At 12.30pm tomorrow I expect to be sitting in the Peers Gallery of the House of Commons for the opening of the Second Reading debate on the Higher Education Bill. At noon on the following day I shall be queuing at the other end of the Palace of Westminster for my copy of Lord Hutton’s report on the events surrounding the death of Dr David Kelly. These two occasions will provide the most exciting 24 hours that Parliament has seen since March 28, 1979, when Jim Callaghan’s Labour Government was defeated by a single vote on a Conservative motion of no confidence.
On that evening I was sitting in the press gallery. I remember chatting to Robin Day, who was always present for the key votes from the 1950s until the 1980s. It is very rare for governments to fall on a confidence motion; it is even rarer for a Prime Minister to face, at the same time, two predicaments on the scale of Hutton and the education vote. What a pity Robin Day will not be there to see it.
The Higher Education Bill is much the more dangerous issue from the Prime Minister’s point of view. It is, I suppose, just conceivable that Lord Hutton could include a finding which would, beyond any quibble of interpretation, condemn Mr Blair’s conduct. From the evidence submitted to him, and the BBC’s excellent Panorama programme last week, that would seem to be unlikely. No doubt the Government will be criticised, and as Prime Minister Mr Blair has an ultimate responsibility: it is difficult to consolidate his initial denial of having exposed Dr Kelly with his chairmanship of the vital meeting. Yet I do not see the killer fact that would force him to resign, or would force Lord Hutton to destroy a Prime Minister. It is more likely that Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, will have to resign. Alastair Campbell has gone already.
Indeed, the real issue lies outside Lord Hutton’s remit. As so often, Robin Cook has seen the point. Beyond question, a Prime Minister ought to resign if he takes his country into a war that is unjustified; he should not be expected to resign for individual misjudgments which may arise out of that decision. Lord Hutton was not asked to deal with the issue of the war itself, nor did he take any evidence on it.
Of course, the Hutton report is likely to criticise the Government as well as the BBC, and these criticisms will damage the Government’s reputation. However, most people are likely to be confirmed in their existing opinions. In particular, Labour Members of Parliament who voted against the war are likely to feel that the Hutton report strengthens their case and that the dossiers were “sexed up” by Mr Campbell and the Downing Street team. There is ample support for this in the evidence.
Too little attention has been paid to the failure of intelligence, both in Britain and in the United States. My own impression is that the Prime Minister did believe that Saddam Hussein had developed weapons of mass destruction in the period after the first Gulf War. He had been convinced by the intelligence he had been given. We now know that this intelligence was very unreliable. David Kay, the retiring chief arms inspector in Iraq, believes it was wholly wrong.
When Dr Kelly spoke to the BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan, the intelligence community had every reason to want to shift the blame for its own intelligence failure — which was surely very serious — to Downing Street. The Prime Minister is most open to criticism in the fact that he was not sufficiently sceptical about dud intelligence that was telling him what he wanted to hear; that is always the most dangerous kind of misinformation.
The vote on Tuesday night is another matter. Normally one should treat forecasts of rebellions in the House of Commons with great caution. Both the rebels and the whips have a motive to exaggerate the numbers of the rebels. The dissidents want a big vote and will be talking it up; the whips want to scare the less resolute by stressing the danger of a government defeat. The traditional outcome is a narrow and carefully calculated government victory.
That is what I would still expect tomorrow evening. But I am made the more suspicious by the role of Nick Brown. He is the leader of the revolt, but he is also Gordon Brown’s close political ally, and a former Chief Whip. It is inconceivable that he should not be behaving like a whip. He will have some number that he wants to achieve in the vote. Perhaps he simply wants to win the vote and defeat the Government. If so, he will be taking Gordon Brown’s interest into account. It will be a direct assault on Tony Blair’s position.
I think it is more likely that Nick Brown wants to obtain political objectives that can be gained by giving the Government a really good fright, leaving them with a majority that may be only in single figures. That would effectively kill the Bill, which may also run into difficulties at the committee stage in the House of Lords. In the war of manoeuvre between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, it would be an advantage to Mr Brown but not an open declaration of war.
A government defeat would destroy the Prime Minister’s authority and make his resignation an immediate issue. But it follows that a narrow government victory would undermine the Prime Minister’s authority and cast doubt on his survival. After all, Neville Chamberlain had a majority of 81 in the Norway debate on May 8, 1940, and he had to resign. Mr Blair does not have a hope of reaching a majority of 81 tomorrow.
Even if one assumes that the Prime Minister will survive both Hutton and tomorrow’s education vote, there will be casualties left on the battlefield. Blairism is dead; new Labour is dead; “modernisation” is dead. The 1997 campaign which brought new Labour to power was based on a promise to govern in a new way. The country voted by an overwhelming majority for a Government committed to reform, and particularly to reform of the social services.
Although the Blair Parliament has passed a number of constitutional reforms, including devolution of Scotland and Wales, the creation of local mayors and the reform of the House of Lords, it has not carried anything like the promised reforms of the social services. Indeed, the Higher Education Bill, introduced after six and a half years of an exceptionally large Labour majority, is the first measure that could be described as specifically new Labour. The foundation hospitals were a fudge.
Old Labour was willing to give devolution to Scotland and more than happy to abolish hereditary peers. Old Labour has never been willing to touch the sacred structures of the post-1945 welfare state.
The progress of the Higher Education Bill has shown that old Labour has regained its veto on government legislation. That veto makes it impossible to reform the social services, impossible to carry out the 1997 promises. The behaviour of the leading Brownite rebels shows that Gordon Brown is effectively the leader of old Labour.
Political consequences will follow. Mr Blair is isolated. He is in a minority on his own back benches on Iraq; he is in a minority on his first serious attempt at reform of the social services. From now on he is a leader only on sufferance, a lame duck. Gordon Brown remains the inevitable successor, but he has paid the price for accepting the support of old Labour.
The social services cry out for reform, but there will be no reform under Mr Blair. He is too weak. There will be no reform under Mr Brown. He is backed by old Labour, which is too strong. Mr Brown’s chief whip is Nick Brown, who is stronger than Hilary Armstrong, Mr Blair’s Chief Whip. There are now two leaders, two chief whips, two Labour Parties.
Eventually Mr Blair will resign and Gordon Brown will become leader. But it is already apparent that the Labour Party is no longer a useful agent of reform. Neither under Mr Blair nor Mr Brown will the Labour Party be able to do more than plod forward along the old Labour path. Reform only of education; no real reform of health; no reform of pensions welfare; stalemate on Europe; higher taxes.
That is a miserable prospect for everyone except Michael Howard and the Tories.
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