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Gordon Brown: a pastor takes power: the new Prime Minister tends a fragmenting Britain with a neo-liberal gospel.

Article Excerpt
Gordon Brown's entry to No. 10 Downing Street ends one of the strangest episodes in modern European politics. For over three months, the United Kingdom was without true political leadership. Tony Blair indulged in a prolonged farewell performance, with the intention of fixing his memory in international affairs as well as in Britain. Brown, his designated heir, passed the same period in characteristic silence. Recently, however, much stronger indications of his style of leadership and intentions have emerged.

A UK general election is not due until late 2008 or 2009, but we now have some clues about the intervening period. Great Britain is in very serious trouble. Since 2003 the highly unpopular war in Iraq has undermined the New Labour regime. Then at this year's regional elections in May, the whole British periphery was convulsed. Both the Welsh and Scottish nationalist movements made striking advances. In Edinburgh the SNP (Scottish National Party) actually won power as the biggest parliamentary party, and has been able to form a minority govern-ment. Its Welsh equivalent, Plaid Cymru, has been able to assume a decisive role in the Welsh Assembly--not yet in power, but making it difficult for any other party to govern. Even more surprising, in Northern Ireland, Catholics and Protestants have reached agreement for the first time ever, on a modest program of enhanced self-government.

The US Antidote

Is Britain breaking up? Any serious answer requires a longer retrospect than the personal and party-political issues surrounding Brown's entry to No.10 Downing Street. The 'United Kingdom' is a survivor from the nineteenth century, or even earlier. Indeed, basic parts of its constitution derive directly from the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and, no less important, from the 1707 'Treaty of Union' with the older Scottish state. After 1914 other empires were shattered by external military defeat and internal nationalisms. But not the British one: aided by geographical isolation, as well as success in both World Wars, its overseas domains lasted until the 1960s, and, with the exception of Southern Ireland, its 'domestic' core has persisted into the present. Another vital ingredient of this longevity has been an intimate alliance with the United States.

Questioned on the BBC recently, Brown was very emphatic: all British premiers must be 'friendly' with the US President. His family takes its holiday...

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