POLITICS

If you want to understand Harriet Harman, you only have to look in her eyes

BRUCE ANDERSON

Aastair Campbell, Tony Blair's press spokesman, is a clever fellow and was talent-spotted some years ago by the late Robert Maxwell. Maxwell decided that in terms of integrity, objectivity and generosi-. ty of spirit, the young Campbell was a natu- ral successor to Joe Haines. Joe had been Harold Wilson's press secretary and later went to work for Bob Maxwell. From Wil- son's Robespierre to Maxwell's homuncu- lus: what a glittering career, and how Alas- tair panted to emulate it.

There were disadvantages in being trained by old Bob. It did involve spending several years halfway up the great man's fundament: not the loveliest of vantage points. But Alastair enjoyed the Maxwell era and mourned his chiefs demise. He was more upset when Maxwell died than he had been until last Monday, when Harriet Harman got her Party into difficulty.

Alastair would be the first to admit that he has only a limited grasp of politics, so he quickly turned the problem over to his cur- rent boss, Peter Mandelson. Peter did what he always does when troubled: he sought solace in that socialist masterpiece, Animal Farm, and in its hero who has inspired him throughout his career — the noblest spin- doctor of them all, the pig, Squealer.

So how would Squealer have handled the situation? Labour's education spokesman, David Blunkett, had made a pledge to the Party Conference: 'Watch my lips — no selection.' What about claiming that there had been an error in transcription and that it should have read: 'Watch my lips — more selection'? But would Blunkett wear it? Squealer had turned 'four legs good, two legs bad' into 'four legs good, two legs bet- ter', and Peter had always wanted to pull off a coup like that. But was this the moment?

Then there was Gerry Steinberg, who had resigned his junior post and criticised Miss Harman in the media. As Peter said to Alastair: 'But who does this oik Steinberg think he is? I know for a fact that he doesn't own a single Armani suit and that he's never been to dinner with Ken and Barbara Follett. What's someone like that doing in our Party?'

They were in despair. Then someone had a bright idea: to claim that Harriet, as a mother, was beyond rational thought. 'Not as if she went in for much of that, anyway,' cracked one wag. Someone else pointed out that 'motherhood, apple-pie and selec- Live schools' would make a perfect Blairite slogan. Everyone was now much more cheerful, and after a few choruses of that great socialist anthem, 'New Labour, New Britain, New Blair, New Blah-blah,' they started up the spinning-looms again.

Miss Harman's claim that she was merely doing her duty as a mother was one of the most infantile explanations ever offered by a supposedly grown-up politician. The charge against her is not that she exercised her rights as a mother, but that she and her Party tried to stop other mothers exercising their rights. Harriet Harman is in the same position as a doctor who knows of an effec- tive new drug but denies it to his patients while prescribing it for his family. The charge against her is not motherhood. It is hypocrisy.

In a leader which also invented a son of Tony Crosland's, the Times advanced another bogus argument in Miss Harman's defence: that, while promoting comprehen- sive education, Labour politicians of the 1960s had sent their own children to private schools. There is an obvious distinction. However deluded those Labour politicians were, they did believe that comprehensivi- sation would result in a better education for everyone. Who now believes that ban- ning selection, opting out et al would result in a better education for anyone?

A few years ago, at a Party Conference lunch given, appropriately enough, by Bob Maxwell, I sat next to the late David Bas- nett. Mr Basnett, as repellent a specimen of the now extinct TUCosaurus Rex as ever had beer and sandwiches, was also a hyp- ocrite on a scale that would have made Har- riet Harman blush. At one stage, while shaking his head over the folly of some Labour politician who had exposed himself to media mockery by using private medicine, he said that he did not see why they did it. If he had to go to hospital, he never had any difficulty in getting a private room on the NHS. He just rang them and told them who he was. I searched his face for any signs of irony, which was absurd of me. What I got instead was an insight into the psychology of the commissar. Miss Har- man has now provided another such insight.

She has some grounds for feeling hard done by, for she was merely following in Mr Blair's footsteps. He did what he liked about his children, so she might have thought that she could do the same. There are two reasons why her tactic went awry, and she should have anticipated one of them. She assumed that because she was a commissar, she could exercise rights which she wished to deny to her con- stituents. Fair enough — but she ought to have realised that, as the senior commissar, Mr Blair could exercise rights which he in turn would deny to junior commissars.

She has a second problem. Many of her colleagues dislike and despise her. Both reactions are justified. Miss Harman might seem easy on the eye, but anyone who is fooled by that should look into her eyes. They reveal her as a cold-hearted, mean- minded, hard, ambitious creature. Whatev- er impelled her into Labour politics, it was not a desire to add to the stock of public benevolence.

There are people in the Labour Party who do care about the poor, and they include the nominal Deputy Leader, that muddled old ranter John Prescott. Mr Prescott's politics may rest on a platform of short planks, but when he takes time off from resenting the slights from Tony Blair's office, he can display a warm heart. But the modern Labour Party has fewer and fewer John Prescotts and more and more Harriet Harmans, who regard the poor merely as a ladder for personal advancement.

She will need to rely on the poor for advancement; she would never rise far on merit. Her performance in her various front-bench posts has ranged from the bad to the abject, which is why she keeps being voted out of the Shadow Cabinet. Mr Blair always reappoints her, because, as Mr Man- delson would put it: never mind the quality, see the photographs. From most of its front- bench spokesmen, New Labour demands no more intellectual effort than is required of a waxwork at Madame Tussaud's. Harriet would make a pretty waxwork.

There have always been some Labour politicians who would do anything for socialism except practise it: Roy Hattersley comes to mind. To be fair to him, though, he has been consistently opposed to selec- tion in schools, opt-out schools, private schools — just as long as they do not touch private restaurants. It is a sign of the moral nullity of the new Labour Party that Mr Hattersley can now pose as a man of princi- ple. New Labour cares as much about real people and their problems as Robert Maxwell did about his pensioners.