Woodward: turmoil in the cabinet my arse
Not dreaming of a White Christmas
I feel soiled somehow. This morning listening to the Today programme on Radio 4, I suddenly realised I was vehemently in agreement with Shaun Woodward. Having just finished my breakfast, you can imagine the uncomfortable position this put me in. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a member of this cabinet sound so righteously ‘on message’ just when it felt like what was needed, rather than being utterly disingenuous.
Allow me to backtrack and explain. Everyone will have heard by now that Patricia Hewitt and Geoff Hoon sent an email around the PLP wittering about a secret ballot on the leadership. Naturally no one touched it. In fact it has been received with almost universal derision on the Left, despite the attempts of all sections of the Press to parlay it into something more serious than it is.
The argument runs that, because cabinet ministers waited a few hours before putting out statements of support, it may be that the ‘coup’ was more serious than it at first seems. Indeed the BBC seems to have got hold of information that half a dozen cabinet members tentatively supported the ‘rebels’, but they ‘bottled it’. Woodward was little short of decisive in crushing the rumour and putting focus back where it belonged.
He called into question the judgment of Hoon and Hewitt – rightly so – and then returned to Brown’s masterful hammering of Cameron at PMQs yesterday, on the continuing failure of the Tories to have a consistent economic policy (or a consistent answer to the same question when it’s asked three times on the same day for that matter). The sad little coup, of course, gives the Right-media the excuse they need to miss this out.
“Has Labour got a death wish? Two ex-cabinet ministers mount abortive coup, inflicting yet more damage on the PM” is the headline on the Mail online today, and though I missed the full details, the dead tree copy is running something similarly hyperbolic. Below the headline, Peter Oborne’s article is called, “Labour is now so riven by poison, we’re being run by two rival governments. And neither cares about Britain”. Subtle stuff.
It is the media who will inflict the damage on Brown, rather than the ‘abortive coup’. By leading off with headlines on the subject, stressing the divisions within Labour and how important they are – and no doubt repeating the Tory meme that this makes Labour unelectable – the press will be propagating a story that is damaging but clearly has little relation to the reality within the PLP, which for once seems broadly united.
Trying to read the tea-leaves of why David Miliband didn’t issue a statement of support for Brown for a few hours is simply not an acceptable replacement for real journalism. Even if everyone was lukewarm, there’s not going to be a coup. If the government simply absorbed the shock and replaced cabinet ministers in the premature June 2009 ‘coup’, and then took a crushing election result on the chin, a few windbags mouthing off in an email, even with cabinet support, is hardly going to make much of a ripple.
What journalists don’t seem to be flagging up, however, is that it’s the same faces involved in these ‘coups’. Blairites and ex-Blairites, maybe a few Brownites who haven’t adjusted to the changed economic realities of higher taxation and higher expenditure levels. Not people, it must be said, who have much respect in the Party, having long since fallen from grace. Certainly not a lot of respect amongst members.
I’m not a supporter of Gordon Brown or New Labour, but the vulturous attacks of these discredited, demoted fools – time and again from wings of the Party even less in favour than Brown – are just sickening and embarrassing. Bearing in mind that Labour’s defeat is still assumed to be all but inevitable, we can only hope for a pro-Labour hung parliament – these antics are thus far from helpful. But we must not get sucked into Press attempts at clairvoyance and second-guessing who loves Gordon Brown and what real or imagined policy differences there are..
The key thing to focus on is policy; Labour is terrible, the Tories are worse.
Whilst I agree the email wasn’t particularly helpful to Labour’s election chances, dismissing this as just a few nuts is wrong. Brown has survived two public coups in the last few months. You shouldn’t face public coups. The fact he does is a sign of weakness. As for the media reading the tea leaves; the media know that the politicians know that the media will read the tea leaves. Thats why normally when these things happen (insofar as they’re normal) all the ministers rush out on TV to say how wonderful the present leader is. The fact they didn’t do that says something. Or at least it is not unreasonable to infer that something.
As for Labour having a consistent economic policy, true so far, I guess. But wait till after the election: I think that if Brown wins he will make swingeing cuts in public expenditure; maybe not straight away as he may well believe that the recovery requires further spending, but soon enough. Evidence for this: (a) Brown’s economic policies prior to the crash – insistence on debt as 40% GDP; (b) Brown, like all politicians, can be a little disingenuous; (c) Brown’s dividing line strategy.
Why shouldn’t a PM face public coups?
Even if we set aside the changing structure of the British government, with more power being focussed on the PM and the departments directly in his hands, and the concomitant increased importance of the position as receptacle of blame, there’s no reason to assume that a PM shouldn’t face opposition or attempts to remove him.
He’s not the US President, not directly elected as leader. He is responsible to parliament – and the last four Prime Ministers have done anything but honour that responsibility. So why shouldn’t there be coups?
As for it being a sign of weakness, I don’t see how it is. The PM has never had the power, actual or legal, to force MPs out of office – and that’s about all that could be done to Hoon and Hewitt, who have already been stripped of everything else. The others launching coups were either shortly forced from office, or fell on their own swords – showing that actually Brown is in a strong position.
Incidentally, also on the subject, see the fact that Hoon and Hewitt’s proposal simply couldn’t happen, being against the rules of the Labour Party. Paul has a post up about it.
You shouldn’t face coups because:
(a) Plotters shouldn’t think they have a chance. Because they shouldn’t have a chance.
(b) It means that they think you won’t be around for long enough to damage their career.
(c) Name a PM in a position of strength who has faced a coup.
I don’t really care that it couldn’t happen according to Labour’s constitution.
Also, would you be arguing the same if it were a Tory PM and party undergoing this, honestly?
As an aside: you accepting my tea leaves and consistency points?
I think you’re wrong in your reasons why people shouldn’t face coups.
(a) Whether or not the plotters think they have a chance is more about their own bad judgment than the state of the government, which is what Woodward put his finger on and why I agreed with him completely.
(b) Hewitt is gone after the next parliament, and despite his ten-thousand strong majority, Hoon has been one of the most unabashed ‘flippers’ – his days are numbered too, even if he succeeds in re-election.
I say this as a way of suggesting it was publicity seeking desperation rather than a principled political attempt on Gordon’s leadership.
(c) I can’t. Doesn’t mean it can’t happen, especially in these days when the Westminster bubble is less grounded in reality than ever, and more responsive to gossip.
As for whether I’d be arguing the same if it were the Tory Party and a Conservative Prime Minister, I hope so.
I could not adhere more closely to Aneurin Bevan’s maxim that socialists should seek nothing less than the complete extinction of the Tory Party.
I’ll never support a Tory government, nor consider it legitimate. Yet if backstabbers of the ilk of Hoon and Hewitt came out of the woodwork to knife Cameron, and the media played such silly buggers, I’d like to think they’d cop it from me too.
I can’t say for sure however, as my knowledge of the Labour Party – especially having met quite a few cabinet members and watched most of the rest for a decade – is greater than that of the Tory Party. So I might not be able to make the same sort of judgment independent of the media.
But as I said, I hope so.
On your aside, yes pretty much. Actually the current budget makes room for cuts even whilst increasing overall expenditure. I have no doubt that Darling will seek to rein that in if re-elected.