Can Gordon Brown make a comeback?

[This article is a prelude to the Fabian Society's 'Fabian Review' new year editorial, published on January 3rd. It was previewed in Sunday's Observer.]

Whose has been the greatest political fightback of all time? The championship bout of our times would be between John ‘Soapbox’ Major, who won an unwinnable election in 1992, and Bill ‘Comeback Kid’ Clinton, reduced to lame duck status by Newt Gingrich’s revolution just two years into his Presidency.

While Harold Macmillan’s ability to turn the Suez debacle into a Tory landslide has many contemporary parallels, the all-time champion of champions has to be Harry Truman, able to brandish the famous headlines ‘Dewey defeats Truman’ after his surprise Presidential victory sixty years ago.

After Gordon Brown’s Autumn horribilis, it may be little Christmas consolation to think that others have dug themselves out of considerably larger holes than he finds himself in. Labour has been buffeted by events ever since a hubristic party conference.

The result is that the Conservatives are now favourites to win the next general election. That, of course, is the threat to Brown. The fightback strategy he needs depends on realizing how he could yet turn it into his opportunity too.

As I argue in an editorial in the Fabian Review new year issue. Like Harry Truman, embracing the status of the underdog could be the key to political recovery.
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How do we get a fairer society?

We all want to live in a fair society. But what should that mean – and how could we get there? I propose that our core fairness test could be this: that we should not inherit our life chances at birth.

In Britain today, where we are born and who our parents are still matters far too much in determining our opportunities and outcomes in life. And so our own choices, talents and aspirations count for too little.

The vision of a free and fair society would be one which extends to us all the autonomy to author our own life stories – challenging the extent to which this is determined by forces beyond our control.

This ‘fight against fate’ – breaking the cycle of disadvantage to make life chances more equal – could provide the lodestar to guide future action and campaigns for equality.

But even if we have an accurate understanding of social mobility, we need a deeper agenda for more equal life chances.
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