Why was Brown smiling?
Why was the chancellor smiling, the Lib Dems pension spokesman demanded to know in the Commons today.
You can see why he asked. There was Gordon Brown sometimes grinning, sometimes heckling the opposition, sometimes even whispering asides to John Hutton (these men, it should be noted, are not political soul mates).
Could this really be the same man who'd fought Blair, Hutton and Turner (whose report the other two had pledged to implement)? Could this be the same man who'd threatened privately to shelve that report?
It was, which leaves an obvious question - what's changed? Since I can't see into the chancellor's head, let alone his soul, here are a few theories with my thoughts on them. (Your musings may be just as valid so please add them below)
Theory 1 - Brown has no intention of doing any of this if he gets to Number Ten.
Today's Pensions White Paper does talk of "our objective" (not "our commitment") to re-link the basic state pension to earnings "subject to affordability and the fiscal position" (which sounds like a Treasury inspired get-out clause).
However, alongside it is a Number Ten "there is no get out" clause. The link is to be restored "by the end of the (next) Parliament at the latest" with the precise date to be set out "at the beginning of the next Parliament". In other words, Prime Minister Brown would have to say straight after an election when he'd do it and - assuming that parliaments run for about 4 years - he couldn’t put it off much beyond 2013.
My view is that Brown would pay a huge political price if he failed to deliver unless war, famine or recession changed the economic and the politics dramatically.
Theory 2 - Brown's only worry was affordability and he made the sums add up.
That is the Treasury line.
Certainly, the costs of the government's plans are a little lower than those in Turner's report. The earnings link is to be restored a couple of years later than he suggested. We're all going to have start working for longer a few years earlier than he'd suggested.
My view is that these are refinements and do not represent the fundamental re-writing of what friends of Brown claimed was an "unaffordable plan in which the sums don't add up".
Theory 3 - Brown had no choice - he'd lost.
That is the Blairite view.
They believe that Gordon Brown got himself into a hole. He adopted an unpopular position out of line with many of his natural supporters in the Labour Party. Once he spotted that he shifted. It's certainly true that Brown often fights and scowls in private only to emerge smiling in public.
My sense is that the Treasury regarded the Turner report as the prime minister parking his tanks on their lawn. They feared that the PM might be tempted to make bold but extravagant promises which he wouldn't be around to pay for. They would rather have left pension reform to a later date when other spending pressures were clearer.
However, they do now accept today's deal and privately accept that they've moved quite a long way.
I'm 
Comments
What a shame that the details of such an important policy, with huge long-term implications, are determined by a Blair / Brown ego match.
"In other words, Prime Minister Brown would have to say straight after an election when he'd do it and - assuming that parliaments run for about 4 years - he couldn’t put it off much beyond 2013."
It appears that two large assumptions being made here. There is no guarantee that Brown will be the next PM, or that Labour will win the next election.
Tom Ravenscroft hits the nail on the head. It will be an incoming Conservative Government who will have to meet the public's new pension expectations. In Gordon Brown's position, I wouldn't be smiling, but laughing like a drain.
From the Blair point of view it's surely about "His Legacy"
The man has desperately tried to find something that he will be remembered for and I guess this seems like a good idea.
But sorry Tony you'll always be remembered for the "illegal" war in Iraq. Or maybe, now that your wife and Spin Cambell have reminded us again, the Hutton whitewash.
Brown........will he ever be remembered for anything?.....I don't think that Blair will give him that chance.
The thing Nick is this. The chances of New Labour getting into office in 2009/10 are minimal asuming things continue going downhill especially regarding immigration. Given that Brown will be a shoo in there will be no Brown Bounce or a Honeymoon period after all the man has been in the Public Eye for years there will be no new dawn we know deep down where Gordon stands...he loves to control he loves details ( to mask the reality ) and there wont be much chance for him to shine against Dave
Cameron. My best bet for the election this. Either a hung parliament or a small Tory Maj of say 12. Would the Lib Dems really want a Lib Lab pact again to be seen
propping up a sleazed up Govt
Ming will be long gone I suspect and men like David Laws so anxious for power might support the Tories.
Which brings me to the opening point.
Who cares about these plans for Pensions ??? The chances of Labour being around to enact changes is remote. The Tories need a 11% lead to get a hung result which is quite likely. I feel after 14 years or so of Labour the old mantra TIME FOR A CHANGE will be the winner. It always is..another Sea Change in Politics is coming.
Nick
These blogs are getting a little too much like knockabout for me - let's have more of the incisive analysis we know you can deliver. I couldn't care whether Brown is grinning or why. What's important is what this time-expired government do and commit themselves to doing. The real story here is that the announcement contains NO commitment on linking to average earnings, despite the spin. ´óÏó´«Ã½ news bulletins are not making this is clear as they should!
He probably can't stop laughing at how much money he can make us, the taxpayers, pay up to provide gold plated pensions for ministers and civil servants compared to the pittance he is prepared to let us, the paying customer, get back for our own pensions.
Is it just me but I begin to feel that more and more it's the government versus the people rather than government of the people. We seem to be going back to rather feudal times with the average punter being hemmed in by more and more intrusive and suppressive legislation, ever increasing stealth taxation whilst government and its officials give themselves more and more perks which we have less and less power to question. Certainly everything possible seems to be done to avoid letting the people of the country see the facts and get a straight story.
Whilst I realise that there may be another political agenda it's at least refreshing to get a whiff of candour from Dr Read instead of the near decade of pretence and evasion we have had from the PM and previous Home Office ministers.
Out of your three mooted reasons, Nick, I find the first most compelling. Clearly, Brown feels as though he has the upper hand; as PM, he will be in the driving seat, and, should he have enough political capital (and personal will), would theoretically be able to reverse the pensions proposals, as announced today.
However, as I argue , the reason for Brown's happiness today is probably just as much to do with a public-relations exercise in "smiling" as a perceived political triumph for the Treasury and Gordon personally.
Please I implore all young people who are 45 yrs old and under. Get your own private pension, one where you can take it with you no matter what job you are in.
Allow me to tell you my experience. Mistake No1: when we were first married I was told by the then Employment Bureau to pay a married womans stamp as my pension would be paid out of my husbands contributions, along came Thatcher and destroyed the link to pensions, my state pension is £47 pw. Not even a pound for every year I worked. I should have kept to a full stamp.
Mistake No 2 most companies in those days made a woman work for 5 years unbroken service with a company before they could join a Staff Pension Scheme, for men it was only 1 Year, after 5 years service I joined a very good company pension scheme, after paying into that, along came a reccesion, end of Company. I now receive a quartely pittance for paying into that for over 6 years. 11yrs out of my life totally wasted pension-wise.
At 40years old I decided to have a Pension review, I was horrified by the results, but it did spur me into action. I then had the common sense to pay into a private pension by a major Insurance Company, I paid a percentage of my salary and could take this pension with me to any job. I hope you will all undertand this when I say the next bit. I took the pension out originally paying for it with good money, but it ended up being paid for with bad money. EG: I had to pay in £20. per month and in those days that was a hell of a lot of money, by the time I came to retire it was peanuts, inflation had seen to that. I have now ended up with a decent private pension, but did struggle hard in those early days to keep it up. Do not put your old age in the hands of any Politician, none of any ilk can be trusted with something so important, because believe me I do not know how some elderly people are surviving on a State Pension alone.
Theory 4- brown knows he will be in Number 10 soon and when it gets to the time to talk about pensions again and people start saying the figures don't add up he can just say that he said this from the start- I thinks this smugness and concetedness is simply because it is only a matter of (a relatively short period of) time before he is PM- and we all know this
Theory Real
There is no commitment here. Who knows what will happen? Nick, I'm surprised at you! Everybody is on their own and the sooner the realise it the better.
Nick, another matter. Could you please give us your opinion on why your coverage ( and that of the ´óÏó´«Ã½ )of the story of the autographed auctioned Hutton Report is getting such relegation compared to your rival news chanels ? Don't you think it's important, or are there other contstraints? Its a very noticible difference in emphasis. You seem personally to have great integrity, and a sense of propriety : what's the reason ?
Could he not be smiling because accepting Blair's pension reforms is his side of a new deal to see Brown in No. 10 sooner rather than later?
I watched the statement on pensions and couldn't believe my ears when it was stated that they had lost patience with private pensions. We have private pensions and were looking forward to retirement. But after Gordon Brown's dash and grab tax on pensions in 1997 we have had to put this off, and 10 years on we just cannot afford to retire. Our pension funds are now a joke, and for the first time in my life I wish I had emigrated years ago. My sisters in the US have their Social Security pension, PLUS an English pension even though they are now US citizens, emigrating when they were in their early 20's. They are now 80 and 72 respectively. They are astounded at the cost of living in this country and are thankful they had the foresight to leave these shores in the 1905's.
I think Blair just gave him some 'happy drugs'!
The chances are that it's a mixture of all three. Brown knew that people would be watching him, he's hardly going to make it look like a defeat, and he may indeed have balanced the sums.
He can change the policy if he doesn't like it later, but for the moment he needs to present the party line and seem pleased as punch about it; remember Brown was on the precipice and has stepped back. He had to balance the sums or the Tories would jump down his throat.
Did the smiling Brown know something that we don't know? Was the pensions crisis sorted because Tony Blair gave something else up? A more firm date as to when he'd handover to Brown? I have no idea but am quite willing to believe that it might be linked to something we haven't heard about.
Nick,
Perhaps Gordon Brown is smiling because you are talking about pensions rather than the crisis he has engineered in the NHS.
Remember 24 hours to save it? Nine years later there are cuts in staff & beds but not in patients needing hospital care.
This hardly gets a mention on national TV.
No outrage - No wonder he is smiling.
Theory 4
Mr. Brown realises that it this may show that he can compromise to the Labour Party members, further guaranteeing their support for him when he launches a leadership bid. His smiling could be for show.
Nick, Your analysis of the semantics is interesting. Normally I'm quite good at picking up on linguistic tricks used by politicians..
But the subtle difference between an objective and a commitment evaded me.
Probably because I'm used to using an 'objective' as a standard of my performance at work. If I don't deliver it, I'm not doing my job.
So I got the wrong impression of the level of 'commitment' by Mr Blair to delivering on that 'objective'.
But maybe that was the point...
You write about a Number Ten "there is no get out clause" amidst all this puff about Blair, Brown and pension schemes.
What is this constitutional nonsense?
"Parliament... has... the right to make or unmake any law whatever". So wrote Albert Dicey authoritatively in 1855. No Parliament can bind its successor, let alone a lame duck Prime Minister.
As Blair's credibility ebbs away, as catastrophe follows catastrophe in his administration, who would seriously put any faith in promises made by this man. His education reforms survive thanks to Opposition votes. He survives thanks to Brown's pitiful lack of leadership of the Parliamentary Labour Party's dissenters.
I don't care for Brown's personal happiness. I'm not interested in his capacity for smiling - it doesn't make my bills easier to pay. I do know that an objective is not a commitment and that for all the talk in the world, a Prime Minister who can't assure his government get its way with a majority of 71 won't be influencing much out of office.
Nick he was smiling because hes conned Gordon Brown again-last n ight following talks between them pres Bush expressed confidence that Blair will be PM till the end of his presidency in 2009-G Brown must be fuming this morning at this latest betrayal!
SINCE DAVID CAMERON WILL BE PRIME MINISTER AFTER THE NEXT GENERAL ELECTION THIS IS ALL IRRELEVANT ISNT IT?
Of course a fourth possibility is that Brown has seen that our economy is currently built on a nasty debt bubble and we are heading for a recession in which their will be no rise in earnings only a slight fall, therefore it could be a treasury inspired way to save money.
Dear Nick,
I suspect that Brown was smiling purely and simply because after years of domination by Blair, he is enjoying seeing the Prime Minister suffering at the despatch box and I mean REALLY enjoying it.
Contrary to what the perceived view of Brown being desperate to be PM, I suspect that he now sees it as a poisoned chalice.
There is only one way New or Old Labour are going and that's downhill.
All talk or renewal is spin for the truth, that The Labour Govt has run out of ideas.
It happens to all Governments, and they all end up outliving their usefulness (if that can be said about New Labour) which had been long on promises and extremely short on delivery.
Furthemore, once a Party is dogged by sleaze, incomptence and dissembling, it cannot get rid of it quickly. It needs time in the wilderness for the smell to evaporate into the atmosphere....and the smell emanating from this Govt is all pervasive.
To Tom Ravenscroft, the one thing you can be certain MPs' pensions will be more generous and better protected than the electorates'.
How much is the current taxpayers' expenditure on MPs' pensions currently and by 2040?
So Nick will you have to work until 68 too?
Nick,
With these reforms, the news that education reforms will continue (now reforming Tony's first reforms), and today's speech that the UN needs ... reforming, I wondered if you might address the question: Is there anything Tony Blair doesn't think needs reforming, and is there ever a point where he will feel "hey that works, we can stop changing stuff now"?
Gordon Brown is precocious. Let him spite Blair...
Yes they are assumptions, but is it not safe to assume that Brown will follow Blair. I would agree that it is looking increasingly unlikely that Labour will win the next General Election and form a majority government.
I think the Chancellor has been backed into a corner but obviously knows that there will be better opportunities ahead for him to have his say.
I believe that Gordon has decided to change tack. I mean, he has realised that Blair isn't going to leave in a hurry (obviously he wants to be in office longer than Thatcher). So he has tried bullying and ranting at Tony to get on deciding when to go (or at least tell Gordon when). This didn't work.
So Brown has now put back on the 'Good Friend' Act, like during the General Election (them going around together and getting Ice Cream). Maybe Gordon thinks that if he is extra nice and supportative of Tony, it will become so annoying that Blair will be glad to see the back of him! (not that he isn't looking forward to that already probably).
Gordon is smiling because he's taking yet more money from the middle classes and giving it to the poor and the feckless.
Stack up them Scottish, Welsh and northern votes and sod the south east.
On the whole I enjoy reading this blog but sometimes I really do feel that it is missing something. It needs a bit more backbone, a bit more roughage in its diet. It needs to question the political status quo a bit more often and challenge the assumptions that the politicians would have us believe.
Here we have a political issue which will have an effect on the lives of nearly everyone in the country. We have the right to expect a real solution, not more New Labour double-dealing.
So, who are these two smiling, happy people? Ah - The Great Liar and The Great Pretender! And what are they carrying between them? Yet another enormous can of whitewash! Except it looks as if someone has mixed even more soot into it this time: it really is a very tawdry shade of grey!
Has anyone here seen Nick Robinson? ... No? ... There he is! ... See? ... Over there in the corner. That bedragled heap that someone has drenched in that revolting grey fluid! Better get the hose and wash him down before it sets too hard!
Apparently, the next election is for the Labour party to lose, all Brown can do is wait or scornfully support blair to finish his reforms. I pity both individual in a rather different way. On the one hand, New labour is coming to an end with no clarity about who would continue to believe firmly and implement their policies. All Blair has built since 1997 and the support he has gathered is crumbling and being transferred onto "new conservative" and "project cameron" (interesting to see how hard the conservative party are trying to reinvent themselves with diferent names to appeal to mainly c2 and c1 voters). Brown on the other hand, is not sure what he wants to do, does he want to follow in Blair's shoes and support New Labour, an ideology he does not believe in wholeheartedly, without passion he cannot deliver or does he want to return to clause iv. As a result, all his efforts of holding the economy together seem to be coming to an unpaid gratitude. With 55% of supporters opposing "a scottish prime minister" i wonder where his fate lies.
The conservative party on the other hand are embracing everythingfar from conservative, like "podcasts" and "web blogs", who are they trying to appeal to ? perharps, new found money people, i.e. those that went to university and prospering in new wealth. It is also worth pointing out that the conservative party is till "CONSERVATIVE" at heart, but on the surface, they are glossing their image with New labour Memobrilia...
Interestingly, i haven't heard(or perharps i haven't been focusing)a response or genuine policy on immigration from Dave Chameleon, or what he has to say about poor housing in the south east, or being punished for blocking the extended maternity /paternity leave. yet voters are running after him like a man in a candy shop. It is sad how voters are quick to forget the conservatives bad handling of the economy leading to interest rates of 15% and how New labour had to fight tooth and nail to bring it to 4% today. Yes, maybe labour has abandoned his traditional supporters, but at least most people have also increased their standard of living over the past year they have been in power. Let's support then and keep the
"New Labour's third way" ideology flying, let's make Blair as popular as he used to be, don't oust or neglect him like Thatcher, it need not be a case of looking back 10 years later and then admring Blair as we are doing to Thatcher now... New Labour is the future of Britain.
There's another theory. It could actually be that the people at the top of government had a meaty issue to deal with, so they sat down and discussed it before agreeing on a solution and now are all committed to making it work.
Could it be that all this Blair vs. Brown stuff is just media hype?
Perhaps Brown is more interested in politics than political economy. Perhaps he is now playing the "nice guy" routine at all opportunities - from talking about his underwear on the media (Heaven forefend!) to smiling when he knows the PMQ cameras and commentators are on to him. He's playing the medium game - not for Blair's short-term, nor for pensions' long-term - but for his premiership's medium term.
Remember Thatcher's voice make-over and Major's make-over for his Y-fronts (more underwear!) - well this is Brown's pre-No.10 self-improvements.
There is no guarantee Brown WILL be P.M. - this lot could be out of office before then- even if he gets in do u think someone will remind him about taxing us to death?? - you bet.
Maybe he is smiling because he has his own inflation-linked, final salary pension that somehow the taxpayer can afford to pay for?
I FEEL THAT THE NATION IS GOING
THROUGH A CRISIS IN REGARD TO THE
MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT OF ALL PARTIES.
AND THEY AND THEY ALONE ARE TO BLAME
THEY SEEM TO REGARDS US ALL AS SIMPLE
WHO WILL PUT UP WITH ANY OF THEIR
ANTICS AND YET CONTINUE TO GIVE THEM
OUR SUPPORT. I FEAR THEY WILL LEARN
A LESSON TO THE COST OF MANY OF THEM
AT THE NEXT TEST OF ELECTORS
I think he's laughing because he knows he is one step nearer No.10. He knows Blair won't be calling the removalists until he's had a decent go at building a legacy and unless Blair gets a few wins under his belt, the prospect of that happening will continue to be remote.
This comment isn't directly related to the subject, but it begs the question of who's driving the government's agenda.
I've just seen a rather chilling ad for the DVLA about paying your car tax. The ad shows a big-brother-type computer hunting down law breakers. It has a rather chilling tagline: 'you can't escape the computer'.
I can't understand how this ad found its way to air while the government is trying to calm the public's concern over ID cards. They couldn't whip up more public hysteria if they tried. Are they?
What a shame that the details of such an important policy, with huge long-term implications, are obscured by the media's obsession with the irrelevant issue of the relationship between Blair and Brown.
Whether the occupants of nos 10 and 11 Downing Street like or loathe each other isn't actually very important: I suspect that they actually get on as well as most colleagues and they have generally worked together successfully.
Our political culture would be much healthier if the media concentrated more on the policy questions and less on personalities.
Not smiling; just wind.