PM started well but went downhill

Today marks the first anniversary of Gordon Brown’s reign as Prime Minister. When he succeeded Tony Blair, he promised the nation “a new Government with new priorities”. Has he delivered? Political Editor John Hipwood looks back at a turbulent year.

In 1992, the Queen broke with tradition by talking publicly about her “Annus Horribilis”, and 16 years on, we have just witnessed another one, this time for her Prime Minister, Gordon Brown.

Mr Brown is very fond of history, and at Question Time in the Commons this week, he massaged a famous quotation from Abraham Lincoln in an exchange with David Cameron.

But it is more recent history and another politician rather closer to home he might be reflecting on today, the first anniversary of his “coronation” as Prime Minister.

Former Labour premier Harold Wilson said a week was a long time in politics, so it must have been a very, very long 52 of them for Mr Brown.

In truth, the first 12 weeks or so went rather swimmingly for the man who had waited so long to take over from Tony Blair.

There had been rumblings among a few Labour politicians who didn’t think he was Premier material, but the vast majority in the party, for want of an obvious challenger, had thought that he must be given a chance to do the job he had always coveted.

In what was called a “baptism of fire and water” within a couple of days of taking office, Mr Brown faced the twin challenges of terrorist attacks in London and Glasgow and flooding which, as Sir Michael Pitt reported on Wednesday, Britain was unprepared for and unable to cope with.

Nonethless, the new PM was soon on television assuring the nation that he was in charge and everything was under control.

Gordon was on the job, unlike Mr Cameron who decided to go ahead with a visit to Africa while his Oxfordshire constituents were wading through flood waters.

If you listen to Mr Brown’s supporters, Tony Blair, of course, would have been sunning himself at Sir Cliff Richard’s villa in Barbados if he had still been PM, leaving John Prescott in charge.

An outbreak of foot and mouth disease couldn’t put the Prime Minister off his workaholic stride, and the Browns were soon packing up their buckets and spades and heading back to London from the Dorset coast.

Gordon, it was clear for all to see, was in charge.

He even invited Margaret Thatcher to tea at No 10. The Iron Chancellor had become the Iron Prime Minister and was happy to be photographed with the Iron Lady.

Such was Mr Brown’s standing in the opinion polls that, as the party conference season approached, people started talking about a snap election to give him his own mandate.

At the time I couldn’t believe he would be so stupid and risk becoming the shortest serving premier in modern times, but this wasn’t just media talk. This was coming from a cabal around the PM who hadn’t tasted defeat since New Labour stormed to a landslide in 1997.

This was when the ‘D’ word came into play for the first time. Against his better judgement, he began to contemplate an October election victory and at least another four years in service to the country in 10 Downing Street.

And he Dithered.

Instead of knocking the idea on the head straight away, which would have been the better option, or going for broke, Mr Brown couldn’t decide one way or the other.

It wasn’t until the Tories had a successful party conference in Bournemouth based on a timely promise to cut inheritance tax that he finally realised the risk, and was eventually forced, humiliatingly, to cancel the election that never was.

We then heard something that we have heard many, many times since: that the Prime Minister was “getting on with the job and taking the right long term decisions for the future”.

By this time, the first of the financial shocks which were to further undermine his premiership had left the nation open-mouthed. The first run on a British bank for 140 years as Northern Rock became an early victim of the American-led credit crunch.

Since then the economy has gone from bad to worse as prices have been swept upwards by a doubling of the cost of oil and a shortage of food on world markets.

Mr Brown and Chancellor Alistair Darling are fond of blaming Britain’s difficulties on what’s been happening in the rest of the world, but some decisions were made closer to home.

As Chancellor, he kept on spending when times were good, and then he dropped a dreadful politicial clanger in almost his last act as Chancellor - scrapping the 10p tax band in favour of improved tax credit kickbacks for families.

The majority of taxpayers would end up better off, they argued, either not knowing, forgetting, or ignoring the fact that more than five million of the least well off people in the country would be even worse off.

They also say that the majority of motorists will be better off when the new road tax rates come into effect next spring and the following year. Just wait until the bills from the DVLA start dropping through people’s letter boxes.

On the 10p tax rate, Mr Brown initially refused to accept that there was a problem. Then the ‘D’ word came into use again, and finally, as disaster loomed in the Crewe & Nantwich by-election, Mr Darling came up with a £2.7 billion tax hand-out in the sort of emergency Commons mini-Budget not seen since Denis Healey’s days as Chancellor.

It has become a regular weekly occurrence for Mr Brown to be bettered by David Cameron at Question Time, and stand-in Liberal Democrat leader Vince Cable cruelly but unforgettably told the PM that he had gone from “Stalin to Mr Bean”.

As the Labour leader’s popularity has plummeted, the reaction of his media advisers has been, extraordinarily, to put him more and more into the spotlight. It’s a bit like being force fed cod liver oil and constantly being told it’s good for you.

Instead of allowing his cabinet ministers to take the lead on issues in their fields (it’s called delegation), nothing happens in government without Mr Brown being publicly involved. It’s quite the opposite to his conduct when he conveniently disappeared from view when Tony Blair was in trouble.

If he gets the chance, he’ll be carrying the union flag at the Bejing Olympics.

Mr Brown tells us every week that Mr Cameron is all about PR, he’s someone who’s into showbiz rather than serious politics.

But that’s clearly not the impression that the public are getting. Despite Crewe & Nantwich and the victory in Henley, the public are not yet signed up to Mr Cameron - and he knows it.

That’s why he keeps banging on about arrogance and triumphalism.

But, according to today’s Spectator, the Conservative leader is preparing meticulously for the prospect of the UK being governed by the Conservative Party within the next two years.

What’s more, the public seem to like him more than they do the Prime Minister. And that’s the biggest worry of all for the current incumbent at No 10.