Alan Johnson could be the perfect Labour leader. Orphaned at the age of 12, he
grew up on a council estate in Notting Hill, around the corner from where
David Cameron now lives. A former postman, he has the man-of-the-people
touch and a natural smile that makes him as comfortable on the daytime TV
sofa as in the Cabinet room. A former union boss, he also has the party
contacts that could help him to the top job. Although he still describes
himself as working-class he is not a class warrior: “The little orphan Alan
bit wears a bit thin,” he said. “I’m 58 – it was a long time ago.”
Some MPs think his calm, unchippy demeanour and optimism could be the ideal
antidote to Gordon Brown but the Health Secretary told us that he has no
desire to lead his party. “We have been through all that,” he said. “I
couldn’t even get deputy leader. That finished the little bit of ambition I
had inside me. I’m not interested.”
Although he admits that his childhood is the perfect foil to the Tory leader’s
upbringing, he insisted: “Cameron’s as powerless about where he was born and
the family he was born into as I am, so I don’t buy that ‘back story’ stuff.
The ‘back story’ would last two seconds. What you need is someone who can
tackle the [economic] problems. I haven’t got any false modesty but I don’t
aspire to that job.”
When we asked him whether he would prefer to be a pop star or the prime
minister, he replied, without hesitation: “Pop star.”
Mr Johnson is, however, quickly becoming Labour’s kingmaker. For weeks the
courtiers at the Palace of Westminster have been waiting to hear him
pronounce on the party’s predicament. With the world in economic crisis, he
believes that the crown should stay with Gordon Brown, for now. “I have
never been a great Brown cheerleader but when I see Gordon at the centre of
these events, dealing with this maelstrom, I think he is the best person at
the moment.” The rebels who are calling for the Labour leader to go are, in
his view, wrong. “They are not nutty but I disagree with them,” he said.
“This is a time when we have to focus absolutely on the public, not
examining our navels.”
He did not think that Mr Brown should challenge his “bastards” to “put up or
shut up”. He said: “I would phrase it more politely. I would just say shut
up. I don’t want a John Major situation. I don’t want someone put up. It’s a
diversion, we should be much more confident about our record.”
The public would see it as self-indulgence if the party had a leadership
contest during such turbulent times. Neither Mr Brown’s conference speech
nor the Glenrothes by-election should be held up as deadlines, he said. “In
my view we can’t spend our time thinking we can just change leader every
five minutes. We need to stick with the leader we’ve got.”
When we asked whether Labour would have to call a general election if it
swapped leaders, he replied: “I don’t think we should do it and that might
be one of the reasons why we shouldn’t do it.” Labour should, he said,
remember how damaging internal battles could be. “The infighting will
reflect in the polls soon. I went through the 1970s and 1980s when half the
Cabinet were [so young that they were] getting their milk tokens and we had
the culture of betrayal.”
He thinks that the events now are more like the late 1960s, “when we had a
very unpopular government, they were expected to lose and they lost within a
whisker. This time I hope the whisker is the other way.” A Labour victory is
in his view still possible: “It can’t be like this all the way through.
People will get bored eventually of Brown being everything bad and Cameron
being everything good.”
Mr Johnson is not afraid to criticise his boss. He admits that Mr Brown has
made two big mistakes: “There was the election that never was and the 10p
tax rate.” Mr Brown had also failed to communicate his vision. “We wouldn’t
be this far behind in the polls if there was not an issue about how we get
our message across.”
There is the charisma question too. “John Prescott always says if you get on a
plane you don’t need to know whether the pilot has a nice smile. Anyway, I
think Gordon has a nice smile. He worked on it as well – he paid quite a lot
of money for that smile.”
Is the Prime Minister collegiate? “Gordon is not perfect. There is no leader
who is perfect in every single sense. He would say himself that he has to
work at the bits that don’t rock his boat, the shaking hands with people.
The razzmatazz is not something he takes to naturally.”
In the 24-hour television age, he conceded, leaders needed a bit of showbiz.
“These are problems that Churchill, Attlee and Gladstone would not have
had.” Is Mr Brown too old-fashioned in that way? “I think there is a chance
of that but the last thing Gordon wants to do is to try and be something he
is not.”
The Cabinet, he admitted, was not exactly happy. “There is a general feeling
that being this far behind in the polls is not a nice place to be. There are
a lot of people round the table who have not been in that position before.
It would be self-defeating if they decided it is all to do with Gordon.”
This week’s political Cabinet meeting had been “not very jolly”: “People were
very honest about the situation but it was in a really constructive mode.”
Mr Brown’s critics “have to move away from the fact that a new leader can
change everything and focus on the battle of ideas. Every week we lose of
the 20 months to the next general election is a waste. We don’t have time
for a leadership bid.”
No 10, he said, had to stop the feuding too. “If there are people briefing
different ways from No 10, that needs to be tackled and Gordon needs to rein
them in . . . That has got to stop. The Brownites versus the Blairites is
just so boring, it is so last century.”
David Miliband was the most prominent victim of the No 10 machine – one of Mr
Brown’s aides accused him of self-serving disloyalty when he published an
article setting out his strategy – but Mr Johnson thinks that the Foreign
Secretary had every right to air his ideas. “No one was entitled to
disparage David Miliband,” he said. “He is a huge talent in the party. His
article was a well-reasoned, brilliant exposition of where the party needs
to be and about getting our confidence up.”
The Downing Street dogs should, he said, hold back. “I don’t know what these
people are doing but anyone looking at David Miliband sees a very, very
good, competent politician who is part of our solution to these problems not
part of the problems themselves.”
H e hoped that his younger colleague would go to the top. “Gordon Brown has
said that if elected he would serve for one term and when Gordon Brown has
decided his one term is over or when he has decided to step down then we
will have a discussion. I think David has got a great future in the party.”
He does not think that Mr Miliband is too much of a nerd. “David has the
common touch. He has suffered from the callow-youth stuff, but Blair had a
bit of that. He was Bambi but that didn’t last very long. One of the things
about David is, given his intellectual power and his background, he is very
down to earth and very modest.”
Would he join him on a dream ticket? “David is a real talent in the team,” Mr
Johnson said. “Where he goes in the future is for the future and I hope he
goes a long way because I am a big fan of his.”
Labour must, he said, beware of veering back to its left-wing comfort zone.
“There are all kinds of dangers [if we lose] and that is one of them. We
have to hold the centre ground.”Labour could be out for years if it were to
lose the next election. “There are not a lot of occasions when the Tories
have just had one term. The public likes to give people another chance.”
The Tories should, he thinks, be easy to beat. “Cameron’s job is a PR
make-over. He wants to go from a party of proud Etonians and closet gays to
a party of proud homosexuals and closet Etonians. They have become cocky and
overconfdent. Cameron is slipping back into Flashman mode. He blames the
poor for being poor and the fat for being fat. It’s ‘get on your bike’ fed
through a PR machine – Chingford meets Notting Hill.”
Mr Johnson seems more relaxed than his Cabinet colleagues. It is perhaps
because before politics he had a harder life. He said that he could never
forget how lucky he was. “When I was a postman I worked from 5am to 8pm six
days a week and sometimes on Sundays too. I have much more time to see my
family now.”
Life and times
Born May 17, 1950
Education Left Sloane Grammar School at 15 to stack shelves in Tesco
Career After being a postman, he became general secretary of the
Communication Workers’ Union in 1992. In May, 1997, he was elected MP for
Kingston upon Hull West & Hessle. He was a minister in the Department of
Trade and Industry and Department for Education then joined the Cabinet as
Work and Pensions Secretary in 2004. He has served as Trade and Industry
Secretary and Education Secretary before becoming Health Secretary last
year. In 2007 he stood, unsuccessfully, in the Labour deputy leadership
contest
Family By the age of 20 he was married with three children. In 1991 he
married for the second time. He and his wife, Laura, have an eight-year-old
son
Quick fire
Mods or rockers? Original and always Mods
Suits or jeans? Suits. Mods don’t wear jeans
The Clash or the Cure? The Cure
Raybans or Reeboks? Raybans
Indiana Jones or James Bond? James Bond
Working-class or middle-class? Working-class
Thunderbirds or In the Night Garden? In the Night Garden, it’s
fabulous.
Pop star or prime minister? Pop star
Quite frankly I can't believe this individual made it as a politician, I think the country would have been better off if he had stuck to his postal round.
christine marshall, tunbridge wells, England
Judy - did we read the same interview? What gives you the impression he has a chip on his shoulder? Did you read the comments on Cameron?
Paul Evans, London, UK
Would David Miliband make a good Prime Minister? Sure;y a more pertinent point to consider, is he making a good foreign secretary? The jury is out on this one .As for being PM, good or otherwise, isn't No.10 occupied right now?
Frank Greaney, Liverpool,
Ah yes, Mr 'chip on his shoulder'. Thank Goodness that he doesn't want the job. He would be one of the worst choices for Britain that I can think of.
judy, Liverpool, England