Anyone watching him knows this is someone who knows about life, who they’d like to go for a drink with or have in their homes.
His upbringing by his sister and his years of experience running the Communications Workers Union have never been used by him as a weapon. He is above the crass ‘vote for me because I’m working class’ argument. Because he knows what tough times are, he doesn’t glorify them. He knows that working people want to get on in life. And he knows that the instinctive scepticism about change and reform sometimes seen on the left in politics doesn’t always serve people well.
I first came across him many years ago when I was working in John Smith’s office. John was engaged in a monumental battle to get his one member one vote reforms through the Labour party. Predictably there was fierce resistance. Unwilling to argue against the principle of one member one vote, the opposition to the changes predicted instead they would mean the end of the union link. That was not true and was never Smith’s intention, but still a ‘Save the Link’ campaign was established to try to defeat his proposed changes.
Against that backdrop it took bravery and foresight for a trade union leader to come out in favour of those changes. Yet that is what Alan Johnson and his colleague Tony Young, who at the time led the National Communications Union, did. Two young union leaders stepping forward arguing our movement had to change.
It was the same later in government when Alan Johnson found himself minister of state for higher education at the time the rise in tuition fees was going through parliament in 2004. Alan met with many MPs who were sceptical about the change and played his part in the passing of a change that went through by just five votes, despite the Labour government’s huge majority at the time.
After the rise in fees came into force Alan quite fairly pointed out the success of the policy. Following the changes there was a huge rise in the number of young people going on to higher education and, within that, a particular rise in the number of students from poorer backgrounds. In 2004 just one in eight young people from the lowest income groups went on to higher education. By last year, after four years of the changes coming in, that figure had gone up to one in five. Alan was critical of the new government’s approach in the main because rather than proposing an incremental rise in fees, they went for the wholesale replacement of state funding with graduate funding, altering the basic bargain between state and student forged in 2004.
He did not have long enough to serve in the position of shadow chancellor to know whether he would have succeeded in that job. But whether that job was the right one or not, he will be a real loss to Labour’s frontbench. If this reads like a political obituary, I hope it isn’t because Labour is stronger and has wider appeal when politicians like Alan Johnson are part of our team.
Pat McFadden is Labour MP for Wolverhampton south-east
I never trusted Alan Johnson. He always appeared to have a fake smile and a fake tan, he always reminded me of a singer crooning to the widows on an ocean liner. He did his many jobs very well. Balls’ is akin to an elderly rocker belting out the old tried and tested classics, reminding the fans of yesterdays stardom.
Do you know how many times I’ve had to listen to people tell me over the years he has the common touch, three MP’s who may well be spending time in jail one used poor judgment on material for an election all, we were told had the common touch. Believe it or not Prescott was the common mans politician, he also said I would never ever sit in the house of Lords. Sorry common touch is rubbish politicians are in this for what they can make.