I DON’T KNOW about you, but nobody — not one person — has asked me about the Labour honours for dosh scandal. Over the past week I have had conversations, outside Westminster and journalism, about schools, school meals, the closure of a local hospital, Tesco, the late spring and property prices. Yes there
is a world out there, there really is, and it’s not terribly interested in Labour stuffing its wealthy supporters into the Lords.
Perhaps the lack of interest of the middle classes merely reflects an unhealthy cynicism about politics in general. Or perhaps people beyond the commentariat cannot get too worked up about the rich bankrolling political parties. (And thank God they do, because taxpayers don’t want to.)
I am delighted that Tony Blair has been caught out nominating secret donors to the House of Lords and that they won’t after all be getting the return they expected on their bung. But none of it surprises me. Most of Labour’s nominations to the Lords have been dodgy. All the parties’ nominations are and they shouldn’t be allowed to make them at all. So it doesn’t strike me as very new, nor does it stir me to call for the Prime Minister’s resignation.
Lucky I don’t work on The Guardian because it has become almost de rigueur for Labour’s in-house journal to call for Mr Blair to step down. On Monday the paper formalised its position, carrying a leading article demanding that the Prime Minister go by the autumn. “At heart”, it said, “the question is how much longer Mr Blair can convince the nation, his party or himself that Britain would be better governed — or he more kindly remembered — if he stayed in office than if he left it.”
You mustn’t underestimate the significance of this. It is a very important moment in Mr Blair’s premiership when The Guardian calls on him to stand down. The demand will reverberate through the Labour Party and revitalise the opposition to the Prime Minister within it.
To those unacquainted with the Labour Party, all this can be baffling. Why dump their vote-winning asset in favour of a dour Scot who we already know sends swaths of voters fleeing to David Cameron? Let me explain: many in the party loathe Mr Blair. Not only the old Left, but the moderates as well, fed up with choking on wars in Iraq and private sector contracts and what they view as the betrayal of comprehensive education. These secret bungs are the rotten cherry on what is already a pretty rank old cake. And that is what The Guardian is reflecting; its view is more than “just” the opinion of liberal Islington chatterati.
Real Labour people, people who love the party, the moderate stalwarts whose work goes back decades, are deeply worried about its health. Even if not as vitriolically angry with Mr Blair as the liberal and left wings, the stalwarts too want him to go before the party shrivels into nothing. Blairite new members, who joined after 1994 and swelled party numbers to more than 400,000, have got bored and wandered off, which was to be expected. Real Labour people are storming off. There are now fewer than 200,000 members, far lower than when John Smith died. The longer that Labour lives with electoral success, the more its members walk away in disgust.
To its members, the party is more important than power. Many would actually prefer to lose the next election to David Cameron’s Conservatives than to have to swallow any more of their principles.
I believe them profoundly wrong. The return of a Conservative government would have one positive effect, sure: it would see Labour reinvigorated in the cause of what it loves doing best — fighting a Tory government. They could fight the tax cuts, the public sector squeeze, the shutting down of myriad local initiatives to try to improve people’s lives. They could march in the lengthening lines for treatment on the NHS. They could fight the fight for a more modern and compassionate understanding of what makes a family all over again. Ooh, and they could really have a fight on their hands for their comprehensives then. Hey, they could even restart the campaign to ban foxhunting! It would be just like the old times . . .
I have enormous respect for the Labour Party. They are good people fighting for good causes. And I am sick of Tony Blair too. He and his wife’s financial shenanigans in particular make me choke. I don’t mean the shenanigans with rich lender-donors: I think the party should be grateful to him for being prepared to get his hands dirty. Someone had to raise the money. No, I mean the personal financial shenanigans, the houses and flats and scrounging holidays and all that. But I recognise that it’s a personal thing that doesn’t much affect the country.
I would love to see Gordon Brown in No 10 — but I’m not sure he’s going to be very good in it. Mr Brown needs more than a fair wind seeing him in. He needs to blast in with the wind in his sails, the weather in his favour and all his charts prepared. This is not that moment.
Some of those urging Mr Blair to go now do not believe, however fair the wind, that Mr Brown can win against Mr Cameron at the next election. That is why they want him in No 10 now; to give him a good few years before he loses. That is a poverty of ambition not shared by, among others, the Chancellor.
And what is it anyway that these people want Mr Brown to do? The Guardian leader asked: “What is it that Mr Blair thinks would be lost under Mr Brown?” My question is different: what is it that you think would be gained under Mr Brown? This Chancellor raises taxes, pours money into Labour’s beloved public services, redistributes generously to the poor. Schools, hospitals have new buildings, new teachers, new nurses. He promises children’s centres in every community, 3,500 of them; a whole new frontier of the welfare state, as he proudly describes it, wrapping the nation’s babies up into its embrace.
And he has been able to do all this under cover of Mr Blair. Mr Brown in No 10 would have to act more Right than Mr Brown in No 11 has done. And he’d have to raise money for the party as well.
