POLITICAL COMMENTARY

The man who isn't running

PETER PATERSON

There is something irresistibly Ruritanian about the British Labour party, with its in- trigues, its shifting coalitions, its appetite for conflict and its jostling crown princes alternately paying court- to, and un- dermining, their emperors. One can picture them all, - resplendent in operatic uniforms—Count Otto von Callaghan, in charge of the royal treasury; the senior crown prince and court favourite, Rudolf Jenkinsburg, Duke of Stretchford; the dashing Count von Healey, General-Major of the royal bodyguard, impetuously prepared to fight any duel for the emperor's honour—but ambitious from the waving plumes of his helmet down to the glittering spurs on his riding boots. And for the boudoir scenes, the enchanting but sinister Countess Barbara of Schloss Blackburns- burg.

. Even while the sabres are flashing they will deny, of course, that they actually revel in the plots and machinations, and all will declare, in unison if necessary, that their only ambition is to serve in whatever sphere, however humble, the party allots them. As to their loyalty to Mr Harold Wilson, there is but one word for it : unswerving. Yet in the days between their shattering defeat by the Conservatives and the preliminary sparring of the new Parliament, their taste for in- ternecine strife has been more than satisfied by the preliminaries to the qection of a deputy leader to replace the vanished George Brown and to the Parliamentary committee from which Mr Wilson fashions the nucleus of his shadow government.

There has, incidentally, been a certain amount of scornful comment on a system that allows the rank and file to elect members of the Labour shadow cabinet, but it seems to me to have much to commend it. In the first place, it can bring an ex-Prime Minister down to earth with a bump: after years of almost supreme power he finds he no longer has an absolute choice of col- leagues. The elections permit backbenchers to make a judgment on the performance of people who have held high office, and to in- dulge themselves in a popularity poll. This latter is a process which can have a therapeutic effect on former ministers who find it difficult to adjust to life as ordinary mortals—one former Cabinet mitaister, asked the other day to describe what it is like to become an ordinary citizen again, replied:

'I'd quite forgotten what it was like to have to carry a raincoat around with me. With an official car available, I just haven't been out in the rain for five years.'

Indeed, some readers might wonder why Mr Wilson himself was not challenged for

the leadership of the party, instead of being

given a walkover. The answer is that the election was held swiftly while everyone was

still suffering from post-opinion poll shock.

Of course Labour backbenchers were disillusioned by Mr Wilson's general election

performance, but this disillusion has not yet penetrated deeply enough for them to con- sider anyone else as his replacement. Mr Leo Abse, the first of the critics to find his voice, is in this, as in so much else, ahead of his time.

This should not feed Mr Wilson's sense of complacency. There has, in fact, been a

behind-the-scenes battle going on between those MPs who wish to judge Mr Wilson by unleashing a power struggle for what amounts to the succession—when that mo- ment arrives—and those who wished to pro- tect him by fudging the whole issue of the deputy leadership, even to the point of abolishing the post. When that proved too clumsy and obvious a course, the fudgers canvassed hard for a compromise candidate (Mr Edward Short was mentioned as a suitably anodyne figure) to stand as a com- promise candidate, thus avoiding a contest between more powerful people and at the same time putting on a demonstration of party unity in its hour of defeat. For this to have worked, of course, everyone else would have had to be persuaded to stand down to allow Mr Short, or whoever, to be elected by acclamation.

However, as so often in real life—as op- posed to the theoretical workings of Labour party democracy—the situation soon became too complicated for this to work. Perhaps because he suspected that the election- of a deputy leader was dangerously likely to turn into an oblique judgment on his own perforthance, the impression was created (forgive this clumsiness: specific evidence in this area is hard to come by) that Mr Wilson backed Mr Roy Jenkins for the job. That im- pression, however, post-dated the in- formation that Mr James Callaghan had decided not to stand.

Now, if Mr Callaghan had taken it into his head to compete he would, very likely, have won hands down. Instead, he chose to stick with his present power base, the party trqasurership, a post which the bloc vote system at the party's annual conference ensures is in the gift of the major unions. Mr Callaghan's hostility to the union-bashing proposals of Mr Wilson and Mrs Castle— not a particularly underpublicised incident in his career—would seem to entitle him to their continued support. And the treasurer- ship gives its holder access to the party machine in the country, which must be in a pretty disgruntled state at present, as well as being the kind of job which can mean much or little according to the style of the person holding it.

Mr Callaghan's decision left some of his supporters puzzled. Why did he not make a bid for the deputy leadership, or at least delay his refusal long enough to demonstrate his future intentions regarding Mr Wilson's job? Ambitious politicians are unwise to allow any chance to pass them by, and though by no means in the elder statesman category, Mr Callaghan is three years older than Mr Wilson and cannot really afford to waste time before making the challenge that is undoubtedly in his heart. To see the

deputy leadership go to a compromise can. didate for the sake of party unity is one thing: to see it go to Mr Jenkins, Harold's nominee, is quite another.

Perhaps Mr Callaghan calculated that Mr Wilson had slipped up. For if ,Mr Jenkins should now lose against Mr Fred Peart, whose motives for entering the race are pret- ty baffling except in the context of the anti- common market cause or as a leftover from the party unity argument, then obviously Mr Callaghan is sitting very pretty when it comes to choosing a successor to Mr Wilson. He will have earned his place on the party's na- tional executive by conference votes—votes cast next October by a gathering which is bound to be obsessed by a bitter inquest into Labour's electoral defeat. But would it not have been tougher and either for him to have gone for the deputy leadership as well? After all, there appears to be nothing in the rules to prevent his holding both jobs.

There is one possible answer to this con- undrum, an answer which would look to Mr Wilson like an appallingly sick joke. And that is that Mr Callaghan and Mr Jenkins have done a deal. If that is the case—and I confess that I have no evidence for it—then Mr Wilson may be done for even earlier than expected by those Labour MPS who cannot visualise him leading the party into the next general election. Politics, we may all reflect, is a very rough game.

There is, of course, a third challenger in the lists for the deputy leadership, Mr Michael Foot. If conviction, honesty and an alternative policy were the criteria by which Labour sips decided these things, Mr Foot would be home and dry the moment his name was placed on the ballot paper. Un- fortunately other factors come into play, and with his depleted forces Mr Foot seems hardly likely to get much support—though I am hesitant to make predictions on the out- come of elections following a recent unhap- py experience in a wider sphere. And after some initial temptation, which must be put down to a momentary- urge to self-destruc- tion, Mrs Castle was dissuaded from run- ning. Britain, I have little doubt, will one cl have a woman Prime Minister. But not and it will not be Mrs Castle.

It is fair to ask'why on earth Labour party should concentrate its mind 13

its internal affairs in this semi-public fashion, and over a period of weeks. One cannot ex- clude the growing bitterness as the realisa- tion of the how and the why of the electoral

defeat begins to sink in, and in the light of that defeat, the identity of the party's new deputy leader does matter very much indeed.

For one thing, it gives us some indication of whether Labour in opposition is to be run as an extension of the autocratic style adopted

by Mr Wilson while Labour was in govern- ment, and some real clue to how much horsepower there really is behind the grumbling and the demands for change.

A Jenkins victory will signal no change. The former Chancellor is Mr Wilson's nominee: unlike Mr Callaghan, he gives lit-

tle sign of the vaulting ambition that could give Mr Wilson unquiet sleep. A Peart vic- tory will be an adverse judgment on Mr

Wilson, and will promote Mr Callaghan's future prospects. The attitude of the winning candidate towards the Common Market, or his precise position in the old Gaitskell- Bevan quarrel, which still incredibly con-

tinues to obsess some Labour MPS, is ir- relevant. What is at stake is the style of the opposition in Parliament and even Labour's credibility at the next election : nothing less, in fact, than the future of Mr Wilson.