pledged to "learn lessons that needed to be learned."
Mr. Brown is an assured hand to manage the British economy which he has tendered with outstanding competence in the past ten years, but there are worries that his profound intellect and a dour image might rob of a political tool, which his predecessor used to the maximum, direct mass contact through the media.
While his sincerity of purpose is not questionable, critics say that Mr. Brown may not be able to connect with the electorates in the way Mr. Blair did. But this observation suggests that public life is mere thearetical, without popular concern for real issues.
This view obviously exaggerates public gullibility. However, Mr. Brown toughest turf is said to be foreign policy, which it is believed he has no experience. He is described as something of an unknown quantity. He can be probably said to be an Atlanticist and his pro-American sympathies cannot be underestimated, though nobody expects him to be close to Mr. Bush as Tony Blair has been. His European instinct is more practical than ideological. But no one can underestimate Mr. Brown conviction.
At the labour conference where he took the mantle of leadership, he declared himself a "conviction politician" adding that "the party I lead must have more than a set of policies - we must have a soul." He has discreetly supported all the interventions orchestrated by Mr. Blair in Iraq, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan - but the question remains as to how far he would go himself to carry out such interventions.
As chancellor of exchequer, (finance minister) he has been keen on multilateral initiatives on debts and aid, so he is expected to continue with that. In respect of America Mr. Brown is expected to distance himself from President Bush to some degree, but he might disappoint on such expectation. He is not instinctively anti-American.
He knows considerable number of American especially Democratic Party leaders, but his relations with Mr. Bush will depend on the decisions he take on Iraq. On Iraq itself, Mr. Brown has not back away from the decision to invade the country but he will certainly take a second look at how long, British troops will stay in the beleaguered country.
He said recently, "I take my responsibility as a member of the cabinet for the collective decision that we made and I believe they were the right decisions, but we are at a new stage now."
However, current British policy is to regroup the 5,500 troops there into one base, at the airport, this time, but there is no time table for total withdrawal. Mr. Blair has always insisted that the troops will have to stay until conditions for stability are right. Mr. Brown has room to maneuver because he could interpret those conditions more flexibly.
This could be the test of how far he is prepared to diverge from U.S policy. On aid and development, Mr. Brown is expected to be very active. This was one area in which he made his mark internationally as chancellor. He has championed debt relief through the "heavily indebted poor countries," initiative. He proposed an international finance facility to help poorer countries raise capital. He supported the G8 initiatives in 2005 to double aid to Africa. The UK Treasury says he will have increased the British aid budget to "nearly 6.5 billion pounds a year by 2007-08 - a real terms of 140% since 1997. So his premiership is expected to increase activism in this area. However Israeli. Palestinian conflict would not receive much boast from Brown premiership. He has not shown any interest in the conflict and would not be expected to play major role as Mr. Tony Blair. He has however appointed the former British Ambassador to Israel Mr. Simon McDonald as his foreign policy adviser. The Israelis are delighted that Mr. Simon is their friend. However one area that might interest Mr. Brown is the economic development of Palestine. On a visit to Israel and Palestinian territories in 2005, he got their economic ministers together for the first time in many years. However, it is difficult to fixate Mr. Brown on all global issues as in their nature, they continually develop.
One thing that however remains obvious is that Britain with Brown's leadership would act in concert with the multilateral imperative of global diplomacy. But no dramatic change is expected, even though Mr. Brown would definitely seek to make a difference.
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