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

Imagine, by way of comparison, if the Conservative party had tried to decide in 1993 who should become its leader 12 years thence. I very much doubt it would have chosen the bright young Cabinet adviser then at the Home Office, the 26-year-old David Cameron — whom it did indeed elect in 2005. Yet, mutatis mutandis, this is precisely what Labour did in 1994, effectively picking not only Mr Blair but also his successor.

Mr Brown should welcome a contest now, a chance to win a mandate based on more than a 12-year-old sense of grievance and the conviction that the party somehow owes it to him. But, according to one senior Blair ally, ‘A race is what Gordon dreads most because he might lose. That’s why he won’t wait, why he insists on having it now, because he’s terrified that Alan Johnson or John Reid might catch up with a bit more time.’

Yet, without such a race, the scene is set for all that is most truly dangerous to Mr Brown. As one of Mr Blair’s closest aides put it to me, ‘There’s a lot of denial about what it’ll really be like. Imagine that first Cabinet meeting when they realise that TB’s not there and he’s not coming back, and Gordon’s in charge. The rest of the world will be saying we’re bonkers to have got rid of Tony.’

Again, Alan Clark offers a precedent in his diary entry for 22 November 1990: ‘What happens when she [Mrs Thatcher] starts to be “missed”, and the rose-tinted spectacles are found in everyone’s breast pocket?’ Well, indeed. Let us suppose that the letter-writers get their way and Mr Blair goes more or less immediately. How long before he, like the Iron Lady, starts to be ‘missed’? How long before a neo-Blairite rump of MPs starts asking awkward questions, defying the whip, complaining that their idol was deposed too hastily, that the party was denied a contest and a mature moment of reckoning?

It is almost exactly ten years since I first interviewed Tony Blair, in the Imperial Hotel, Blackpool, with Alastair Campbell lurking in the background. ‘It is absolutely obvious that New Labour is a reality,’ the party leader said then. But how real was it then, and how real is it now? The reckless enthusiasm with which Labour is ditching the greatest electoral asset it has ever had answers the question. Mr Blair was deluded when he spoke to me all those years ago. But not as deluded as his party is now.