Matthew Parris on Gordon Brown

I FIND this rather frightening. We all know he's talking nonsense, but does he actually believe what he's saying?

Northern Rock, a range of tax twists and U-turns, the recent notorious abolition of the 10p tax rate (where Brown still fails to use the word “I” when acknowledging mistakes) . . . the instances are various. But they have one feature in common. Study his phraseology as a psychotherapist rather than a student of policy might, and this leaps out at you. What Brown really, really, won’t say is that he has been pressured by anyone else into doing anything he did not want to do in the first place; or that on any central question it is his own judgment that has been wrong.

Pressed, he will allow that circumstances have changed and decisions varied or revisited in light of the new situation. Pressed further he will admit that mistakes “were made” or that “we” made mistakes. Pressed even harder he will even use the “I” word and admit to failures of diplomacy, tact, consultation or explanation. But what he cannot allow is either that he has been pushed around, or that a big decision was wrong at the time he took it.

This twin refusal, like the two arms of a nutcracker, puts a man under intolerable pressure. If you can admit you’re wrong, then you don’t need to admit to being pushed by others, but only by your own intelligence, to alter course. If you can admit to being pushed by others you don’t need to admit you were ever wrong: you’ve altered course for collegiate reasons, against your best judgment. But if you are to insist both that your first decision was right, and that your second thoughts do not arise from arm-twisting, you get into an awful tangle when challenged to explain your change of mind.

It was in just such a tangle that Gordon Brown faced John Humphrys on the Today programme and Adam Boulton on Sky News on Thursday. He will have known he would face questions about Alistair Darling’s Budget U-turn, raising the tax threshold to compensate for pain inflicted by abolishing the 10p rate.

How would he reply? By saying he should never have invented the 10p rate? Or never have abolished it? Or would he say that this week’s policy shift would not have been his preference, but it was affordable, and he was therefore bowing to parliamentary anxiety and national concern?

To my incredulity, he told his interviewers that the £2.7 billion tax cut, financed by borrowing, was a response to the world economic downturn: a measure to stimulate domestic growth by putting extra money in people’s pockets. Brown said he wanted to ease the financial squeeze being faced by hard-working families. Asked why the need for this had only been discovered since the Budget, he could give no answer. It was pitiable.

It was also scary. I’ll tell you what scares me, and scares (I believe) a wider public who may not always be consciously aware why. It’s not the thought that the Prime Minister may be lying. It’s a more disturbing thought: that he may not. That under the terrible internal pressure created in his own head by a refusal to accept either that his will may be thwarted or his judgment questioned, the PM is having to warp the external world to make it fit.

You know what? I think Parris could be right. What a state we're in.