The real threat to Ruth Kelly is not the paedophile scandal but the Education Bill
Almost without exception Tony Blair’s Cabinet reshuffles have been a shambles, sometimes descending into farce. The reshuffle that followed the 2001 general election was a case in point. Decisions were delayed and a major reorganisation of Whitehall put on hold as Blair was locked in his study having a shouting match with Cherie. In the anteroom senior officials hung around listlessly, too embarrassed to barge in, awaiting instructions that failed to arrive. Two years later, matters got worse. The Prime Minister, without consulting officials, abolished the ancient office of Lord Chancellor. The decision had to be embarrassingly rescinded as it emerged that this could not be put into effect without primary legislation.
The business of the Lord Chancellor was incompetence of a very high order indeed. In the early days this kind of inattention to detail, one of the hallmarks of the Prime Minister, caused much of the trouble. More recently weakness and drift have added to the problem. For instance, I believe that Tony Blair yearns to sack Jack Straw and establish John Reid, one of the few remaining Cabinet loyalists, at the Foreign Office. But he is no longer strong enough to do so. Many in Downing Street would love to see the back of Margaret Beckett, the time-serving Environment Secretary. But it is calculated that she would stir up too much trouble on the back benches. Those close to the Prime Minister would, of course, love to have got rid of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. But that is now out of the question.
This profound weakness at the heart of government is the primary cause of the latest confusion. A reshuffle has been due ever since last November, but has been held up for a number of reasons. For a while the Prime Minister seemed set on sacking his chief whip Hilary Armstrong, but may have been dissuaded. He was eager to evict the Labour party chairman Ian McCartney, who has been ill. But McCartney’s patron John Prescott has ridden to the rescue, for the time being at least.
Now Ruth Kelly is the obstacle. The difficulty with Kelly is emphatically not the crisis over sex offenders in schools. Here she is strongly supported by Labour MPs who think, not without a great deal of justice, that the Education Secretary is the victim of a witch hunt whipped up in the tabloid press. At a closed meeting with Labour’s National Policy Forum in Nottingham last weekend Kelly had a very candid exchange with Labour activists. Not one of them criticised her handling of the paedophilia issue. She was, however, ripped to shreds over her plan to free schools from local authority control. This is the great and definitive issue.
The Education Bill, which is due to be published before Easter at the latest, has caused convulsions at Westminster. It has already generated a crisis of greater power and intensity than the rebellion over Iraq. The revolt over schools reform has the potential to blow away not just Ruth Kelly but also Tony Blair.
As The Spectator went to press, some 87 Labour MPs had signed an alternative white paper on education which is critical of the government’s proposal for schools reform. Matters are even worse than they look: perhaps 20 MPs have held back from endorsing this document because it is too conciliatory and accommodating towards the government.
For 12 years Neil Kinnock has been a model ex-leader of the Labour party, holding back from uttering even a word of criticism of Tony Blair, despite what at times must have been extreme provocation. Kinnock has now come out publicly against the Education Bill. It has mysteriously got around that Patricia Hewitt, the Health Secretary, has sharp reservations. John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister, has given the most eloquent expression to the rage in Labour’s ranks against Ruth Kelly’s plans to improve Britain’s schools. ‘If you set up a school and it becomes a good school,’ as Prescott accurately noted, ‘the great danger is that everyone wants to go there.’ In summary, it is completely impossible for Tony Blair to get his education reforms through the House of Commons without relying on the thoughtfully extended hand of support of David Cameron’s Conservative party.
The usual course of action for a Labour Prime Minister confronted with a backbench rebellion of this scale and consequence would be to give in at once. It is indeed the case that various compromise proposals — such as giving local councils mandatory control over the admissions policy of trust schools — are already being privately discussed. However, the Prime Minister, to his eternal credit, has ruled out any pragmatic course of action by putting radical reform of schools and hospitals at the heart of his third-term agenda. If he surrenders to Labour MPs, he will make himself look ridiculous and his premiership entirely pointless. This is the tightrope which Tony Blair must walk as he approaches the end of his ninth year in office. He has dealt with comparable dilemmas before and solved them through a mixture of equivocation, brutality and the exercise of his considerable personal charm. There is no special reason to suppose that he can’t pull off the impossible again, apart from one factor: Ruth Kelly.
There is little doubt that Tony Blair must be regretting his decision to make the unfortunate Kelly Education Secretary. She is not popular or easy with Labour MPs, partly for reasons that reflect well on her character. Kelly has four young children at home, all born since she became an MP in 1997. She has been singled out for very rapid promotion. This has inspired jealousy, made much worse by the fact that she has never had time to cultivate a following on the back benches. She is seen as a creature of Downing Street, and not without reason. It is by no means clear whether the Education White Paper was drafted by Tony Blair’s adviser Lord Adonis or by Ruth Kelly and the Department for Education. Her political skills, as she has demonstrated during the sex offenders’ crisis, are poorly developed. Downing Street sources have been briefing that Kelly is not up to the job since last summer, if not before.
This is the extraordinary thing: the Education Bill and with it the Prime Minister’s legitimacy are in the hands of this inexperienced and fragile, though promising, politician. I am told that just two weeks ago Tony Blair gently suggested to Kelly that she might benefit from a change of scenery, a proposal which Kelly resisted in very spirited fashion. Good for her. Since then the paedophilia row has broken. Conventional wisdom at Westminster maintains that this new controversy cements Kelly in her office, because moving her would look like giving a victory to the tabloid press.
I wonder if this is right. Tony Blair is facing one of the great crises of his premiership. He will surely want an old hand with a shrewd political touch to help him through it. That person — for all her other merits — is not Ruth Kelly. When faced with an almost identical crisis over university top-up fees, the then higher education minister Alan Johnson navigated the government away from disaster. There are voices close to the Prime Minister who are urging Johnson, now well established inside the Cabinet as Trade Secretary, to be brought back for a repeat performance.
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