IS WOODWARD DEAD WOOD?
Mark Seddon reports that Shaun Woodward
is not finding New Labour a comfortable berth
IN addition to George Orwell's stapler raffled once a year to raise funds for his old paper, Tribune — I have sometimes wondered about our bulging photographic archive and how best it might be auctioned off. Lacking any entrepreneurial flair, I have yet to discover how much Harriet Harman might be prepared to cough up for that framed sepia print, the one in which she is pictured, dressed in a duffel coat (de rigueur under Michael Foot), gaz- ing winsomely at a similarly attired Peter Tatchell. Or Robin Cook: how much does he value that nicely proportioned picture of him, CND badge featured prominently on his lapel? And Jonathan Dimbleby? I bet he wouldn't mind getting his hands on that pie of him and his missus, Bel Mooney, marching with Arthur Scargill and Red Clydesider Jimmy Reid at a Yorkshire miners' gala. Labour's moderni- sation has rendered most of our archive as potentially lucrative and embarrassing as, say, a painting of Tony Blair in the buff.
Try as I might, I have not found any compromising pictures of Mr Shaun Woodward, MP (Witney, Nouvelle Labour). Yet knowing of his burning desire to inherit a safe Labour seat and having learned a little about his misspent youth at Jesus College, Cambridge, I do have some comradely advice. Ascend into the attic of your stately pile, Shaun, and dig out the most outrageous memento of your undergraduate days. Lesser mortals, especially those of the modernised New Labour variety, would balk at such a suici- dal suggestion, but, believe me, Shaun, those yellowing, curling photos and the old English essays could be your passport.
`You couldn't miss Shaun at Jesus,' recalls a contemporary. 'He looked like the lead singer from Dexy's Midnight Runners, what with the woolly hat without the bobble and his donkey, jacket. Oh, except that he had a chunky beard.' It didn't take much for the impressionable, woolly-hatted undergradu- ate to fall under the spell of that doyen of English Marxist structuralism, the extremely hip and trendy Stephen Heath. Heath and his colleague Lisa Jardine worked under the incomparable Professor Raymond Williams, a colossus of the British intellectual Left
whose influence may one day rival that of William Morris. The young Shaun soon became something of a devotee of Heath, Marx and structuralism. Not that he went as far as 'Red' Andy Marr, later of the BBC, who hawked copies of the Socialist Organiser. 'We all thought that Shaun was something of an opportunist, miraculously attaching himself to the movers and shakers even then,' says the same acquaintance. `Mind you, he deserves a medal for going on to work for Esther Rantzen.'
Light years on, here is Shaun in full, breathless flow having discovered a new object for his affections. 'It is quite impossi- ble in 500 words to describe the current Labour government's achievements.' But, if anyone can, Shaun's surely the man. The former Conservative Central Office press officer has become quite prolific — 'over- zealous', according to one former govern- ment adviser — in his flailing attacks on 18 years of Tory misrule. 'Never Forget' was the title of a recent New Labour training event presided over by Woodward and his old mucker, Peter Mandelson. Yet even the most cynical New Labourites seem to have been shocked by Woodward's gift for amne- sia and the speed of his conversion.
`I shan't make my mind up until Decem- ber,' Woodward has told inquirers from his well-appointed, well-staffed office in Portcullis House. This time he seems to be referring to the quest for a Labour seat, or, failing that, a place in the Lords, preferably as a foreign minister working under Peter Mandelson. 'He believes that he will be brought into government before the election,' says a former adviser. But he forgets that promises made in the heat of the moment aren't always, er, deliver- able. Bright? No doubt. But curiously naive.' The charity stops there.
`He [Woodward] thinks he can bypass the Alan Howarth route,' says another close to the power nexus at the time when Woodward was flitting between the Tory benches and Alastair Campbell. Howarth seamlessly moved from ministerial office under the Conservatives to ministerial office under New Labour, but he did so after having the good grace first to face Labour party members in gritty Newport.
`But why would I give up a safe seat, one which I worked so hard to get?' asked Woodward of his critics recently. An intrigu- ing question, perhaps best answered by those who knew him in Smith Square. 'There won't be a Tory government for at least six years,' says a Central Office survivor. 'Wood- ward knows this, and he reckons he can get there quicker with New Labour — and be with the metropolitan fast set while he is at it. He is, let's be blunt, a star-fucker.' For someone who has wooed Labour with mili- tary precision, Woodward's tilting at elitism is alarmingly shallow. Soon after the Sunday Times reported that he was to spend £250,000 planting an arboretum, the Evening Standard's Londoner's Diary discovered that one Mr S. Woodward and a Mrs C. Wood- ward had applied for the maximum 'diversifi- cation grant' of £62,000 from the South-East Development Agency. This, in order to con- vert farm cottages into offices on their Sars- den Estate. Woodward's considered view, as relayed to the Standard, was that he would be lucky to be awarded two or three thou- sand, that it would benefit a charity — and that he was recording the conversation.
Woodward is said to be looking for a safe berth in the Midlands, in which case our lives may soon be enlivened by the Shaun and Sion show. For that most startlingly loyal of New Labourite columnists, SiOn Simon, is apparently also drawn by the warm glow of the Black Country, the chance of a safe Labour seat in the Rhondda Valley hav- ing slipped away earlier this year. Both will be aware that a list of 20 or so MPs, who may be persuaded to retire by the whips, is doing the rounds. But methinks Shaun Woodward would have to be imposed as a candidate at the last minute rather than face a Labour general committee.
Yet the mystery remains: why did Shaun Woodward, as a Tory frontbencher repre- senting a safe seat, go over to New Labour? Perhaps there is no longer an ide- ological leap to be made between the two parties. Shaun Woodward fits happily into the ruling elite. Needing to be with the 'in crowd' has, it seems, been a longtime vice, but fashion is ephemeral. A second-terrn Labour government with a smaller majori- ty will have powerful backbenchers to assuage. For Shaun Woodward there can be no guarantee of a plum job in that Labour government. Why not give it up and get on with planting the trees?
Mark Seddon is editor of Tribune.
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