Another day, another Downing Street communications relaunch. Is this the fifth or sixth since Gordon Brown entered Downing Street? Following tanktop-wearing Stephen Carter, who arrived making much of his political naiveté, yet managed to negotiate a peerage and a ministerial job on his departure, we now have Simon Lewis.
Lewis starts in July as the director of communications and the prime minister’s official spokesman. Lewis is a fully paid up member of the media class: his brother is editor of the Daily Telegraph, and the man who decided to pay for documents relating to MPs’ expenses. Labour MPs are already grumbling that yet another outsider has
been brought into the heart of government with the remit of slapping cosmetics on
the porkers.
It’s not that Lewis is a former running dog of capitalism, with stints spinning for Centrica and Vodafone. Nor even that he was once a flunkey to Her Majesty, repairing the damage post-Diana. No, what irks Labour members most of all is that Lewis was head of communications for the SDP, which nearly drove Labour into third place at the 1987 election. In the mid-80s, when Labour was teetering on the edge of extinction, Lewis was one of the main people prodding it with sticks to drive it towards the tar pits. That’s what Labour MPs cannot forgive.
Defeat from the jaws of victory – again
Every Insider reads Peter Riddell in the Times. He’s as informed as they get. His take on the appointment of yet another No 10 chief spin doctor is simple: it won’t fix the underlying problems of ‘the sense of drift that has damaged the Brown premiership far more than the work of his spokesman’.
What frustrates ministers is that papers go into No 10 for decisions to be taken, and nothing comes out, sometimes for weeks. One minister tells the Insider: ‘It’s like a black hole. Stuff goes in. Nothing comes out. You’ve more chance of getting answers to your prayers than Downing Street.’
It seems that only when an issue is at boiling point that any kind of decision gets taken, and then it is often the wrong decision. The expenses issue led to the ludicrous idea that MPs should be paid an attendance allowance on top of their salary – a policy which fell apart within hours. Then there was the Gurkhas, a policy stoically defended by ministers, then reversed by Downing Street at the last minute. Now there’s the Iraq Inquiry, originally to be held in secret, and by the time you read this probably to be televised live on Sky and available on your mobile.
It’s a pattern, say ministers. They stand firm on an issue, take enough flak to bring down a B52, see the policy reversed under pressure, and end up doing the right thing in the end, but without getting any credit.
Brown launches the National Plan
To counter the charge of dithering and drift, Downing Street is planning to launch a ‘National Plan’ within weeks, which will cover the economy, industry, education, health and crime. A fierce row is going on inside government, not over the content – which will of course be decided by the first secretary of state – but over the title.
You see, the last time someone called Brown launched a National Plan on behalf of the Labour government, it wasn’t what you’d call a complete success. In 1964, Harold Wilson came to power with an elected deputy leader (and infamous piss artist) called George Brown. Wilson established a vast new chunk of Whitehall called the Department for Economic Affairs (DEA) and put Brown in charge of it, largely to keep him occupied and out of the way. Tony Blair did something similar with the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM), but that’s another story.
The main output of the DEA (which should have been called the DOA) was a document called the National Plan, which was posted out to millions of people. The economic policies it contained collapsed within months, the pound was devalued, the DEA was abolished, and Labour lost the election. George Brown tragically drank himself to death, but not before joining the SDP. I wonder if he ever met Simon Lewis?