Reid begs the questions

Last September, in a rousing speech to Labour's conference that had him spoken of as a potential Prime Minister, John Reid said he intended to "play his full part" in helping Labour renew itself in government following Tony Blair's departure. It was a speech that was open to several different interpretations at the time and seems even more so now that Reid has revealed that the only part he will in fact play will be as a backbench MP.

So what's going on? As ever with Reid, there are quite a few theories, and they can be summarised thus.

1. He is genuine. He is coming up to 60, wants to take a break from government, and wants Gordon Brown to have the freedom to bring in his own people as he said yesterday.

Probability rating: 2/10. Reid is a politician to his fingertips, and it just doesn't square with what he said last autumn.

2. With the forthcoming break-up of the Home Office, Reid's role is about to diminish and Gordon was unable to offer him anything bigger by way of compensation. There is some speculation that he might have asked for a combined Defence and Homeland Security brief

Probability rating: 6/10. Gordon would have been happy to keep Reid in Cabinet in one of the two Home Office briefs, but not in a beefed-up role.

3. He has been forced out by some impending tabloid scandal. This is the theory currently running on Iain Dale.

Probability rating: 4/10. Reid has a fairly colourful past but it's unclear to me whny him resigning would make a tabloid newspaper any less likely to print something.

4. He is staging a canny tactical retreat to distance himself from what he sees as the impending disaster of the Brown premiership so that he can live to fight another day after the next election.

Probability rating: 7/10. There is no love lost between Reid and Brown and his decision not to serve could be likened to Iain Macleod's under Douglas-Home in 1963.

My conclusion, then, is that this is an act of deep disloyalty on the part of Reid which will weaken Brown and weaken Labour in the run-up to the next election.

If he ever does attempt a comeback, the Labour Party should remember that.

Ming must go, and Salmond must be stopped

No, I' ve not been ignoring the local elections. But as it happens, this year was the first time since 1989 that I didn't have to cover them live for either a newspaper or a website, so rather than join the live-blogging bandwagon I thought I'd take a step back from it all for once!

I also had a column to write on it yesterday, and since (unlike this blog) that earns me good money, it had first call on my priorities!

Two days on, though, and it seems the dust is now settling a bit, to the point where more considered judgements can be made. The two main conclusions I would draw from the local, Scottish and Welsh elections are summed up in the title of this post.

Scottish National Party leader Alex Salmond seems likely to be Scotland's First Minister. He shouldn't be. Ming Campbell seems likely to continue as Liberal Democrat leader. He shouldn't either.

To take Salmond first, he is no doubt entitled to claim some sort of victory from the fact that the SNP has emerged as the largest party in the Scottish Parliament, and as such he is entitled to have first crack at forming an adminstration.

What he is not entitled to claim is that there is a separatist majority either in the Parliament or in the Scottish electorate.

Salmond's commitment to staging and winning a win a referendum on Scottish independence by 2010 is a policy so dangerous and so utterly wrong-headed both for Scotland and for Britain as a whole that he must be prevented from ever being in a position to carry it out.

Whatever their differences on other matters, the future of the UK is an issue of such importance that Labour, the Tories and the Lib Dems should now agree to form a Grand Coalition that reflects the unionist viewpoint of the majority of the Scottish people.

To his credit, Sir Menzies Campbell has appeared to rule out any sort of deal between his party and Salmond's unless the referendum pledge is dropped.

Sadly, it is clear from the Lib Dems' dismal performance in the South of England that Ming is the wrong man to counter the Tory revival that is occurring under David Cameron.

I said when Ming became leader that I thought he was the wrong choice but I was prepared to see how he performed in the job before casting judgement. The overwhelming evidence is that he isn't cutting the mustard.

If it's too soon for a return to Charles Kennedy - in top form again on Thursday's Question Time - then it's time Chris Huhne was given the chance to see what he can do.

He wouldn't, would he?

Tony Blair to stand down as MP as well as PM next week? Not so say Tom Kelly and John Burton.

But if it is true, well, wouldn't that be the final kick in the teeth for the poor bloody voters of Sedgefield who have provided the vehicle for his parliamentary ambitions for the past 24 years?

Blair has always denied that he was a carpetbagger, that he alighted on the old mining seat as a convenient means of getting into Parliament and then spent as little time there as possible.

On the contrary, he has always stressed his County Durham background and his commitment to the North-East of England, although he hasn't always been able to translate that commitment into policy assistance for the region.

The least Blair now owes the people of Sedgefield who re-elected him in 2005 is to see out his term as their constituency MP.

I may be crediting the guy with far too much in the way of decency, but I just can't believe he would reward their steadfast loyalty to him by leaving them in the lurch in this way.

Major tells it like it is

As is probably obvious from the last but one post, I always had a sneaking admiration for Sir John Major, and certainly nothing became him in the office of Prime Minister like the leaving of it ten years ago today. He has been as good as his word too - unlike his own predecessor he has resisted the temptation to meddle and has genuinely "left the stage."

That said, he has never been afraid to express his view that New Labour has demeaned politics far beneath the level achieved by his own administration and that, in this respect, his treatment at the hands of the spin machine in the run up to May 1997 constituted a fairly major personal injustice.

Sir John's views on spin are worth listening to because he correctly identifies this as the defining characteristic of the Blair government - and the main reason why the hope and expectation that marked that bright morning a decade ago has turned to cynicism and loss of trust.

His article in today's Times is pretty much on the money, and I will quote part of it here - my italics.

"I view politics now through the eyes of an outsider. And much of what I see is uncomfortable. Political promises ring hollow. The political parties seem isolated and remote. In the last two general elections the turnout dropped from a healthy 80 per cent to a modest 60 per cent. Public disaffection is widespread.

"All parties bear some blame but the culpability of the present Government is clear. When Labour came to power, they brought with them all the black arts of sharp practice and spin that they had perfected in opposition. One of the most dismal legacies of the new Labour mission has been to turn government into a marketing exercise. The electorate now know they were sold a pup.

"I am not naive about politics. Spin – putting a gloss on events – is as old as politics itself...but it’s gone too far. Spin today is often downright deceit. For all its faults, old Labour had a soul; new Labour only has sound-bites and apparatchiks, careless of constitutional proprieties, who will use any unscrupulous trick to benefit the Government.

"This downward spiral began when Labour trashed the Government Information Service and politicised news management. Until then, no one doubted the No 10 spokesman. Now, if No 10 tells you Friday follows Thursday, wise men check the calendar. The consequence of this sophistry is profound and damaging. If, tomorrow, this Government told Parliament that our nation was under threat and we must go to war, would Parliament or the public rally behind it without independent corroboration? I think not – and that is unprecedented."

The Gould decade?

Comment is Free today features a somewhat preposterous counterfactual by Neil Clark speculating on what sort of country we would now be living in if Tony Benn rather than Blair had just chalked up 10 years in power.

I have already posted a comment to this effect HERE but it seems to me that a much more plausible alternative history would have Bryan Gould celebrating a decade as Labour premier - for the simple reason that unlike Benn Gould could actually have become Labour leader in the 90s.

In 1992, he was offered a deal by John Smith under which Smith promised to support him for the deputy leadership if he stood aside from the leadership race and allowed Smith a coronation. Had Gould agreed to this, he would have become deputy leader and thus acting leader when Smith died.

Blair or Brown would still have challenged him for the leadership, but there is just a chance that Gould might have been able to put together enough of a coalition to hold onto the job. Had he done so, he and not Blair would have become Prime Minister on May 2, 1997.

Were you there?

Well, I was, but with the hacks on the other side of the street rather than the cheering crowds pictured here.


It was possibly the craziest day of my entire working life. I had gone up to Newcastle the day before to cover the election for my paper, The Journal, and worked through the night with colleagues to produce our election special edition. At 6am I got on the London train, arriving back in my office in the Press Gallery at 9.30am. Then it was off to Downing Street to hear John Major's graceful exit. At that stage I reckoned I would be at work at least another 8-9 hours, so I envied him being able to go off and watch cricket on such a beautiful day.

Eventually the new Prime Minister arrived in triumph, having kissed hands at the Palace minutes earlier. "I should tell you that earlier this morning, I was invited by Her Majesty the Queen to form a government," he informed us in a slightly self-deprecating way, before going on to make his much-parodied statement about governing as old Tories New Labour. He also paid a generous tribute to Major, triggering a minor outbreak of booing among the more graceless (and less choreographed) elements of the cheering crowd.

By mid-afternoon, the details of the first Cabinet appointments were emerging and by 5am we were back at No 10 for the new government's first Lobby briefing. Alastair Campbell strode in to the basement room to general cheering from the hacks, who still, at that stage, regarded him as one of them. Asked how the new Prime Minister felt, he replied: "He realises that he has been given a remarkable opportunity to unite the country." It was a phrase that has always stuck in my mind.

I finally arrived back at my flat in Islington that night at 8pm, having had no sleep for 36 hours except for a few snatched moments on the train. It had been hugely satisfying, if rather exhausting, to have watched history unfolding at such close quarters, though not an experience I necessarily wanted to repeat. But of course, four years later, in June 2001, I did!