Conference round-up podcast

The conference season is over for another year, and my podcast rounding up the events of the past three weeks is now available HERE. All in all, I don't really think it taught us a great deal about the future direction of British politics over the next few years, for the simple reason that we are still in this sort of "phoney war" stage waiting for the new Labour leader to emerge to take on David Cameron.

"Until we know the identity of the person Mr Cameron will be up against at the next election, we won’t really know how the dynamics of the contest are going to shape-up. We also don’t know whether, once rid of Mr Blair, the public will be prepared to give the new Prime Minister a fair wind, as they did in 1990 for instance when John Major took over.

"Some in the Labour Party appear mesmerized by Mr Cameron, arguing that they need a figure of comparable freshness and charm to counter the new Tory threat. For my part, I tend more to the view that a “style v substance” election would suit Labour, and that a man of Mr Brown’s vast experience would take a jumped-up PR man like Cameron apart.

"What we do know is that governments tend to lose elections rather than oppositions win them, and that it is the party in power that has the greater ability to make the political weather. So whatever Mr Cameron may think, and whatever the polls may say, my bet is that the next election is still Labour’s to lose."

Labour's uneasy peace

The conference caravan may have moved on to the Tories in Bournemouth, but for the benefit of those who want a recap of last week's events in Manchester, my Labour Conference Podcast is now live.

As the great Mr Rawnsley said yesterday, the conference was ulimately a fudge that didn't really resolve either of the two big questions facing Labour - when is Mr Blair finally going to step down, and who is going to replace him?

"The warring factions have made their peace, but just like when the mafia hoods made their peace with eachother in the Godfather movies, it is a very fragile peace."

You can listen to the podcast HERE, view the text version HERE, and subscribe to the podcast by copying THIS SHORTCUT into your feed reader or listening software.

Thanks by the way to the podlounge.com for including my Week in Politics podcast in their directory. It lists all 36 of my podcasts HERE.

I expect I'll get around to posting on the Tories when I can be arsed....

Have we all misinterpreted John Reid?

Virtually everybody is interpreting John Reid's speech to the Labour Conference yesterday as the opening salvo in a leadership bid, and they may very well be right. It is not the only interpretation however, and Reid deliberately left things a bit ambiguous so that any of these interpretations can be retrospectively applied.

They are:

1. Reid has no intention of standing for the leadership. Yesterday's speech was purely the speech of a Home Secretary and any suggestion to the contrary is just media "froth." When Reid used the L-word, he was simply talking about the need for strong leadership in confronting crime and terrorism.

2. He hasn't made up his mind. The speech was a toe-in-the-water exercise, more than likely prompted by the Frank Luntz survey on Newsnight on Monday evening showing him as potentially the most popular leader among floating voters. If this interpretation is correct, JR would have been heartened by the response in the hall.

3. He is leaving open the option of running for the leadership, but the primary purpose of yesterday's speech was to keep up the pressure on Gordon Brown. This view rests on the theory that what happens next depends on whether Gordon behaves himself. If he does, he gets the endorsement. If not, he gets challenged.

4. His purpose was not to put down a marker for the leadership at all, but to reinforce his own position against the possibility of dismissal by Prime Minister Brown. The phrase "I intend to play my full part" could be translated: "I mean to extract a firm promise from the bastard to keep me in my current job. Or else."

5. He is definitely a candidate for the leadership, although he will not actually announce it formally until Tony Blair names the date for his departure. The remarks about others not being diminished when one shines could be read as an appeal for Brown to accept a position in his Cabinet.

If I have to take a view, I'm going with a combination of Nos 3 and 4 for now, as I genuinely do believe that Reid hasn't decided and that Blair is still keeping open the option of endorsing Brown at the last minute.

I think it was telling that Trevor Kavanagh, who must know Reid fairly well, said on Newsnight this week that he didn't think Reid really wanted the job. Against that, he is a politician, and somebody who doesn't want to be PM probably has no business being in the Cabinet in the first place.

So where does it all leave us?

So as Labour bids farewell to Manchester, as well as John Prescott, what conclusions can we draw from the week's events? I would draw the following:

1. By dint of his conference tour-de-force on Tuesday, Tony Blair has earned the right to stay on into the summer of 2007.

2. Gordon Brown has largely recovered the ground lost in the aftermath of the abortive "coup," but remains on probation.

3. Provided there are no further attempts to hustle him out of the door, Mr Blair will continue to hold out the possiblity of endorsing Brown, while making him sweat for it until the very last minute.

4. If however the infighting erupts again, and the polls show they can win, the Blairites will run John Reid against the Chancellor.

That's my objective assessment of the situation. My personal view remains however that to challenge Brown would be a mistake that will only help the Tories, and that the Blairites should stop threatening an alternative candidate and accept this.

Of all the punditry I have read about the conference, the piece that made the most sense to me was the piece by David Clark in today's Guardian.

"Parties that spurn leadership favourites for internal reasons unrelated to merit tend to regret such decisions. Labour passed over Denis Healey for Michael Foot in 1980 even though he was far better qualified for the job. The Tories did the same to Michael Heseltine 10 years later in revenge for his role in deposing Margaret Thatcher.

"Labour can avoid that fate, but only if it is willing to put the spite merchants in their place and choose the only candidate with the substance and experience to govern successfully and win the next election. That means uniting behind Gordon Brown."

Blair the ingrate

Mo Mowlam (pictured) was just one of the people who played a big part in the creation of New Labour who didn't get a mention in Blair's valedictory conference speech. Maybe he was afraid she would get another standing ovation. Should he have taken this last opportunity to express his gratitude to the contribution made by those who, like Mo, are no longer with us? More on this theme on my Labour Home Blog.

Spot the difference

"Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."

Matthew 28, vv 18-20


"Whatever you do, I'm always with you. Head and heart. You've given me all I have ever achieved, and all that we've achieved, together, for the country. Next year I won't be making this speech. But, in the years to come, wherever I am, whatever I do. I'm with you. Wishing you well. Wanting you to win. You're the future now. Make the most of it."

Tony Blair, 26 September 2006

Blair the healer says farewell

And so it is done. Tony Blair has made his last party conference speech as Labour leader and Prime Minister, and British politics will never be quite the same again.

Watching the speech via the BBC website rather than live in the conference hall as of old, it was clear to me that he has his eyes on one last great historical achievement before he hands over, working to resolve the Middle East conflict that is the fulcrum of so many of the world's problems.

"I will dedicate myself with the same commitment I have given in Northern Ireland to advancing peace between Israel and Palestine," he said.

If he can achieve that, I will gladly take back everything I have ever said about him.

But Mr Blair also made clear his intention to try to heal the wounds closer to home, pledging to work to unify the party in pursuit of "the only legacy that matters" - a fourth-term general election win.

And in that context, though they stopped short of an endorsement, his words about Gordon Brown this afternoon must surely be seen as an attempt to end the "deep fissure" in the New Labour family about which Peter Mandelson spoke this morning.

Mandelson's words seemed to me to signal a rapprochement and Blair's tribute to Brown's "remarkable service to the country" has underlined that.

Are the Blairites finally getting the message that by attacking Gordon, they only help David Cameron's Tories in the longer-run? Let's hope so.

Either way, this speech surely laid to rest any scurrillous suggestions that Blair sees Cameron as his real political heir, and is content to adopt an "apres moi le deluge" approach to the Labour Party.

The attacks on Cameron were the most convincing - and most loudly applauded - bits of the speech, mocking his foreign policy for simultaneously flirting with both anti-Americanism and Euro-scepticism.

"If we can't take this lot apart in the next few years, we shouldn't be in the business of politics at all," he said.

I may hate the bugger for what he did in Iraq, for what his henchmen did to David Kelly, and for all the years of media-manipulation and spin. But you can't help but admire a winner.

Memories of Tony

As any regular reader of this blog, or for that matter any of my newspaper columns will know, I have not always been very complimentary about Tony Blair. There is something about his showmanship and shallow ideological roots that repels me and in that respect, I suppose I have always been a natural Brownite, yearning for a return to the more substantial, less image-based style of politics that prevailed during my formative years.

But it is that very showmanship and ability to make others hear what they want to hear that makes him a master of the setpiece party conference address, and I confess that there have been times when even a sceptic like me has been held spellbound by them.

I heard my first live Blair conference address in 1995, shortly after joining the Lobby. This was the year of his "Britain as a young country" speech, with Blair successfully projecting himself as the young moderniser who could give Britain a fresh start after the sleaze and division of the Major years.

Each of his subsequent speeches was distinguished by a memorable catchphrase, from "A beacon to the world " (1997), to "The giving age" (1998), "The forces of conservatism" (1999), "My irreducible core" (2000) and so on up to "No reverse gear" (2004) and last year's "We are the changemakers."

Without a doubt, though, the best and in retrospect most poignant was his 2001 "New world order" speech made in the aftermath of 9/11, in which he set out his vision not just of a better Britain, but a better world.

It was much caricatured. Matthew Parris memorably wrote at the time that he "left the runway on a limited strike to remove one individual from a hillside in Afghanistan, then veered off on a neo-imperial mission to save the entire planet."

True, but there undoubtedly was a feeling in the days immediately after 9/11 that, as Blair put it in that speech, "out of the shadow of this evil should emerge lasting good."

"This is a moment to seize," he said. "The kaleidoscope has been shaken, the pieces are in flux, soon they will settle again. Before they do let us reorder this world around us and use modern science to provide prosperity for all. Science can't make that choice for us, only the moral power of a world acting as a community can."

He was right, but sadly, he couldn't be as good as his words, and that phrase "The moral power of a world acting as a community" sounds unbearably hollow in the light of the unilateral invasion of Iraq which shattered not just that world community but the whole concept of international co-operation.

Today Mr Blair makes his 13th and final speech. But whatever memorable phrases he comes up with, it won't change the fact that his premiership has been a missed opportunity, both at home and abroad.

Update: More great party conference memories, including Iain Duncan Smith turning up the volume, David Steel telling the Liberals to prepare for government, and Denis Healey defying the old left, can be viewed HERE.

Gordon shows why he's the man

As the previous post makes clear, it's not my opinion that counts. Gordon Brown's campaign for the leadership of the Labour Party will stand or fall on the extent to which he can win over those people who are NOT his natural supporters.

But for what it's worth, the Chancellor's brilliant party conference speech today demonstrated to me exactly why I believe he is the man to run Britain.

It wasn't so much the stuff about social justice, constitutional reform, the "empowerment agenda," the "good society" and rebalancing the honours system - although I warmly welcome everything he said about those things.

No, it was because Brown tackled head-on the idea that political style is somehow more important than political substance - encapsulated in his phrase: "I am more interested in the future of the Arctic Circle (pictured) than the future of the Arctic Monkeys."

"If I thought the future of politics was about celebrity, I wouldn't be in politics. Some see politics as spectacle. I see politics as service," he said.

The significance of this lies in the context in which it was said - a concerted attempt by the Blairites to hang Brown out to dry by calling his "image" into question, knowing they cannot get him on his record.

The reason I hope they fail is not necessarily because I disagree with them politically - many of Alan Milburn's ideas about the "new localism" are brilliant, for example - but because I think they are cheapening politics.

Brown closed his speech by saying he would "relish" the chance to take on David Cameron, the apotheosis of style over substance. Today's speech showed why he should get it.

Who's backing Gordon?

Gordon Brown is today making the most important speech of his career. But as Iain Dale has already pointed out, it is not the reaction in the conference hall that will really matter but the reaction in the media.

Says Dale: "If it bombs, the media will again develop a herd instinct, just as they did last year following David Davis's speech." And he should know of course.

To me this touches on an important issue - just where is Brown's support in the media going to come from in the forthcoming leadership election?

Over recent weeks, even newspapers one might have expected to be loyal to the Chancellor in any leadership campaign have started to question his credentials - as Mike Smithson pointed out on PoliticalBetting.com on Saturday.

Brown's most steadfast ally in the media is likely to be the Daily Mirror. Its Associate Editor Kevin Maguire calls the shots on political matters and he is a long-standing admirer of Brown. Besides that, the Mirror is likely to view a Brown premiership as slightly more in tune with the traditional Labour values held by much of its readership than a continuation of Blairism under an alternative leader.

The Daily Mail has also long been regarded as Brownite territory, largely on account of the friendship between Brown and its editor Paul Dacre, although presumably he also feels that the Chancellor's solidity and experience are the kind of virtues that appeal to Mail readers.

But leaving those two, admittedly influential newspapers aside, Brown appears to be facing an uphill struggle to build a broader coalition of media support as the contest draws nearer.

The Guardian has noticeably changed its editorial tune from "smooth and orderly handover" to "there must be a contest" over recent weeks and it might be that the voices of Brown's admirers on the staff - Toynbee, Ashley et al - are being cancelled out by those of Blairites such as Martin Kettle.

As for the rest, the $64m question is of course which way Murdoch will turn. He is said to like and admire Brown, but in a contest between Brown and, say, John Reid, it is hard to see Murdoch backing the candidate perceived as the more left-wing.

On the other hand the coventional wisdom about Murdoch is that he always backs the winner, in which case, it is hard at the moment to see any departure from Brown.

But if, as is widely believed, Murdoch is planning to endorse David Cameron at the next election, he might just do what he has never done before - deliberately back a Blairite loser, to give himself the perfect excuse to switch his support to the Tories.

I can almost see The Sun's front page now. "Tony Blair was a great British Prime Minister. We were proud to support him through three magnificent general election victories in 1997, 2001 and 2005. But now, by electing the old-fashioned socialist Gordon Brown as leader, Labour has turned its back on Blairism - and so we're turning our back on Labour. Vote Cameron for 2009!"