‘I’m not an ambassador for New Labour, I’m an MP’

9 August 2008

In the latest of his occasional series, Martin Rowson talks to Bob Marshall-Andrews, serial Labour rebel who had the entertaining cheek to accuse Miliband of disloyalty

I asked him who his ideal Labour leader would be. ‘John Smith. Very witty. Able administrator. Moderate socialist.’ (And also, for the record, described by a friend after his death as of that generation of Scotsmen who consider white wine to be a soft drink which doesn’t count at lunchtime.) And among the living? ‘Alan Johnson. Not too close to New Labour. Moderate socialist.’ So would he describe himself as a Hattersleyite? ‘What, New Hattersley? No, not really. I’d say I was a Healeyite.’

‘Some people enter politics to gain power. I entered it to hold power to account. I don’t like power. It makes me uneasy. One of the ghastly things Blair said was that we were meant to be ambassadors for New Labour. I’m not an ambassador for New Labour. I’m not even an ambassador for Medway. I’m a Member of Parliament whose job is to scrutinise the government and hold it to account.’ Which is a vision of politics — about the thwarting of power rather than its usurpation — which is deeply unfashionable these days, and almost certainly explains his dislike of a fundamentally Leninist political construct like New Labour. It places principle above party, and recognises that jokes are just as valid a part of your political armoury as anything else.

Nonetheless, was he never in danger, having embraced the showbiz aspect of politics, of suddenly pratfalling into being a National Joke? ‘I agree there is always that danger, that element of buffoonery. I’ve sometimes been compared with Boris Johnson, but I actually think that my politics is more serious than that.’