Brown is not an ‘effing disaster’

‘Gordon has not been an effing disaster’

Fraser Nelson

19 September 2007

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An interview with John Hutton

But the purge never arrived. Mr Brown pledged a government of ‘all the talents’ and Mr Hutton remains in the Cabinet. As we sit in the kitchen of his west London home, I ask whether Mr Brown’s government has been what an anonymous Cabinet member — possibly Hutton himself — suggested in September 2006 would be an ‘effing disaster’? ‘No,’ he says, eyeing me suspiciously. ‘Not a disaster. A model, in fact. The secret of good politics is to disarm people, prove them wrong.’ And where Mr Brown has confounded critics, he says, is by uniting his party.

‘To understand why Labour’s so strong, you have to understand the legacy effects of being out of government for a generation,’ he says. ‘The Tories’ secret weapon was always unity. They’ve lost it, and we discovered it a long time ago. We’re not going to throw it away, and those who predicted otherwise failed to understand something about Labour. Not just our will to survive, but our will to go on delivering. To help people do things, acquire things, be what they want to be, help their kids get on. Now that’s socialism in my book.’

It is rare for a Cabinet member to use the ‘S’ word nowadays, and perhaps Mr Hutton does so because he cannot be accused of being an unreconstructed leftist. I first came across him at a breakfast seminar at a Labour conference when he was health minister, saying very unsocialist things about reforming the NHS. He seemed to grasp, in a way that eludes most Tories, the menace of bureaucracy and the urgency of pro-market reforms in public services.

But is this agenda still alive in a Brown government? Hasn’t the phrase ‘choice agenda’ been banned? Mr Hutton looks puzzled. ‘I haven’t noticed that,’ he says. ‘We are, and we have to be, on the side of the user of public services.’ So is the choice agenda safe? ‘I believe that it is safe. I am New Labour, which means I want a search for social justice, opportunity for everyone to get on, and I don’t see the Tories anywhere near that agenda.’

He spends much time listing Con�servative shortcomings. The Conservatives’ fixation with corporate social responsibility, he says, means ‘more burdens, more regulation, more [workers’] rights, less competitiveness’. The Tory health policy, he says, is ‘throwing in the towel. It’s all about saying, “We’ll do whatever the nurses and doctors want.” Of course it’s important to take doctors and nurses with you in the reform process. But in public services you have to be on the side of the patient, of the parent and of the people in general.’