The unions say the Health Secretary has sold out so it's time to buy shares in Alan Milburn
PETER OBORNE
Tony Blair has noisily proclaimed New Labour's independence from the unions ever since his election as Labour leader in 1994. Like many New Labour claims, this assertion is partly false. Just as it was impossible to understand the Macmillan government without a complex grasp of school, regiment and the extended connections of ducal houses, so it is with Labour and the unions.
To take only a handful of' current examples. The anti-euro pronouncements from Bill Morris, the leader of the Transport and General Workers Union, are interesting enough in themselves. But they become very much more important the moment you consider that Morris is the closest tradeunion ally of the Chancellor, Gordon Brown. Brown has drawn Morris deep into his counsels and went to the lengths of securing the trade-union leader a place on the court of the Bank of England. In return. Morris has been more than happy to make the TGWU block vote available on the far from infrequent occasions when the Chancellor, as becomes a great man, has felt the need to stitch up a political opponent or look after a friend. It is unthinkable that Morris would wade into the euro controversy now engulfing the Labour party without consulting very closely his friend the Chancellor.
Likewise the presence of John Spellar at the Cabinet table as transport minister is unfathomable until one knows that this primitive politician is the bridge between the government and Sir Ken Jackson, leader of the AEEU (now Amicus) trade union. Amicus has been the most cherished ally of New Labour from the start and has cheerfully involved itself in all sorts of skulduggery and intrigue on behalf of Tony Blair. It played a helpful role in securing Alun Michael the leadership of the Welsh Assembly, and tried to block Ken Livingstone's nomination for London's mayor. Its most signal and remarkable service in recent times was steamrollering Shaun Woodward through the nomination in the St Helens constituency.
In return Sir Ken Jackson can ask for just about any favour — promotion for Spellar was just a bauble — and Amicus's greatest stroke so far has been wrecking Tony Blair's and Paddy Ash down's cherished plan for proportional representation. PR is the one major issue where the union has been out of line with government policy,
and for a very good reason. PR would have wrecked Amicus's ability to place its favoured candidates (The Spectator writer Sian Simon was one of them) in safe seats and thus destroyed the basis of its power. So it had to be stopped. Faced with an ultimatum. Tony Blair realised that he needed Amicus more than the Liberal Democrats.
To take a third example of how nothing makes sense without understanding union power: the paralysis which continues to grip transport policy. The RMT transport workers' union — now engaged in industrial action at Waterloo station — imposed an iron grip during the first Blair administration. The railways minister (now deputy chief whip) was Keith Hill, who used to work as a research officer for the union. More striking still was the man in overall charge. John Prescott was not merely sponsored by the union: he had — and retains — use of a flat owned by the RMT. The benefit, which he still refuses formally to disclose after an angry wrangle with the parliamentary standards commissioner Elizabeth Filkin, is worth an estimated £10,000 a year. Had a Tory transport secretary enjoyed a comfortable London residence belonging to Raiitrack, and his deputy been a former member of Railtrack's management team, the arrangement would have caused a furious public outcry — and rightly so. But the conflict of interest that prevailed at transport during Tony Blair's first term was simply taken for granted.
Perhaps these union links would have something to be said for them if they were of any help in ending the strikes that are now causing chaos on the railways. But they are not. The government insists that the industrial action is a matter for the unions and the railway companies, a position which is grievously undermined by the fact that the Deputy Prime Minister has his RMT flat. More striking still, Vernon Hince, the acting leader of the railworkers' union who strongly supports the strikes, was until very recently
chairman of the Labour party and, as such, a familiar though obscure figure on the podium at party conferences. It was his job, for instance, to find the right welcoming noises before Tony Blair's annual speech. Various shadowy emissaries — among them the inevitable John Spellar and, though this has been denied, Keith Hill — have been dispatched to plead with the RMT, to no effect. John Prescott himself — yet another humiliation — has been powerless.
To illustrate all the linkages between Labour and the unions would be the work of a lifetime, and call for the unremitting scholarship of Sir Lewis Namier allied to the loving eye for nuance of Marcel Proust. Tony Blair for the most part finds it sordid and beneath him. His distaste for dealing with the unions is one overlooked reason why he has so far failed to tackle public services with the same readiness and dispatch that he has shown during overseas entanglements.
He has chosen instead to devolve the task to juniors. One of them was Stephen Byers who announced his 'ten-year plan' for the railways earlier this week. This intellectually feeble effort differed remarkably little from the ten-year plan that John Prescott announced two years earlier. Byers has dedicated himself since becoming Transport Secretary to solving the problems of the future with the tools of the past.
The contrast with the Health Secretary Alan Milburn, with whom he shared an office as a young MP, could not be more striking. Milburn's performance in the House of Commons on Tuesday was the most impressive by any Cabinet minister since the election. Milburn has had the courage to build on the insights of the last Tory government, not bury them. His plan for self-governing 'foundation hospitals' was denounced by Old Labour and the unions. John Edmonds of the GMB said that 'he is creating Rai1track on a hospital trolley'. A spokesman for the public sector workers' union, Unison, asserted that 'the government are now engaged on a suicide mission'.
The Health Secretary should take heart. Being denounced by the GMB and Unison is a sure sign that he is getting something right. Buy shares in Milburn. If the NHS is in better shape by the election, the nation will not simply be getting the health care it needs: Milburn himself will be exceptionally well placed to succeed Tony Blair as leader.
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