A post at Foreign Exchange on a Gordon Brown lecture/book launch I attended yesterday at NYU:
The basic thrust of the book is that financial reform laws in individual countries are irrelevant as tools against a future crisis, because they simply provide incentives to firms to take their riskier business elsewhere. Instead, the book pushes for formal regulatory coordination and essentially, for expanded global governance. It is not an explicitly left-wing argument, as Brown’s vision of global coordination includes a completed Doha Round and a plea for international institutions to prod China into speeding up its push for more consumer spending. [During his talk, Brown clarified this point–essentially he thinks the recent five year plan can be a two year plan if Beijing wants it to be.] My take having read the first section and skimmed the rest: It’s a pretty good blueprint, but completely unfeasible. It’s also not badly written, as far as books by ex-politicians go. Certainly a relief after the purple prose we got from Blair.
After laying all this out in a short lecture, the former PM took a few questions.
Regular readers of this blog, as well as followers of my Twitterand Reader feeds, will know that for many months, I have been obsessed by the British general election. Earlier this week, my friend and True/Slant blogger Ethan Epstein chastised American journalists for over-hyping this story at the expense of more significant elections, like the August ouster of the Liberal Democrats in Japan.
To be sure, in their domestic political contexts, the recent Japanese or (I might add) Chilean elections were milestones that deserved better treatment from the media. But from the perspective of U.S. media outlets concerned primarily with American foreign policy, the British election carries weight. Read the rest of this entry »
It is technically premature to call Gordon Brown a dust-biter, but the dismal results from yesterday’s local elections suggest Labour’s days are numbered. Indeed, David Cameron made a good point, for once noting that everyone gathered around their tellies looking for election results couldn’t even get them because the only news story was the flood of cabinet resignations and calls for Brown’s ouster. So far, Brown is hiding behind the loyalty of Darling and Mandelson, but I don’t think it will carry him past mid-summer, if that.
I’ll leave the horse race analysis of how the coup will unfold and who will replace Brown to others, but there’s one point relevant to the paradigm shifts Cappuccino follows. The nail in the coffin for Labour seems to have been the populist uproar over MP’s expenses and the rhetorical space that created for other anti-institutionalist arguments including the Tory rants against European integration and government welfare programs.
The election results thus support my longstanding belief that the real divide in society is between individualists and institutionalists and my hunch that institutionalists are losing that battle so badly and on so many fronts (from the referendum on Europe to Obama’s “new politics” to the collapse of organized media) that we might not rise to fight again.
Although today’s a U.S. holiday, I’m taking my time off to worry about the political winds across the pond in the U.K. Not only because I livedthere a while and have friends with vested interests in how the next election pans out, but also because the core issue in that election is the same as the one I’ve been ranting about in our politics: the battle between institutionalists and individualists.
In Britain, however, it’s the individualist right, rather than the individualist left, that is ascendant over a Labour party that, so long as it’s led by Gordon Brown, will be all about big institutions tackling big social problems. The latest missive is Conservative leader David Cameron’s op-ed on the uproar over MPs’ expenses in the Guardian. Cameron begins with an assault on government abuse that reminds me of the individualist left’s assault on corporate bonuses a while back. His core argument: this is why institutions, all of them, are bad, and we should devolve more power to the people
“The anger, the suspicion, and the cynicism – yes, with politics and politicans, but with so much else – are the result of people’s slow but sure realisation that they have very little control over the world around them, and over much that determines whether of not they’ll live happy and fulfilling lives…So I believe the central objective of the new politics we need should be a massive, sweeping, radical redistribution of power: form the state to citizens; from the government to parliament; from Whitehall to communities; from the EU to Britain; from judges to the people; from bureaucracy to democracy. Through decentralisation, transparency and accountability we must take power from the elite and hand it to the man and woman in the street…We should start by pushing political power down as far as possible…With every decision government makes, it should ask a series of simple questions: does this give power to people or take it away? Could we let individuals, neighbourhoods and communities take control? How far can we push power down?”
Part of me is glad Cameron wrote this item, because it should finally kill the delusions of those who are trying to cast him in an institutionalist light. The scariest claim is the push for replacing “judges”–the rule of law–with “the people.”–as in cowboy justice. The most absurd claim is the argument that the purpose of government should be to determine how much power it can give away. This is the great paradox of the individualist right: why run for state office if, ultimately, you don’t believe in the writ of the state? One hopes that the “people” in whom Cameron places so much faith will see through this circular logic, but that would require Labour to offer something coherent in response.
Gotta hand it to Gordon today. Somehow, he’s pulled world leaders back from their insanity to agree to principles for that were, only a day ago, the butt of jokes among policy wonks. A triumph.
In the past week, much of the American media has referred to the IMF infusion in particular as though it were proposed by President Obama in the lead-up to this meeting. That’s wrong.
As readers of this blog will know, the whole combination of trade, aid, and regulation was the brainchild of Gordon Brown and the subject of his speech in Congress some weeks ago. At the time, the American media focused on his praise of the United States and on the symbolism of the moment, so American readers never processed the weight of his policy prescriptions.
Meanwhile, the Obama administration, realizing that a dramatic expansion of fiscal stimulus was not in the cards, began talking up the IMF infusion as though it were their plan, and journalists in the US political press have followed suit. World leaders were smart enough to let Gordon announce the comminque himself (he did superbly; video below), but the talking heads in the American press still spent the evening news discussing whether this as an achievement of the Obama team.
Obama and his celebrity charm get some credit for helping curmudgeonly Gordon get this done; surely Obama had some role in stopping Nicholas Sarkozy from throwing another tantrum. But the policies–using the IMF as a form of trade subsidization and trade as a form of development aid–don’t bear any signs of his input. That my colleagues in the political media insist on declaring otherwise only facilitates conservative critiques that they are in Obama’s tank.
Moreover, I find this strategy of taking credit for others’ ideas unnerving. There were two stories buried in the inside section of the NYT these past weeks about a Congressional effort–led by Ted Kennedy–to devise a health care bill, even before the administration has a Health Secretary. The emerging plan sounds a lot more like Hillary Clinton’s proposal from last spring than the Obama plan, but if it looks liable to get Congressional passage, you can bet it will get Obama branding.
Come on, Mr. President. Your popularity ratings are sky-high, where Gordon Brown is fighting for his political life. You are young with years ahead of you, where Ted Kennedy is singing his swan song. Take a back seat, for once, and give credit where it’s due.
So in part, I just swooned to see Brown succeed on both political and policy fronts. But I was also bowled over by the content of his argument: Read the rest of this entry »
Now that (hopefully) your election-induced hangover has subsided, let me break some news: for all the symbolic resonance of Obama’s victory, there is more ideologically at stake across the pond in the British general elections, due to materialize by the end of 2010. Read the rest of this entry »
Gordon Brown may have saved the world economy. Whether he can save his own career is still an unknown:
Last week, Brown unveiled his plan to combat the credit crisis: a transfusion of capital into UK banks in exchange for stakeholding rights, new requirements on lending practices, and government guarantees on inter-bank loans. Watch him explain the plan here. After a month of US and European governments waffling over the correct measures to take, after an American bailout package that passed but remains unpopular and unimplemented, Brown’s plan just made sense. As of today, those same European and US leaders are signing on to follow Brown’s lead.
Given how disastrous Brown’s run as PM has been thus far, it’s hard to understand where this stroke of genius came from. Until you take the longer view. As new Nobel winner Paul Krugman reminds us today, Brown is the economic brains behind the British revival that Tony Blair so often took credit for. While Blair travelled the world winning new political allies for Britain with his charm, the man behind the New Labour economy was the old curmudgeon from the University of Edinburgh, a former Blair rival who was blind in one eye. Blair was the better politician, but his Chancellor of the Exchequer, Brown, was the policy wonk.
So when the uncharismatic Brown took over for Blair last summer, and had to face political–as well as financial–responsibilities, he self-destructed. Despite valiant attempts to rebrand himself, his poll numbers have gotten worse every month since he took office…until now. That he might turn those numbers around with a policy that effectively nationalizes the banking sector suggests the final undoing of the free-market Thatcherite proposals that Brown and Blair were elected to reverse in 1997.
The question now is whether these nationalization policies can have their real economic effect (can “trickle down,” to borrow a phrase,) in time for the next elections.
Last month, I blogged about Gordon Brown’s attempt to connect with young, hip voters through an interactive video Q&A; on YouTube. Apparently, this is a new trend, because China’s Premier Hu Jintao is taking a similar tack on people.com this week. Wonder when I’ll get to ask George Bush my questions…I have a pretty long list, you know.
So Gordon Brown’s Labour got a pretty severe walloping in elections earlier this month. Pundits are predicting a similar defeat for Brown himself in the next general election vs. David Cameron and the Conservatives.
Cameron has been making waves for some time for bringing youthfulness to Mrs. Thatcher’s Tories, complete with a hot pink website. How could Gordon Brown, curmudgeonly and old-school compete?
This week, Brown launched his counterattack: a Web 2.0 version of Prime Minister’s question time. “Ask the PM” is a new feature on YouTube!’s 10 Downing St. channel, where Britons can submit 30 second questions and vote on the questions of their peers. Brown will periodically sign on to give video responses to the most popular spots.
The Guardian, whose editorial line is pro-Brown to begin with, gave the project a rave review. Brown certainly gets points for taking Labour in the right direction, and he’s already got tons of videos from (mostly) young voters.
But can “Ask the PM” become a voter mobilization device? Or, like so many politician-goes-techie ventures before it, is it just a gimmick?