When a body is discovered on the Orient Express, Agatha Christie’s sleuth Hercule Poirot is amazed to discover that the fatal wounds have been administered by a dozen different hands. Such was the victim’s unpopularity that all his enemies have conspired together to end his life, taking it in turns to plunge in the knife. Similarly, when John Reid’s political cadaver eventually receives its post-mortem it will be hard to know which of his many ill-wishers administered the decisive lunge.
For a man who likes to tell the world how clever he is, or at least how thoroughly educated, the home secretary seems to lack any common sense when it comes to dealing with other human beings. When he took up his post last year he lost no time in blaming his predecessors, David Blunkett and Charles Clarke, for the chaos that he had inherited. They must have started to sharpen their daggers at once.
Then he humiliated the civil servants upon whose hard work and goodwill he depended if he was to succeed in his new job. Ministers who command the loyalty and support of officials can often survive career- threatening fiascos. Those who have alienated the people who work for them are cheerfully left to swing when the political wind blows stiffly.
Reid saw fit last year to criticise a judge for imposing on a paedophile a sentence that he thought too lenient. It cannot be a coincidence that two judges have now embarrassed him severely precisely by releasing paedophiles, saying that they would have jailed them had the home secretary not written urging the judiciary to use imprisonment only when strictly necessary, because Britain’s prisons are full. The ill-considered letter was sticking his jaw out to be punched. The judges have done so, while nonetheless finding a cell for the royal editor of the News of the World.
On arrival at the Home Office, Reid entered a Faustian pact with the tabloid press. Brimming with testosterone, he promised to deal swiftly with the prisons crisis by commandeering ships and military bases in which to incarcerate criminals. He should have known that such an operation was well beyond the administrative capability of his ministry and so months later there is nothing to show for those initiatives.
The popular press has exacted a terrible revenge. Last week a headline in The Sun asked where Reid’s brain had gone. The question is not misplaced — even if the grey matter has been. As Reid’s chances of becoming Labour leader have receded, the tabloid newspapers have lost any reason to show him deference. And even the broadsheet and broadcast journalists, who find Reid’s swagger repellent, have turned on him hungrily.
One paradoxical but welcome result of the Home Office debacle is that we see less of Reid than before. Last summer, when terrorists were thwarted from mixing liquid bombs on planes, the home secretary stood — perpetually it seemed — before the cameras. Now his ministry is in meltdown, media presenters announce with a poorly suppressed snigger that Reid, although invited onto the programme, was unavailable for interview.
Also joining the band of putative Reid assassins are all those Brownite Labour MPs affronted that the home secretary refuses to rule himself out of the party leadership election.
Civil libertarians have always found Reid’s addiction to populist politics alarming. On Friday social reformers also enlisted in the murderous anti-Reid cabal. Professor Rod Morgan resigned from his job as head of the Youth Justice Board. While there is no room to lock up paedophiles it seems that the jails are crammed with young offenders who, in Morgan’s opinion, should have received non-custodial sentences. So, far from fulfilling Tony Blair’s promise to be tough on the causes of crime, the government has criminalised and stigmatised young people without attacking the roots of their antisocial behaviour.
Like Julius Caesar, Reid now finds himself surrounded by a bloodthirsty mob. As he sways under their blows, “schadenfreude” is too sombre a term to describe the glee that is gripping Whitehall, Westminster and the media.
In passing, it is worth noting that among recent home secretaries David Waddington, Michael Howard, Blunkett, Clarke and Reid were all pantomime tough guys and their time at the Home Office blighted or ended their political careers. Only Douglas Hurd and Jack Straw brought dignity, humanity and liberalism to the post, and both left the Home Office on promotion. Reid’s successor please note.
The irony of Reid’s predicament is that he is by no means a main culprit. Had he approached his job with greater humility and been more willing to accept responsibility for some of his ministry’s mishaps, more blame would properly have attached to the principal villains, Blair and Gordon Brown.
Last week the prime minister was still boasting to the Commons of all the ways in which he has increased sentences for wrongdoers. It is a pity that David Cameron did not impale him more effectively on the charge of incompetence. The shortage of prison places is of Blair’s making and was wholly foreseeable. As so often, his ignorance of and lack of interest in administration has led to disaster.
Perhaps the failure to build new prisons is due to the longstanding breakdown in relations between 10 and 11 Downing Street. The goal for the Tories must be not only to end Reid’s career but also to paint Brown as the co-offender. It is the chancellor who is principally responsible for allocating enough public spending to achieve each of the government’s policy objectives. In a properly functioning administration there could not be such a mismatch between changes to sentencing policy and the distribution of resources to prisons.
In part it is because Brown has squandered money ineffectively on health, education, tax credits and the “new deal” youth training scheme, leaving the Home Office strapped for cash. As a former Treasury minister, I should add that chancellors always take a dim view of the Home Office — and for good reason. Its demands for money are never-ending and the value it achieves is unimpressive. Reid’s view that it is not fit for purpose will be shared in 11 Downing Street.
While describing your own department in such terms is a good way to grab headlines, it hardly inclines the Treasury to entrust you with more money.
The disaster engulfing Reid has a broader political context. Every time a minister clings to office by his or her fingernails, the frenzy among MPs and journalists is directed, at least in part, towards Blair. For as long as he declines to name the date for his departure, there is sport to be had in trying to dislodge his acolytes, with a chance that the prime minister may also be carried off if they fall.
Last week members of the cabinet declared that there could be no exemption made for Catholic adoption agencies who feel morally unable to give children over to gay couples. Blair had battled to exclude them from the new legislation. The incident proves that his authority within the government is shot.
The media and Blair’s colleagues treat him increasingly with contempt. Everything he stood for — from whiter-than-white politics, to “education, education, education”, to the Iraq war — lies in tatters. As the cash for peerages police inquiry develops there is still a chance that before the summer Blair, like Richard Nixon, will be forced to resign with allegations of a cover-up haunting his administration.
The smell of death is on the government. The question is whether that stench attaches to Blair alone or whether it hangs over the Labour government as a whole. An objective answer would be that an administration could cleanse itself under different leadership if it were really fresh and new. But the party is set to choose the chancellor, a man deeply implicated in the prisons fiasco and all the other incompetence of the past decade. That is why Labour’s attempt at self-purification will come to nothing.
michael.portillo@sunday-times.co.uk
How I wish Portillo was in parliament - he continues to impress with his more strategic grasp of politics and the link between cause and effect. Would that Cameron would pick up the gauntlet of dealing with real, rather than headline, issues and tackle the Brown/Blair/New Labour inability to turn what sound like good ideas into actions. For too long spin has taken the place of objective analysis and action, and we are starting to see the result of ten years of an administration which can pontificate, but not deliver. Whether it be education, health, crime or Europe - little has matched the rhetoric. Even Brown's much acclaimed economic management has much to thank the Tories for, and not enough is said about his micro-management style which causes needless complexity and inefficiences, and still less about his politicking - witness Portillo's point regarding the disjunct between Balir's crime onslaught and Brown's refusal to invest in facilities not sanctioned by his cohort. 'Nuff said.
John Wade, Milton Keynes, Buckingham