Monday, May 21, 2007
Fare ye well Kevin
A good friend of mine from Sheffield, Kevin Bolster, is cycling from John O Groats to Lands End in aid of Macmillan Cancer Support starting later this week. He's also started a blog to let us know how he's getting on. Interested to see that one of my very favourite places, Llanthony Priory, is on the itinerary.
Saturday, May 19, 2007
Was Brown's coronation a historical inevitability?
Not at all, I argue in my weekly column in today's Newcastle Journal. Here are some extracts.
***
"The first thing to say about Gordon Brown's unopposed elevation to the leadership of the Labour Party is that it represents a stupendous achievement...political history is full of front-runners who led from the tape only to be overhauled in the final few metres before the line.
I'll be honest, there was a time last month when I briefly thought it might happen to Brown, when all around seemed to be clamouring for a contest and the Chancellor's stock appeared to be falling rapidly.
By the end, Mr Brown's coronation had an air of inevitability about it, all rival contenders having fallen by the wayside, all the passion that has been expended on Labour's tribal feuding seemingly spent.
But actually, there was nothing historically inevitable about this week's events. It could easily all have turned out very differently.
The downfall of David Blunkett, after he lost his head over Kimberley Quinn, will I believe come to be seen as a major turning point in the history of New Labour.
Had he still been in the Cabinet, he would have been the very clear and obvious alternative to Gordon and, with his more compelling personal "back story," may well have been able to beat him.
Darlington MP Alan Milburn's decision to leave the Cabinet in 2003 and again in 2005 also removed a potentially big player from the succession stakes.
Mr Milburn, far more so than South Shields MP David Miliband, was the natural "heir to Blair," and though an intellectual pygmy besides Brown, his looks and charisma could have made him a contender."
Full text is available HERE.
***
"The first thing to say about Gordon Brown's unopposed elevation to the leadership of the Labour Party is that it represents a stupendous achievement...political history is full of front-runners who led from the tape only to be overhauled in the final few metres before the line.
I'll be honest, there was a time last month when I briefly thought it might happen to Brown, when all around seemed to be clamouring for a contest and the Chancellor's stock appeared to be falling rapidly.
By the end, Mr Brown's coronation had an air of inevitability about it, all rival contenders having fallen by the wayside, all the passion that has been expended on Labour's tribal feuding seemingly spent.
But actually, there was nothing historically inevitable about this week's events. It could easily all have turned out very differently.
The downfall of David Blunkett, after he lost his head over Kimberley Quinn, will I believe come to be seen as a major turning point in the history of New Labour.
Had he still been in the Cabinet, he would have been the very clear and obvious alternative to Gordon and, with his more compelling personal "back story," may well have been able to beat him.
Darlington MP Alan Milburn's decision to leave the Cabinet in 2003 and again in 2005 also removed a potentially big player from the succession stakes.
Mr Milburn, far more so than South Shields MP David Miliband, was the natural "heir to Blair," and though an intellectual pygmy besides Brown, his looks and charisma could have made him a contender."
Full text is available HERE.
My vote for Cruddas
I'm not going to make a huge song and dance about it, but I've decided I will be supporting Jon Cruddas for Labour's deputy leadership. There was a time when I might have supported Peter Hain but although I still have a lot of sympathy for some of his ideas on tax I think a fresher face - along with fresher thinking - is required now. Jon is the only candidate in this election who will bring a genuinely new perspective to policy-making and genuinely seek to ensure that the views of mainstream Labour members are heard.After some initial misgivings, I have come round to the view that the Deputy Prime Minister and the Deputy Leader need not be the same person, and that if Jon does win, Gordon Brown would be quite within his powers to appoint someone else to the DPM post.
Friday, May 18, 2007
The Deputy Leadership Revisited
The last time I conducted a POLL on Labour's deputy leadership, it produced the following result from blog readers.
Jon Cruddas 35%
Hilary Benn 28%
Alan Johnson 7%
Peter Hain 5%
Harriet Harman 4%
Hazel Blears 3%
Jack Straw 3%
None of the above 15%
Now that the contest is live, I'm running the poll again HERE, minus Straw who is no longer a candidate and without the None of the above option. It will be interesting to see whether opinion has shifted over the last couple of months.
Jon Cruddas 35%
Hilary Benn 28%
Alan Johnson 7%
Peter Hain 5%
Harriet Harman 4%
Hazel Blears 3%
Jack Straw 3%
None of the above 15%
Now that the contest is live, I'm running the poll again HERE, minus Straw who is no longer a candidate and without the None of the above option. It will be interesting to see whether opinion has shifted over the last couple of months.
David Bamber RIP
I can't claim to have been a friend of Dave's, but we worked together in the regional lobby for a couple of years in the 1990s and I was shocked to read this via Tom Watson. I share Tom's assessment of his rapier-like wit and quick mind.
Thursday, May 17, 2007
The right man wins
It's a pity, in a way, that there wasn't a contest. Had either the hard left or the uber-Blairite right succeeded in launching a challenge to Gordon Brown for the leadership of the Labour Party, they would have been rightly humiliated and Gordon's mandate for taking the party in a fresh, post-Blairite direction would have been strengthened.
But no matter, the important thing is that Gordon Brown will become Prime Minister on June 27, 2007 and for once in politics, the right man has finished first.
The speculation will continue about why first David Miliband, then John Reid, then finally Charles Clarke all ruled themselves out of the running, about why John Denham didn't spot the opportunity of a challenge from the sensible left, about why a trail of past would-be contenders from Stephen Byers to David Blunkett to Alan Milburn all fell one by one by the wayside.
But the single biggest reason was because Gordon was, all along, the best candidate - and his opponents knew it.
Over the past few months, there has been a concerted attempt on the right-wing blogosphere to portray Gordon Brown as both sinister and sleazy. This has gone way beyond the normal left-right party politicking, and has demonstrated at times an intensely personal dislike of Brown on the part of the ringleaders.
This has included accusations that Gordon abused his position by allowing a charity set up in memory of his close friend and mentor John Smith to use No 11 Downing Street, and various spurious attempts to link him into the cash-for-honours affair.
Had I joined in this witch-hunt, I have no doubt that my monthly traffic figures would now be soaring towards six figures. As it is, it is pretty clear from my stats that some people of a right-ish persuasion stopped reading my blog because they wanted to read bile about Gordon Brown, and didn't want to hear that he is a genuine guy with deeply-held values. So be it.
It's obvious why the Tory bloggers hate him so. They knew all along that he was the man who will show their leader David Cameron up to be the sub-Blair pretender that he is, and so set out to hobble him below the knees before he had even stood up against Cameron at the Despatch Box.
But if Brown's triumph is a victory against these politically-motivated bloggers, it is also a victory against a mainstream media which seemed determined to provoke a challenge for its own savage amusement.
Improbably led by the Labour-supporting Guardian and its Sunday stablemate the Observer, certain newspapers set out over a number of weeks to create the conditions in which a Cabinet-level challenge became seen as inevitable.
The intention was that, in the days following Blair's resignation announcement, the clamour would reach such a fever-pitch that some opportunist somewhere would be persuaded to dance to the media's tune. Indeed I myself fully expected that this would be the case.
As things turned out, it seems I both under-estimated the good sense of Brown's would-be opponents, and over-estimated the power of my former profession. And for that, I am grateful.
But no matter, the important thing is that Gordon Brown will become Prime Minister on June 27, 2007 and for once in politics, the right man has finished first.
The speculation will continue about why first David Miliband, then John Reid, then finally Charles Clarke all ruled themselves out of the running, about why John Denham didn't spot the opportunity of a challenge from the sensible left, about why a trail of past would-be contenders from Stephen Byers to David Blunkett to Alan Milburn all fell one by one by the wayside.
But the single biggest reason was because Gordon was, all along, the best candidate - and his opponents knew it.
Over the past few months, there has been a concerted attempt on the right-wing blogosphere to portray Gordon Brown as both sinister and sleazy. This has gone way beyond the normal left-right party politicking, and has demonstrated at times an intensely personal dislike of Brown on the part of the ringleaders.
This has included accusations that Gordon abused his position by allowing a charity set up in memory of his close friend and mentor John Smith to use No 11 Downing Street, and various spurious attempts to link him into the cash-for-honours affair.
Had I joined in this witch-hunt, I have no doubt that my monthly traffic figures would now be soaring towards six figures. As it is, it is pretty clear from my stats that some people of a right-ish persuasion stopped reading my blog because they wanted to read bile about Gordon Brown, and didn't want to hear that he is a genuine guy with deeply-held values. So be it.
It's obvious why the Tory bloggers hate him so. They knew all along that he was the man who will show their leader David Cameron up to be the sub-Blair pretender that he is, and so set out to hobble him below the knees before he had even stood up against Cameron at the Despatch Box.
But if Brown's triumph is a victory against these politically-motivated bloggers, it is also a victory against a mainstream media which seemed determined to provoke a challenge for its own savage amusement.
Improbably led by the Labour-supporting Guardian and its Sunday stablemate the Observer, certain newspapers set out over a number of weeks to create the conditions in which a Cabinet-level challenge became seen as inevitable.
The intention was that, in the days following Blair's resignation announcement, the clamour would reach such a fever-pitch that some opportunist somewhere would be persuaded to dance to the media's tune. Indeed I myself fully expected that this would be the case.
As things turned out, it seems I both under-estimated the good sense of Brown's would-be opponents, and over-estimated the power of my former profession. And for that, I am grateful.
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