The summer months in the House of Commons bring a crane to the buttress of the building underneath Big Ben. Everywhere there are pneumatic drills and men in hardhats, ostensibly laying some new tin on the roof. But for the scribblers of the current constitutional crisis, these men are, of course metaphorically, trying to rebuild parliament’s future.
They thought they would be safe to carry on without irritants getting in the way since the Commons officials would have felt safe saying that, as usual, MPs would be scattered to all postcodes of the Isles. But instead of MPs lying dormant, elsewhere, reading their booklists on Cape Cod and working on their forehand like Larry Summers or Timothy Geithner would once do, a strain of presenteeism has taken hold and the builders’ work is disturbed by MPs.
The problem seems to be that MPs have been so irritated that the country thinks they’ve checked out during a constitutional crisis, they are to be found loitering under cloisters and at the top of escalators – eager to have someone record that they were AT WORK during THE SUMMER. Those who do go for a vacation are to be found gleefully ending the telephone call of any conversation they allow a journalist with the following: ‘By the way, I hope you noticed that I spoke to you. Even though I was on holiday.’
And what are they working on? The Tories around Team Cameron can be found in Norman Shaw South drawing up preliminary ideas that may in six weeks time have been developed to be their big conference idea – in the mould of the inheritance tax speech two years ago. They currently have four candidates and are testing them like German scientists with ideas, including a pledge to slash the costs of central government. Possibly expect a speech like Clinton’s ‘the era of big government is over’.
The government’s own manifesto process continues apace inside No 10, with a panel of wise men about to be convened, past whom all ideas will eventually be run. There are, as yet, only three of them and the Insider understands them to come from the Fabian and communitarian left of the party. A sign that the manifesto of 2010 won’t owe much to Tony Blair. But what of the 600-odd MPs involved in neither process, filling up the Pugin cloisters this summer to underline dedication when once they would have been at the timeshare?
For a key contingent, there are the memories of how Gordon Brown bought their loyalty during the June plot and how little had been acted on in the interim. In tea rooms, instead of getting mad, they are getting even: an idea from one backbencher includes a star-rating system that would see Brown rated every week for how much attention he had shown the parliamentary Labour party. The futility of this gesture is not lost on this backbencher – and it is likely that such intermediary checks and balances on the PM will expire when the appetite for another direct challenge to him returns – expect this later this autumn, not earlier.
Elementary Watson
Meanwhile, what of the Brownites themselves? Right now, Tom Watson’s stock is rising, with some MPs watching to see how he repositions himself now he is outside government. Watson is morphing into something of a kingmaker.
He possibly always has been. Much is made of his role as a subordinate ‘functionary’ for Brown, but it’s little remembered that when he became a whip he usurped the usual etiquette and, instead of letting the then chief whip assume the role of Treasury whip as tradition would dictate, he bagsied the position to be closer to one GB.
At first sight, when Watson resigned from the government in June, people thought he had done so to be able to devote more time to political attack – and, sure enough, within days of leaving he was tabling parliamentary questions about Demos to his heart’s content.
But, more recently, he has also turned on the government – criticising its digital strategy and developing critiques of the ID cards scheme.
Watson is an intellectual, but not an indulger: he has little time for the Amartya Sen fanclub growing among both left and right researchers at Demos. If it is to be Watson what won it, many are uncertain whom he’ll back.
Cabinet in the round
Governments come and governments go, but the civil service goes on forever. But even though the current cohort of cabinet ministers may be on their way out, there are signs the civil service will enjoy a last say. In the autumn, cabinet ministers will be subjected, for the first time ever, to 360-degree appraisals. Civil servants, quango chiefs and junior ministers will be hauled in to a kind of permanent secretary diary room to give their verdict on how the minister handles all staff, high and low. The idea is to improve the performance of a minister, not to execute them with every grievance held up by junior civil servants, but it is tempting to wonder whether Ed Balls must supply his opinion on Ed Miliband. And to be truly 360-degrees, shouldn’t Brown give evidence on cabinet ministers? Mandarins due to begin the experiment will have a job on their hands to make sure these 360-degree appraisals don’t end up becoming more like exit interviews.