The latest cabinet spat amounts to a tussle for the hearts and minds of Labour traditionalists. Like all the best feuds it involves Gordon Brown, in pole position to succeed Tony Blair as PM should a vacancy arise. This time his adversary is Peter Hain, whose recent pronouncements have been endearing him to the left.
The admission by the Commons leader that plain-speaking has landed him in ‘the odd scrape’ is an understatement. In October he was forced to tear up a speech on America’s failings, before it was delivered but after the text had been released to journalists.
It was foreign secretary Jack Straw who vetoed the speech, after being shown an advance copy. Tony Blair appeared to be the target of a warning, in the abandoned text, against ‘tagging along behind a unilateralist United States’.
But Mr Hain’s assault on US-style capitalism, pointing out that it breeds violence and social breakdown, was a direct pop at the chancellor. Mr Brown regularly praises the American entrepreneurial spirit and exhorts Europe to be more like the US in the way it does business.
When the speech was pulled and Mr Hain had to deliver off-the-cuff banalities instead, no-one experienced a greater sense of schadenfreude than the chancellor. Only four months earlier, Mr Hain had to abandon another speech, in which he would have suggested a hike in the income tax rate for top earners. Mr Brown did not take kindly to the encroachment onto Treasury territory.
It has not escaped the attention of either minister that attacks on President Bush and calls for higher taxes on the rich play well with the Labour grassroots. When Mr Blair finally calls it a day, Mr Hain may yet emerge as the strongest challenger to the chancellor.
Why on earth is the shadow home secretary dubbed Oliver Leftwing? Only in the Conservative party could you be singled out as a bit of a pinko for opposing hanging, not being homophobic and treating your political opponents with civility.
Mr Letwin has charm, intelligence and a refreshing honesty. He is also quite rightwing. His outings onto newspaper front pages have mostly followed the format ‘politician gaffes by giving straight answer to straight question’. And the answers – from steep tax cuts envisaged before the 2001 election, to the admission that he would rather beg on the street than send his child to the local comp – are more Thatcher than third way.
The policy of sending all asylum seekers to an unspecified spot ‘far, far away’, unveiled at the Tory conference, differed chiefly in that it was announced on purpose. But in a question-and-answer session with Tory activists at the conference, Mr Letwin excelled himself. ‘Attlee,’ he said, ‘destroyed this country. We have had to rescue it ever since. If we can get to a point where the whole Attlee inheritance has gone forever, then… I would celebrate that.’
Er, wasn’t it Clement Attlee’s postwar Labour government that gave us the NHS?
Boris Johnson, young-fogeyish Tory MP and Spectator editor, tells a story about taking his family to Disneyland Paris. While stuck in an endless queue for a big rollercoaster, he is galled to see fellow visitors cruise straight past to the head of the queue without waiting. The reason, he says, is that the queue-jumpers had bought a special ticket called FastPass, which allowed them speedier access.
It was all a political analogy about public services. At first, says Boris, he was filled with a kind of incipient socialist rage that some people could get faster fun just by paying extra. But on more mature reflection, he turned it all around on its head and realised it was a Tory metaphor. (I’m afraid I lost it at that point and didn’t grasp why, but it was probably something about vouchers and internal markets).
I was sad that the story hadn’t ended halfway through, because paying to queue-jump is, of course, wrong, and certain to infuriate those who can’t afford to do it. Which is why socialists used to oppose private healthcare and education, and many still do.
But there is a twist in the tale. According to my guidebooks, FastPass is actually free to all Disneyland visitors – just like the timed tickets on a supermarket deli counter. So the hapless member for Henley needn’t have queued after all.
A footnote to the by-election disaster in Brent East, the first seat lost by Labour at a by-election since Neil Kinnock was at the helm. Up to now, Labour wounds in the constituency were self-inflicted. Reg Freeson, the seat’s Labour MP from 1964 to 1987, shook his head in sorrow as he watched the Lib Dem votes stack up in Brent town hall.
The man who knifed him to inherit the seat in 1987, Ken Livingstone, stayed away from the count but sent his chief of staff Simon Fletcher to survey the scene. The two ex-MPs still get along badly. But they agreed on the reason for the defeat: distaste for war in Iraq among voters in this cosmopolitan slice of London.
Paul Daisley, the Labour MP whose death forced the by-election, opposed the war. So did the Labour by-election candidate, Robert Evans. Yet the final Lib Dem campaign leaflet was a spoof Labour flyer picturing Tony Blair alongside President Bush under the strapline ‘These men need your help’.