The Second Honeymoon Will End
Pundits are predicting that in the next few weeks Gordon Brown’s government will receive a further bounce in the polls and narrow the Conservative lead to single figures. The emerging theme is that the Prime Minister’s hour has come and he may stand astride the world as the heroic figure who rescued the financial system from complete collapse.
It is true that the First Lord of the Treasury has acted decisively to shore up the British banking system. The result is a natural bounce in the polls. But as Mr. Brown must now be all too painfully aware, what goes up must come down.
The current boost in Gordon Brown’s popularity is the temporary result of a crisis. Politicians whose status relies upon crises are ultimately hostages to fortune. As Churchill discovered in 1945, once the crisis is over, the electoral response tends to be “thanks, but it’s time for a change”. As the immediate crisis gives way to a lingering recession, Mr. Brown’s inability to empathise will once again come to hurt him.
In this particular instance the blow may be doubly hard. Not only will the crisis bounce come down, but people will start looking for who in the government was responsible. The popular ire will likely be directed at the man who presided over the economy for ten years, ignored the warnings and failed to act decisively much earlier.
It is very easy to appear heroic when fighting a fire, but when the former occupants of the burnt out wreck discover that you were the one who drenched it in petrol and smashed the alarms, you cannot count on their gratitude lasting.
