Why Brown should be taking the blame for Labour’s election debacle

The blame game has begun. Obviously, there is plenty of blame to go around and all the obvious suspects have been quickly identified: Jeremy Corbyn, the party’s policy on Brexit and the manifesto (surely now displacing the party’s 1983 effort as the longest suicide note in history).

However, the roots of this most recent electoral debacle go back further than the election of Corbyn as the party’s unlikely leader in September 2015. To really get to the bottom of this, it is necessary to delve into the history of the last Labour government. The clues are there for all to see: the murder was carried out

The far-left had always hated Labour’s most successful post-war prime minister. Brown empowered ‘moderates’ to do so, too

using a piece of lead piping, in the drawing room by … Gordon Brown.

It was a series of fatal misjudgments and unforced errors by Brown as prime minister that led directly to Labour’s 2010 general election rout, to the election of Ed Miliband as leader, the consequent scrapping of Labour’s electoral college (which had ensured that MPS kept the lion’s share in any leadership vote) and the introduction of the one member, one vote (or, more accurately, three quid, one vote) system that gave Corbyn his two impressive leadership victories.

Brown, having actively undermined his former friend and predecessor, Tony Blair, throughout the latter’s premiership, finally achieved his life’s ambition at the end of June 2007 and became prime minister.

Having used up most of his policymaking capacity during his years as chancellor of the Exchequer, there was very little creativity to apply to the new job after he arrived in No 10. A promising early few weeks, during which Brown deliberately whipped up public expectation of a snap general election, came to nothing when he changed his mind and desperately tried to convince a sceptical press lobby that the thought of such an election had never even crossed his mind. Within 24 hours, the Labour lead in the polls was brutally reversed; it would not regain it until it had returned to opposition.

On the back foot for the next three years, Brown flailed in office, running from one crisis to the next, damaged by colleagues’ half-hearted but regular conspiracies to replace him with a more sure-footed and popular leader. If he ever had any plans to continue Blair’s project to modernise the party, by reducing the power of the trade unions further, they came to nought.

Since before he became an MP, Brown had assiduously courted the trade unions and was more at ease in the company of general secretaries and regional organisers than Blair ever was. In the wake of the 2006 coup orchestrated by Tom Watson, a Brown acolyte, to persuade Blair to announce his departure as leader and prime minister, it was the trade unions who united behind their favoured candidate, making it clear that a coronation rather than a contest was their preferred route.

In Downing Street, Brown decided to be Not Tony Blair. He constantly defined himself against Blair, seeking to carve out a more distinct political philosophy and distancing himself from Blair’s legacy. This sent out a signal to the party’s MPS and members that the Blair era wasn’t just over – it should be repudiated. The Iraq War (which Brown had voted for), the

hospital PFI scandal (which Brown had created), the national ID scheme (which Brown initially championed and then abandoned) – Blair’s legacy was no longer to be celebrated. The far-left had always hated Labour’s most successful post-war prime minister. Brown empowered the “moderates” to do so, too.

By the time Brown’s inevitable defeat came in May 2010, the party and trade unions had got the message. Faced with a choice between the former foreign secretary David Miliband (Blair’s protégé) and his younger brother Ed (Brown’s protégé), the party – with a nod and a wink from Brown – opted for the candidate that represented a repudiation of Blair, the one who would make the party feel better about itself. David represented too much of what the party disliked about Blair: triangulation, common sense and (an admittedly fruitful) compromise with the electorate.

But no more. Labour would win power again on its own terms, not that of the electorate. We all know how that particular phase of arrogant introspection ended under Ed Miliband: with a share of the vote barely larger than the one Brown had secured and the first majority Tory government in 18 years.

So comfortable was the party with a return to the sectarian Left-versus-right conflict, that veteran MPS who counted themselves allies of Brown, such as Margaret Beckett, succumbed to such a degree of complacency that she even lent her crucial MP’S nomination to Corbyn, allowing him to secure a place on the ballot in 2015. Other Brownites, such as Andy Burnham, then legitimised Corbyn’s hold on power by serving in his shadow cabinet.

Labour’s recent history has been defined by a series of bad decisions and errors of judgment by a succession of leaders. But it was Brown, Labour’s last prime minister, who bears much of the responsibility for last week’s disaster. He removed three-time election winner Blair for the crime of being a block to his own ambition. He encouraged the denigration of his predecessor’s record, even though much of it was also his own record. And he made it far easier for the Left to draw the conclusion that Labour’s defeat in 2010 and its failures in office could be remedied by shifting the party and the leadership Left-wards.

There are many to blame for what happened last Thursday. It would be historically unfair if Brown’s name were missing from the list of indictments.