Downing Street was forced into a damage limitation exercise on a number of fronts on Monday, amid a palpable sense of frustration among Mr Brown’s inner circle over the fallout from the weekend’s Group of 20 finance ministers’ meeting.
The prime minister had aimed to set the agenda by highlighting work already in train on mechanisms to make the banks pay more towards the costs of bail-outs.
In depth: G20
G20 finance ministers meet in London, ahead of the Pittsburgh summit on September 24-25
But the British government’s emphasis in Saturday’s off-record briefings to journalists on one of the four options set out by Mr Brown, the financial transactions tax, backfired badly.
The rapid rejection of a “Tobin tax” by the US, Canada and others dominated the Sunday headlines, portraying the prime minister as isolated, rather than world-leading.
Aides to Mr Brown insisted he was fully aware his speech could prove contentious. “We knew going into the G20 meeting these were pretty radical steps that would put some noses out of joint,” one government insider told the Financial Times. “The prime minister has taken a calculated risk.”
The government privately blamed the media, rather than the message, while conceding that the spinning of the speech had gone awry. Mr Brown’s spokesman said the prime minister’s intention had been to kick-start a debate on the risk-reward imbalance enjoyed by the banks, rather than to gain immediate agreement on a transactions tax.
“No one has said these are not the right things to be debating at this time,” the prime minister’s spokesman said. “No one was looking for a definitive answer over this weekend – the prime minister was looking for a sense of where the finance ministers were.”
Political rivals scoffed at this interpretation of events, suggesting the prime minister had been caught out trying to gain political advantage by bank bashing. The Tories – often accused by Mr Brown of floating opportunistic ideas – accused him of putting politics above policy.
Mark Hoban, the shadow financial secretary, told the FT: “Car crashes like this happen when the prime minister chases headlines.”
The Treasury might well agree with this blunt assessment. Alistair Darling publicly backed Mr Brown. But the chancellor is understood to be frustrated at the way the proposals were framed, particularly as Tim Geithner, the US Treasury Secretary, was known to oppose a Tobin tax.
The incident will fuel concerns among Labour MPs about how effectively the Downing Street machine is operating before a general election. Some ministers lament the absence of an Alastair Campbell-style political bruiser who can spot media elephant traps well in advance – and have the authority to tell the prime minister to avoid them.
The problem was in evidence as Mr Brown came under intense media fire for apparently mis-spelling the name of a dead soldier in a handwritten letter of condolence. In a stormy morning briefing to the Parliamentary lobby, the prime minister’s spokesman appeared reluctant to concede that Mr Brown might have erred.
“The handwritten letter clearly contains mistakes on the basis that the person who received it has misread the words,” the official said.
The tone had markedly changed by the time of the regular afternoon briefing. Asked about the fact that Mr Brown also appeared to have got the dead soldier’s surname wrong in a list of the fallen read out to MPs, his spokesman replied: “It’s only human to stumble over these things.”
