How a show of humility could make Brown’s succession a certainty

I’ve just come across this interesting article by Michael Tomasky in the “American Prospect” describing the “air of overdog entitlement” which he believes is damaging Hillary Clinton’s campaign for the nomination.

In it Tomasky praises the quality of humility that characterised her campaign to be a US senator and contrasts that with the way she, and particularly her team, are approaching the drive for the nomination.

He goes on: “…there’s a disturbing air of entitlement about the campaign, a quasi-monarchical assumption that the nomination is her right and that for anyone else to presume that he could or should wrest the nomination from her is almost an act of partisan apostasy..This attitude came through in the Clinton camp’s high-handed attempt to make Barack Obama knuckle under in the David Geffen dust-up. The idea that Obama should have had to apologize for words spoken by Geffen was preposterous… Obama won the Geffen fight, and he won it because of the Clinton camp’s arrogance.”

Doesn’t that sound like the way the Brown gang are going about the Labour succession – the “lack of humility” and the assumption that the job is Gordon’s by right?

I’m convinced that the current ferocious media attacks on Brown are being fuelled by the way his close aides seem to assume that him becoming leader and PM is a right – not something that he has to compete for

Consider last weekend’s lofty “warning” by Margaret Beckett to David Miliband about him standing – it had all the feel of what Tomasky was writing about in relation to Hillary and it does not look very attractive.

Surely Brown, and more particularly the rather unlovely group of people supporting him like Balls and Beckett, would do a lot better by approaching the coming election as though they want the support of those entitled to vote rather than assume that they will just follow in line.

In particular Brown needs to curb the aggressive and arrogant approach of Ed Balls which isn’t doing his boss any favours. It was the way that Balls attacked the CBI and then had to withdraw that kept the pensions row boiling longer than it did.

If “being liked” is seen as your biggest weakness then the worst thing you can do is surround yourself by people who are nastier. Balls is a disaster for Brown and should be muzzled until Gordon has safely taken up residence at Number 10.

Mike Smithson