LONDON: “Last week”, said a friend of mine, “I read a list of the issues that Brown plans to take up after the May elections, so that he can seize the political initiative. And do you know what they were? Britishness and constitutional reform. I mean, my mortgage is going up, and I can’t afford my petrol bills for God’s sake, what planet is the man on? What’s that got to do with my life?”

As Labour slumps in the polls it’s apparent there is a dangerous disconnection between the issues that concern voters and those the government thinks they should be worried about. This week, for instance, the government will be trying to push through 42-day detention for terror suspects, and combating a rebellion over the doubling of the 10 per cent tax band on the low paid. Meanwhile, election canvassers report that the biggest issues on the doorstep are post office closures, the loss of the 10 per cent band, and the economy. Yet it was only on Monday (APR14) that Gordon Brown finally managed to sound as if he understood he was meant to empathise with people’s fears about the coming economic storm. The week before, in an impatient interview with Nick Robinson on the BBC, he had managed to convey only a resentful irritation with the electorate for being so anxious and irrational.

For the past year, ever since the leadership election that never was, commentators have been warning uneasily that Brown needed to establish a connection with the voters by making it clear what he stood for, and what his government wanted to achieve. For many months, that argument has had little traction. Brown has been able to shrug off complaints about his remoteness, his indecisiveness, or the political incoherence of decisions like the doubling of inheritance-tax thresholds, because the polls kept showing the Tories were unable to open up a substantial lead over Labour. The global financial earthquake has changed all that. Labour’s last trump card was economic stability. Now voters are looking at the party with a much more unforgiving eye.

Labour’s support has always been drawn from two key groups. One votes chiefly from self-interest the party’s policies match its social and economic needs. The second votes largely as an expression of values. It is drawn to Labour rather than the Tories because it believes that the party stands for a fairer society and a more rounded, generous view of what it means to be a human being. Brown’s government is in trouble because both groups are becoming increasingly disenchanted.

MPs for marginal constituencies have been acutely aware of the party’s vulnerability for some time. One minister I spoke to was frank about the tactics that are being adopted. Labour’s national message was now so muddled, and its priorities so unlike voters’ own, that some MPs were no longer selling the party’s brand on the doorstep. “It wouldn’t work. What people want to know is, what can you deliver for them in their daily lives? You can’t knock on the door and give them some vague slogan dreamed up in Downing Street, ‘Hello, I’m here to unlock your talent’. Instead I’m selling my own brand. I ask people, what are the issues that matter to you locally? And they want a CCTV camera, or a hospital to stay open, or their daughter to move up a housing list. And you act on it, and it’s hugely time-consuming. But that’s what people want. And it’s only at the end that you say, we’re just collecting some details here and you say you’re from the party.”

The minister says about a dozen MPs have adopted the same personal approach to their constituencies, because trying to defend national policies is not what’s going to get them re-elected. People are too confused and disillusioned. “We’ve created an ideological vacuum. All major political parties have abandoned ideology. The Tories have done the same; they’ve abandoned tax cuts. Then, when Brown came in and talked about his moral compass, you thought ideology might be coming back. But it wasn’t. His actions don’t fit his words inheritance tax, ending the 10 pounds rate. So you can’t argue, this is what we stand for.”It is the disjunction between values and actions that is so damaging for Brown. He claims to believe in social justice, economic prudence and individual liberties, yet his record shows remarkable inconsistencies on all three. He presided over a boom based on cheap credit and mega city bonuses, while inflicting the giant mortgage on the nation that is the private finance initiative (PFI). His final budget snatched money from the poorest purely in order to score a quick hit against the Tories, but he never had the courage to bring in higher taxes at the top. His government found billions to bail out Northern Rock, but refused to find the 40 million pounds to refund the struggling families who had saved for Christmas clubs through the now defunct Farepak.

As for freedoms, his instincts lead him to favour intrusion, oversight and control. Not only is he pushing ID cards and detention without trial, but his government has given councils and 318 other bodies unprecedented powers to spy on citizens suspected of the most minor offences. Even his introduction of tax credits to help working families has been fatally flawed, because the process of claiming them has been made so bureaucratic, punitive, intrusive and censorious that many of those who go through it end up hating the government and its agents.

This record in itself is enough to alienate millions of voters. It’s made worse because although Brown is drawn to abstract ideas, he thinks public services should only be judged by outcomes that can be costed or measured. That obsession prevents him understanding the real impact on ordinary lives of so many official decisions, from shutting post offices to closing swimming pools or forcing people to go to giant GPs’ surgeries. He doesn’t grasp the fact that economic efficiency is not always people’s overriding concern that in their search for good lives, people expect that to be just one of the factors involved in making a political choice.

What Brown’s supporters still maintain is that the man must be given more time and opportunities to set out his stall. That’s no longer a credible stance. Brown has had a whole year to make an impact since Tony Blair announced his departure, and he has to be judged on his record. Reluctantly, those of us who hoped that the man had hidden depths have had to conclude that he’s a man of hidden shallows. It’s not a question of, as one MP put it, letting the nation see who he really is. We’ve seen it the flickers of grim worthiness beneath the nervous, bumbling, indecisive arrogance and on the whole we’re not impressed. But since Brown is neither likely to acquire a new personality nor to be replaced unless the electorate throws him out, the only question is whether the party and the cabinet have got the guts or the mechanisms to push him into making the coherent and worthwhile decision that will resonate with both the party and the voters.

Labour’s chief politicians are currently divided between those who are pouring their energies into plotting their own paths to power and those who are transfixed in the headlights of the impending disaster. The onus is now on them to start making collective decisions on Labour’s future before they find that there isn’t much of one left.—Dawn/ The Guardian News Serivice

THE prolonged crisis over the judiciary that had the entire country in a tailspin is seemingly nearing its climax. The incessant debate over the issue here, there and everywhere is a sign enough to prove that it could not go on.

The first impression that one gets the moment one enters the National Assembly is that something is about to happen. Even the walls seem to clamour that this suspenseful tension is having its toll on the national nerves.

The stage, it seems, is all set. The riff-raff, like in a Western movie, are gathering in the Main Street to see who in the end will shoot faster from the hip. The National Assembly, to give credit to its new members, is making extra effort to prove that it is different from the earlier lot. But the fact is that everybody is waiting for the grand duel that will decide their fate, and perhaps also of the teeming millions who wait in queue all day to buy a bag of flour and then come home, if at all they get one, to eat in darkness caused by power cuts. Files in government offices, we are told, have slowed down. The babus discuss all day long various scenarios that might happen at the ‘High Noon’, who might win, lose or who may withdraw in the end.

The courts are virtually non-functional, the lawyers in no mood to back out. Not even an inch. The black coats were all over the media oozing ‘blood’ all around. At the cafeteria we wondered what they were up to. Where and when is it going to end? Is it just about the reinstatement of judges or the ‘revolution’ will continue until the Camelot is retrieved?

Some colleagues smelled a rat, saying that sooner or later this will convert into a political party. “Why not,” said the others. What’s wrong about it if we could have a political group founded on sound principles and genuine agenda that had been deficient in the two-party system that we have seen in the last two decades.

Still others believed that any government, if it was sincere in a reforms agenda, could not be successful without the new judiciary and without this pressure of lawyers, civil society and the media. The country has been taken over by stock bunglers, corporate monopolies, cartels, even the mafia. The moment any government tries to reform, they all gang up to pull it down, mostly from within. We all know who they are, yet they are the first ones to be notified by those very government. One indications is that the most sought after person in the assembly, even more than the prime minister is the good old Rehman Malik. (No calls early in the morning, please). Athar Minallah, who deserves credit for carrying the torch under such trying times, was right when he said the other day that it is only the re-empowered courts that could take daring steps over daring issues. The courts already have before them a long list of, well, dangerous cases—the cases of missing people, the stock exchange scam and Asghar Khan’s petition about ISI giving funds to politicians, the re-opening of the president’s re-election case, just to name a few. But then this might be the reason why the establishment is having sleepless night over this possible eventuality.

The good thing is that the ruling coalition is emanating positive vibes. The politicians have finally decided to go for the kill. Or so they say. Insiders claim a few hiccups remain over the drafting of the resolution. Therein lies the catch, insist our perpetual nay-sayers. The cynics believe the legal troika around Asif Zardari has still not given up finding a middle way, which in simple terms means a sell-out. The argument goes that the pledge in Bhurban was made about the National Assembly passing a resolution within 30 days. Reinstatement of judges can take longer. How smart?

The prime grudge is that some of the judges may have been unjust to the jailbirds now in power. Some judges, says the troika, are immoral, others unethical. But the crucial public objection is that they have taken oath under the earlier PCO.

The last argument seems particularly flawed. Asif Zardari is, for heaven’s sake, no angel. Nawaz too supported a dictator in the past. Chaudhry Nisar sucked up to Ziaul Haq more than what Pervaiz Elahi is doing today. Yusuf Raza Gilani and Shah Mahmood Qureshi were turncoats at one time. But then that’s past. What matters is who stands for what today. A colleague aptly commented that in our relative political world there is the revolution of the day. Whoever stands for that is the hero, no matter what his or her past. And who does not is doomed to be a zero.

The question is what will happen if the government issues the executive order after the resolution. For Aitzaz it’s simple as Chaudhry Iftikhar will simply go to the Supreme Court and the incumbent CJ will leave the chair for him. Others think that it cannot be as simple as that. What if the incumbent stays the executive order? What if he writes a letter to the army seeking its help. But then, goes the counter-argument, the government too might write seeking a similar khaki intervention. Whatever the outcome, one thing is for sure. The army is not coming in. And nobody is asking them either. Not this time.

Tailpice: Kashmala Tariq seems to have become extra active in the proceedings lately. ‘Why couldn’t you show similar conscience in the last government,’ Saad Rafiq took a jab at her. This provoked an angry response. The insinuation was obviously about the alleged reports that she and Raza Hayat Hiraj were considering making a forward bloc. Raza became a ‘lota’ the first time he ever got elected. So it should not be surprising if he repeats the performance. Kashmala, at least, is taking her time.