Fractious Labour sets itself up for electoral kicking
ANALYSIS: Senior British Labour politicians appear to be forgetting every basic rule in the political handbook
THE BRITISH Labour Party has a curious relationship with restaurants. Gordon Brown and Tony Blair divvied up power within the party in one such venue after then leader John Smith died suddenly of a heart-attack in 1994, even if they disagreed afterwards about the nature of the deal.
In 2006, junior Labour ministers met in the Bilash restaurant in Wolverhampton in “a curry house plot” that laid the seeds of the removal from office of Blair within the year.
Now it has emerged that last week’s challenge to Brown had its origins in a series of dinners in Gandhi’s curry house in Kennington in south London, and that defence secretary Bob Ainsworth was one of those at the table.
Voters do not like politicians much in any country. They never have. But if there is one thing that they dislike more than politicians as a class it is a disunited political party. Such a verdict on a party by the electorate is a veritable kiss of death.
Faced with an economic crisis, appalling borrowing figures and a party leader that most of them do not respect, senior British cabinet figures now appear determined to do nothing other than highlight the cabinet’s fractious nature.
Last week’s short-lived rebellion by former ministers Geoff Hoon and Patricia Hewitt was amateurish and naive – especially for the fact that they believed in promises from some of their colleagues.
Brown’s cabinet associates were slow in coming to his rescue. Some sought concessions from him. Others dithered, perhaps until they were more certain about the fate of the coup. When support did come, it was tepid.
In the short term, business secretary Peter Mandelson, who played defence once more for Brown; chancellor of the exchequer Alistair Darling; and leader of the House of Commons Harriet Harman came out ahead.
It seems that Harman, who has been frozen out for months by the coterie around Brown, such as schools secretary Ed Balls, has been promised an up-front role in the general election campaign that is under way already in all but name.
Mandelson and Darling both won out economically. For some time, they have wanted Brown to tell the British public that pain is coming and not to seek to hide in sugar-coated unreality the fact that tens of billions of pounds will have to be cut from public spending.
Clearly feeling empowered by the events of the week, Darling gave an extraordinarily revealing interview to the London Times on Friday, using language that can only be regarded as dismissive of Brown.
“The next spending review will be the toughest we have had for 20 years . . . to me, cutting the borrowing was never negotiable. Gordon accepts that, he knows that,” said Darling, speaking in his office in the treasury.
Balls, who caused fury by his last-minute arm-twisting in search of more money for education, and more importantly political power, last month, is a figure disliked by many sitting around the cabinet table. Darling is one of them.
Questioned about Balls’s conduct, Darling was scathing: “Ministers can get moved around, Ed may be doing something else in the future, he may have a more difficult department in spending terms.”
For the second time in a week, Darling dismissed the prime minister’s declaration that the fruits of economic growth – if they come – should be spent on public services rather than on reducing Britain’s debt.
The political difficulty now is that both Labour and the Conservatives may end up promising the electorate nothing other than spending cuts. But the Tories under David Cameron have the advantage of having been first to do so.
Brown was supposed to lay out the general election strategy to Labour MPs in the House of Commons tonight. Instead, he will merely make the introductions, while Mandelson puts flesh on the bone.
Labour’s only chance of victory, or even of a narrow defeat that might allow it to live to fight another day, is to try to make an issue of Cameron’s inexperience. However, that cannot happen while the public focus is on Brown’s weakening grip on his own party. And although his position appears secure for now, he is likely to face further buffeting in the months ahead.
Everywhere he turns, disaster strikes: the economy, the weather and now with former Labour general secretary Peter Watt’s memoirs of the dysfunctionality of No 10 Downing Street.
Watt is not an unbiased commentator. There are few enough of them around in a British political system that is responding ever more to the febrile and often viciously motivated world of the blogosphere.
Nevertheless, his account of the downfall of Tony Blair and his replacement by Brown will heighten the perception that despair now lies at the heart of New Labour – not ambition and hope.
The sun-filled days of 1997 are a long, long way in the past.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2010/0111/1224262052597.html
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