LONDON.
Britain’s new prime minister, Gordon Brown, has the reputation as something of a Puritan. And he knows it. In Camp David last week for his first official meeting in the United States, he borrowed from no less a figure than Mark Twain, hoping to show Britain’s closest ally a leadership style lighter than billed. Like Twain in Nevada, if he were a Puritan before he came to America, he did not remain one long.
Mr. Brownwent on to tick the boxes of American concern adroitly. Britain will remain America’s steadfast strategic ally. No final British pullout from Iraq without a corresponding U.S. draw down within the next 18 months. Britain will honor its responsibilities in the Middle East. The moral evil of Darfur will be confronted. His message: Substance trumps style. On balance, Mr. Brown hit the target of diplomatic niceties. After all, he knows the United States well; he vacations in Cape Cod most years. A shrewd political operator,he is nevertheless also a clear soul mate for the Democrats.
But his attempt to soften his imagecaused wry smiles across the Atlantic. In Britain, Mr. Brown is seen as a Puritan down to his toes. Mr. Brown’s reputation for moral probity, even dourness,remains legendary in the UK. Arguably Britain’s most successful post-1945 economics minister,his management style emphasizes control — to put it mildly. He’s famous for eschewing traditions, such as the chancellor’s glass of whisky, consumed during budget speech. He favors a glass of water. Not for him a dinner jacket and white tie, traditional garb at the annual speech to financial grandees in the City of London. Surely the mark of the Puritan.
Yet, with a current poll lead over Conservative opponent David Cameron, Mr. Brown is enjoying a political honeymoon. In recent polls, a majority of Britons approve of his flinty image. He is a novelty, for the moment. With British politics currently a land grab for the center ground, leadership personality issues and appropriation of rivals’ policies are much in vogue. Mr. Brown now wants to show policy and image distance from Tony Blair. His unfolding policy agenda is even raising speculation that Britain is set for a period of “New Puritanism” — policies designed to differentiate him from the glitz of the Blair years for good. And, almost 400 hundred years after the Pilgrim Fathers arrived in America in 1620 — progenitors oftoday’s global superpower — there are indeed signs that greater Puritanism may be returning home.
Consider Mr. Brown’s domestic social policy agenda. After the rather laissez-fairestewardship of Mr. Blair on such matters as alcohol and casino licensing, Mr. Brown is taking a different tack. He calls it “social responsibility”: the repeal of former colleagues’ legislation on casino deregulation, 24-hour drinking and classification of cannabis. He wants greater powers for the detention of terrorist suspects: up from 28 to 56 days. He favors a greater role for youth cadet forces — critics dub them “Brown shirts” — to counter youth crime. And tighter welfare rules for single parents. Puritan measures all.
His new book, “Britain’s Everyday Heroes,” even praises aspects of Edmund Burke’s conservatism — unheard of for a Labor Party leader.
It goes on. At Mr. Brown’s suggestion, a host of Union flags now flutter from government buildings; to inculcate a greater sense of “Britishness.” And Mr. Brown has overseen a new smoking ban across Britain. On July 1st, thegovernment’s Orwellian-sounding Ministry of Culture brought in draconian anti-smoking restrictions.
After four centuries — after Sir Walter Raleigh introduced it into the court of Elizabeth I — smokingis nowillegal in all British public enclosed spaces. Public opinion has fractured. Local government enforcers — lampooned as a “smoking Stasi” — can now prowl town centers in search of evaders. Many Britons, including the UK’s 10 million smokers, are not happy. As in England’s last Civil War — in the 17th century — the nation is divided between Puritan Roundheads, bent on a new order, or Royalist-Catholic Cavaliers, defending the status quo. Puritans say smoking must go the way of the pub spittoon. “Cavaliers” charge hypocrisy, pointing to the few restraints on junk food, on the Hogarthian spectacle of late night British pubs, or on the legal status on high strength cannabis. They say that excessive Puritanism is surely stalking the land when British greats Churchill, Brunel and Sherlock Holmes can have their cigars and pipes airbrushed from schoolbooks.
A New Puritanism for Britain or the pragmatic policy calculations of a new prime minister to maintain apoll lead?Thisautumn will bring answers. Mr. Brown, currently dealing with an agricultural crisis, knows he faces otherunsettling challenges ahead. In October, he will sign a new European Union treaty, virtually identical to the former EU Constitution on which British voters were promised — but now denied — a referendum.
Opponents are already making hay with this as a “cut and paste” job that will alienate many Britons. On this and on new domestic and foreign policycrises as yet unidentified, Mr. Brown’s true mettle will shortly be tested.
Ronan Thomas is a London-based correspondent.
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