‘A Benn, not a Bennite,’ is how the international development secretary and contender for Labour’s deputy leader, Hilary Benn, once memorably described himself in comparison to his more rebellious father.
Indeed, it is his reputation for moderation and as a hardworking and competent secretary of state that perhaps explains the broad appeal of his bid for the deputy leadership, with figures ranging from the former New Labour minister, Chris Smith, to the Bolsover MP and veteran left-winger, Dennis Skinner, declaring their support for him. And it is a combination that could yet win him the much-coveted role of John Prescott’s replacement, with the bookies rating him joint favourite to win the contest with the education secretary, Alan Johnson.
So what does he think marks him out from the other declared candidates? ‘That’s for others to answer that question, and not for me,’ he responds. ‘Why am I doing this? Because I’ve been encouraged and I think I’ve something to contribute. What do I think we need in the job? We need someone who’s going to offer honest advice to the leadership. We need someone who’s going to ensure that the voice of the party gets heard in the upper reaches of government.’
How does he see the role of deputy leader? ‘In the end it’s for the leader of the party to decide what he wants from the job,’ he says. ‘I say “he” because I hope the leader will be Gordon.’ Nonetheless, he thinks it is ‘perfectly possible to combine the deputy leadership with having a substantive job in the cabinet, because to be very clear, I’m not running for the post of deputy prime minister and I’m not running for the post of chair of the party, I’m running for the post of deputy leader of the party.’
We wonder if having a ‘good news job’ like international development secretary has prepared him for the tough decisions likely to be required of a deputy leader. ‘Well, I wouldn’t term it as a “good news job”,’ he replies. ‘International development does have tough decisions, like stopping direct budget support to the government in Ethiopia because they had shot dead 40 people on their streets and arrested the opposition leaders. So that’s tough.’
He cites an impressive track record in both national and local government as further evidence of his ‘toughness’: ‘I spent a year as the home office minister responsible for prisoners and probation – nobody can describe that job as a bed of roses, it wasn’t. I had 20 years as a councillor. I’ve been in opposition. I’ve been deputy leader of a local authority, and we had to make some pretty tough decisions there about budgets.’
The underlying theme of Benn’s pitch for the deputy leadership is the need to reconnect the Labour party with the process of government. ‘I think the party feels a bit as if its outside in the street peering through the glass at the government at work, and we’ve got to bring the party inside,’ he says. He makes a commitment that, ‘as big decisions come before the government and the country, we promise that we will talk to the party about what those decisions will actually be.’ He also believes the party ought to be able to elect its own chair, a process he suggests that might be conducted through the national policy forum.
For Benn, however, the problem of disconnection goes much deeper than between government and the Labour party; it encompasses the relationship between government and the public as a whole. ‘We live in a society where it is a bit too fashionable in some quarters to decry the ability of politics to change anything,’ he says.
Part of the reason for this cynicism, he suggests, is cultural. ‘Politics isn’t the same as shopping,’ he exclaims, and, in a clear echo of his father, he asserts the primacy of politics as something in which ‘we all play a part’. But politicians, and our current political system, he implies, must also accept their own share of responsibility for the publics’ current lack of trust.
‘The cash for honours [incident] has been deeply corrosive,’ he says. ‘And one of the conclusions I draw from that is we can’t anymore, as we seek to reform the House of Lords, credibly argue that political parties will continue to have the right to nominate people to the legislature. And that’s why I would have an 80 per cent elected chamber, and the other 20 per cent I would co-opt based on the advice from the independent appointments commission. But I would not have political parties nominating people to the legislature. It’s not credible.’
Furthermore, in a nod to Labour’s former reliance on ‘spin’, the development secretary denounces what he terms the politics of ‘excessive expectation’. This tendency, he says, is ‘very unhealthy in personal relationships, really bad for the relationship between government and governed.’
Instead, Benn thinks politicians should have the confidence to be more direct in their dealings with the public. ‘I believe in straightforward politics,’ he remarks. ‘I think people are yearning for straightforward politics, because they know leading government is difficult and that there are decisions which have to be made and choices which we have to form a view on. Politics working alongside people is Labour at its best, and politics that appears to descend from on high and tell everyone what to do isn’t going to work.’
While Benn has been happy to set his stall by the need to re-engage people in the political process, other candidates for the deputy leadership have ventured into perhaps more controversial territory. Does he support Peter Hain’s recent call for a cap on city bonuses? ‘I don’t, because I don’t see how you could operate them,’ he says. ‘What I would say to the individuals is, and it may sound rather old fashioned, I’d say, “have you ever heard of the word ‘self restraint’,” actually.’
Benn is similarly cautious when it comes to discussing the role of the unions in the Labour party. ‘I believe passionately that trade unionism is just as relevant now as it has been throughout the whole of history,’ says the development secretary, who worked for both the MSF and ASTMS unions for more than 22 years, and is a former chair of the trade unions thinktank, Unions 21.
So is he at all worried by the prospect of the proposed ‘super-union’ and its effect on Labour party democracy? Would he prefer that they didn’t amalgamate? ‘Well no, in the end it’s for the unions to decide,’ he says. ‘No, I wouldn’t say to them they shouldn’t amalgamate because they get economies of scale and all sorts of things. But amalgamating, as the unions themselves will recognise, is not a substitute for continuing to recruit. Just as the party has had to change and modernise the same is true for the trade unions.’
Beneath the carefully moderate statements, we wonder if there is anything of the father who helped draft Labour’s 1983 manifesto that committed the party to renationalising the commanding heights of the economy. Benn speaks passionately about the problems of inequality in his Leeds constituency, and the importance of education, both at home and abroad, in achieving social justice. So what, if anything, has he taken from his father’s political philosophy?
‘My father and my mother both had a very profound impact on me,’ he says. ‘I think the most important thing they both taught me is to listen, think, reflect, form a view and say what you think. Second, an optimism. Not because I’m naïve, but if we don’t take optimism, hope and encouragement with us in our journey as party members and government then we are sunk.’ This Benn, at least, still has plenty of reasons to be hopeful.