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Below the radar, however, ‘senior Blairite MPs’ were sending precisely the opposite signal to the media, effectively acknowledging that Mr Clarke’s attack had changed the terms of trade, and that it was time to expedite the Prime Minister’s departure date. To those unversed in the byzantine rituals and codes of Westminster, these contradictory messages must be utterly baffling.
In the past nine years The Spectator has been consistently critical of Mr Blair, his many failures and his unforgivable squandering of golden economic and parliamentary opportunities. We warmly applaud the return of serious two-party politics with the Conservative revival. But the departure of a prime minister is a matter of the deepest seriousness in the political life of a nation: it has a significance that rises above narrowly partisan considerations. Self-evidently, the manner and timing of Mr Blair’s exit are issues that affect us all. Yet you would not think so from the way in which New Labour is behaving.
The Prime Minister is just that: Her Majesty the Queen’s first minister, and the person she judges best equipped to command a sound majority in the House of Commons. The New Labour oligarchy treats the highest office of government quite otherwise: as the captaincy of its own team, a role to be bestowed upon the person whom the party elite believes most deserving. To speak of ‘succession’ in this context is an insult to every convention and constitutional norm previously observed in the appointment of prime ministers. Mr Brown may indeed be the next occupant of No. 10; but to act as if the job was his as of right is a deeply contemptuous way to treat both the Sovereign and the electorate. Since when was one man’s impatience the guiding principle of our polity?
Let us not forget what Mr Blair specifically promised when he made his pledge in October 2004 not to stand for a fourth term. ‘There have been all these stories rolling round that maybe I might stand for election but then stand down — in year one, year two — I’m not going to do that,’ he told the BBC. ‘I think if you put yourself forward, you’ve got to put yourself forward for the full term.’ He added, ‘Then I’m asked the next question, well, will you serve a full term? And the answer to that is “yes”.’ It was on this completely unambiguous basis that, seven months later, Mr Blair went to the country and won a third successive general election.
Since polling day, the clear promise of October 2004 has been eroded by stages — most notably when Mr Blair promised whoever follows him as Labour leader ‘ample time’ to prepare for the next election. When Jack Straw told The Spectator three weeks ago that the Prime Minister would go ‘well before’ the end of the Parliament, Mr Blair was reportedly furious. Yet that is precisely what the PM’s acolytes now seem to be saying is his intention. Mr Straw, it would appear, was only stating a fact.
Senior ministers talk constantly of ‘renewal’ and of their determination to rebuild trust in the Labour government specifically and in the political process generally. How hollow such claims will seem if Mr Blair does indeed step down next spring, barely two years after his re-election. His legacy — over which he frets so much — will be stained by a flagrantly broken promise to the electorate. If Mr Brown becomes prime minister in this fashion, he will have no mandate other than his own personal sense of grievance that he was cheated out of the Labour leadership 12 years ago. To put it mildly, that is a flimsy basis upon which to govern.
In such circumstances, Mr Brown could soldier on for two years or more, hoping that his actions would gradually win over the electorate and give him an interim, makeshift legitimacy until he went to the country. But he should be mindful of a Populus poll for the BBC’s Daily Politics in May which showed that 67 per cent think that if Mr Blair stands down before serving a ‘full term’, the new prime minister should call a general election soon afterwards.
That is a wholly understandable sentiment. Why should the public suddenly accept a new occupant in No. 10? There is no overwhelming national crisis to justify such a bizarre outcome at this stage in the Parliament. The irony is that such a crisis — a crisis of public confidence — might well be the consequence rather than the cause of the reckless course of action chosen by New Labour.
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