Within weeks of taking office in 1997, Tony Blair invited Margaret Thatcher to Downing Street to take her counsel on foreign affairs. The encounter with the left’s hate figure infuriated union and party activists, but it helped to set the seal on Blair’s pledge to ‘govern as New Labour’ – for the whole nation not for sectional interests.
Yet interventions by predecessors are seldom so positive. Thatcher became exasperated by sniping at the sidelines from Ted Heath. John Major often found himself pushed onto the defensive by off-message comments from Thatcher.
Gordon Brown and his strategists are busy planning how they will strike the balance between claiming the credit for the policy successes of the past decade, and portraying the new government as a fresh start. But as well as the policies they must consider the personalities – the role that Blair, and his family, will continue to play in shaping the public’s impression of the Labour party.
So it is fascinating to observe Cherie Booth assembling some of the most senior figures in the legal establishment to sit on a high-powered commission, which she will head, to review the state of Britain’s jails.
Although the inquiry has no statutory basis and was set up by a pressure group, the Howard League for Penal Reform, she has managed to secure the participation of no less a figure than the director of public prosecutions (her old friend Sir Ken Macdonald) as well as another key individual, the chairman of the Sentencing Advisory Panel. The formal launch will be in the House of Lords in July, only weeks after Brown takes up office. The first findings will be released before the end of this year, with a full report next year.
Whatever else the commission concludes, it is certain to lambast the Labour government for allowing prisons to become overcrowded and for failing to divert enough offenders into non-custodial sentences. Cherie is a senior lawyer with sincere and well-informed views about prisons, so no one would question her qualifications for the role. But it will thrust her into the public spotlight in a manner hardly helpful to the government. For now, Brown’s lieutenants are refraining from authorizing the kind of stories that say ‘Sources close to the chancellor said Mrs Blair should “keep her oar out”.’ We shall see if the Brownites remain so restrained.
Cherie does not just want to lobby the government, she says she wants to shift public opinion on crime and punishment. Her venture will certainly open a debate. (Under her husband’s government, the prison population has risen by a third, while crime, according to the British Crime Survey, has fallen by a third. Some would call these figures a Labour success story, and evidence to back Michael Howard’s claim that ‘prison works’.)
What matters most to Labour is that Brown is able to strike his own balance between ‘more of the same’ and ‘a fresh start’, without being blown off course by interventions from former occupants of Number 10.
Those of you who attended the Progress deputy leadership hustings will have heard Harriet Harman criticise the government’s ‘specialist schools’ programme, in which comprehensives are encouraged to rename themselves ‘humanities colleges’, ‘engineering colleges’, or the like, at the pain of missing out on funding if they refuse.
Harman’s objection is practical rather than ideological. What if you have three children, all with different interests? Do two of them just have to lump it? Or do you send all three to different schools? It’s the kind of down-to-earth thinking which justifies her claim to be ‘Radio 2 to Gordon’s Radio 4’.