The very next day it was, however, appropriate to send a letter telling the boss (and some newspapers) that it was clear to the signatories “as it is to almost the entire party and the entire country — that without an urgent change in the leadership of the party it becomes less likely that we will win that election”. If Mr Watson didn’t tell Mr Brown what he was just about to do, then the man is one of the most dangerous kinds of friends anyone can have.
And for what was this all done? Mr Blair was going in 2007 anyway, and just about everybody knew it. So the consequence of the Watson attempted coup has been to pull the date forward by about three months, while wreaking fabulous damage on the Labour Party. It’s like having your car crushed so that you can fit into the one available parking space; maybe it’s better to wait a little. It’s noticeable, by the way, that not one woman MP signed the letter; too bloody sensible.
As for the argument, what can you say? The next election doesn’t have to be held till 2010. What on earth was so “urgent” about leadership change? Why would two to three years of Brownism be so insufficient to win round a sceptical public? It smells like panic. It feels like scapegoating. If only Tone goes we can win the Scottish and Welsh elections (which, by the way, have nothing to do with him), stem the Cameroonian tide with new-found clarity and new-found newness, lose three stone and give up smoking.
I can see how, if you don’t think about it, you might be gulled into something like this. So universally expressed is the trendy Blair-hating that you could easily think that he’s the man who persuaded Hezbollah to abduct Israeli soldiers just for jollies. The grey methane fog of political journalism in this country, with its lifeless storms and sterile uniformity, works hard to make us all think the same way, or to make us think that everyone else thinks the same way. What always surprises me, however, is the latent support there is for the proposition that Tony Blair is not the spawn of Satan, and has done a pretty reasonable job.
One thing Mr Blair has failed at though, and it is evidenced in the letter of the unsagacious 17, is to make his party understand that this is yet another moment of political change. My instinct is that Labour MPs are panicking because they don’t any know more what they’re for and they’re desperate to be told. They may sense Britain is moving beyond the more money/less money, more private/less private, more tax/less tax paradigms of 1997 and after. God knows, someone should tell this to the witless dogmatists whose interchangeable whinges have choked the airwaves since the beginning of the TUC this week. Have you heard Simpson, Woodley and all the other trade union leaders piously telling everybody else to shut up for the sake of unity and then mouthing off themselves about how hard done by they all are? Too, too attractive.
It’s a shame these trade union leaders weren’t there to hear Mr Blair talk about the new political landscape. He told a friendly audience on Saturday that today’s issues are demographic change, energy security, climate change, terrorism and the conditions that may help to give rise to it. Yesterday, though smothered by the methane, the Government launched its new policies on social exclusion. But the consequence of Mr Watson’s elementary mistake has been to suck the dead gases away from the question of Mr Blair’s longevity, and attract them to the issue of whether Mr Brown is or isn’t a bit bonkers.
Charles Clarke helped this process, although I don’t imagine for a second that he was acting as part of a Blairite plot “apparently emanating”, as George “Mad-mouth” Mudie, MP, put it, “from the outriders of No 10”. My impression is that Mr Clarke, the former Home Secretary, was driven by pure desperation (and character flaws, of course) into telling the truth as he saw it. His calculation, I imagine, is that it was better to talk about it now, rather than write a post-curry letter about it in a decade’s time.
All the same, the suddenly fashionable view of the Chancellor as an idiot savant — brilliant with figures but unable to eat soup in company — is not my experience. Mr Brown can be funny, a good listener and very open to debate. But something else is clear too, and it was pinpointed by Mr Clarke. When the Watson letter was sent, he said, “Gordon ought — as Chancellor and as putative Prime Minister — to have condemned it from the outset. Why didn’t he?”
That’s what I have wondered all week. And in even wondering it, I sense the answer. I sense it in the knowledge that this article will be labelled as part of a Blairite attack on the Chancellor by his acolytes (many of whose devotions have been, to be fair, unsought) in the press and the Labour Party. They are, whether they know it or not, a terrible bunch of unimaginative bullies. In any case I am, I think, a Milibandite — partly because it sounds like something from the Cretaceous period, and partly because there are two Milibands, and that gives me wriggle room.
Mr Brown has, for some time now, seemed to regard that he is not Prime Minister but only Chancellor, as the product of an unfairness. He feels that he has a grievance that he is somehow entitled to have sorted out. And it just isn’t true. He is entitled to nothing, except for appreciation of his performance as Chancellor (which should, after all, be enough). And the stolid maintenance of this feeling — against the backdrop of a new world and a new Tory party — feels to me like a sheet anchor on Labour’s capacity to change.
Until last Tuesday I put myself undeviating in the camp of those who saw Mr Brown as the inevitable and welcome successor to Mr Blair. But like Tom Watson and his baby clothes, something — a shadow of a doubt — came visiting last week. And, like Tom Watson, it’s something I wish had stayed away.
>by the way, that not one woman MP signed the letter; too bloody sensible.<
Sexism writ large David - imagine if in a different scenario you reversed this sentiment ...really not on..tut tut!
Posted by: Nick (South Africa) | 12 Sep 2006 06:04:19
It's hard not to feel that the urgency in the Brown camp stems from a fear that the longer he has to wait, the more likely a credible challenger is to emerge.
Posted by: Andy Rooney | 12 Sep 2006 08:09:30
I now share this feeling of uncertainty - even apprehension - where Gordon Brown's accession as Prime Minister is concerned. The image of a dull but safe pair of hands has clouded somewhat as either he - or more importantly - his supporters and advisors, have appeared to be indulging in somewhat Machiavellian activities, placing national interest behind personal ambition.
I am not naive about Tony Blair. Far from being a supporter - with a one-man consultancy business, the tax changes of his government have cost me dearly - but I can respect the fact that Blair comes as near as is possible to fulfilling the demands and challenges of the job in a nation more concerned with who wins Big Brother than dealing with countries who support Islamic terrorism developing nuclear capability.
As the ongoing investigations into terrorist recruitment and training in the UK indicate, we face possibly the biggest challenge to our way of life since 1939 and the people in government tasked with developing and maintaining the security of our nation in the face of the Islamic terrorist threat - home and abroad - have an enormous responsibility.
Is Mr Brown the man for the job? Can we trust that he has the character and strength of purpose to appoint and listen to people who put the country first and their personal ambition and progression second?
If nothing else, Tony Blair has shown in the latter stages of his tenure that he has grown into such a person who recognises when action is necessary, when it is right that we align ourselves with the one nation that has the capability of fighting back against the spread of religious fundamentalism.
And he has done this in the face of opposition from Leftist elements in his own party - who see any conflict as unnecessary - and those minority cultural groups in our country who naturally feel an identification with fellow Muslims abroad - and many of whom refuse to accept that their Islamic brothers have anything to do with terrorism!
Five years ago, on several aircraft speeding towards their destruction in American airspace under terrorist control, innocent passengers were faced with a choice. Is Mr Brown a man who would sit in his seat, letting others decide his fate, or is he the leader who has the strength of character and determination to stand up, motivate and organise his fellow passengers and fight back to regain control? That is the stark reality facing the Prime Minister of our country today and, for me, highlights the criteria by which we should judge the suitability of anyone to lead our government.
Posted by: Keith Downer | 12 Sep 2006 08:38:44
I agree, the "Balti House plot" has indeed cast a shadow over Gordon, but Blair has often taken him for a chump.
Unlike David, I am not (yet) an admirer of Gordon, and see him as an unkown quanitity. I do worry about that nervous tic of his, hence the sobriquet "Goldfish" at the office.
However, like David, I am admirer of Tony, above all his ability to blag, particularly on behalf George Bush. And such resilience!.
Iraq was a big gamble. It could have been different if Tony had checked the odds - and only a fool ignores them - with Ladbrokes on the eve of battle, on a "coalition of the willing" victory. I did; all betsies were offskies. That means keep away.
If only he could go back, wouldn't it be so different. Iraq? According to him, no. So he does have something of the deluded psychotic about him. (There was one really mystifying "fact" during the Iraq buildup, or was it bollocks-up: why was Sadam going to attack Cyprus in 45 minutes? Fair enough, he was dulally. But why should we care, anyway, there are tons of equally pleasant places to take holidays. No? I mean, fair enough if Tony's got property there.).
What Tony wants above all else, is a smooth orderly, transition, which will, without doubt, give New Labour a modest boost towards an historic fourth term. Passing the job to a mate would be nice, but, let's face it, who really give's a toss what happens back at the office when one retires. In fact one hopes disaster strikes, to proove the brilliance of oneself. Come on David, you must have been praying that the Guardian circulation figures dropped after you moved on.
Let me wind up on the positive. I say: go ahead with the farewell tour, Tony. Don’t any longer hang around for something good to happen, because, you have hit that part of the curve where things will only get worse. This middle East peace mission Bush has you on is dead-cert-loser. He knows it; that's why he sent you.
And the tour, itself. It could still start with the live peformance on Blue Peter, then coast- to-coast rock-and-roll in the US, where you are loved. Top it all with a spectacular at the Dome, making it a charity bash for starving Africans or families British war dead in Afganistan. God knows they'll be loads of them. Get Cliff, Bonso and your old mate Clinton guesting. Suggestion: you are on stage guitar-soloin on, shit loads of dry ice, strobes, the full kit. Bill Clinton strolls on blowing his sax, joining you in a duet.
And then comes the "smooth and orderly transition" - to netting an capacious wad of cash; jobs for the boys, News International, Haliburton, and British Aerospace, to name but three. There may be a few legal hurdles to duck, and with this in mind, don’t wait until the coppers come banging on number 10 asking about flogging Peerages. I am sympatic because there have been a few, let's say, border line issues invloving money in my life..
Do the tour, then make some serious money to pay off the mortgage and buy a Villa somewhere hot, private, and very far away from the Middle East. Not Cyprus!
Look, in ten years time, a comeback is not out of the question, unless you don't go the way of Thatcher - she dribbles, and not much else, 24/7.
So, scorched earth policy, get out by Christmas. If you don't your brains must be baltied.
Posted by: Harold | 12 Sep 2006 12:25:31
Gordon Brown's denial of plotting has been so feeble that I find myself wondering, uneasily, just how stupid he thinks we all are.
Posted by: Moobs | 12 Sep 2006 12:51:18
Tony said he would step down and the red pygmies mistake it for weakness. They think they can safely give him a kicking because he has forced them to wear blue clothes for years. They wrongly assume that Gordon Stealthtax will step in to protect them. Gordon, meanwhile, will be happy to watch them die, just to count how many guns Tony still has firing and who is raising what colour battleflags. If they win, he can still step in as their leader.
The media drive around with a huge wooden spoon, mischieviously stirring the other kind of brown by feeding the pygmies with sugar-laden publicity.
This week, Labour's glittering carnival of spin stopped for a moment and the engine door fell open. The disappointment felt is not so much that Gordon Stealthtax is suddenly revealed as stealthy, but rather that the whole lot of them are revealed as greasemonkey politicians, more interested in playing stab-my-leader than silly things like policy or the electorate.
Posted by: John Nash | 12 Sep 2006 12:56:01
Well like you I was dismayed by Brown's disastrous and self-defeating machinations last week, but I took some encouragement from Brown's interview with Andrew Marr on Sunday.
Surely the Blair-haters must get over their obsession soon and start to turn their guns in Brown's direction. When Marr put to him that "if you become leader what the country will get is ultra Blairism with a Scottish accent" there were no denials from Brown. On Iraq, PFI, market reforms/privatisation he toed the Blair Cabinet line.
This reassured me that he had not gone completely barmy, and possibly forgotten that the left of the Labour Party kept Labour out of office for a considerable chunk of his early political career.
Over on the Compass website I have tried without success to debate around the subject of "What happens when Blair goes, who will you support? Cos Gordon needs you like a hole in the head..."
No-one wants to talk about it! The left and the trade union barons are still deluding themselves, after all these years, that Brown will throw away his once chance of becoming Prime Minister by suddenly turning his back on everything he's been involved in (ie three historc Labour victories) and start courting the left.
Do the trade unions, Compass etc actually realise how ludicrous it is to moan about funding for an NHS which has 22% more jobs than in 1997? Against a background of half a million more public service jobs than there were in 1997 (two in five net new jobs) their carping is incomprehensible to the wider public. Today, there are 4,203 vacancies on the NHS careers website - 1,011 of them nurse vacancies. Some job cuts!
So I take heart that Compass, the TUC etc will soon wake up and realise that Brown -Mr PFI himself - is just as Blairite as Blair. I hope he takes on the left and they turn on him - because their endorsement would be a fatal blow to his hopes of beating Cameron.
I wonder how many of those half a million jobs would be left two years after a Cameron election victory?
Posted by: Seasider | 12 Sep 2006 14:38:20
Well well well, amazing what Google turns up isn't it. I see that Tom Watson, in August 2004, refers to Neal Lawson as "My favourite lobbyist" and opines that having set up Compass, it was "all building up to a Neal Lawson finds a seat crescendo".
Lobbygate, Baltigate, where will it all end for Neal? Not, one suspects, at the Broonhoose.
http://tomwatson.co.uk/archives/2004/08neal_lawson.html
Posted by: Seasider | 19 Sep 2006 21:27:47