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This Was the Week That Was
By Andy | May 1, 2009
In these pages last week I wrote that the fight for Labour’s future began the moment Darling sat down after delivering his budget speech. After the most disasterous week of any Labour premiership in modern times it is clear that the fight is on. The battle lines are being more drawn quickly, and they are wider and deeper than I had imagined.This has been a torrid week. The only comfort to me is that I’m off for a two week hike across the Scottish Highlands and previous experience suggests that I won’t be able to find that much news.
What was particularly disturbing the chaos of the last week was so much of it came from Brown personally. The lobby fodder has spoken through votes and now the big beasts are beginning to speak through the press. You may find all of this a little unedifying but — given the nature of our leadership — it is inevitable. In other times I might have found myself writing “for the sake of the country, for now”, or some other melodramatic stuff. The time for this has gone. As I’ve said before we’ll all have to go down together (those of us who stay around that is). As my grandmother used to say, “you’ve made your bed and now you’ve got to lie in it”.
The sad thing about all of this is that Brown has surely done enough to warrant a more dignified end to a political career. Weirdly David Milliband had it spot on when he made his intervention at the the last Party conference. Gordon, look what you’ve achieved he said. The achievement noted was Brown’s contribution to international development and to Africa. It was not his leadership of the party, nor his financial stewardship of the country. He didn’t even mention boom and bust. It may well be that DM was successfully pinpointed Brown’s political legacy.
I carry two images of Gordon Brown around in my head.
The first is the image that we see on TV night after night, of a man shattered and exhausted, barely able to communicated with any sense of purpose, humility or humour. If the You Tube expenses video was bad enough the interview given to Channel 4 News last night was almost too painful to contemplate. Let’s kid ourself not. Brown is a broken man. As I’ve said before, imagine this figure diving into a three week election campaign.
The second image is one I’d rather remember. IT comes from a couple of years ago, just prior to becoming leader (I think). I was in Stratford on Avon and it was Shakespeare’s birthday. On a sunny Sunday morning the place was buzzing as visitors took in the special open day exhibits. There was Gordon relaxed in his denim jacket carrying one the children high on his shoulders. This was a man for whom family mattered. Maybe it is now time to start contemplating life in amore family friendly environment.
The back benchers did their stuff this week and, ironically, they seemed to have done the right thing. MPs expenses is not something to be sorted out in the back rooms of No.10. We have an official enquiry and this should be allowed to get on with the job. And it has been obvious for a while that the campaign about the Gurkhas had captured the public’s hearts. I’m not sure I really agree with all of this stuff, but Parliament this week more or less did deliver the will of the people.
If our democracy is to develop along healthy lines then we need more of this from Parliament. It — alone — is the only thing that has the potential to become a day-to-day check on the rampant executive power that has been developed in this country since Thatcher.
Now, the debate is deepening. Say what you think about both Blunkett and Clarke but they both have focused on the true breadth and depth of Labour’s problems.
Our political leadership understands little about genuine leadership. It understands just as little about good governance. And our broken Party machine is simply nowhere near up to the task of building alliances and campaigns at the local or regional level. When Party offices can’t even protect a ballot box we’re in real trouble. It’s not only a new political direction we will need but a new — not made over — political machine.
Over the next few weeks Blunkett and Clarke will be joined by an array of Party figures — many not in Parliament — who will be questioning policy, leadership and our political machine. To the Parliamentarians I would say don’t forget the machine, and don’t forget the members.
Within a matter of months really us members is all that they’ll have left. think about it. The trappings of power will be gone. Power lunches with journalists will not be the same. There is nowhere near as much fun in rumours of political leadership after a poll disaster.
There is one group who seem to miss all of this completely; the New labour family. Over the last few weeks many members have been puzzled as to what the Thamesmead selection fight is all about. I worry that it is all too simple. For the small core that really make up New Labour the Party has now become a family business. And what do you do with a family business? You look to install the next generation.
All of this must go but of course it doesn’t mean that it will.
Rank and file members face a real choice. Some, like me, have already made it. This is my Party and I really don’t know anything else. I’ll have to stay and fight my corner. But staying has a real cost.
I went into politics to make a difference to the people that I live and work amongst every day. Despite the achievements of this government life is getting harder and more unfair for many (if not more and more). Although I’m here for life I’m not here just for the ride.
And this brings us to the biggest problem. Those of us who are stuck with Labour (and who Labour are stuck with) have to face up to a horrible possibility. In a number of conversations over the last fortnight it has become clear that others have the same fear. Labour might simply be a political movement that can’t recover. As the vehicle for change it might just be broken, not just for a generation but for much longer.
The trick for all political administrations is to re-invent yourselves — renew yourself — while in government. We’ve missed this trick now. the Party leadership seems unable to countenance genuine debate and argument while in power.
Yet debate is needed now. We need a debate on taxation policy — now. We need a debate on the direction of the economy and our investment in it — now. We need a debate about how we protect the weakest through cuts and recession — now. And we need to break this miserable Party machine and start thinking about what might be fit for future purposes, and we need that debate now.
You may think I’m completely mad. But it is because these needs ar so pressing that Clarke and Blunkett are right to do what they have done this week. They are expressing political leadership. I’ve not much time for Clarke; he’s far too driven by personal bitterness for me. Blunkett, despite his flaws, I have more time for (and I have warm memories of working with him). But despite all of the flaws and the difficulties they are right. This debate needs to start now.
This is a time to start going to political meetings again, not necessarily branches and constituencies but the Fabians, Compass, Briefing, Tribune or whatever. It is a time to start reading widely. Have in your minds these big questions about the future of the Party and the future of ‘our people’, the people who we are here for.
It won’t be wasted effort.
Topics: Westminster Village |
May 4th, 2009 at 5:57 am
Andy, as I have said before, the Blairites are a damned nuisance and causing far more problems to Labour than the Tories and the lweft wing combined.
Two of the most gutless hypocritical outbursts have occured in the last three days - Blunkett, the man screwing another man’s wife and getting her pregnant - then boasting about it in diaries he meant for publication - at the same time as he was getting up in church and reading the scriptures to fellow church-goers in his position as lay-preacher. He has fallen from the gutter into the sewer. To compound his hypocrisy didn’t he used to hit out at any mild critique of Blairism by Labour Mps as “disloyalty”?. I am astonished you have such warm feelings for this nasty little piece of humanity, Andy - the man who played the race card claiming as Education minister that “our schools are being swamped by foreign children” The man who gave us PCSO’s - wannabe policemen who would fail the intelligence test to join the real police and like to strut about like members of Hitler’s youth (or Dads Army with their pot-bellies and Benny Hill glasses).#
Charlie Clarke and Frank Field are two embittered old men who have never gotten over being sacked (though I think Clarke was gtreated rather unfairly - many other ministers have got away with far worse than reading out dodgy figures)
Then the tap-dancing dwarf, Hazel Blears. She writes a hard-hitting outburst in the Observer, then , seeing her remarks went down like a bucket of warm sick, she then pleads she “supports Gordon 100%”. The poison dwarf is so lily-livered she hasn’t even got the guts to stand by her own words.
Is she just mixed up and daft, or a mendacious little troublemaker prepared to say anything to advance what is left of he flagging “career”?
As if that was not enough two other ardent Blairites Baroness Udden and Purnell also caused more bad publicy: Udden bought a flat in Maidstone which she claimed as her first home, but it remained unfurnished for FOUR YEARS till the Sunday Times contacted her - she and her family have now hastily put up curtains, and, that arch-expense-fiddler Purnell has been at it again: last month it was his claim for £400 per month for food, last week it was £100 p.m. for cleaning which hadn’t been done, now this weeek, over-claiming rent. This from the schmuk who is anxious that benefit claiments don’t “play the system”.
Brown, if he can’t bring himself to sack people like Blears and Purnell should have an immediate reshuffle and ditch the Blairite scum from his cabinet. It is his only chance: they will continue to plot and scheme, and in this case, it would be better if they were “outside the tent pissing in, rather than inside the tent pissing out” as an American President once had it.
On a personal note Andy you wrote “I went into politics to make a difference” Lease Andy DON’T use that threadbare, hacknyed old cliche’ - you sound like the Blair Babes who, back in 97 were so naive that every time they were asked a question they came out with that! Along with “Best practice” and “lessons will be learned” they out to be put on the bonfire now. Queen Anne furniture still has value Queen Tony cliche’s do not.