Richard Spring MP
Member of Parliament for West Suffolk

It would be impossible for any of us around twenty years ago to forget this time of year. We had stock markets crashing world wide. I was working in the City, having started a new business the year before. It was going swimmingly well but after that it was pretty tough. The excesses of the 1980s were demolished very quickly indeed.

The famous hurricane ripped up thousands of trees in Suffolk, as elsewhere. It was the week of my son’s christening and I had to drive between London and Suffolk to collect some plates, knifes and forks for the lunch afterwards. It was a difficult drive what with the uprooted trees and debris everywhere. 

But renewal is extraordinary. New trees were planted extensively, and have flourished. The world’s economy eventually recovered and we have had 15 years of economic growth.

In the last few days, however, I have been wondering whether Gordon has thought that a hurricane has ripped through his life again. It must feel like it.

There can be no denying that Gordon Brown suffered an incredible mauling after a hellish half hour at Prime Minister’s Question time yesterday. The reaction of Labour MPs said it all as they sat there quietly and glum faced as David Cameron picked apart the furious looking PM for refusing to call a General Election and the theft of Tory tax proposals.

It may be premature to say yesterday could represent a turning point in British politics but from every angle it looked as if the foundations of the Gordon Brown big-tent Government had crumbled. After a fine display of wit and intelligence by David Cameron the momentum now lies firmly with the Conservative party.  

Tony Blair would have dealt with the situation entirely differently, and not been bruised at all in the same way. We have an expression in Suffolk: ‘The last vicar was the best vicar.’ I wonder if Labour MPs (including Quentin Davies) are just beginning to think that too.

It is an expression you will occasionally hear in Suffolk, and I think it will be worth remembering in the next few months.

Gordon Brown inevitably is enjoying a bounce in popularity, and that will be strengthened by the terrorist threats. However, at his age, people find it difficult to change, and his more well known characteristics will re-assert themselves.

It was to be expected that some journalists and commentators did not appreciate the ovation Tony Blair got in the chamber of the House of Commons last week. However, it was a recognition by politicians of a remarkable politician, something somewhat different from whether he was a good or bad Prime Minister. It was an acknowledgement of his political place in our history over 10 years.

I would be very surprised if in due course Gordon Brown will be applauded when he leaves the Prime Ministership. He is not to be underestimated, but as a pure politician and communicator, he is not in the same class.

In the spring when Gordon Brown announced his Budget, he announced private finance initiatives to the value of over £20 billion. On one level, everybody may appear as a winner – hospitals, schools and roads can be built, welcomed by the public. For the Government all this expenditure does not appear on the state balance sheet.

The House of Commons Public Accounts Committee has been looking at whether this is all being well spent. Of the over £50 billion spent under PFI, the real long term cost may be nearly three times this amount. What has come to light is that backers of PFI schemes have been able to sell of their PFI stakes, where equity is involved, very profitably. All of this is very tempting to financial institutions.

With the huge demands on the public purse, PFI looks set to remain part of the infrastructure scheme of things. Somebody, in the future, will have to pick up the ultimate bill. Nothing ultimately costs nothing.

Despite his new clothes, teeth and ties, Gordon Brown has been unable to shake off the misfortune that seems to have dogged him in his most recent quest for the premiership. Note his visit to India which was wholly sidetracked due to the race row which had flared up over Shilpa Shetty’s treatment on the Big Brother show. The local election results, and the vote in Scotland, were a blow, as have been a number of recent economic statistics.

Now, as reported on Iain Dale’s blog today, his first few weeks as Prime Minister could be overshadowed by the long-awaited publication of Alistair Campbell’s Downing Street Diaries on 9^th July. Campbell’s diaries are likely to be a revelation detailing the many skirmishes – if honestly written - between the Brownites and Blairites from someone who was as close to the centre as it is possible to be. After seeing the paralysis this often caused at the heart of Government, it will be very interesting.

For most of us, the diaries will be a good summer read. What we do know, much to the credit of George Osborne, is that the Chancellor attains the premiership with a much more controversial and diminished reputation than only a few months ago.

We now know why Gordon Brown was so tetchy and miserable-looking at Treasury questions on Thursday: he knew that the £5 billion pensions grab initiated in his first Budget was about to be put under the microscope.  Every attempt to block the warnings being made public about this pensions grab from the then Treasury officials at the time finally failed.  The impact has been devastating – so many people have lower pensions than they could have expected.  Younger people starting their careers increasingly can no longer look forward to a comfortable retirement pension.  In 1997 we had the most successful pension arrangements in Europe.

Poor Gordon.  It isn’t going very well for him.  Now Charles Clarke is apparently entering the leadership fray.  He is a fearless character.  The sparks will fly.

That is the name of the great waterfall on the Zambezi River before it was called the Victoria Falls.  It was a good description of the Chancellor’s performance yesterday with its concluding coup de théâtre.

Beyond the headlines, there were two really bizarre announcements.  Taxes on small businesses have risen yet again, thus acting as a disincentive to start up businesses.  The Chancellor’s reliefs on capital investment in small companies will not apply to the creative and knowledge based acorn businesses.  Also, at a time when energy security is an increasing problem, yet another consultation has been launched on offshore oil and gas taxation, rather than an actual tax cut which applies to other businesses.  The warnings from the industry have been ignored.

Once again, micro-management, despite the major income tax realignment, characterised this Budget.   A future Chancellor will have to disentangle the accumulated webs of complication which have been such a beanfeast for lawyers, accountants and tax advisers.  

In Gordon Brown’s long reign at the Treasury, he has often spoken of his prudence. Prudence for a purpose was the one well remembered catchphrase which he loved repeating.

Oh dear, young fresh Prudence is now into advanced middle age and no amount of cosmetic surgery, botox (micro-management) or face cream (covering the cracks) can disguise one simple terrible truth for Labour. Their great cry was that ‘investment’ in our public services would transform them beyond recognition.

Well, huge sums have indeed been hurled at the NHS with no commensurate improvement. Ever since the NHS was founded, there have been important strides in improving healthcare. However, we now have massive deficits, junior doctors unable to get jobs, and indeed emigrating, and nurses being laid off. Similarly, educational standards have simply not risen to acceptable levels. To pay for this largesse, we now have the highest burden of tax in our history. People might be more willing to pay, I suspect, if they saw the visible fruits of their tax bills. However, they are now sorely disappointed. The link, which has been at the heart of the Labour attack on Conservatives, is clearly not there, and Labour scare stories no longer resonate.

So Gordon may huff and puff but he has been rumbled. He has dispersed huge sums of money to public services without overseeing how this has been  effectively spent. Commentator after commentator has observed this. Now, Lord Turnbull, Permanent Secretary at the Treasury for four years, has savagely damned the Chancellor with faint praise, ironically inviting us to “admire” the “sheer Stalinist ruthlessness” deployed by Brown in dealing with colleagues and allocating resources.

However, it should be the Chancellor’s colleagues who hold him in contempt, not the reverse, as he has dispensed public money to them without any proper consultation or prioritisation, which is why it has been so appallingly misspent.

It is in this very changed atmosphere that he presents his Budget tomorrow.

Vulpine, serpentine, duplicitous….these are just some of the adjectives which have been applied to the Prince of Darkness, Peter Mandelson. What an enigmatic figures he is, so brilliant at analysing problems and issues other than those which apply to himself.

Yet, even if not amongst Labour MPs, he is regarded with some admiration in political terms by many Conservatives on the grounds that he was central in making the Labour Party electable, a remarkable feat after so many years in the political wilderness. Personally he is charming, funny and clever.

Peter Mandelson is an enthusiastic Europhile, and in The Guardian yesterday effectively attacks Gordon Brown for his rather less fulsome views on the European Union. The Brown camp is constantly throwing out hints about the Chancellor’s dissatisfaction with much about the EU.

I am convinced that Mandy would do anything to stop Gordon from succeeding Tony and that Gordon knows this. Until Gordon, as is now very likely, succeeds this summer, the heavy hints and spats will continue, not even in code.

Unless something seismic happens to Gordon, he will in due course either seek to marginalise or decapitate Peter. Knowing this, Peter may feel he has nothing to lose. It will make for great entertainment.

Gordon must occasionally wake up having been terrorised by two nightmares: 1) a fresh faced public schoolboy stealing his crown (again), 2) that Scotland will sail off out of the United Kingdom.

Hence all this stuff about Britishness. Obviously he wants to overcome the notion that somehow Gordon’s Scottishness will weigh against him. However what will happen if the Scots support independence? – then there will be no seat for Gordon in the House of Commons. It is bad enough that he is voting in Parliament for matters in my constituency, but cannot vote on key issues like health in his own.

I suspect it will not come to that, inasmuch as the Scots will pull back from breaking away. However we may have a situation like Quebec when the desire for independence ebbs and flows, and can be very destabilising.

Meanwhile, with the atrocious current performance of this Government, we can look forward to some nasty surprises in the elections in May. This is not a cheerful time to be a Labour MP, especially from Scotland, and especially if you are Gordon.