Former politics professor Bill Jones, who blogged as Skipper, was less than impressed by the suggestion! The original blog post is here.
Showing posts with label Labour leadership. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Labour leadership. Show all posts
Saturday, December 19, 2015
Corbyn's leadership predicted on this blog in 2006!
Looking back over some old blog posts today, I came across this gem from 2006. A propos of a discussion of who might succeed Tony Blair and whether Alan Milburn might put up as a challenger to Gordon Brown, the former Reading MP Jane Griffiths appears to predict Jeremy Corbyn's leadership of the party.
Former politics professor Bill Jones, who blogged as Skipper, was less than impressed by the suggestion! The original blog post is here.
Former politics professor Bill Jones, who blogged as Skipper, was less than impressed by the suggestion! The original blog post is here.
Friday, November 14, 2014
If Johnson won't play ball, what about Andy Burnham?
Despite yesterday's fighting speech, Ed Miliband's personal unpopularity is dragging his party down and making the re-election of a Tory-led government much more likely. For the party to fail to recognise and act on this would amount to a betrayal of its own values. Here's this week's Journal column.
http://www.thejournal.co.uk/opinion/paul-linford-labour-not-address-8113524
http://www.thejournal.co.uk/opinion/paul-linford-labour-not-address-8113524
Saturday, February 18, 2012
What next for David Miliband?
It was Clement Attlee who famously told a Labour colleague that a period of silence from him would now be welcome, thereby inadvertently earning himself an entry in the Oxford Dictionary of Modern Quotations.
And it is certainly true that there are times in politics when it is best to keep your head down and your mouth shut.
By and large, the past 15 months have been such a period for David Miliband, the South Shields MP and former Foreign Secretary who, until October 2010, had been widely expected to become leader of his party.
But it wasn't to be and, rather than risk the sort of comparisons that might have undermined his younger brother's leadership, the elder Miliband stood bank from the political frontline and confined his public statements to the occasional supportive message.
Such was ostensibly the nature of his article in the New Statesman a couple of weeks back in which he outlined a seven-point plan for the future of the party and called for “restless thinking” in its bid to recapture power.
He made a point of praising his brother Ed on no fewer than four occasions, highlighting his success in maintaining party unity, and having spoken out "powerfully" over issues such as welfare cutbacks.
But that, of course, did not stop the political commentariat once more portraying David’s intervention as a covert leadership bid.
The resulting furore saw Mr Miliband forced into another round of interviews in which he appeared to rule out any return to the frontbench on the grounds that it would merely perpetuate the “soap opera.”
One rather venomous interpretation of his actions came from the Telegraph columnist Matthew Norman in an article headlined: ‘The sniping and self-pity of a truly feeble man.’
Likening Mr Miliband’s political modus operandi to the game of Knock Down Ginger, he accused him of thrice raising the standard of internal revolt before “scuttling away to hide in the bushes.”
“The pattern was set in the summer of 2008, when David wrote a barely coded article in the Guardian lacerating Gordon Brown. The moment it was greeted as the challenge to the PM’s authority that it certainly was, off he scarpered, denying any such intent,” he wrote.
“Within a year, his close friend and Cabinet ally James Purnell resigned, laying the ground for David to oust Mr Brown by doing the same. Again he bottled it, and stayed."
Mr Norman saw the New Statesman article, and the semi-retreat that followed it, as more of the same, going on to suggest a permanent silence from a man he charmingly described as “a mincing paean to metrosexual narcissism.”
It was left to the former Labour North official and Blairite blogger Hopi Sen to leap to Mr Miliband’s defence, pointedly describing Mr Norman as a “food writer” alongside various other less polite terms.
But beneath all this knockabout lies a serious point - namely what is to become of a politician who still has much to say about the future direction of his party – but who is unable to say it without his actions being either over- or mis-interpreted?
As one of those ubiquitous ‘friends’ put it: “This is someone who has spent a lot of time thinking about the future of the Labour Party. The way the cookie has crumbled, the only way he can do that is through argument and debate.”
Perhaps the real purpose of David’s New Statesman article was to find out whether he can actually now start to contribute to that debate without others seeing it as an attempt to further destabilise his brother’s somewhat faltering leadership.
If that was indeed his intention, the answer seems to be a resounding no.
Sadly, the likely upshot of this is that Mr Miliband may well come to feel that the only way to end the soap opera will be for him to remove himself from the political arena entirely, and leave Parliament at the next general election.
And given his stature in both the country and the region, I, for one, would consider that a shame.
And it is certainly true that there are times in politics when it is best to keep your head down and your mouth shut.
By and large, the past 15 months have been such a period for David Miliband, the South Shields MP and former Foreign Secretary who, until October 2010, had been widely expected to become leader of his party.
But it wasn't to be and, rather than risk the sort of comparisons that might have undermined his younger brother's leadership, the elder Miliband stood bank from the political frontline and confined his public statements to the occasional supportive message.
Such was ostensibly the nature of his article in the New Statesman a couple of weeks back in which he outlined a seven-point plan for the future of the party and called for “restless thinking” in its bid to recapture power.
He made a point of praising his brother Ed on no fewer than four occasions, highlighting his success in maintaining party unity, and having spoken out "powerfully" over issues such as welfare cutbacks.
But that, of course, did not stop the political commentariat once more portraying David’s intervention as a covert leadership bid.
The resulting furore saw Mr Miliband forced into another round of interviews in which he appeared to rule out any return to the frontbench on the grounds that it would merely perpetuate the “soap opera.”
One rather venomous interpretation of his actions came from the Telegraph columnist Matthew Norman in an article headlined: ‘The sniping and self-pity of a truly feeble man.’
Likening Mr Miliband’s political modus operandi to the game of Knock Down Ginger, he accused him of thrice raising the standard of internal revolt before “scuttling away to hide in the bushes.”
“The pattern was set in the summer of 2008, when David wrote a barely coded article in the Guardian lacerating Gordon Brown. The moment it was greeted as the challenge to the PM’s authority that it certainly was, off he scarpered, denying any such intent,” he wrote.
“Within a year, his close friend and Cabinet ally James Purnell resigned, laying the ground for David to oust Mr Brown by doing the same. Again he bottled it, and stayed."
Mr Norman saw the New Statesman article, and the semi-retreat that followed it, as more of the same, going on to suggest a permanent silence from a man he charmingly described as “a mincing paean to metrosexual narcissism.”
It was left to the former Labour North official and Blairite blogger Hopi Sen to leap to Mr Miliband’s defence, pointedly describing Mr Norman as a “food writer” alongside various other less polite terms.
But beneath all this knockabout lies a serious point - namely what is to become of a politician who still has much to say about the future direction of his party – but who is unable to say it without his actions being either over- or mis-interpreted?
As one of those ubiquitous ‘friends’ put it: “This is someone who has spent a lot of time thinking about the future of the Labour Party. The way the cookie has crumbled, the only way he can do that is through argument and debate.”
Perhaps the real purpose of David’s New Statesman article was to find out whether he can actually now start to contribute to that debate without others seeing it as an attempt to further destabilise his brother’s somewhat faltering leadership.
If that was indeed his intention, the answer seems to be a resounding no.
Sadly, the likely upshot of this is that Mr Miliband may well come to feel that the only way to end the soap opera will be for him to remove himself from the political arena entirely, and leave Parliament at the next general election.
And given his stature in both the country and the region, I, for one, would consider that a shame.
Saturday, June 04, 2011
Does Ed need David back like a hole in the head?
With Labour leading in the opinion polls and the relationship between the Coalition partners growing increasingly fractious, it would be easy to make the assumption that these are good days for Ed Miliband.
And doubtless on a personal level they are, what with him having finally tied the knot with long-standing partner Justine at a ceremony in Nottinghamshire last week.
But as he returns from his short honeymoon this weekend, I suspect that Ed himself will be feeling rather less complacent about his party's prospects.
Any serious analysis of Labour's performance in last month's local and devolved elections suggests it is currently a long way away from being in a position to win power again.
Sure, the party did well in its Northern heartlands, recapturing big city councils like Newcastle after the Lib Dem interregnum – but it made few inroads in the Southern marginals it needs to win back from the Tories.
And as for Scotland and the party's defeat to Alex Salmond's resurgent SNP….well, the less said the better.
One idea increasingly doing the rounds at present is that what Ed really needs, apart from the operation on his adenoids that is due later this summer, is his brother David back on the front bench.
But while the return of the South Shields MP and former Foreign Secretary would certainly make the Shadow Cabinet look more like a government-in-waiting, I wonder if it might ultimately cause more problems than it would solve.
The biggest and most obvious danger would be that David's return in a senior role would invite comparisons between he and his younger brother which would be less-than-flattering to the latter.
Ed Miliband is already being outshone by his namesake Ed Balls, who has taken to the job of opposition like the proverbial duck to water.
But the Shadow Chancellor and Coalition-basher-in-chief is not even popular within his own party, let alone with the wider public, and as such represents no real threat to his leader.
The elder Miliband is a different matter. Not only did a significant number of Shadow Cabinet members support him for the top job, a majority of Labour members did too.
If history is any guide, neither of the Miliband brothers will be the one to lead Labour back to the promised land.
Whenever the party has lost power after a long period in government, it has usually taken several goes before alighting on a leader capable of persuading the electorate to entrust it with power again.
After the fall of the Attlee government in 1951, it took the party 12 years before it found such a leader in Harold Wilson. And after 1979, it had a 15-year wait before Tony Blair came along.
Some think Labour's next Prime Minister is likely to come from the 2010 intake - with Stella Creasy and Chuka Umunna the names most frequently mentioned - although for my part I wouldn't write off class of '97 alumnus Yvette Cooper just yet.
Either way, if David Miliband isn't going to come back onto the front bench, it calls into question why he is still in the House of Commons at all.
For all his genuinely heartfelt commitment to the people of South Shields, he is a big politician who demands a big stage for his next political role.
The trouble is that, whether David likes it or not, there are still a lot of people around who would dearly like his next role to be that of leader of the Labour Party in his brother's stead.
And so long as that remains the case, the odds must be on him staying where he is.
And doubtless on a personal level they are, what with him having finally tied the knot with long-standing partner Justine at a ceremony in Nottinghamshire last week.
But as he returns from his short honeymoon this weekend, I suspect that Ed himself will be feeling rather less complacent about his party's prospects.
Any serious analysis of Labour's performance in last month's local and devolved elections suggests it is currently a long way away from being in a position to win power again.
Sure, the party did well in its Northern heartlands, recapturing big city councils like Newcastle after the Lib Dem interregnum – but it made few inroads in the Southern marginals it needs to win back from the Tories.
And as for Scotland and the party's defeat to Alex Salmond's resurgent SNP….well, the less said the better.
One idea increasingly doing the rounds at present is that what Ed really needs, apart from the operation on his adenoids that is due later this summer, is his brother David back on the front bench.
But while the return of the South Shields MP and former Foreign Secretary would certainly make the Shadow Cabinet look more like a government-in-waiting, I wonder if it might ultimately cause more problems than it would solve.
The biggest and most obvious danger would be that David's return in a senior role would invite comparisons between he and his younger brother which would be less-than-flattering to the latter.
Ed Miliband is already being outshone by his namesake Ed Balls, who has taken to the job of opposition like the proverbial duck to water.
But the Shadow Chancellor and Coalition-basher-in-chief is not even popular within his own party, let alone with the wider public, and as such represents no real threat to his leader.
The elder Miliband is a different matter. Not only did a significant number of Shadow Cabinet members support him for the top job, a majority of Labour members did too.
If history is any guide, neither of the Miliband brothers will be the one to lead Labour back to the promised land.
Whenever the party has lost power after a long period in government, it has usually taken several goes before alighting on a leader capable of persuading the electorate to entrust it with power again.
After the fall of the Attlee government in 1951, it took the party 12 years before it found such a leader in Harold Wilson. And after 1979, it had a 15-year wait before Tony Blair came along.
Some think Labour's next Prime Minister is likely to come from the 2010 intake - with Stella Creasy and Chuka Umunna the names most frequently mentioned - although for my part I wouldn't write off class of '97 alumnus Yvette Cooper just yet.
Either way, if David Miliband isn't going to come back onto the front bench, it calls into question why he is still in the House of Commons at all.
For all his genuinely heartfelt commitment to the people of South Shields, he is a big politician who demands a big stage for his next political role.
The trouble is that, whether David likes it or not, there are still a lot of people around who would dearly like his next role to be that of leader of the Labour Party in his brother's stead.
And so long as that remains the case, the odds must be on him staying where he is.
Saturday, December 04, 2010
Labour don't do assassinations, but if they did....
When Ed Miliband was elected Labour leader on the opening day of the party's conference in Manchester in September, a leading Tory blogger delivered a withering verdict on the result.
"They’ve missed out Hague and gone straight to IDS," said Paul Staines, author of the Guido Fawkes blog which, while not exactly impartial in its coverage of the political scene, is not without influence at Westminster.
Staines was, so far as I am aware, the first political pundit to make the comparison between 'Red Ed' and the failed Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith, but he certainly hasn't proved to be the last.
"It may be too early to start talking about Ed Miliband not making it to the next election as Labour leader, but many more performances at PMQs as poor as he put on today and it won’t be long before he’s in IDS territory," said another this week.
Wednesday's Prime Minister's questions should have been a breeze for Mr Miliband with the continuing three-way split in the Liberal Democrats over whether to vote for tuition fees, vote against them or abstain.
On top of that, he had the leaked critique by Bank of England governor Mervyn King describing Prime Minister David Cameron and his Chancellor George Osborne as "out of their depth."
Yet Mr Miliband chose instead to base his attack on another leaked document in which William Hague had described himself, Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne as 'Thatcher's children.'
"I would rather be a child of Thatcher than a son of Brown," the Prime Minister responded, ramming home the open goal to hoots of laughter from the government benches.
For Mr Miliband to attack the coalition for its Thatcherite tendencies was politically inept on so many levels it is hard to know where to start.
To begin with, Mrs Thatcher would not even have contemplated some of the things the coalition is doing, particularly in the area of welfare, so the comparison breaks down at the first hurdle.
But the real problem with referencing Margaret Thatcher in contemporary political debate is the wildly differing reactions she still elicits, even 20 years on from her downfall.
Labour's core voters may still regard her as the devil incarnate - but to many of the swing voters the party needs to win back, she was, and remains, a heroine.
Inevitably, the mounting discontent over Ed's slow start has led to continuing speculation that South Shields MP David Miliband might yet get a second shot at the leadership.
For my part, I can't see it. David may have deserved to get the job in September, but his brother's performance since then is in danger of trashing the entire Miliband brand.
It is simply inconceivable to my mind that, charged with finding another new leader at this stage, the party would replace a failed Miliband with….another Miliband.
Shadow Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper, who should have stood for the job this time round, is surely in pole position to take over should the opportunity arise.
What will probably save Ed Miliband is that Labour doesn't really do leadership assassinations. They knew Michael Foot was going to lose badly in 1983, yet passed up the chance to put Denis Healey into the job instead.
They probably knew Gordon Brown was going to lose in 2010, but again, they failed to move decisively against him.
The big difference, though, between those two leaders and the current one is that while they, at least to begin with, could claim the support of their own MPs, Mr Miliband was foisted on his by the wider party.
And, of course, there was another recent party leader who found himself in exactly that position. His initials were IDS.
"They’ve missed out Hague and gone straight to IDS," said Paul Staines, author of the Guido Fawkes blog which, while not exactly impartial in its coverage of the political scene, is not without influence at Westminster.
Staines was, so far as I am aware, the first political pundit to make the comparison between 'Red Ed' and the failed Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith, but he certainly hasn't proved to be the last.
"It may be too early to start talking about Ed Miliband not making it to the next election as Labour leader, but many more performances at PMQs as poor as he put on today and it won’t be long before he’s in IDS territory," said another this week.
Wednesday's Prime Minister's questions should have been a breeze for Mr Miliband with the continuing three-way split in the Liberal Democrats over whether to vote for tuition fees, vote against them or abstain.
On top of that, he had the leaked critique by Bank of England governor Mervyn King describing Prime Minister David Cameron and his Chancellor George Osborne as "out of their depth."
Yet Mr Miliband chose instead to base his attack on another leaked document in which William Hague had described himself, Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne as 'Thatcher's children.'
"I would rather be a child of Thatcher than a son of Brown," the Prime Minister responded, ramming home the open goal to hoots of laughter from the government benches.
For Mr Miliband to attack the coalition for its Thatcherite tendencies was politically inept on so many levels it is hard to know where to start.
To begin with, Mrs Thatcher would not even have contemplated some of the things the coalition is doing, particularly in the area of welfare, so the comparison breaks down at the first hurdle.
But the real problem with referencing Margaret Thatcher in contemporary political debate is the wildly differing reactions she still elicits, even 20 years on from her downfall.
Labour's core voters may still regard her as the devil incarnate - but to many of the swing voters the party needs to win back, she was, and remains, a heroine.
Inevitably, the mounting discontent over Ed's slow start has led to continuing speculation that South Shields MP David Miliband might yet get a second shot at the leadership.
For my part, I can't see it. David may have deserved to get the job in September, but his brother's performance since then is in danger of trashing the entire Miliband brand.
It is simply inconceivable to my mind that, charged with finding another new leader at this stage, the party would replace a failed Miliband with….another Miliband.
Shadow Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper, who should have stood for the job this time round, is surely in pole position to take over should the opportunity arise.
What will probably save Ed Miliband is that Labour doesn't really do leadership assassinations. They knew Michael Foot was going to lose badly in 1983, yet passed up the chance to put Denis Healey into the job instead.
They probably knew Gordon Brown was going to lose in 2010, but again, they failed to move decisively against him.
The big difference, though, between those two leaders and the current one is that while they, at least to begin with, could claim the support of their own MPs, Mr Miliband was foisted on his by the wider party.
And, of course, there was another recent party leader who found himself in exactly that position. His initials were IDS.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Mutually assured destruction
Behind all the brave talk of new generations, it is my fairly considered view that this Labour conference has been little short of a disaster for the party.
The outcome of the leadership election, via a flawed system that appears to have awarded the prize to the less popular, as well as the less experienced brother, has overshadowed the whole week in Manchester.
Had David Miliband won, as once seemed his appointed destiny, then the week would surely have been a breeze.
Labour would have elected an oven-ready Prime Minister who would instantly have struck fear into the coalition. Instead, the party has opted to do it the hard way.
As I have written before, I don't think Ed Miliband's politics are the problem. He was right yesterday to have distanced himself from some of the issues which caused Labour to suffer such a catastrophic loss of trust at the last two elections, and the 'Red Ed' jibs of the right-wing press will soon be shown to be self-evidently ludicrous.
Another of his nicknames, 'Forrest Gump', is perhaps nearer the mark. The trouble with Ed for me is that, for all his personal ruthlessness in fighting his elder brother for the party leadership and humiliating him in the process, he still comes across as rather well-meaning and naive.
To the Blarites, he was neither Red Ed, nor Forrest Gump, but 'The Emissary from the Planet Fuck' - apparently a reference to the fact that he was the only leading Brownite they could speak to without being told to "fuck off."
This too is revealing. Ed Miliband effectively won this contest by being the acceptable face of Brownism - by contrast with Ed Balls who was seen as its unacceptable face.
But the real problem Ed has faced this week is the psychological outworking of his brother's humiliation, culminating in today's announcement that he will not serve under him.
It undoubtedly leaves Ed weakened, and leaves Labour's already depleted top team looking even more bereft of experience, but it is merely the price he is now having to pay for upsetting the natural order of things.
Ed should perhaps have given more thought to this before he entered a contest which he did not really need to enter - that in destroying his brother, he risked ultimately destroying himself.
This self-destruction is not just a matter of whether Ed can look himself in the mirror at 3am in the morning, but whether, in laying bare the divisions within Labour in order to grab the top job, he has ultimately fatally hobbled his own election chances.
It was for all these reasons, and also partly because Ed's victory has left me feeling rather disconnected from Labour, that I posted a picture of Yvette Cooper on this blog last night under the headline "Labour's next Prime Minister."
Okay, so five years is a long time in politics, and Ed will doubtless grow in stature during that time, but in the increasingly presidential nature of our election contests, he doesn't look or sound to me like a man who could beat David Cameron.
So Dave is in for two (fixed) terms, Labour will turn to someone else for 2020, and Yvette - who in my view could have won this time and spared us this whole psychodrama - will surely make Chuka Umunna wait a while longer.
It is surprising in many ways that we have not yet had a second woman Prime Minister. The 30th anniversary of Thatcher's overthrow would seem an appopriate year in which to remedy that.
The outcome of the leadership election, via a flawed system that appears to have awarded the prize to the less popular, as well as the less experienced brother, has overshadowed the whole week in Manchester.
Had David Miliband won, as once seemed his appointed destiny, then the week would surely have been a breeze.
Labour would have elected an oven-ready Prime Minister who would instantly have struck fear into the coalition. Instead, the party has opted to do it the hard way.
As I have written before, I don't think Ed Miliband's politics are the problem. He was right yesterday to have distanced himself from some of the issues which caused Labour to suffer such a catastrophic loss of trust at the last two elections, and the 'Red Ed' jibs of the right-wing press will soon be shown to be self-evidently ludicrous.
Another of his nicknames, 'Forrest Gump', is perhaps nearer the mark. The trouble with Ed for me is that, for all his personal ruthlessness in fighting his elder brother for the party leadership and humiliating him in the process, he still comes across as rather well-meaning and naive.
To the Blarites, he was neither Red Ed, nor Forrest Gump, but 'The Emissary from the Planet Fuck' - apparently a reference to the fact that he was the only leading Brownite they could speak to without being told to "fuck off."
This too is revealing. Ed Miliband effectively won this contest by being the acceptable face of Brownism - by contrast with Ed Balls who was seen as its unacceptable face.
But the real problem Ed has faced this week is the psychological outworking of his brother's humiliation, culminating in today's announcement that he will not serve under him.
It undoubtedly leaves Ed weakened, and leaves Labour's already depleted top team looking even more bereft of experience, but it is merely the price he is now having to pay for upsetting the natural order of things.
Ed should perhaps have given more thought to this before he entered a contest which he did not really need to enter - that in destroying his brother, he risked ultimately destroying himself.
This self-destruction is not just a matter of whether Ed can look himself in the mirror at 3am in the morning, but whether, in laying bare the divisions within Labour in order to grab the top job, he has ultimately fatally hobbled his own election chances.
It was for all these reasons, and also partly because Ed's victory has left me feeling rather disconnected from Labour, that I posted a picture of Yvette Cooper on this blog last night under the headline "Labour's next Prime Minister."
Okay, so five years is a long time in politics, and Ed will doubtless grow in stature during that time, but in the increasingly presidential nature of our election contests, he doesn't look or sound to me like a man who could beat David Cameron.
So Dave is in for two (fixed) terms, Labour will turn to someone else for 2020, and Yvette - who in my view could have won this time and spared us this whole psychodrama - will surely make Chuka Umunna wait a while longer.
It is surprising in many ways that we have not yet had a second woman Prime Minister. The 30th anniversary of Thatcher's overthrow would seem an appopriate year in which to remedy that.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Saturday, May 01, 2010
It is still not clear who is going to win. It is clear, though, that Gordon is going to lose
In my Journal column today I'm calling the 2010 general election against Gordon Brown and Labour. Not an easy one for me to write for reasons I make clear in the text.
Here it is in full.
Thirteen years ago, on John Major’s last Saturday in 10 Downing Street, I wrote in my pre-election column that the over-riding factor when people cast their votes would be the desire for change.
Politics tends to go in cycles, and so this election, too, is likely to see the curtain fall for a Prime Minister who now seems ready to leave the stage.
For all the talk of “Cleggmania” and “Duffygate” altering the dynamics of the contest over the past three weeks, the key dynamic – the desire for a new beginning - has been in place from the start.
It is still not clear who is going to win on Thursday. It is, though, becoming clear that Gordon Brown is going to lose.
It’s not easy for me to have to write that. I continue to believe that Mr Brown could have been a perfectly good Prime Minister had he got the chance to be one at a time when his party as a whole was still riding high.
I also believe that history will judge him far more kindly than his contemporaries have done, and that the actions he has taken with regard to the recession will, in time, be vindicated.
But once the country began to tire of New Labour, it was always going to be a big ask for a man who has been so close to the centre of power for so long to successfully represent change.
The party’s core campaign message – “don’t risk the recovery” – has been an essentially defensive operation in a situation which cried out instead for vision.
The Gillian Duffy incident in Rochdale this week – which could have happened to any of the three party leaders – only put the seal on Mr Brown’s already fading prospects.
The real significance of it was not that he views the voters with contempt – he doesn’t – but the fact that he thought the initial exchange had been a “disaster.”
It wasn’t - Mrs Duffy had actually promised to vote Labour. But Mr Brown thought it was a “disaster” because he has lost both his self-confidence, and his ability to judge political situations.
His inability to make any inroads in the polling that followed Thursday’s final TV debate shows the public has by and large made up its mind about him, and they won’t change it now.
So, then, Clegg or Cameron? Well, I won’t dwell at length on the potential hazards for the North-East that may result from an outright Conservative victory.
Mr Cameron’s comments last weekend, suggesting the region receives too much public money, probably tell you all you need to know, however hard he later tried to row back from them.
Irrespective of that, I have argued previously that both Britain and the North-East need a balanced Parliament, for two reasons.
Firstly because the Tories cannot be trusted to govern on their own. Secondly, because this must be the last election fought on a bent electoral system which could yet produce a result on Friday that is beyond parody.
All along, the polls have suggested it will happen, but that may yet change as minds are concentrated over the remaining few days of the campaign.
The outcome that would probably best reflect the mood of the country at the moment is a Lib-Con coalition – but that can only happen, of course, if Mr Cameron puts electoral reform on the table.
If he does not, the likeliest scenario is a minority Conservative administration and – joy of joys! – a re-run of all this in a few months’ time as Prime Minster Cameron seeks a working majority.
One thing will be different next time though. Mr Brown will not be there.
Here it is in full.
Thirteen years ago, on John Major’s last Saturday in 10 Downing Street, I wrote in my pre-election column that the over-riding factor when people cast their votes would be the desire for change.
Politics tends to go in cycles, and so this election, too, is likely to see the curtain fall for a Prime Minister who now seems ready to leave the stage.
For all the talk of “Cleggmania” and “Duffygate” altering the dynamics of the contest over the past three weeks, the key dynamic – the desire for a new beginning - has been in place from the start.
It is still not clear who is going to win on Thursday. It is, though, becoming clear that Gordon Brown is going to lose.
It’s not easy for me to have to write that. I continue to believe that Mr Brown could have been a perfectly good Prime Minister had he got the chance to be one at a time when his party as a whole was still riding high.
I also believe that history will judge him far more kindly than his contemporaries have done, and that the actions he has taken with regard to the recession will, in time, be vindicated.
But once the country began to tire of New Labour, it was always going to be a big ask for a man who has been so close to the centre of power for so long to successfully represent change.
The party’s core campaign message – “don’t risk the recovery” – has been an essentially defensive operation in a situation which cried out instead for vision.
The Gillian Duffy incident in Rochdale this week – which could have happened to any of the three party leaders – only put the seal on Mr Brown’s already fading prospects.
The real significance of it was not that he views the voters with contempt – he doesn’t – but the fact that he thought the initial exchange had been a “disaster.”
It wasn’t - Mrs Duffy had actually promised to vote Labour. But Mr Brown thought it was a “disaster” because he has lost both his self-confidence, and his ability to judge political situations.
His inability to make any inroads in the polling that followed Thursday’s final TV debate shows the public has by and large made up its mind about him, and they won’t change it now.
So, then, Clegg or Cameron? Well, I won’t dwell at length on the potential hazards for the North-East that may result from an outright Conservative victory.
Mr Cameron’s comments last weekend, suggesting the region receives too much public money, probably tell you all you need to know, however hard he later tried to row back from them.
Irrespective of that, I have argued previously that both Britain and the North-East need a balanced Parliament, for two reasons.
Firstly because the Tories cannot be trusted to govern on their own. Secondly, because this must be the last election fought on a bent electoral system which could yet produce a result on Friday that is beyond parody.
All along, the polls have suggested it will happen, but that may yet change as minds are concentrated over the remaining few days of the campaign.
The outcome that would probably best reflect the mood of the country at the moment is a Lib-Con coalition – but that can only happen, of course, if Mr Cameron puts electoral reform on the table.
If he does not, the likeliest scenario is a minority Conservative administration and – joy of joys! – a re-run of all this in a few months’ time as Prime Minster Cameron seeks a working majority.
One thing will be different next time though. Mr Brown will not be there.
Saturday, January 09, 2010
Why I want a hung Parliament
Why don't I want anyone to win the general election that will happen sometime in the first half of this year? Because its high time our two main parties were forced to put their tribalism to one side and work together for the good of the country. Here's today's Journal column.
Last week, in my political preview of 2010, I put my head on the block and predicted that this year’s general election will result in a slim Tory majority of the order of that achieved by Margaret Thatcher in 1979.
The chances of such an outcome have doubtless been strengthened by the past week’s events, and yet another botched coup attempt against Gordon Brown which has left the Prime Minister badly wounded, but not quite dead.
But if a narrow Tory victory is what I think will happen come May 6 – if indeed that proves to be the election date – what do I think should happen when the country finally goes to the polls?
Well, at the risk of infuriating the supporters of both main parties – and it wouldn’t be the first time, after all – I have no hesitation in saying that I very much hope the electorate will deliver us a hung Parliament.
At this point, I can practically hear the collective ranks of the North-East’s Conservative and Labour stalwarts sighing to themselves: “We always knew he was a Liberal Democrat.”
But actually, the reason I want to see a hung Parliament is not because I want to see a Lib-Lab coalition, or even a Lib-Con one, but because I think the country now badly needs a government of national unity.
It may seem an odd time to say this, given the increasingly bitter nature of the two parties’ attacks on eachother over the past few days as the pre-election skirmishing got under way in earnest.
But in my view, the peculiar circumstances of this time in politics demand a degree of cross-party co-operation that can only happen if the two main parties are working together in government.
Why do I say this? Well, because the country is facing three big challenges at the moment which, in my view, would be best handled by a bipartisan approach.
They are, firstly, the economy, and specifically the question of how to tackle the budget deficit. Secondly, how to restore trust in politics after the twin scandals of the Iraq War and MPs’ expenses. And thirdly, how to bring our involvement in Afghanistan to a successful, or at the very least an honourable, conclusion.
On all of these key questions, whichever party wins the election will have to make some hard and potentially unpopular choices.
It would, in my view, be better if they were in a position to build a national cross-party consensus for those difficult choices rather than having to make them in the knowledge that they will be opposed for opposition’s sake.
This is particularly true of the economy. Everyone now knows that the next government will have to carry out the most vicious public spending cuts since the early 80s – so why indulge in the pretence that there is actually an alternative?
On political reform, too, it would be better if the parties could as far as possible reach agreement on the way forward, rather than for one side to face the inevitable accusations of fixing the system to suit their own ends.
The last Lab-Con coalition was, of course, the wartime one formed by Sir Winston Churchill and Clement Attlee in 1940 which successfully saw the country through to victory over Hitler in 1945.
I do not claim the peril facing us now is anything like of the order of that dark hour, but the sense of national emergency that has gripped the UK for the past year or so perhaps comes closer to it than anything since.
Last week, in my political preview of 2010, I put my head on the block and predicted that this year’s general election will result in a slim Tory majority of the order of that achieved by Margaret Thatcher in 1979.
The chances of such an outcome have doubtless been strengthened by the past week’s events, and yet another botched coup attempt against Gordon Brown which has left the Prime Minister badly wounded, but not quite dead.
But if a narrow Tory victory is what I think will happen come May 6 – if indeed that proves to be the election date – what do I think should happen when the country finally goes to the polls?
Well, at the risk of infuriating the supporters of both main parties – and it wouldn’t be the first time, after all – I have no hesitation in saying that I very much hope the electorate will deliver us a hung Parliament.
At this point, I can practically hear the collective ranks of the North-East’s Conservative and Labour stalwarts sighing to themselves: “We always knew he was a Liberal Democrat.”
But actually, the reason I want to see a hung Parliament is not because I want to see a Lib-Lab coalition, or even a Lib-Con one, but because I think the country now badly needs a government of national unity.
It may seem an odd time to say this, given the increasingly bitter nature of the two parties’ attacks on eachother over the past few days as the pre-election skirmishing got under way in earnest.
But in my view, the peculiar circumstances of this time in politics demand a degree of cross-party co-operation that can only happen if the two main parties are working together in government.
Why do I say this? Well, because the country is facing three big challenges at the moment which, in my view, would be best handled by a bipartisan approach.
They are, firstly, the economy, and specifically the question of how to tackle the budget deficit. Secondly, how to restore trust in politics after the twin scandals of the Iraq War and MPs’ expenses. And thirdly, how to bring our involvement in Afghanistan to a successful, or at the very least an honourable, conclusion.
On all of these key questions, whichever party wins the election will have to make some hard and potentially unpopular choices.
It would, in my view, be better if they were in a position to build a national cross-party consensus for those difficult choices rather than having to make them in the knowledge that they will be opposed for opposition’s sake.
This is particularly true of the economy. Everyone now knows that the next government will have to carry out the most vicious public spending cuts since the early 80s – so why indulge in the pretence that there is actually an alternative?
On political reform, too, it would be better if the parties could as far as possible reach agreement on the way forward, rather than for one side to face the inevitable accusations of fixing the system to suit their own ends.
The last Lab-Con coalition was, of course, the wartime one formed by Sir Winston Churchill and Clement Attlee in 1940 which successfully saw the country through to victory over Hitler in 1945.
I do not claim the peril facing us now is anything like of the order of that dark hour, but the sense of national emergency that has gripped the UK for the past year or so perhaps comes closer to it than anything since.
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Review of the Year 2009
With the possible exception of 2001 and 9/11, seldom has any political year in recent history been dominated by a single story to the extent that the MPs expenses scandal dominated this one.
Most people have a fairly cynical view of politicians, casually and sometimes wrongly assuming them to be in it for what they can get.
Few taxpayers however imagined that they might be footing the bill for the cost of cleaning MPs’ moats, mowing their paddocks, and doing up their second homes to enable them to make a killing on the property market.
The scandal that broke over the summer will, quite literally, change Parliament – and the nature of the relationship between the public and their elected representatives – for ever.
The sad thing is, it could all have been averted, with a little foresight and some courageous leadership on the part of the Prime Minister and his fellow party leaders.
If Gordon Brown really was the strategic political genius his admirers have always claimed him to be, he would have seen it coming a mile off and pre-empted it by introducing measures to clean up the place.
Okay, so MPs would probably have voted him down – but that would have left him in an even stronger position when the storm finally broke.
As it was, Gordon’s inability to regain the political initiative was another of the themes of a political year that seems likely to be Labour’s last full 12 months in office for some time.
At one point, it looked as though Mr Brown’s handling of the continuing economic crisis, and in particular his role in brokering the global recovery plan, was winning over the public.
But his difficulty is that when it comes to the economy, too many voters see him as part of the problem rather than part of the solution – thanks largely to his hubristic claims to have “abolished boom and bust.”
It all threatened to come to a head in May when the sequential resignations of Hazel Blears and James Purnell seemed to herald the start of a Blairite counter-revolution against his leadership.
Had South Shields MP and Foreign Secretary David Miliband followed them out of the door, it would have been – but Lord Mandelson saved the day for Gordon by talking him out of it.
Mr Brown’s troubles were by no means over though. Another long-running story that caused big problems for the government over the summer was its alleged failure properly to equip British troops in Afghanistan.
It coincided with a terrible spate of British casualties as soldiers embarked on a perilous mission to drive back the Taliban in order to allow elections to take place.
And the year ended with startling revelations about another war – the 2003 Iraq conflict which is now the subject of a wide-ranging inquiry under Sir John Chilcot.
The disclosure that former Prime Minister Tony Blair knew there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq ten days before the invasion seems likely to further sully his already tarnished reputation.
But to return to MPs’ expenses…one consequence of the saga is that it adds an extra element of unpredictability to the election which must now be held this spring.
More fringe party candidates are certain to be elected. The incumbency factor which traditionally favours sitting MPs may go into reverse. And the turnout may well be lower, leading to more volatility in outcomes.
Some believe that the scandal will ultimately lead to a better, more diverse House of Commons, a political culture in which MPs genuinely see themselves as the servants of the people rather than their masters.
Others, and I have to say I am one of them, take a more jaundiced view: that it’s an ill wind that blows no good.
Most people have a fairly cynical view of politicians, casually and sometimes wrongly assuming them to be in it for what they can get.
Few taxpayers however imagined that they might be footing the bill for the cost of cleaning MPs’ moats, mowing their paddocks, and doing up their second homes to enable them to make a killing on the property market.
The scandal that broke over the summer will, quite literally, change Parliament – and the nature of the relationship between the public and their elected representatives – for ever.
The sad thing is, it could all have been averted, with a little foresight and some courageous leadership on the part of the Prime Minister and his fellow party leaders.
If Gordon Brown really was the strategic political genius his admirers have always claimed him to be, he would have seen it coming a mile off and pre-empted it by introducing measures to clean up the place.
Okay, so MPs would probably have voted him down – but that would have left him in an even stronger position when the storm finally broke.
As it was, Gordon’s inability to regain the political initiative was another of the themes of a political year that seems likely to be Labour’s last full 12 months in office for some time.
At one point, it looked as though Mr Brown’s handling of the continuing economic crisis, and in particular his role in brokering the global recovery plan, was winning over the public.
But his difficulty is that when it comes to the economy, too many voters see him as part of the problem rather than part of the solution – thanks largely to his hubristic claims to have “abolished boom and bust.”
It all threatened to come to a head in May when the sequential resignations of Hazel Blears and James Purnell seemed to herald the start of a Blairite counter-revolution against his leadership.
Had South Shields MP and Foreign Secretary David Miliband followed them out of the door, it would have been – but Lord Mandelson saved the day for Gordon by talking him out of it.
Mr Brown’s troubles were by no means over though. Another long-running story that caused big problems for the government over the summer was its alleged failure properly to equip British troops in Afghanistan.
It coincided with a terrible spate of British casualties as soldiers embarked on a perilous mission to drive back the Taliban in order to allow elections to take place.
And the year ended with startling revelations about another war – the 2003 Iraq conflict which is now the subject of a wide-ranging inquiry under Sir John Chilcot.
The disclosure that former Prime Minister Tony Blair knew there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq ten days before the invasion seems likely to further sully his already tarnished reputation.
But to return to MPs’ expenses…one consequence of the saga is that it adds an extra element of unpredictability to the election which must now be held this spring.
More fringe party candidates are certain to be elected. The incumbency factor which traditionally favours sitting MPs may go into reverse. And the turnout may well be lower, leading to more volatility in outcomes.
Some believe that the scandal will ultimately lead to a better, more diverse House of Commons, a political culture in which MPs genuinely see themselves as the servants of the people rather than their masters.
Others, and I have to say I am one of them, take a more jaundiced view: that it’s an ill wind that blows no good.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Miliband rises as Griffin bombs
All the media attention this week was on Nick Griffin and the BNP. But meanwhile, some possibly more significant developments have been taking place behind the scenes in the Labour Party. Here's today's Journal column.
There is a widely-held maxim in our profession that all publicity is good publicity. But after Thursday night's Question Time on the BBC, I wonder if Nick Griffin would necessarily agree.
In the run-up to the programme, there were widespread fears that the British National Party leader's appearance would somehow give the far-right group the mainstream political respectability it craves.
Critics of the BBC's decision to allow him to appear cited the upsurge in support for Jean-Marie Le Pen's neo-fascist National Front party in France in 1984, following a high-profile television performance.
But in the event, those who were worried on this score need not have feared. Far from giving his party added credibility, Mr Griffin's appearance on the programme merely confirmed that neither he nor his party are serious political players.
If Mr Griffin was the political genius that his admirers - as well as some of his opponents - clearly believe him to be, then maybe they would have had a point.
But Mr Griffin is no Jean-Marie Le Pen, still less an Enoch Powell, and my overwhelming impression from watching the programme was to wonder why anyone would want to vote for this clown.
Grinning your way through a YouTube video about MPs' expenses as Prime Minister Gordon Brown did earlier this year is one thing. Grinning your way through a question about whether or not you denied the Holocaust is quite another.
For my part, I cannot disagree with Justice Secretary Jack Straw's verdict, that far from providing the BNP with a platform for a political "breakthrough," the whole episode has been a catastrophe for the party.
Meanwhile, back in the real world of serious politics....strange things seem to be stirring in the Labour undergrowth.
Today sees the return to the region of the one-time Hartlepool MP Peter Mandelson to deliver the annual South Shields Lecture in the constituency of Foreign Secretary and potential Labour leadership contender David Miliband.
The confluence of these two leading Blairites in the region at the same time has led to excitable talk that Lord Mandy may be preparing to throw over poor Mr Brown in favour of the perennial young pretender.
While this may be a case of putting two and two together and making 17, there is a certain political logic to some of the speculation, in that most Labour MPs now believe the Prime Minister to be incapable of leading them to victory next May.
But as Mr Brown's fortunes have continued to decline, Miliband Senior seems to have overcome the political banana-skins that afflicted him during 2008 to become, once more, the flavour of the month.
As I noted a few weeks back, his cause has probably been helped by the fact that his chief rival, Home Secretary Alan Johnson, has now said he's not up to the job of PM so many times that most of the party agrees with him.
As well as resuming his front-runner status for the Labour leadership, Mr Miliband is also being spoken of as a contender for the post of EU foreign minister or "high representative," due to be created once the Lisbon Treaty is ratified.
Mr Miliband used Twitter to deny the rumour yesterday, but some insist he'd be happier in that role than in No 10, and that it's actually younger brother Ed who is Mandy's chosen one.
I wrote several months ago now that I did not believe Mr Brown would lead Labour into the General Election if it became clear that the only consequence of that would be a catastrophic defeat.
The recent drip-drip-drip of information about the Prime Minister’s health, some of it emanating from within Downing Street itself, seems to confirm that an exit strategy is being carefully devised.
At the moment, I suspect Mr Brown is keeping his options open in the hope that something will turn up, but yesterday’s news that the country is still in recession will hardly have lightened his mood.
One slogan heard doing the rounds this week was “New Year, New Leader” – and once again, the name of Miliband seems to be in the frame.
There is a widely-held maxim in our profession that all publicity is good publicity. But after Thursday night's Question Time on the BBC, I wonder if Nick Griffin would necessarily agree.
In the run-up to the programme, there were widespread fears that the British National Party leader's appearance would somehow give the far-right group the mainstream political respectability it craves.
Critics of the BBC's decision to allow him to appear cited the upsurge in support for Jean-Marie Le Pen's neo-fascist National Front party in France in 1984, following a high-profile television performance.
But in the event, those who were worried on this score need not have feared. Far from giving his party added credibility, Mr Griffin's appearance on the programme merely confirmed that neither he nor his party are serious political players.
If Mr Griffin was the political genius that his admirers - as well as some of his opponents - clearly believe him to be, then maybe they would have had a point.
But Mr Griffin is no Jean-Marie Le Pen, still less an Enoch Powell, and my overwhelming impression from watching the programme was to wonder why anyone would want to vote for this clown.
Grinning your way through a YouTube video about MPs' expenses as Prime Minister Gordon Brown did earlier this year is one thing. Grinning your way through a question about whether or not you denied the Holocaust is quite another.
For my part, I cannot disagree with Justice Secretary Jack Straw's verdict, that far from providing the BNP with a platform for a political "breakthrough," the whole episode has been a catastrophe for the party.
Meanwhile, back in the real world of serious politics....strange things seem to be stirring in the Labour undergrowth.
Today sees the return to the region of the one-time Hartlepool MP Peter Mandelson to deliver the annual South Shields Lecture in the constituency of Foreign Secretary and potential Labour leadership contender David Miliband.
The confluence of these two leading Blairites in the region at the same time has led to excitable talk that Lord Mandy may be preparing to throw over poor Mr Brown in favour of the perennial young pretender.
While this may be a case of putting two and two together and making 17, there is a certain political logic to some of the speculation, in that most Labour MPs now believe the Prime Minister to be incapable of leading them to victory next May.
But as Mr Brown's fortunes have continued to decline, Miliband Senior seems to have overcome the political banana-skins that afflicted him during 2008 to become, once more, the flavour of the month.
As I noted a few weeks back, his cause has probably been helped by the fact that his chief rival, Home Secretary Alan Johnson, has now said he's not up to the job of PM so many times that most of the party agrees with him.
As well as resuming his front-runner status for the Labour leadership, Mr Miliband is also being spoken of as a contender for the post of EU foreign minister or "high representative," due to be created once the Lisbon Treaty is ratified.
Mr Miliband used Twitter to deny the rumour yesterday, but some insist he'd be happier in that role than in No 10, and that it's actually younger brother Ed who is Mandy's chosen one.
I wrote several months ago now that I did not believe Mr Brown would lead Labour into the General Election if it became clear that the only consequence of that would be a catastrophic defeat.
The recent drip-drip-drip of information about the Prime Minister’s health, some of it emanating from within Downing Street itself, seems to confirm that an exit strategy is being carefully devised.
At the moment, I suspect Mr Brown is keeping his options open in the hope that something will turn up, but yesterday’s news that the country is still in recession will hardly have lightened his mood.
One slogan heard doing the rounds this week was “New Year, New Leader” – and once again, the name of Miliband seems to be in the frame.
Saturday, August 08, 2009
Johnson lies low as Hatty and Mandy slug it out
Is the Home Secretary the big winner after two weeks of "grandstanding" by Harman and Mandelson? Here's today's Journal column
Last week, in the course of describing Peter Mandelson’s assumption of the reins of power in Whitehall, I made passing reference to talk of the former Hartlepool MP becoming Britain’s next Prime Minister.
At the time, the spate of “PM4PM” rumours doing the rounds struck me as no more than silly season tittle-tattle, and to be fair, the Business Secretary himself seemed keen to play them down.
But silly season or no, over the past seven days the story has both acquired ‘legs’ – as they say in the trade – and a fresh North-East dimension to boot.
According to at least two Sunday newspapers, a serious plot to install Lord Mandelson as Gordon Brown’s successor is already under way, with former Chief Whip Hilary Armstrong said to be playing a key role.
The plan, or so we are asked to believe, is for a leading Blairite Cabinet minister to stage what is being termed a “nuclear resignation” in the middle of Labour’s conference this autumn which would force Mr Brown out within hours.
Lord Mandelson would then take advantage of a new measure which became law this summer to allow life peers as well as hereditary peers to disclaim their titles.
At this point, Ms Armstrong, who has already announced she is standing down as MP for Durham North-West at the next election, would vacate her safe seat, allowing Mr Mandelson – as he would now be called - to stand in a by-election.
The one-time Prince of Darkness would then be duly returned to the Commons in good time to be installed as Labour leader and Prime Minister by Christmas.
Fanciful? Well, the fact that Peter Mandelson has even managed to get people talking about the idea of him as Prime Minister is surely proof that, in politics, nothing can ever be ruled out.
As the humourist and commentator Matthew Norman put it: “Even by the standards of Bob Monkhouse Syndrome, whereby the most reviled national characters inevitably come into vogue if they hang around long enough, this is some transformation.”
Either way, one politician who will have been looking somewhat askance at all this Mandy-mania is Harriet Harman, Labour’s nominal Number Two and Mr Brown’s official holiday stand-in.
She once again left us in no doubt this week that, if there were to be a vacancy at the top of the Labour Party in the near future, her hat remains very firmly in the ring.
First came her assertion that the party should never again be led by an all-male leadership team, on the grounds that men “cannot be left to run things on their own.”
Allied to this was the suggestion that men were effectively to blame for the recesssion, and that if Lehman Brothers had been Lehman Sisters we would not be in the mess we are in now.
There followed rumours of a spat with Justice Secretary Jack Straw and Home Secretary Alan Johnson, in which Ms Harman was said to have vetoed a review of rape laws because it did not go far enough.
Solicitor-General and Redcar MP Vera Baird attempted to pour oil on these troubled waters, but Ms Harman hit back again by telling Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour she would not “tippy-toe” around issues she believes in.
For Ms Harman, it’s a dangerous game. While few doubt that playing the ‘women’s card’ has got her a long way in the Labour Party, it has not always endeared her to the wider public.
Some elements of the party have been criticised in recent years for trying to re-launch the class war, but it has seemed at times this week as if Labour’s deputy is trying to start a gender war.
And if her pro-feminist agenda sometimes plays badly with floating voters in ‘Middle England,’ neither is it always overwhelmingly popular with Labour’s own core supporters.
Many Labour activists believe that all-women shortlists, for instance, have actually harmed equal opportunities by making it harder for black and Asian men to become Labour candidates.
What should Mr Brown make of all this “grandstanding?” Maybe he’s enjoying the spectacle of leadership wannabes vying for media attention as he himself takes a much-needed break.
Maybe there’s even an element of Machiavellianism in it, the kind of divide-and-rule strategy that his predecessor sometimes employed to good effect, setting Mr Brown, Robin Cook and John Prescott against eachother.
But while Mr Brown is undoubtedly devious enough to play such a game, he is not secure enough in his own job to be relaxed about such open jockeying for power among his subordinates.
If it carries on into the autumn, it risks the conference turning into a ‘beauty contest’ between the would-be successors, rather than the launch-pad for what would surely be the final Brown comeback bid.
But while Mandy and Harriet have been slugging it out across the airwaves and column inches over the past fortnight, one politician has been carefully staying out of the fray – Mr Johnson.
For all the bigging-up of Lord Mandelson over recent weeks, the Home Secretary is still the one the Tories most fear, the man whose common touch would instantly make David Cameron look like the privileged Old Etonian he is.
Mr Johnson has spent the last few weeks quietly liberalising the Home Office and neutralising ID cards as a potential election issue – both moves which will play well with Labour MPs in any contested leadership race.
Some will see his decision to lie low as evidence that he doesn’t really want the top job. But in so doing, perhaps he is showing the political astuteness which Harriet Harman so often lacks.
Last week, in the course of describing Peter Mandelson’s assumption of the reins of power in Whitehall, I made passing reference to talk of the former Hartlepool MP becoming Britain’s next Prime Minister.
At the time, the spate of “PM4PM” rumours doing the rounds struck me as no more than silly season tittle-tattle, and to be fair, the Business Secretary himself seemed keen to play them down.
But silly season or no, over the past seven days the story has both acquired ‘legs’ – as they say in the trade – and a fresh North-East dimension to boot.
According to at least two Sunday newspapers, a serious plot to install Lord Mandelson as Gordon Brown’s successor is already under way, with former Chief Whip Hilary Armstrong said to be playing a key role.
The plan, or so we are asked to believe, is for a leading Blairite Cabinet minister to stage what is being termed a “nuclear resignation” in the middle of Labour’s conference this autumn which would force Mr Brown out within hours.
Lord Mandelson would then take advantage of a new measure which became law this summer to allow life peers as well as hereditary peers to disclaim their titles.
At this point, Ms Armstrong, who has already announced she is standing down as MP for Durham North-West at the next election, would vacate her safe seat, allowing Mr Mandelson – as he would now be called - to stand in a by-election.
The one-time Prince of Darkness would then be duly returned to the Commons in good time to be installed as Labour leader and Prime Minister by Christmas.
Fanciful? Well, the fact that Peter Mandelson has even managed to get people talking about the idea of him as Prime Minister is surely proof that, in politics, nothing can ever be ruled out.
As the humourist and commentator Matthew Norman put it: “Even by the standards of Bob Monkhouse Syndrome, whereby the most reviled national characters inevitably come into vogue if they hang around long enough, this is some transformation.”
Either way, one politician who will have been looking somewhat askance at all this Mandy-mania is Harriet Harman, Labour’s nominal Number Two and Mr Brown’s official holiday stand-in.
She once again left us in no doubt this week that, if there were to be a vacancy at the top of the Labour Party in the near future, her hat remains very firmly in the ring.
First came her assertion that the party should never again be led by an all-male leadership team, on the grounds that men “cannot be left to run things on their own.”
Allied to this was the suggestion that men were effectively to blame for the recesssion, and that if Lehman Brothers had been Lehman Sisters we would not be in the mess we are in now.
There followed rumours of a spat with Justice Secretary Jack Straw and Home Secretary Alan Johnson, in which Ms Harman was said to have vetoed a review of rape laws because it did not go far enough.
Solicitor-General and Redcar MP Vera Baird attempted to pour oil on these troubled waters, but Ms Harman hit back again by telling Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour she would not “tippy-toe” around issues she believes in.
For Ms Harman, it’s a dangerous game. While few doubt that playing the ‘women’s card’ has got her a long way in the Labour Party, it has not always endeared her to the wider public.
Some elements of the party have been criticised in recent years for trying to re-launch the class war, but it has seemed at times this week as if Labour’s deputy is trying to start a gender war.
And if her pro-feminist agenda sometimes plays badly with floating voters in ‘Middle England,’ neither is it always overwhelmingly popular with Labour’s own core supporters.
Many Labour activists believe that all-women shortlists, for instance, have actually harmed equal opportunities by making it harder for black and Asian men to become Labour candidates.
What should Mr Brown make of all this “grandstanding?” Maybe he’s enjoying the spectacle of leadership wannabes vying for media attention as he himself takes a much-needed break.
Maybe there’s even an element of Machiavellianism in it, the kind of divide-and-rule strategy that his predecessor sometimes employed to good effect, setting Mr Brown, Robin Cook and John Prescott against eachother.
But while Mr Brown is undoubtedly devious enough to play such a game, he is not secure enough in his own job to be relaxed about such open jockeying for power among his subordinates.
If it carries on into the autumn, it risks the conference turning into a ‘beauty contest’ between the would-be successors, rather than the launch-pad for what would surely be the final Brown comeback bid.
But while Mandy and Harriet have been slugging it out across the airwaves and column inches over the past fortnight, one politician has been carefully staying out of the fray – Mr Johnson.
For all the bigging-up of Lord Mandelson over recent weeks, the Home Secretary is still the one the Tories most fear, the man whose common touch would instantly make David Cameron look like the privileged Old Etonian he is.
Mr Johnson has spent the last few weeks quietly liberalising the Home Office and neutralising ID cards as a potential election issue – both moves which will play well with Labour MPs in any contested leadership race.
Some will see his decision to lie low as evidence that he doesn’t really want the top job. But in so doing, perhaps he is showing the political astuteness which Harriet Harman so often lacks.
Saturday, August 01, 2009
Mandy takes up the reins
Whoever ends up leading Labour into the election, the past seven days have shown where the power really now lies. Here's today's Journal column.
Traditionally, the time of the year between the start of the MPs long summer recess in July and the build-up to the party conferences in September has been known as the political ‘silly season.’
In most years, an uneasy peace descends over Westminster, and political journalists are reduced to writing about such ephemera as John Prescott finding a baby crab in the Thames and naming it after Peter Mandelson.
But with an election less than a year away and Gordon Brown’s government still mired in difficulties at home and abroad, nobody expected this to be one of those summers when politics effectively goes into abeyance.
And something else has changed too since Mr Prescott observed that tiny crustacean in 1997. From being the butt of Old Labour humour, Lord Mandelson of Foy and Hartlepool is now seen by most of the party as vital to its slim hopes of election victory.
In one sense, it’s a fulfilment of former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s more controversial pronouncements.
Asked once how he would know when his mission to transform his party had been completed, he replied: “When the party learns to love Peter Mandelson.”
With Mr Brown off on his holidays this week – in so far as the workaholic PM is ever off-duty – the former Hartlepool MP has been large and in charge around both Whitehall and the TV studios alike.
In so doing, he demonstrated beyond any remaining doubt that he has now inherited the mantle of his one-time tormentor Mr Prescott, as Deputy Prime Minister in all but name.
Lord Mandelson is sensibly playing down excitable talk that he could actually become the next Labour leader, although one influential backbencher declared this week that he was the only person who could beat the Tories.
There has not been a Prime Minister in the House of Lords since Lord Salisbury in 1902, and to have one in 2009 would be extraordinary even by the standards of Lord Mandelson’s topsy-turvy career.
Nevertheless, one had the unmistakeable sense this week that this was a moment he had been looking forward to for a long time, such was the relish with which he took up the levers of power.
His aim was nothing less than to set a new strategic course for Labour as it approaches an election that almost everyone now expects it to lose, and lose badly.
Such pessimism about the party’s prospects is hardly surprising given its dire performance in the Norwich North by-election ten days ago, a result which if replicated across the UK would give David Cameron a majority of 240.
So far, it has not led to a renewed bout of speculation about Mr Brown’s leadership, but it has brought about a growing realisation that he has lost the argument over “Labour investment versus Tory cuts.”
This tired old mantra has been central to Mr Brown’s re-election strategy, but has failed to gain any traction with a cynical public that believes spending cuts will follow whoever wins in 2010.
What Norwich North did was to present an opportunity to those Cabinet members who want to move away from a strategy which they think the public now regards as fundamentally dishonest.
Hence the new note of candour in Lord Mandelson’s interview with BBC Newsnight this week when, without actually using the c-word, he accepted that cuts would indeed be part and parcel of a Labour fourth term.
“I fully accept that in the medium term the fiscal adjustment that we are going to have to make….will be substantial. There will be things that have to be postponed and put off, and there will probably be things that we cannot do at all,” he said.
It wasn’t the only change in election strategy Lord Mandelson announced this week. He also appeared to commit Mr Brown to a televised debate with Mr Cameron, despite Downing Street’s insistence that the Prime Minister remains opposed to the idea.
“I think television debates would help engage the public, help answer some of the questions at the heart of the election, help bring the election alive in some way,” he said.
For what it’s worth, my guess is that it still won’t happen, for the simple reason that electoral law obliges the big broadcasters to give the Liberal Democrats almost equal airtime to that of the Labour and Conservative parties.
This will mean that Nick Clegg will have to be included in any head-to-head between the party leaders, something the other two might be keen to avoid.
But that is by-the-by. The real significance of Lord Mandelson’s comments this week is that he now feels in a strong enough position to set out his own agenda without clearing it with Number Ten.
Some could even see it as the beginnings of an attempt to distance himself from Mr Brown and prepare the way for a new leader with a new, more open style.
After the failed “coup” in May I predicted that Mr Brown would, at some stage, come under fresh pressure to stand down in favour of Home Secretary Alan Johnson, and nothing that has happened since has caused me to revise that view.
Mr Brown’s position remains weak. Labour MPs who effectively put him on probation in May spoke then of the need for a demonstrable improvement in Labour’s performance by the autumn, but there is absolutely no sign of this happening.
But whatever internal machinations occur in the run-up to the conference season – and my guess is that there will be plenty – one thing is becoming increasingly clear.
It is that whether it is Mr Brown or Mr Johnson who leads Labour into the next election, it will be Lord Mandelson who is once more pulling the strings.
Traditionally, the time of the year between the start of the MPs long summer recess in July and the build-up to the party conferences in September has been known as the political ‘silly season.’
In most years, an uneasy peace descends over Westminster, and political journalists are reduced to writing about such ephemera as John Prescott finding a baby crab in the Thames and naming it after Peter Mandelson.
But with an election less than a year away and Gordon Brown’s government still mired in difficulties at home and abroad, nobody expected this to be one of those summers when politics effectively goes into abeyance.
And something else has changed too since Mr Prescott observed that tiny crustacean in 1997. From being the butt of Old Labour humour, Lord Mandelson of Foy and Hartlepool is now seen by most of the party as vital to its slim hopes of election victory.
In one sense, it’s a fulfilment of former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s more controversial pronouncements.
Asked once how he would know when his mission to transform his party had been completed, he replied: “When the party learns to love Peter Mandelson.”
With Mr Brown off on his holidays this week – in so far as the workaholic PM is ever off-duty – the former Hartlepool MP has been large and in charge around both Whitehall and the TV studios alike.
In so doing, he demonstrated beyond any remaining doubt that he has now inherited the mantle of his one-time tormentor Mr Prescott, as Deputy Prime Minister in all but name.
Lord Mandelson is sensibly playing down excitable talk that he could actually become the next Labour leader, although one influential backbencher declared this week that he was the only person who could beat the Tories.
There has not been a Prime Minister in the House of Lords since Lord Salisbury in 1902, and to have one in 2009 would be extraordinary even by the standards of Lord Mandelson’s topsy-turvy career.
Nevertheless, one had the unmistakeable sense this week that this was a moment he had been looking forward to for a long time, such was the relish with which he took up the levers of power.
His aim was nothing less than to set a new strategic course for Labour as it approaches an election that almost everyone now expects it to lose, and lose badly.
Such pessimism about the party’s prospects is hardly surprising given its dire performance in the Norwich North by-election ten days ago, a result which if replicated across the UK would give David Cameron a majority of 240.
So far, it has not led to a renewed bout of speculation about Mr Brown’s leadership, but it has brought about a growing realisation that he has lost the argument over “Labour investment versus Tory cuts.”
This tired old mantra has been central to Mr Brown’s re-election strategy, but has failed to gain any traction with a cynical public that believes spending cuts will follow whoever wins in 2010.
What Norwich North did was to present an opportunity to those Cabinet members who want to move away from a strategy which they think the public now regards as fundamentally dishonest.
Hence the new note of candour in Lord Mandelson’s interview with BBC Newsnight this week when, without actually using the c-word, he accepted that cuts would indeed be part and parcel of a Labour fourth term.
“I fully accept that in the medium term the fiscal adjustment that we are going to have to make….will be substantial. There will be things that have to be postponed and put off, and there will probably be things that we cannot do at all,” he said.
It wasn’t the only change in election strategy Lord Mandelson announced this week. He also appeared to commit Mr Brown to a televised debate with Mr Cameron, despite Downing Street’s insistence that the Prime Minister remains opposed to the idea.
“I think television debates would help engage the public, help answer some of the questions at the heart of the election, help bring the election alive in some way,” he said.
For what it’s worth, my guess is that it still won’t happen, for the simple reason that electoral law obliges the big broadcasters to give the Liberal Democrats almost equal airtime to that of the Labour and Conservative parties.
This will mean that Nick Clegg will have to be included in any head-to-head between the party leaders, something the other two might be keen to avoid.
But that is by-the-by. The real significance of Lord Mandelson’s comments this week is that he now feels in a strong enough position to set out his own agenda without clearing it with Number Ten.
Some could even see it as the beginnings of an attempt to distance himself from Mr Brown and prepare the way for a new leader with a new, more open style.
After the failed “coup” in May I predicted that Mr Brown would, at some stage, come under fresh pressure to stand down in favour of Home Secretary Alan Johnson, and nothing that has happened since has caused me to revise that view.
Mr Brown’s position remains weak. Labour MPs who effectively put him on probation in May spoke then of the need for a demonstrable improvement in Labour’s performance by the autumn, but there is absolutely no sign of this happening.
But whatever internal machinations occur in the run-up to the conference season – and my guess is that there will be plenty – one thing is becoming increasingly clear.
It is that whether it is Mr Brown or Mr Johnson who leads Labour into the next election, it will be Lord Mandelson who is once more pulling the strings.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Why Johnson will still take over in the end
Gordon Brown may have survived the Cabinet crisis and the Euro-elections debacle, but Alan Johnson is still in the driving seat to lead Labour into the next election. Here's today's Journal column.
Shortly after coming to power in 1997, the newly-elected Prime Minister Tony Blair asked his political mentor, Roy Jenkins, to carry out a wide-ranging inquiry into the voting system.
Lord Jenkins’ report, published the following year, recommended a form of proportional representation for Westminster based on the so-called ‘alternative vote’ in which candidates are ranked in order of preference.
Mr Blair, whose party had committed in its 1997 manifesto to holding a referendum on the voting system, was genuinely torn as to how to proceed, with Robin Cook and Paddy Ashdown among those urging him to cross the Rubicon.
But in the end, he was talked out of it by an alliance of senior figures within his own Cabinet, and Labour’s plans for voting reform were kicked, seemingly permanently, into that bit of St James’s Park where they can’t quite get the mower.
The senior Labour figures in question included the then deputy leader John Prescott, who has always been hostile to PR, and Jack Straw, who put the boot into the Jenkins Report in the Commons almost before the ink on it was dry.
But among them also was Chancellor Gordon Brown, as ever playing to the Old Labour gallery in his efforts to undermine Mr Blair and shore up his own power-base within the party.
More than a decade on, and facing the loss of the power he has dedicated his adult life to acquiring, Mr Brown has decided voting reform might be worth another look as part of a wide-ranging package of constitutional measures to restore trust in politics.
But as the Good Book says, you reap what you sow, and Mr Brown’s apparent deathbed conversion to PR has surely come too late to be taken seriously, still less as a means of relaunching his troubled premiership.
On the one hand, one can admire Mr Brown’s resilience in attempting to bounce back from last week’s Cabinet crisis and Sunday’s Euro-election drubbing by launching a set of proposals which would transform the British system of government.
On the other, you can simply view him as deluded. After all, this is a man who cannot even order his own Cabinet around, let alone carry out what would be the biggest set of constitutional reforms since Magna Carta.
The tragedy for the Prime Minister is that constitutional reform – or cleaning up politics in tabloid-speak - really could have been his “Big Idea,” had he been bolder about it at the start of his premiership.
Now, nearly two years on, it simply looks like a belated reaction to the continuing tide of parliamentary sleaze on the one hand, and on the other, Mr Brown’s desperate need to find some sort of purpose to his remaining in power.
There are essentially two reasons why the Prime Minister survived the coup attempt led by former Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell when he stormed out of the Cabinet a week ago last Thursday.
The first and most obvious is the that Labour MPs do not want to be pitchforked into fighting a general election which they know they would lose.
Rightly or wrongly, the idea that a new leader would be obliged to hold an immediate general election has taken hold at Westminster, and the line was being heavily spun by Mr Brown’s supporters last weekend.
Looked at from this perspective, the point at issue for Labour MPs at their crunch meeting on Monday evening was not so much whether the Prime Minister should stand down before the election, as when.
My own view, for what it’s worth, is that there is no way the Labour Party is going to allow Mr Brown to lead it into the next election, for the simple reason that it knows there is no way the public is going to vote for another five years of him.
But given that the election has to be held next Spring anyway, there is an inescapable logic to delaying any change in the leadership for now.
If, say, the change were to be delayed until the New Year, it would enable a new leader to take over close enough to the election not to have to bring it any further forward.
What Mr Brown has done over the past week is not so much “seen off” the threat to his leadership, as earned the right a dignified resignation at some point between the party conferences and Christmas.
But the second reason why the Prime Minister survived was quite simply the identity of those trying to unseat him - “wrong plot, wrong plotters” as one MP put it.
Whatever Mr Brown’s shortcomings, the great majority of Labour MPs do not want a Blairite restoration in any shape or form, and as soon as it became clear that the coup was essentially a Blairite enterprise, the whole thing was doomed to failure.
Mr Purnell is undoubtedly a bright lad, but he suffers from the considerable drawback of looking like Tony Blair’s junior research assistant, which indeed he was until he became an MP.
Likewise Ms Blears is a doughty campaigner and a highly effective communicator, but her nickname in the PLP, Mrs Pepperpot, gives some idea of the level of esteem in which she is held by her colleagues.
In a revealing BBC radio interview on Tuesday, Foreign Secretary and South Shields MP David Miliband said Mr Brown would remain in power because “the main contender Alan Johnson” was supporting the Prime Minister.
This tell us three things. First, that Mr Brown is now dependent on Mr Johnson’s support. Second, that Mr Johnson can take over any time he wants. Third, that when that time comes, Mr Miliband will support him.
The Labour Party has finally reached a settled will on the future of Prime Minister Gordon Brown, but it is not that he will lead them into the next general election for good or ill.
It is that he will be replaced, at a decent interval and in a suitably dignified way, by the man he has just appointed Home Secretary.
Shortly after coming to power in 1997, the newly-elected Prime Minister Tony Blair asked his political mentor, Roy Jenkins, to carry out a wide-ranging inquiry into the voting system.
Lord Jenkins’ report, published the following year, recommended a form of proportional representation for Westminster based on the so-called ‘alternative vote’ in which candidates are ranked in order of preference.
Mr Blair, whose party had committed in its 1997 manifesto to holding a referendum on the voting system, was genuinely torn as to how to proceed, with Robin Cook and Paddy Ashdown among those urging him to cross the Rubicon.
But in the end, he was talked out of it by an alliance of senior figures within his own Cabinet, and Labour’s plans for voting reform were kicked, seemingly permanently, into that bit of St James’s Park where they can’t quite get the mower.
The senior Labour figures in question included the then deputy leader John Prescott, who has always been hostile to PR, and Jack Straw, who put the boot into the Jenkins Report in the Commons almost before the ink on it was dry.
But among them also was Chancellor Gordon Brown, as ever playing to the Old Labour gallery in his efforts to undermine Mr Blair and shore up his own power-base within the party.
More than a decade on, and facing the loss of the power he has dedicated his adult life to acquiring, Mr Brown has decided voting reform might be worth another look as part of a wide-ranging package of constitutional measures to restore trust in politics.
But as the Good Book says, you reap what you sow, and Mr Brown’s apparent deathbed conversion to PR has surely come too late to be taken seriously, still less as a means of relaunching his troubled premiership.
On the one hand, one can admire Mr Brown’s resilience in attempting to bounce back from last week’s Cabinet crisis and Sunday’s Euro-election drubbing by launching a set of proposals which would transform the British system of government.
On the other, you can simply view him as deluded. After all, this is a man who cannot even order his own Cabinet around, let alone carry out what would be the biggest set of constitutional reforms since Magna Carta.
The tragedy for the Prime Minister is that constitutional reform – or cleaning up politics in tabloid-speak - really could have been his “Big Idea,” had he been bolder about it at the start of his premiership.
Now, nearly two years on, it simply looks like a belated reaction to the continuing tide of parliamentary sleaze on the one hand, and on the other, Mr Brown’s desperate need to find some sort of purpose to his remaining in power.
There are essentially two reasons why the Prime Minister survived the coup attempt led by former Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell when he stormed out of the Cabinet a week ago last Thursday.
The first and most obvious is the that Labour MPs do not want to be pitchforked into fighting a general election which they know they would lose.
Rightly or wrongly, the idea that a new leader would be obliged to hold an immediate general election has taken hold at Westminster, and the line was being heavily spun by Mr Brown’s supporters last weekend.
Looked at from this perspective, the point at issue for Labour MPs at their crunch meeting on Monday evening was not so much whether the Prime Minister should stand down before the election, as when.
My own view, for what it’s worth, is that there is no way the Labour Party is going to allow Mr Brown to lead it into the next election, for the simple reason that it knows there is no way the public is going to vote for another five years of him.
But given that the election has to be held next Spring anyway, there is an inescapable logic to delaying any change in the leadership for now.
If, say, the change were to be delayed until the New Year, it would enable a new leader to take over close enough to the election not to have to bring it any further forward.
What Mr Brown has done over the past week is not so much “seen off” the threat to his leadership, as earned the right a dignified resignation at some point between the party conferences and Christmas.
But the second reason why the Prime Minister survived was quite simply the identity of those trying to unseat him - “wrong plot, wrong plotters” as one MP put it.
Whatever Mr Brown’s shortcomings, the great majority of Labour MPs do not want a Blairite restoration in any shape or form, and as soon as it became clear that the coup was essentially a Blairite enterprise, the whole thing was doomed to failure.
Mr Purnell is undoubtedly a bright lad, but he suffers from the considerable drawback of looking like Tony Blair’s junior research assistant, which indeed he was until he became an MP.
Likewise Ms Blears is a doughty campaigner and a highly effective communicator, but her nickname in the PLP, Mrs Pepperpot, gives some idea of the level of esteem in which she is held by her colleagues.
In a revealing BBC radio interview on Tuesday, Foreign Secretary and South Shields MP David Miliband said Mr Brown would remain in power because “the main contender Alan Johnson” was supporting the Prime Minister.
This tell us three things. First, that Mr Brown is now dependent on Mr Johnson’s support. Second, that Mr Johnson can take over any time he wants. Third, that when that time comes, Mr Miliband will support him.
The Labour Party has finally reached a settled will on the future of Prime Minister Gordon Brown, but it is not that he will lead them into the next general election for good or ill.
It is that he will be replaced, at a decent interval and in a suitably dignified way, by the man he has just appointed Home Secretary.
Saturday, May 09, 2009
The changing face of politics
Did Margaret Thatcher save Britain? Can Hazel Blears really become Britain's second woman PM? And could the MPs' expenses revelations ultimtately rebound to Gordon Brown's advantage? Just some of the questions addressed in today's Journal column.
All general elections bring change, but some general elections bring more change than others, and there is a pretty universal consensus that the one that brought the most change in recent times was the one that took place 30 years ago this week.
For better or worse, Margaret Thatcher's victory over Jim Callaghan in that 1979 contest has cast its shadow over moreorless everything that has happened in British politics in the ensuing decades.
There is still, to my mind at least, a debate to be had about the Thatcher legacy. The widely-held view is that she “saved” Britain, which is the fundamental reason why the Labour Party subsequently found it necessary to take on most of her ideas.
But in many ways we were a more contented society back then, and while the “opportunity economy” which she ushered in may have made some people considerably better-off, it has not necessarily made people happier or more secure.
Anyway, for those lucky enough - or should that be sad enough? - to have access to the Parliamentary Channel via Freeview, there was the chance to relive it all again last Monday, as the channel replayed all 17 hours of the BBC's election coverage.
I flitted in and out of it between DIY jobs and the snooker, the main points of fascination for me being the impossible youth of David Dimbleby and other BBC presenters, and hearing Labour politicians speaking with genuine working-class accents.
Superficially, there would seem to be obvious parallels between that time and this - a failing Labour government, a faltering economy, an experienced but somewhat shop-soiled Prime Minister, an untried Tory leader whose time nevertheless looked like it had come.
But that's way too easy. In truth, Mr Brown would probably kill for the kind of personal ratings enjoyed by Big Jim, and Labour's predicament then - popular leader but unpopular policies - is moreorless the reverse of the position the party finds itself in now.
Either way, one politician who clearly had Margaret Thatcher very much in mind this week was the Communities Secretary, Hazel Blears, who enlivened the Bank Holiday weekend by launching an astonishing attack on Mr Brown.
She told the Observer that the government had shown a "lamentable" failure to get its message across, and that the public no longer believed any government policy announcements.
Ms Blears has since denied her comment should be seen in any way as a criticism of Mr Brown's leadership, but this is hogwash.
The giveaway was her use of the words "You Tube if you want to," a phrase which anyone over 40 will immediately recognise as an echo of the Iron Lady's famous soundbite: "You turn if you want to, the Lady’s not for turning."
Ostensibly, Ms Blears was of course referring to Mr Brown’s laughable performance on YouTube when he grinned his way through an announcement of a clampdown on MPs expenses.
But the subtext was clear: Ms Blears was suggesting that she is the new Margaret Thatcher, a plain-speaking, down-to-earth woman impatient with silly fads such as using internet video channels to make policy statements.
So can Hazel Blears really become Britain’s second woman Prime Minister? Well, I thinks she thinks so, although her last place in the 2007 deputy leadership election is hardly an ideal base from which to launch a successful leadership bid two years on.
That said, Mrs Thatcher herself is the supreme example of a rank outsider who propelled herself into the leadership ahead of more experienced and more highly-thought-of rivals.
In any case, to give Mr Brown his due, he promptly ignored Ms Blears’ protestations by going straight back onto YouTube to do a campaign broadcast for the European elections on 4 June.
But any hopes the Prime Minister may have had of regaining the political initiative in the run-up to those elections were hit by yesterday’s revelations about the Cabinet’s expense claims.
Although no rules appear to have been broken, stories about Mr Brown paying his brother £6,577 to cover the cost of cleaning services, Jack Straw overclaiming for his council tax, and Ms Blears juggling claims between three homes are hardly helpful at this juncture.
Whatever explanations ministers may offer, many voters are now conditioned to believe all politicians are guilty until proven innocent. – a sad state of affairs no doubt, but one which the political elite has largely brought on itself.
The wider political impact of these revelations may well depend on what is uncovered when the Daily Telegraph gets round to publishing the expense claims of the Tory frontbench, as no doubt it will do in the next few days.
Who knows, if it turns out that some of them have broken the rules while Mr Brown’s team stayed largely within them, it may even rebound to the Prime Minister’s advantage.
Indeed, at least one conspiracy theorist has already suggested that Brown Central could have orchestrated the whole thing as a way of staving off the anticipated Labour meltdown on 4 June.
If a real spin genius like Alastair Campbell was still at No 10, I’d be tempted to believe that, but it’s way too clever for the blundering bunch of incompetents that currently surround the Prime Minister.
The expenses issue is, at bottom, more an illustration of the changing relationship between politicians and the public than an indictment of any particular individual or party.
Old parliamentary stagers like Middlesbrough MP Sir Stuart Bell may look back fondly to the “age of deference” when MPs were implicitly trusted and the public left them alone to do their work.
But thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, and more generally the public’s desire for greater transparency in our political system, those days are gone for good.
It’s just another of the many ways in which politics has been transformed since the day Margaret Thatcher walked into 10 Downing Street all those years ago.
All general elections bring change, but some general elections bring more change than others, and there is a pretty universal consensus that the one that brought the most change in recent times was the one that took place 30 years ago this week.
For better or worse, Margaret Thatcher's victory over Jim Callaghan in that 1979 contest has cast its shadow over moreorless everything that has happened in British politics in the ensuing decades.
There is still, to my mind at least, a debate to be had about the Thatcher legacy. The widely-held view is that she “saved” Britain, which is the fundamental reason why the Labour Party subsequently found it necessary to take on most of her ideas.
But in many ways we were a more contented society back then, and while the “opportunity economy” which she ushered in may have made some people considerably better-off, it has not necessarily made people happier or more secure.
Anyway, for those lucky enough - or should that be sad enough? - to have access to the Parliamentary Channel via Freeview, there was the chance to relive it all again last Monday, as the channel replayed all 17 hours of the BBC's election coverage.
I flitted in and out of it between DIY jobs and the snooker, the main points of fascination for me being the impossible youth of David Dimbleby and other BBC presenters, and hearing Labour politicians speaking with genuine working-class accents.
Superficially, there would seem to be obvious parallels between that time and this - a failing Labour government, a faltering economy, an experienced but somewhat shop-soiled Prime Minister, an untried Tory leader whose time nevertheless looked like it had come.
But that's way too easy. In truth, Mr Brown would probably kill for the kind of personal ratings enjoyed by Big Jim, and Labour's predicament then - popular leader but unpopular policies - is moreorless the reverse of the position the party finds itself in now.
Either way, one politician who clearly had Margaret Thatcher very much in mind this week was the Communities Secretary, Hazel Blears, who enlivened the Bank Holiday weekend by launching an astonishing attack on Mr Brown.
She told the Observer that the government had shown a "lamentable" failure to get its message across, and that the public no longer believed any government policy announcements.
Ms Blears has since denied her comment should be seen in any way as a criticism of Mr Brown's leadership, but this is hogwash.
The giveaway was her use of the words "You Tube if you want to," a phrase which anyone over 40 will immediately recognise as an echo of the Iron Lady's famous soundbite: "You turn if you want to, the Lady’s not for turning."
Ostensibly, Ms Blears was of course referring to Mr Brown’s laughable performance on YouTube when he grinned his way through an announcement of a clampdown on MPs expenses.
But the subtext was clear: Ms Blears was suggesting that she is the new Margaret Thatcher, a plain-speaking, down-to-earth woman impatient with silly fads such as using internet video channels to make policy statements.
So can Hazel Blears really become Britain’s second woman Prime Minister? Well, I thinks she thinks so, although her last place in the 2007 deputy leadership election is hardly an ideal base from which to launch a successful leadership bid two years on.
That said, Mrs Thatcher herself is the supreme example of a rank outsider who propelled herself into the leadership ahead of more experienced and more highly-thought-of rivals.
In any case, to give Mr Brown his due, he promptly ignored Ms Blears’ protestations by going straight back onto YouTube to do a campaign broadcast for the European elections on 4 June.
But any hopes the Prime Minister may have had of regaining the political initiative in the run-up to those elections were hit by yesterday’s revelations about the Cabinet’s expense claims.
Although no rules appear to have been broken, stories about Mr Brown paying his brother £6,577 to cover the cost of cleaning services, Jack Straw overclaiming for his council tax, and Ms Blears juggling claims between three homes are hardly helpful at this juncture.
Whatever explanations ministers may offer, many voters are now conditioned to believe all politicians are guilty until proven innocent. – a sad state of affairs no doubt, but one which the political elite has largely brought on itself.
The wider political impact of these revelations may well depend on what is uncovered when the Daily Telegraph gets round to publishing the expense claims of the Tory frontbench, as no doubt it will do in the next few days.
Who knows, if it turns out that some of them have broken the rules while Mr Brown’s team stayed largely within them, it may even rebound to the Prime Minister’s advantage.
Indeed, at least one conspiracy theorist has already suggested that Brown Central could have orchestrated the whole thing as a way of staving off the anticipated Labour meltdown on 4 June.
If a real spin genius like Alastair Campbell was still at No 10, I’d be tempted to believe that, but it’s way too clever for the blundering bunch of incompetents that currently surround the Prime Minister.
The expenses issue is, at bottom, more an illustration of the changing relationship between politicians and the public than an indictment of any particular individual or party.
Old parliamentary stagers like Middlesbrough MP Sir Stuart Bell may look back fondly to the “age of deference” when MPs were implicitly trusted and the public left them alone to do their work.
But thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, and more generally the public’s desire for greater transparency in our political system, those days are gone for good.
It’s just another of the many ways in which politics has been transformed since the day Margaret Thatcher walked into 10 Downing Street all those years ago.
Saturday, May 02, 2009
On 6 June, all hell will break loose
"The Labour Party faces a shattering defeat at the next general election unless there is a fundamental change in the character, culture and direction of the government. That requires a change of leadership, for two reasons.
Firstly, because Mr Brown is simply too closely associated with the economic mismanagement of the past decade to be able to restore the party’s reputation for economic competence.
Secondly, because post-McBride, he cannot now escape responsibility for the corrosive culture of spin that has always characterised New Labour. Indeed, it is now clear that he has no more abolished spin than he has abolished boom and bust."
Here's the rest of today's Journal column.
It is not so very long ago that the main yardstick against which many political commentators sought to judge would-be Prime Ministers or party leaders was whether they were “good on TV.”
Tony Blair certainly fell into that category, and for a decade, he successfully used his mastery of the arts of communication to mask his numerous other political shortcomings.
But if the last few weeks are anything to go by, we are now entering a new age in which Prime Minsters could rise and fall according to whether they are good on the internet.
Recent political events have led some pundits to pose the question: Could Gordon Brown be the first occupant of 10 Downing Street to be brought down by the worldwide web?
First, we had the Damian McBride smeargate affair, a scandal that for all the damage it has done the government, could only really have occurred in the digital age.
To start with, the smears in question were contained within emails. Secondly, they were brought to light not by the compliant national political media, which had an interest in keeping Mr McBride onside, but by an internet blogger, Guido Fawkes.
We then had the spectacle of Mr Brown making an ass of himself on YouTube, bopping around and smiling in the wrong places while announcing a clampdown on MPs expenses.
The fact that he was this week forced to withdraw the wretched proposals for fear of a humiliating defeat at the hands of his own backbenchers only served to rub salt into the self-inflicted wound.
Finally, 10 Downing Street was hoist by its own digital petard when it found itself hosting a 24,000-signature e-petition on its website calling on the Prime Minister to resign forthwith.
To add insult to injury, a rival petition calling on him to stay was signed by just 600 “visitors” including the likes of Phil McCavity and Orson Carte.
All of which left Mr Brown not just struggling to hold on to his authority, but – far worse for someone of his intellectual seriousness – struggling to avoid turning into a national joke.
As one commentator put it: “The internet hasn't yet made a politician in Britain. But the comic relief it affords bored office workers is helping to finish off poor Mr Brown.”
Of course, that was not all that the Prime Minister had to cope with this week. He also had to deal with a good old-fashioned backbench rebellion over plans to restrict the rights of Ghurkas to settle in the UK.
The obvious injustice of the government’s position presented an open goal to opposition party leaders Nick Clegg and David Cameron, whose alliance gave a foretaste of what might happen in a hung Parliament.
On top of everything else, we even had Mr Brown trying to leave the Commons Chamber after Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, forgetting that he had a statement to make on the war in Afghanistan.
How MPs fell about with laughter. How this most high-minded and sensitive of Prime Ministers must have inwardly squirmed.
So where does this leave Mr Brown now? Well, the Prime Minister’s fortunes have ebbed and flowed moreorless ever since he entered No 10, and in a sense we’ve been here before.
The problem is, there are some European elections coming up on 5 June which, in my view, are likely to prove a catastrophe for Labour.
Not only is the party up to 20 points behind in the polls, but as every Labour strategist knows, the party has always had a problem getting its vote out in elections where the government of the country is not at stake.
If the elections go as badly as everyone expects they will for Labour, it will create the political momentum for some sort of Cabinet-led putsch against the premier in the early weeks of June.
This is not the time to speculate on exactly how that might happen – there will be plenty of scope in future columns for me to do that.
But the underlying truth of the situation is that the Labour Party faces a shattering defeat at the next general election unless there is a fundamental change in the character, culture and direction of the government.
That requires a change of leadership, for two reasons. Firstly, because Mr Brown is simply too closely associated with the economic mismanagement of the past decade to be able to restore the party’s reputation for economic competence.
Secondly, because post-McBride, he cannot now escape responsibility for the corrosive culture of spin that has always characterised New Labour. Indeed, it is now clear that he has no more abolished spin than he has abolished boom and bust.
As someone who has always admired Mr Brown, and believed he would make a good Prime Minister, it gives me no great pleasure to write this. In fact I feel desperately sorry for him.
He should have had the chance to work for his vision of a fairer society at a time when the political wind was set fair for Labour. It was his tragedy to be denied that chance until the tide started going out on the party.
In the five weeks leading up to 5 June, we will by and large see the party rallying round him, Charles Clarke’s comments about being “ashamed to be a Labour MP” yesterday notwithstanding.
But once these elections are out of the way, expect all hell to break loose. And not just on internet blogs and YouTube.
Firstly, because Mr Brown is simply too closely associated with the economic mismanagement of the past decade to be able to restore the party’s reputation for economic competence.
Secondly, because post-McBride, he cannot now escape responsibility for the corrosive culture of spin that has always characterised New Labour. Indeed, it is now clear that he has no more abolished spin than he has abolished boom and bust."
Here's the rest of today's Journal column.
It is not so very long ago that the main yardstick against which many political commentators sought to judge would-be Prime Ministers or party leaders was whether they were “good on TV.”
Tony Blair certainly fell into that category, and for a decade, he successfully used his mastery of the arts of communication to mask his numerous other political shortcomings.
But if the last few weeks are anything to go by, we are now entering a new age in which Prime Minsters could rise and fall according to whether they are good on the internet.
Recent political events have led some pundits to pose the question: Could Gordon Brown be the first occupant of 10 Downing Street to be brought down by the worldwide web?
First, we had the Damian McBride smeargate affair, a scandal that for all the damage it has done the government, could only really have occurred in the digital age.
To start with, the smears in question were contained within emails. Secondly, they were brought to light not by the compliant national political media, which had an interest in keeping Mr McBride onside, but by an internet blogger, Guido Fawkes.
We then had the spectacle of Mr Brown making an ass of himself on YouTube, bopping around and smiling in the wrong places while announcing a clampdown on MPs expenses.
The fact that he was this week forced to withdraw the wretched proposals for fear of a humiliating defeat at the hands of his own backbenchers only served to rub salt into the self-inflicted wound.
Finally, 10 Downing Street was hoist by its own digital petard when it found itself hosting a 24,000-signature e-petition on its website calling on the Prime Minister to resign forthwith.
To add insult to injury, a rival petition calling on him to stay was signed by just 600 “visitors” including the likes of Phil McCavity and Orson Carte.
All of which left Mr Brown not just struggling to hold on to his authority, but – far worse for someone of his intellectual seriousness – struggling to avoid turning into a national joke.
As one commentator put it: “The internet hasn't yet made a politician in Britain. But the comic relief it affords bored office workers is helping to finish off poor Mr Brown.”
Of course, that was not all that the Prime Minister had to cope with this week. He also had to deal with a good old-fashioned backbench rebellion over plans to restrict the rights of Ghurkas to settle in the UK.
The obvious injustice of the government’s position presented an open goal to opposition party leaders Nick Clegg and David Cameron, whose alliance gave a foretaste of what might happen in a hung Parliament.
On top of everything else, we even had Mr Brown trying to leave the Commons Chamber after Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, forgetting that he had a statement to make on the war in Afghanistan.
How MPs fell about with laughter. How this most high-minded and sensitive of Prime Ministers must have inwardly squirmed.
So where does this leave Mr Brown now? Well, the Prime Minister’s fortunes have ebbed and flowed moreorless ever since he entered No 10, and in a sense we’ve been here before.
The problem is, there are some European elections coming up on 5 June which, in my view, are likely to prove a catastrophe for Labour.
Not only is the party up to 20 points behind in the polls, but as every Labour strategist knows, the party has always had a problem getting its vote out in elections where the government of the country is not at stake.
If the elections go as badly as everyone expects they will for Labour, it will create the political momentum for some sort of Cabinet-led putsch against the premier in the early weeks of June.
This is not the time to speculate on exactly how that might happen – there will be plenty of scope in future columns for me to do that.
But the underlying truth of the situation is that the Labour Party faces a shattering defeat at the next general election unless there is a fundamental change in the character, culture and direction of the government.
That requires a change of leadership, for two reasons. Firstly, because Mr Brown is simply too closely associated with the economic mismanagement of the past decade to be able to restore the party’s reputation for economic competence.
Secondly, because post-McBride, he cannot now escape responsibility for the corrosive culture of spin that has always characterised New Labour. Indeed, it is now clear that he has no more abolished spin than he has abolished boom and bust.
As someone who has always admired Mr Brown, and believed he would make a good Prime Minister, it gives me no great pleasure to write this. In fact I feel desperately sorry for him.
He should have had the chance to work for his vision of a fairer society at a time when the political wind was set fair for Labour. It was his tragedy to be denied that chance until the tide started going out on the party.
In the five weeks leading up to 5 June, we will by and large see the party rallying round him, Charles Clarke’s comments about being “ashamed to be a Labour MP” yesterday notwithstanding.
But once these elections are out of the way, expect all hell to break loose. And not just on internet blogs and YouTube.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Brown's authority is draining away
Could this week's "mini silly season" of Labour leadership stories turn into a full-blown crisis for Gordon Brown? Absolutely. Here's today's Journal column.
And so it begins again. From the high watermark of Brown Bounce II before Christmas, when it looked certain that Gordon Brown would lead the Labour Party into the next General Election, the Prime Minister is once again beset by rumours of his political demise.
Okay, so it’s moreorless exactly what I said would happen at the start of the year, but to be perfectly honest with you, it wasn’t rocket science.
Once the recession really started kicking in, it was never likely that the Prime Minister on whose watch it occurred would somehow manage to escape the blame for the whole crisis.
It was even less likely when that Prime Minister is Mr Brown, the man who claimed to have abolished boom and bust and to have presided over an economic miracle during his 11 long years as the self-styled Guardian of the People’s Money.
Mr Brown’s default response to the downturn thus far has been to blame it on global economic forces way beyond his or any of his ministers’ control.
For a while, the public seemed prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt on that. But over recent weeks, the excuse has become increasingly threadbare as the failure of the government’s system of financial regulation has become more and more apparent.
Last week it was revealed that former HBOS executive Sir James Crosby, who went on to become deputy head of the financial services authority and a key Brown adviser, had sacked a whistleblower who had tried to warn the bank about excessive risk-taking.
While it did not constitute a “smoking gun” linking Mr Brown directly to the collapse of the bank, it added to a growing public feeling that he was part of the problem – and hence cannot be part of the solution.
When the former bosses of HBOS and other leading bankers appeared before the Treasury Select Committee ten days ago, they practically fell over themselves to apologise for effectively causing the banking crisis.
But there has, of course, been no such apology from Mr Brown, and nor is there likely to be.
As Shadow Chancellor George Osborne put it with lethal precision this week, the Prime Minister “is still living in his Walter Mitty world where his system of banking regulation didn't fail, where boom-and-bust had been abolished and where Britain is best placed to withstand the recession.”
It may be Punch and Judy politics, but it’s also a charge that is increasingly resonating with the voters.
The politics of the situation are being driven, as ever, by the polls, with the Tory lead once more stretching towards the 20-point mark.
It is important to remember that even at the height of Brown Bounce II, the polls never had Labour in front, but the pre-Christmas deficit of around 5-6pc was of such a magnitude as can often be clawed back during an election campaign.
It gave the party hope that they could at least get to the starting-line in 2010 with a fighting chance of victory, but as the Tory lead has grown over recent weeks that hope has turned steadily to despair.
As I wrote three weeks back, it was only a matter of time in those circumstances before the plotting to replace Mr Brown began again, and sure enough, this week it has.
At the start of the week, the main beneficiary of this renewed speculation around Mr Brown’s future appeared to be the Health Secretary, Alan Johnson.
"The Prime Minister's mistakes are catching up with him. Only Johnson can hold back the Tories,” cried John Rentoul, in the Independent
The Guardian’s Jackie Ashley wrote: "If Brown stepped aside and was replaced by, say, Alan Johnson, then Labour might do better…..the one quality Johnson does have is authenticity - and that is what is needed right now.”
And the Telegraph’s Matthew d’Ancona weighed in from the Tory perspective with: "Alan Johnson is the figure who bothers the Cameroons most."
Such a remarkable degree of unanimity from the commentariat suggested some kind of spinning operation on Mr Johnson’s behalf, but by the end of the week, other names had entered the frame.
Depending on which paper you read, deputy leader Harriet Harman and Children’s Secretary Ed Balls were either forming a leadership “dream ticket” or alternatively locked in a deadly briefing war against eachother.
The Balls camp was said to have fingered Ms Harman over a suggestion – floated in Ms Ashley’s column – that Mr Brown could be offered some grand international post to enable him to quit the UK stage with dignity.
Meanwhile Mrs Balls – Treasury minister Yvette Cooper – was named by London’s Evening Standard as a potential “Stop Harriet” candidate, although her husband’s response to this idea went sadly unreported.
Is this all just froth of the kind the national political media excel in? Well, up to a point.
But take it from me as someone who has been there, Westminster journalists don’t simply sit there making this sort of stuff up. There is always some grain of truth, however small, in what they are writing.
What I suspect is happening at the moment is that minsters are becoming increasingly indiscreet about what they say to journalists, and that some of that is finding its way into the news pages.
What that shows in turn is that the Prime Minister’s authority is steadily collapsing as Labour MPs indulge in ever more open speculation about what will happen when he goes.
Can the government go on like this? Not really, and certainly not for another 15 months up to a May 2010 election.
Mr Brown is in dire need of economic good news, but that currently seems very far away and, in any case, whenever good news of this nature occurs the government has a tendency to over-claim for it.
Until very recently, there was a settled will in the Labour Party that, for good or ill, the party was stuck with Mr Brown until the election, and that it had better knuckle down and make the best of it.
My instinct tells me this mood is changing, and that the party may be about to experience a spring awakening. Watch this space.
And so it begins again. From the high watermark of Brown Bounce II before Christmas, when it looked certain that Gordon Brown would lead the Labour Party into the next General Election, the Prime Minister is once again beset by rumours of his political demise.
Okay, so it’s moreorless exactly what I said would happen at the start of the year, but to be perfectly honest with you, it wasn’t rocket science.
Once the recession really started kicking in, it was never likely that the Prime Minister on whose watch it occurred would somehow manage to escape the blame for the whole crisis.
It was even less likely when that Prime Minister is Mr Brown, the man who claimed to have abolished boom and bust and to have presided over an economic miracle during his 11 long years as the self-styled Guardian of the People’s Money.
Mr Brown’s default response to the downturn thus far has been to blame it on global economic forces way beyond his or any of his ministers’ control.
For a while, the public seemed prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt on that. But over recent weeks, the excuse has become increasingly threadbare as the failure of the government’s system of financial regulation has become more and more apparent.
Last week it was revealed that former HBOS executive Sir James Crosby, who went on to become deputy head of the financial services authority and a key Brown adviser, had sacked a whistleblower who had tried to warn the bank about excessive risk-taking.
While it did not constitute a “smoking gun” linking Mr Brown directly to the collapse of the bank, it added to a growing public feeling that he was part of the problem – and hence cannot be part of the solution.
When the former bosses of HBOS and other leading bankers appeared before the Treasury Select Committee ten days ago, they practically fell over themselves to apologise for effectively causing the banking crisis.
But there has, of course, been no such apology from Mr Brown, and nor is there likely to be.
As Shadow Chancellor George Osborne put it with lethal precision this week, the Prime Minister “is still living in his Walter Mitty world where his system of banking regulation didn't fail, where boom-and-bust had been abolished and where Britain is best placed to withstand the recession.”
It may be Punch and Judy politics, but it’s also a charge that is increasingly resonating with the voters.
The politics of the situation are being driven, as ever, by the polls, with the Tory lead once more stretching towards the 20-point mark.
It is important to remember that even at the height of Brown Bounce II, the polls never had Labour in front, but the pre-Christmas deficit of around 5-6pc was of such a magnitude as can often be clawed back during an election campaign.
It gave the party hope that they could at least get to the starting-line in 2010 with a fighting chance of victory, but as the Tory lead has grown over recent weeks that hope has turned steadily to despair.
As I wrote three weeks back, it was only a matter of time in those circumstances before the plotting to replace Mr Brown began again, and sure enough, this week it has.
At the start of the week, the main beneficiary of this renewed speculation around Mr Brown’s future appeared to be the Health Secretary, Alan Johnson.
"The Prime Minister's mistakes are catching up with him. Only Johnson can hold back the Tories,” cried John Rentoul, in the Independent
The Guardian’s Jackie Ashley wrote: "If Brown stepped aside and was replaced by, say, Alan Johnson, then Labour might do better…..the one quality Johnson does have is authenticity - and that is what is needed right now.”
And the Telegraph’s Matthew d’Ancona weighed in from the Tory perspective with: "Alan Johnson is the figure who bothers the Cameroons most."
Such a remarkable degree of unanimity from the commentariat suggested some kind of spinning operation on Mr Johnson’s behalf, but by the end of the week, other names had entered the frame.
Depending on which paper you read, deputy leader Harriet Harman and Children’s Secretary Ed Balls were either forming a leadership “dream ticket” or alternatively locked in a deadly briefing war against eachother.
The Balls camp was said to have fingered Ms Harman over a suggestion – floated in Ms Ashley’s column – that Mr Brown could be offered some grand international post to enable him to quit the UK stage with dignity.
Meanwhile Mrs Balls – Treasury minister Yvette Cooper – was named by London’s Evening Standard as a potential “Stop Harriet” candidate, although her husband’s response to this idea went sadly unreported.
Is this all just froth of the kind the national political media excel in? Well, up to a point.
But take it from me as someone who has been there, Westminster journalists don’t simply sit there making this sort of stuff up. There is always some grain of truth, however small, in what they are writing.
What I suspect is happening at the moment is that minsters are becoming increasingly indiscreet about what they say to journalists, and that some of that is finding its way into the news pages.
What that shows in turn is that the Prime Minister’s authority is steadily collapsing as Labour MPs indulge in ever more open speculation about what will happen when he goes.
Can the government go on like this? Not really, and certainly not for another 15 months up to a May 2010 election.
Mr Brown is in dire need of economic good news, but that currently seems very far away and, in any case, whenever good news of this nature occurs the government has a tendency to over-claim for it.
Until very recently, there was a settled will in the Labour Party that, for good or ill, the party was stuck with Mr Brown until the election, and that it had better knuckle down and make the best of it.
My instinct tells me this mood is changing, and that the party may be about to experience a spring awakening. Watch this space.
Friday, February 20, 2009
In defence of Mrs Balls
It was fairly predictable that the right-wing blogs would have a field day with yesterday's London Evening Standard story about Yvette Cooper running for Labour leader. Guido describes her as a comedy candidate while Iain comments: "Please let it be true. Pretty please."
For what it's worth, this is what I wrote on Iain's blog:
I'm not quite sure why it is that the right has it in for Yvette in a way that it doesn't, for instance, for Hazel Blears or Jacqui Smith. Sure, she can come across as a bit strident on the telly at times, but so did their heroine Mrs T. I personally think Cooper vs Cameron would make a very interesting contest.
One further point about the Standard story which some other bloggers may have missed: it carried the by-line of political editor Joe Murphy, which suggests to me there is probably something in it.
For what it's worth, this is what I wrote on Iain's blog:
"It's not in the least absurd. Yvette Cooper is easily the most intellectually capable of all the potential women candidates and it's quite obvious to anyone who knows her that she is capable of being Prime Minister - something that could not be said of Ms Harman.
Yvette is handicapped by the fact that she occupies the most junior position in the Cabinet, and to a lesser extent by the fact that she is seen as junior to her husband, but it should not be forgotten that she has been in the Commons eight years longer than he has.
Her career has been held back thus far for two reasons. Firstly, she had an attack of ME during Labour's first term which hampered her progress up the ministerial ladder. Second, she incurred the emnity of Tony Blair who refused to promote her to the Cabinet even though she was widely regarded as the most able junior minister of her generation.
Now that she has finally made it to the top table, it is entirely proper that she should be talked about as a potential Labour leader. In my view, the party could do a lot, lot worse."
I'm not quite sure why it is that the right has it in for Yvette in a way that it doesn't, for instance, for Hazel Blears or Jacqui Smith. Sure, she can come across as a bit strident on the telly at times, but so did their heroine Mrs T. I personally think Cooper vs Cameron would make a very interesting contest.
One further point about the Standard story which some other bloggers may have missed: it carried the by-line of political editor Joe Murphy, which suggests to me there is probably something in it.
Monday, February 16, 2009
Is it game on for Alan Johnson?
It's hard not to detect a pattern forming here....but full marks to the UK Daily Pundit who clearly knew something a good week or so before the mainstream media caught up with it.
"According to one source the Health Secretary will publicly denounce Brown's leadership before the June elections. Word is, the Miliband/Johnson dream ticket is back on and they want Brown out by September."
UK Daily Pundit
"Only Johnson can hold back the Tories. The Prime Minister's mistakes are catching up with him. If his party stays loyal to him, it means certain electoral ruin"
John Rentoul, Independent
"The Tories, for their part, are privately wondering which of his prospective successors they should fear most: as it happens, Alan Johnson, interviewed in the current issue of The Spectator, is the figure who bothers the Cameroons most."
Matthew d'Ancona, Telegraph
"If Brown stepped aside and was replaced by, say, Alan Johnson, then Labour might do better in that election. The one quality Johnson does have is authenticity - and that is what is needed right now. Labour people aren't saying they would actually win it, but think that they could limit a Tory majority, or hold them to a hung parliament."
Jackie Ashley, Guardian
"According to one source the Health Secretary will publicly denounce Brown's leadership before the June elections. Word is, the Miliband/Johnson dream ticket is back on and they want Brown out by September."
UK Daily Pundit
"Only Johnson can hold back the Tories. The Prime Minister's mistakes are catching up with him. If his party stays loyal to him, it means certain electoral ruin"
John Rentoul, Independent
"The Tories, for their part, are privately wondering which of his prospective successors they should fear most: as it happens, Alan Johnson, interviewed in the current issue of The Spectator, is the figure who bothers the Cameroons most."
Matthew d'Ancona, Telegraph
"If Brown stepped aside and was replaced by, say, Alan Johnson, then Labour might do better in that election. The one quality Johnson does have is authenticity - and that is what is needed right now. Labour people aren't saying they would actually win it, but think that they could limit a Tory majority, or hold them to a hung parliament."
Jackie Ashley, Guardian
Friday, October 03, 2008
Plotters routed
We were told that seven ministers were going to resign, that Ruth Kelly's was just the first in a series of departures which would deliver a crushing blow to the Prime Minister's authority. We were told that others, including John Hutton, would refuse to serve or be moved. And today, Gordon Brown has stuck a triumphant two fingers up to the lot of them.
The key to this reshuffle, for Gordon, was to find a way of demonstrating that he can unite the Labour Party and thereby isolating the rebels. Today he has done that - and then some.
Gordon's tactic from the start was to find a senior Blairite who would be prepared to join his team and help heal the party's wounds. Alan Milburn rebuffed him, while Charles Clarke simply rubbished him, but what did Gordon do? He recruited the archest Blairite of them all.
As a demonstration of "if at first you don't succeed, try, try again" it could scarcely be bettered. If he'd persuaded Mr Tony himself to come back as Foreign Secretary, then maybe - but getting Peter Mandelson on board as Business Secretary was surely the next best thing.
The message to the rebels is unmistakable. To paraphrase Chapter Eight of the Book of Romans - if Mandy Mandelson, Maggie Beckett, Dolly Draper, Ali Campbell and yes, John Hutton are all for me, then who can be against me?
In other words, relative political nonentities such as Joan Ryan, Graham Stringer and Siobhain McDisloyal have been put very firmly in their place.
It's not perfect. I'd like to have seen Jon Cruddas given the housing job, while I think the very talented and articulate Shaun Woodward is wasted at Northern Ireland - and you don't often see those two guys praised in the same sentence.
But that apart, this is a cracking reshuffle which demonstrates Brown using the power of incumbency to absolute maximum effect to make both the Tories and the rebels look irrelevant. The public loves a fighter, and Brown is fighting, fighting and fighting again to save the party he loves.
You can read more of my thoughts on the past week in politics - and where it leaves David Cameron - in my Journal column which will be posted here tomorrow as usual.
The key to this reshuffle, for Gordon, was to find a way of demonstrating that he can unite the Labour Party and thereby isolating the rebels. Today he has done that - and then some.
Gordon's tactic from the start was to find a senior Blairite who would be prepared to join his team and help heal the party's wounds. Alan Milburn rebuffed him, while Charles Clarke simply rubbished him, but what did Gordon do? He recruited the archest Blairite of them all.
As a demonstration of "if at first you don't succeed, try, try again" it could scarcely be bettered. If he'd persuaded Mr Tony himself to come back as Foreign Secretary, then maybe - but getting Peter Mandelson on board as Business Secretary was surely the next best thing.
The message to the rebels is unmistakable. To paraphrase Chapter Eight of the Book of Romans - if Mandy Mandelson, Maggie Beckett, Dolly Draper, Ali Campbell and yes, John Hutton are all for me, then who can be against me?
In other words, relative political nonentities such as Joan Ryan, Graham Stringer and Siobhain McDisloyal have been put very firmly in their place.
It's not perfect. I'd like to have seen Jon Cruddas given the housing job, while I think the very talented and articulate Shaun Woodward is wasted at Northern Ireland - and you don't often see those two guys praised in the same sentence.
But that apart, this is a cracking reshuffle which demonstrates Brown using the power of incumbency to absolute maximum effect to make both the Tories and the rebels look irrelevant. The public loves a fighter, and Brown is fighting, fighting and fighting again to save the party he loves.
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