Gordon Brown – a declining stock in the Scottish political market

Having disposed of his last budget at the expense of the low paid the Chancellor has announced that he is to spend more time in Scotland over the next four weeks putting the case for the continuation of the Union.

He should not overestimate his appeal to his fellow Scots. In recent years his stock in Scotland has been in rapid decline. First there was his attempt to refurbish British identity by reminding us of the historic achievements of the British progressive tradition - parliamentary government, habeas corpus and the rule of law, the extension of the franchise. But the record of the Labour government of which he has been co-leader - the erosion of habeas corpus, the curtailment of trial by jury, the harassment of asylum seekers, the proposals for compulsory ID, the continuing self serving refusal to reform Westminster's blatantly anti-democratic voting system, above all parliament's failure to hold the executive to account on Iraq - left him beating a hollow drum.

Then there was his attempt to play the kinship card, claiming that independence would cut the links between English domiciled Scots and their families in the auld country. For good measure he teamed up with Wendy Alexander to warn that the web of professional, scientific and commercial networks built up over 300 years of Union would be blown to the winds by independence.

When reminded of the small facts of European integration, global interdependence and the internet he reverted to the old discredited argument that Scotland with an £11bn budget deficit could not afford independence, oblivious to his own culpability as Chancellor and long term Scottish MP as to the large deficit the United Kingdom itself carries on the books (not to speak of the even larger public liabilities off book).

Meanwhile Brown's image as the godfather of Scottish politics suffered from the by-election loss of Dunfermline West on his own political doorstep. Of a different order entirely was his pronouncement that that Gascoigne's 1996 Euro goal against Scotland was his favourite footballing moment. Suddenly revealed was a man so consumed by ambition that he would deny his own identity, and no doubt sell his Scottish granny, if political advancement required it.

But the two issues which have done most damage to the Brown stock in Scotland have been Iraq and Trident. By supporting the prime minister he has isolated himself from his own political hinterland. Even worse has been the way in which he has done it. On the two biggest moral challenges of the Blair years Gordon brown, the man who learned from his Church of Scotland father that politics was nothing if it was not about morality, has been virtually dumb. If he believes in the rightness of his own government's policies he has failed to champion them. If he believed they were wrong he has bitten his tongue. Either way he has silenced his conscience in case it got in the way of his becoming prime minister. From such a man as Gordon Brown has become it is no surprise that his last budget has been more a budget for his personal advancement than a budget for the people.

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