The great New Labour civil war

9 September 2006

Matthew d’Ancona says that the Prime Minister’s power has now gone for good, no matter when he stands down formally. The Labour party will descend into a battle to define its future as Gordon Brown struggles to prevent a leadership contest

If Mr Cameron can prevail in the capital, the keys to No. 10 could be his. Gordon Brown may yet thwart that ambition. But the question would not even arise had not the Tory leader emulated Mr Blair so assiduously — just as Mr Blair made Margaret Thatcher his strategic role model. At the GQ Men of the Year Awards last week I heard Jamie Oliver say of Mr Cameron, ‘No, he’s all right, I quite like him.’ When the celebrity chefs start to back the Conservative leader, you know Mr Blair’s reign really is over. If the Prime Minister wonders what his legacy will be, he need only look across the dispatch box.

Orwell’s description of political language — ‘designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind’ — has rarely seemed as apt as in the past week. Suddenly the word ‘debate’ has acquired a ludicrous toxicity. Deployed by the Blairite ‘outriders’, it has come to mean ‘forcing Gordon to sign up to ideas he doesn’t like’ — which is why the Chancellor’s chief lieutenant, Ed Balls, launched a furious attack last week on ‘internal navel-gazing’ and ‘indulgent thinking’.

So stultified has Labour’s political discourse become that the content is no longer what matters. All that we know about Mr Brown’s plans is that nobody is allowed to question them. The next Prime Minister of this country starts from the premise that no ‘debate’ is necessary.

That’s what happens when the heir apparent has been waiting for 12 years. He regards his succession to the leadership as just that: the overdue collection of a loan taken out by Mr Blair in 1994 — the loan of the Labour leadership — rather than a prize to be earned after a normal political contest. It would be idle to claim that Mr Brown lacks the experience and stature to become Labour leader. Still, the manner of his imminent elevation is very odd.