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Politics

The Labour party has ended up as the unloved child of the Blair–Brown divorce

Anne McElvoy

Wednesday, 5th December 2007

The Brown camp are playing a dangerous game in trying to push the blame for donor-gate onto the Blair era.

Many of those I have spoken to who worked in senior positions feel that Mr Brown’s summary firing of the General Secretary Peter Watt without an investigation was unfair and would rebound on him. This scandal flows, as one put it, ‘from the desire of politicians to have the money flow in, but not to get involved in how that happens’. That does not make them less responsible.

For many years I wondered whether the state of the Labour party mattered at all. It seemed to manage perfectly well — sporadically active at election times, churning out unreadable guff in-between. If Mr Watt sent out badly written emails, one of which managed to mangle Mr Blair’s Fettes-honed grammar beyond recognition, then so what? The show stayed quite nicely on the road.

It turns out it did matter. The party ended up as the unloved child of the Blair–Brown divorce. Neither of its warring parents took custody. That is why, whoever ends up carrying the can for the rule-breaking, they are both guilty — of rank neglect, at the very least.

Lack of any recognition of co-responsibility from Mr Brown is what is really rankling with his ancestral enemies. ‘That will return to haunt him,’ says one with the kind of menace that bides its time.

Charles Clarke, Alan Milburn, Stephen Byers are not individually great forces. Yet they can very easily become a danger to the PM if they speak out collectively for the centre-right of the party when Mr Brown is at a nadir. The lowest point has not been reached yet. I gather that Messrs Clarke and Milburn will not be reviving the 20/20 website devoted to alternative New Labour thinking (alternative to Gordon, obviously), which would be a declaration of war. Alas for Labour, there is no settled peace. That uncertainty is Mr Brown’s worst harvest. He has spent all these years plotting to become the unassailable leader, only to become a vulnerable one.