The anguish was lined on his face. Ten years previously it had been his moment to call a snap election and he had blown it. Ten years that might just have altered the course of history. No David Cameron, no coalition, no Brexit. Imagine it. Ten years on, Theresa May had seized hers and, barring a miracle, the last remaining traces of his legacy would soon be erased. Hubris, thy name is Gordon.
Not that Gordon Brown wasn’t going down without a fight. It was just that these days he had learned to pick his fights more carefully. He hadn’t come to stand beside a Harrier jump jet in Coventry University’s faculty of engineering, environment and computing, to defend a leader he didn’t respect or a party that couldn’t even stop its own manifesto being leaked.
He was there to campaign for two old friends – Geoffrey Robinson and Jim Cunningham, both long-serving MPs in Coventry, and Colleen Fletcher, the city’s other Labour MP. And to campaign himself, of course. If he didn’t bother to stand up for his reputation no one else would.
“I’m proud to speak on behalf of three excellent local Labour candidates,” he began. His eyes glazed over and his mouth momentarily relaxed as he recalled the good old days of the New Labour Years.
Some might remember Robinson as the man who gave rise to the phrase “champagne socialist” and whose personal loan cost Peter Mandelson his first cabinet post, but to Gordon he would always be the minister who came up with the idea for the £5bn windfall tax on utility companies that helped fund 2 million long-term unemployed get back into work.
Pensioners and children had also benefited on his watch and Geoffrey’s watch. Mostly his, mind. He, Gordon, with a little bit of help – he couldn’t quite remember what – from Geoffrey and possibly even Jim, had reduced the number of pensioners in poverty from 30% in 1997 to 10% by the time he had left office, in 1997.
Thanks to SureStart – his SureStart, whatever else others might claim – child poverty had come down dramatically. Under the Tories, pensioner and child poverty were back at near record levels. Things that could once only get better were now getting remorselessly worse under the Tories. Tony Blair’s name wasn’t uttered once throughout this paean to himself.
But Gordon wasn’t in Coventry just to remind people of his own achievements. Oh no. He was here to talk about how Theresa May and the Tories were going to destroy the economy of cities like Coventry with her reckless pursuit of a hard Brexit.
Without the single market and customs union all the local car factories would have tumbleweed blowing through them within the next five years. No one in the city could afford to give her a blank cheque in her negotiations with the EU if they wanted to protect their jobs.
The only possible way forward was to re-elect Geoffrey, Jim and Colleen and ... well, hope for the best really. Gordon didn’t have a vision for what a new Labour government might look like because he clearly didn’t think there would be one. He pointedly made no mention of the leaked manifesto or Jeremy Corbyn throughout his speech. Corbyn to the left of him, Blair to the right, here he was. Stuck in the middle with Geoffrey, Jim, Colleen and a hundred or so Labour activists.
“Vote for Geoffrey, Jim and Colleen,” he concluded. Not for Labour or Jeremy. For Geoffrey, Jim and Colleen. Not because you think they have a chance of winning but in the hope of stopping the Tories winning by too much.
It wasn’t exactly a message of hope, but it was all said with a fire and passion that has been markedly absent in all of the present Labour high command. Gordon still has the gift of making people find meaning and purpose in hopelessness and futility.
Taking a leaf out of May’s playbook, Gordon didn’t bother to take any awkward questions and did a quick runner when one reporter tried to ask him about the Labour leader.
There again, back in London, Corbyn had been busy doing a runner from himself. Having already managed to miss his own poster launch and run over a BBC cameraman, he had holed himself up in a darkened room as he tried to remember whether it had been him or someone else who had leaked the manifesto to the press. “How dare the Tories talk of a coalition of chaos!” he muttered to himself. Labour could manage chaos just fine on its own.
