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Gordon Brown’s first month looks good

— PHOTO: AP

Gordon Brown at his first regular press conference as Prime Minister at 10 Downing Street on July 23.

He has endured trial by fire and trial by water, and he’s still standing. Wednesday marks four weeks in the job for Gordon Brown, an initiation more intense than anyone could have anticipated. The attempted terror attacks on London and Glasgow came within his first 72 hours inside 10 Downing Street; now he contends with the worst floods in modern British history. One Cabinet colleague concedes that had Mr. Brown “dropped the ball” in handling either cris is — and, remember, the flood menace has not yet receded — it might already be over for him. If Mr. Brown had faltered or panicked, voters would have formed an early, fatal impression.

Even before those twin disasters struck, the stakes were always going to be high for this July. Mr. Brown won’t even have the luxury of FDR’s 100 days to prove himself. He can’t do anything in August, a political non-month. He knew when he took office on June 27 that the public view of him would congeal in these first four weeks, a time when people are already disengaging, preparing to go on holiday or watching the sport on TV. There was little room for error.

How has he done? There have been some stumbles. He was shaky in his first Prime Minister’s questions session in the House of Commons, the weekly event when any MP can quiz him on any subject, and he patently has none of his predecessor’s gifts for conveying the apparently spontaneous, empathetic remark. He could find no such language to convey what he had seen in submerged Gloucestershire on Monday, for instance. And some of the non-politician “talents” he has brought into his government have strayed badly off-message.

But set aside those relatively minor glitches and Mr. Brown’s first month looks like a striking success. Last week, Labour won two parliamentary byelections — despite being in mid-term in its 11th year in office. The national polls record a predictable Brown bounce, but also a warm personal reception. Wednesday’s Guardian survey shows not only a six-point Labour lead but also nearly a quarter of Tory (as Conservatives are also known) voters conceding that their op inion of Mr. Brown has risen since he became Prime Minister. You pick up the same impression anecdotally, as those who do not follow politics obsessively describe the new Prime Minister as solid, reliable and grown-up. The word “gravitas” comes up a lot.

All of which forms an unhappy contrast for David Cameron, the leader of the opposition Conservatives. It is he, not Mr. Brown, who is having the sticky July, fending off anonymous sniping from his backbenches as well as a call from a high-level but “disillusioned” Tory donor for a rethink.

Third place in both Ealing and Sedgefield byelections, and the bad timing that left him beached in Rwanda while his own Oxfordshire constituency drowns, add up to a grim summer for the Tory leader.

In conversations this week with several senior Cabinet Ministers, it’s clear that the Brown command views all this with pleasure but not much surprise. It had, after all, planned meticulously for this period and knew what it had to do. First, it wanted to sear into the public mind the notion that there had been a change of government. It knew the voters were tired of it and that the Tories’ best shot was “time for a change” — so change, it resolved, was what the voters would get.

That meant Mr. Brown repeating the word nearly a dozen times outside No 10 on his first day, but also signalling that everything — or at least those things the public did not like — would be different from now on. So the presidential style of Tony Blair has been replaced by the much-heralded return of cabinet government, with two-hour discussions on constitutional reform, for instance, which — brace yourself — actually alter government policy.

Mr. Brown sent the collegial message even more directly by dispatching Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary (Interior Minister), to speak first on the attempted London terror attacks, and by having Hilary Benn, Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, at his side when briefing on the floods. Privately, Mr. Brown says there are two approaches to his job. One is to walk into the room and say, “Right, I’ll do everything” and make yourself the focus of activity. (I can’t imagine who he has in mind.) And the other is to delegate and then make sure everybody else is doing their job properly.

But there’s been more than a change in political process. The new Prime Minister has rapidly chucked overboard those items of Blair baggage the public disliked. The ditching of plans for a super-casino in Manchester, the likely reclassification of cannabis to make its possession a more serious offence, and a retreat on allowing licensed premises to sell alcohol all night have won expected plaudits from the social conservatives of The Daily Mail, but not only from them. The su percasino had become the symbol of an aspect of the Blair era — the materialism, the worship of bling — which clearly made many Britons uncomfortable. Downing Street has been struck by how few people have mourned the roulette wheel’s passing. In this context, Mr. Brown’s dourness, his repeated references to his upbringing in the manse, reinforce the point. Eventually, people may tire of it, even feeling vaguely judged by the puritan in No 10. But for now, and given what’s gone before, the roundhead Mr. Brown fits the moment.

He’s also used July to signal that his priorities will be domestic. The word Mr. Brown picked up on his pre-prime ministerial tour of Britain was that voters wanted the government to “come back home.” They’d had enough of the strutting on the global stage, and wanted Ministers to return to British bread and butter. Mr. Brown has acted on that, ensuring his lightning visits to Paris and Berlin were so quick they were barely noticed. He’ll go to Washington next week, but you detect little of his predecessor’s enthusiasm for that aspect of the job.

He had one last objective for July. Assembling the New Labour coalition in 1997 was easy: all you had to do was unite everyone who opposed the Tories. Its binding purpose was essentially negative. Mr. Brown’s task in 2007 is harder, to supply positive reasons for people still to support Labour. That’s why he’s so proud of his recruitment to government of a former head of the navy, Lord West, or a business chieftain such as Digby Jones: they suggest that Labour offers a positive project people want to join.

One astute Shadow Cabinet member suggests that if Mr. Brown is presenting himself as the candidate of change, he’ll have to go for an election soon: he won’t look much like change when he’s been in power for 18 months. The polls must make that tempting. A Cabinet colleague adds that Mr. Brown’s driving goal is to win his own mandate, that everything we see now is preparation for that.

And yet Mr. Brown’s caution will surely prevail. He might cite the historical precedents for a change of Prime Minister without an election, and insist that it would look like careerist opportunism to trigger an early poll, but it is surely fear of failure that will hold him back. He doesn’t want to be remembered as the shortest-serving Prime Minister in history.

Besides, his offer to the electorate will not be “change” anyway. Marking a break from the Blair past was just a necessary first step — like “meeting a hygiene standard,” according to one ally — in order to get the public to listen to Labour again. Once they are, there will be more to say. And that work will begin in September. —

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