Labour’s magic circle
In a famous Spectator article of 17 January 1964, Iain Macleod denounced the ‘magic circle’ of senior Conservatives who had engineered the succession of Lord Home as prime minister the year before. The Crown was obliged to follow the advice tendered by Harold Macmillan, Macleod concluded, ‘but the result of the methods used was contradiction and misrepresentation. I do not think it was a precedent that will be followed.’ He was right. Since the election of Edward Heath in 1965, every Tory leader, with the exception of Michael Howard in 2003, has been chosen in a full-blown democratic contest. Twice since Home, there has been a change of Prime Minister without a general election. But in both cases — James Callaghan in April 1976 and John Major in November 1990 — the new party leader and PM was chosen in an open contest.
It now appears quite probable that Gordon Brown will succeed Tony Blair this summer without a formal election. As things stand, the other two declared candidates, John McDonnell and Michael Meacher, would struggle to obtain the backing of 44 MPs required to enter the contest. Last weekend, Jack Straw announced that he would be Gordon Brown’s campaign manager and, with silken menace, told his colleagues: ‘If you would like to be involved in Gordon’s campaign, please let me know.’ The message was clear to Labour MPs who want to keep their options open: sign up to Gordon now, or face the consequences.
The formalisation of the Brown campaign was all the more striking as the Chancellor had brushed aside such matters only days before. ‘As and when there is a leadership election for the Labour party, I will set out what I intend to do,’ he said in an interview with the Financial Times on 15 March. ‘The time for setting out one’s stall for the future will be when actually there is a leadership election. People want us to get on with the job of governing and then sort out these other issues at a later time.’ The formula used by Mr Brown and his allies has been that he hopes to serve the country in the years ahead, but does not want to go into detail until Mr Blair formally declares his resignation. Indeed, it has been a constant gripe by Brownites that this sense of propriety has prevented the Chancellor from unleashing a full-frontal counterattack against David Cameron.
Evidently, this sense of propriety is dissolving fast. The lukewarm reception given to Mr Brown’s final Budget and the latest flurry of speculation concerning David Miliband’s intentions convinced the Chancellor to bring his plans forward and to disclose Mr Straw’s role. There is, it must be said, nothing remotely improper in this. Mr Blair’s absurdly protracted farewell has more than entitled his colleagues to begin campaigning for the leadership and deputy leadership. If Mr Brown wants to set out his stall as Prime Minister-in-waiting, he should do so: indeed, the sooner, the better.
Where Mr Brown is miscalculating badly is to imagine that a coronation, rather than a contest, is in his interests. In September, after Mr Blair was forced to announce that the 2006 Labour conference would be his last as leader, the Chancellor told Andrew Marr that ‘I would welcome there being other candidates for the election.... I think it’s good for the party if there’s an election.’ Since then, however, he has clearly had a change of heart. Every Brownite sinew is being stretched to deter a serious challenger and ensure a coronation. Labour’s National Executive Committee has ruled that, if unopposed, Mr Brown would not even face an ‘affirmative vote’ by the party — of the kind that William Hague sought in 1997 after his election as leader by Tory MPs. It is bizarre that, 12 years after Mr Blair’s hugely symbolic rewriting of the Labour constitution was submitted to the judgment of the party, the question of the succession may be settled without reference to Labour members — let alone the rest of us. In recent years, only the coronation of Mr Howard as Tory leader provides a precedent for Mr Brown, and it is not a happy one. The Conservative party in November 2003 was on the brink of nervous collapse after Iain Duncan Smith’s brief reign, and senior Tories concluded, quite rightly, that a full-blown leadership contest might tip the movement over the edge. David Davis and other candidates stepped aside, enabling Mr Howard successfully to restore unity and discipline in his two years as leader.
But a party in its third term, with a robust majority of 67, should not be resorting to such defensive measures. Indeed, the public, having re-elected Mr Blair in 2005 after his explicit promise to serve ‘a full term’, must be puzzled and annoyed by what the Labour party is up to. Only two years after the general election, a new Prime Minister is to take office, without a personal mandate from the electorate or, quite possibly, a formal party contest.
Harriet Harman, who hopes to be Mr Brown’s deputy, claims that ‘it’s not Gordon’s fault he is so much the best candidate’. That may be so, but poll after poll shows that the public are not yet persuaded of the Chancellor’s prospective merits as an opponent to Mr Cameron. How much better for Mr Brown if he had the chance to show his mettle and his fitness to lead the country into the second decade of the century. It is overwhelmingly in his interests that a serious candidate comes forward to give Labour a meaningful debate about its post-Blair trajectory and the electorate a sense of what sort of Prime Minister it is getting.
As it is, the Labour party has begun to resemble the worst sort of oligarchy, introspective and nervous of open competition, stitching up the nation’s future behind closed doors. Mr Brown says he is serious about open government and restoring trust in politics. If so, he is making the worst possible start.
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