The Tragic Mr Brown (Part III)

I'm back in the library bashing out a post before my allotted one hour runs out. Forget about putting pictures in, unless they're old ones. I just spent £45 to find out there's nothing wrong with my computer or router. And my service provider says there's nothing wrong their end. I have to sort this before next week, or I'll get caught up in Mercury retrograde and that'll be that for 3 weeks!

Anyway, in the UK we are experiencing another round of calls to get rid of Gordon Brown as Prime Minister. Specifically, 9 Labour MPs have formally requested a leadership election (which Brown could, of course, win.) The more who do this, the more emboldened others become to do so, and once 70 MPs have sent in the papers making the request, there will have to be a leadership election. The first MP to make the call was a junior Minister, and she promptly got sacked, as she would have known, but someone had to make the start. There is such a groundswell of dissatisfaction with Gordon Brown amongst MPs.


Click to Enlarge

Brown is particularly sensitive at the moment to the movements of Pluto. Natally he has Chiron at 1 Capricorn conjunct MC at 5 Capricorn. Blair also had a Chiron-MC conjunction in Capricorn. Both men have an intense desire to leave a legacy (Capricorn MC) and a way of damaging it by their own volition (Chiron). Blair did leave a real legacy: his government managed to both keep the economy growing while putting loads more money into public services. Yet all many of us remember is the Iraq debacle and the bulging-eyed religious fanatic that Blair became. His achievement was real, but it will take time, perhaps another generation, to acknowledge it.

Brown shares in that same achievement, for he was the Chancellor, the controller of the national purse-strings, during those years. He is busy damaging that legacy by the very fact of being PM, a position to which he was never suited. Again, it may be years before Brown is remembered for his achievements as Chancellor rather than his shortcomings as Prime Minister.

Of course, with Pluto entering Capricorn, we are starting to encounter some of the limitations of the economic model under which Blair and Brown, and the whole western world, were operating. It was a model of endless growth which had been there for many decades. A model which is obviously worrying if you have any sort of perspective, but which whole populations had been caught up in. You can't blame the politicians, because we elected them. And all people wanted, quite often, was a quite understandable improvement in their living conditions. It was a sort of lemming thing. So within the economic universe they inherited, Brown and Blair did quite well. At the same time, history will make a wider judgement not just about them but the wider profligate western world of which they were a part.

Even though the country's current economic difficulties are in many ways not of Brown's making, the fact is he is not a leader, he doesn't like public exposure (half his planets in 12th House Pisces), and so his unpopularity is largely of his own making.

When Labour got hammered in the local elections back in April, Pluto was very close to Brown's natal Chiron. Since then the unrest has continued on and off. Now with Pluto having just turned Direct but still stationing, a new phase in the destruction of his leadership seems to be beginning. Instead of mutterings and insinuations, we have concrete action to remove him starting up. The requisite 70 MPs may yet not sign up, but I think they will.

The weakness of Gordon Brown's position was highlighted a month ago, after another bye-election hammering, when his Foreign Secretary David Milliband wrote a newspaper article about the future of the Labour government that did not mention Gordon Brown. And Milliband kept his job! (See my posting of Aug 13th).

So the next significant Pluto event for Mr Brown will be when Pluto crosses his Chiron later this year. If he is still around, that may be when he finally goes, the damage to his legacy done, no longer the Iron Chancellor but the Prime Minister who failed. He will still have Pluto conjunct MC to go through, and if he is still PM, it may describe his drubbing at the next general election.

I seem to be having a series on the Tragic Mr Brown, plotting the course of his downfall. It is not because I want him to fail. It just seems to be what is happening. It is tragic because he so desperately wanted the job all his life, yet is so unsuited to it.

I have 2 minutes of my one hour left. Over and out...