A former Labour MP, beaten at the last election and now keen to find a new seat in order to return to Westminster, tells me of a stumbling block. Like a seaside (or Manchester) guesthouse in conference season, there’s a sign saying ‘No vacancies’ hanging on the door of the Commons.
Sitting Labour MPs were told to inform the party by September 15 whether they intend to fight the next election or retire from the House. Those who say they will carry on face the ‘trigger ballot’ reselection procedure, starting in October. In seats where the MP declares an intention to stand down, a full selection process will be arranged.
But September 15 came and went, and hardly anyone noticed. A string of veteran MPs insisted that they would fight on. (On this occasion, the Rt Hon exception was Clare Short, who – despite her disloyalty in calling for a hung parliament – at least played by the rules as regards the timing of her announcement that she will not seek re-election under the Labour banner.)
In swathes of the country, including the whole of Greater London, not a single sitting Labour MP said they would stand down. The result? Veterans who sail through the trigger ballot will be well placed to strike a deal close to the next general election, in which they may accept some inducement to stand aside for a favoured replacement.
Former MP Roy Hughes, now Lord Islwyn, blew the whistle on the practice when he described how, in the run-up to the 1997 election, he accepted a peerage to vacate Newport East in favour of Tory-to-Labour defector Alan Howarth.
There are three things wrong with this practice. First, for those of us who value party democracy, it curbs the right of local members to select their new MP from an open field. Second, a candidate chosen at the last minute, who may not be local and will have no time to bed in, will be vulnerable to attack by the more-local-than-thou Lib Dems. Third, it leaves individuals like my former Labour MP – a staunch moderniser – stuck in limbo right up until the election is called.
It would be easy to put things right. Simply announce that only those MPs who declare their retirement in good time will be considered for peerages. Procrastinators will never be ennobled. I suspect the sign on the Commons door will soon be flipped over to read ‘Vacancies’.
Simon Jenkins, former editor of the Times, has produced a timely reminder of where Gordon Brown stands in Labour’s political spectrum. Voters watching the Blair-Brown sparring of the past couple of months could be forgiven for assuming that, while the prime minister embraces modernisation and centrism, the chancellor is some kind of 1970s throwback who wants to declare war on the private sector, restore secondary picketing and be photographed with Fidel Castro.
It suits the Tories for Brown to be seen as an old-fashioned socialist. They hope that when Blair goes, the natural pre-1994 political order will reassert itself. But in his book Thatcher and Sons: a Revolution in Three Acts, to be published during Tory conference, Jenkins reels off those policies – PFI, tube PPP, privatising air traffic control, initially sticking to Tory spending plans – on which Brown has been every inch New Labour.
Jenkins concludes: ‘In his attachment to privatisation, private finance and “tough love” welfare reform, Brown went where Tories had never dared to venture. Of all “Thatcher’s sons”, none was to be more true to her faith.’ While this may be over the top, the point remains that what separates Blair and Brown is personal, not political. The danger for Labour is that if, during a leadership contest, a Blairite challenger calls the chancellor a dogmatic old leftie, some of the mud might stick.