Why does Gordon Brown have a ‘big tent’?
Why does Gordon Brown have a ‘big tent’? Why, to be pertinent, does he have a ‘tent’ at all? There must have been leaders, throughout world history, who have ruled calmly and inclusively and by consensus. Yet if we were to group these people together on a Venn diagram, in their own little circle, surely this circle would not interlock extensively with the one representing ‘people who ruled from tents’.
Genghis Khan ruled from a tent. Sheltering under felt on the harsh Mongol steppes, did he ever worry about reaching out to the other side? ‘We may disagree on minor matters, such as whether I ought to behead you with my axe,’ he almost certainly did not say, to lesser warlords, ‘but I sincerely respect your views on the environment.’
Fable holds that the House of Saud started out in a Bedouin tent. That was a real progressive hotbed, was it not? Muammar Gaddafi, too, is a fan. Remember when Tony Blair visited his tent in May? He sat on a cushion, hands on his knees, gurning. Shock and awe in the baking desert. It was hard to imagine John Bercow dropping by and being made particularly welcome.
The tent of Gordon Brown, by contrast, is strictly figurative. As a mental exercise, though, it may be useful for us to imagine otherwise. Let us take Gordon and place him in a campsite. Let us make it drizzle. Now, let us take all of the surprising friends that he has made in the last few months — right the way up to the tottering Lady in Red herself. Let us put them in that campsite, too. Now. Here is my thesis. To understand exactly how much use each of them is actually going to be to Gordon, we must imagine them all together, literally putting up a big tent.
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