The Siobhan McDonagh insurgency is on its third day, with a wide range of names and rather devastating quotations in today’s press all aimed at Labour activists who gather in Manchester this time next week. I’ve just come from News 24 which is leading with footage it has today of Fiona McTaggart on today’s Politics Show but but there are far more names. Here’s a list of who’s saying what:-
— Barry Gardiner, a special envoy for Brown: accusing him of “vacillation, loss of international credibility and timorous political manoeuvres that the public cannot understand”. (Sunday Times)
— Frank Field: “Given we haven’t got a cabinet stuffed with people who would win political VCs, this strategy is forced upon MPs because the cabinet has so far failed to carry out one of its key roles” (ST)
— Fiona McTaggart: “My constituents have begun to pity the Labour party. I am not in politics to be pitied.” (ST). And “’I think we should give a chance to someone else to take over, I really do” (BBC Politics Show, later today)
— George Howarth, former Home Office minister: “every test of public opinion shows that people seem to have decided Gordon is not the person they want to lead the country” (News of the World)
— Graham Stringer, former Cabinet Office minister: “I’m being loyal to the electorate and to the Labour Party. What is the point of being loyal to a leader if the country and the party lose out as a result?” (Mail on Sunday)
— Greg Pope: “The leadership is the only thing that is being discussed by the MPs. What we need to do is bring it into the open. Party members need to have a say.”
— Janet Anderson, former tourism minister
— Jim Dowd, former whip (‘expected to go public in the next few days’ says the Observer)
No10 is on the counter attack saying this is a “Blairite” move, which it patently isn’t. Sure, many were loyal to the man who was their leader until last year – but there are no veterans of Labour’s sectarian warfare here. The second No10 attack line is that there are no ministers here. This is McDonagh point. It’s a backbench revolt, a serious pitch to Labour’s grassroots. Derek Draper said on Newsnight on Friday: McDonagh is a loyal Labour person, why is she doing this? And the answer is: because she’s a loyal Labour person.
This is what gives the insurgency its potency. The people involved are not the embittered and the no-hopers, but Labour backbenchers with a reasonable claim to say – as Joan Ryan, Labour vice-chair, did – “I’m a loyalist. This is the most responsible thing I can do”. One can search in vain amongst her supporters for any Milibandite or any –ites whatsoever. Most have impeccable voting records, and the rebels (like Frank Field) usually broke over issues that tug the heartstrings of the Labour Party, such as the 10p tax.
Field has another line in the News of the World, comparing Brown to Nixon in his paranoid treatment of his political opponents. “The only people who could have leaked this are from the Labour Party itself. How can we trust our own party anymore when its leadership indulges in Nixonesque leaking against its members?” Brown v Labour Party is the narrative of the McDonagh insurgency, and it comes across very clearly today.
Yet should Labour thank or curse McDonagh? It weakens Labour further to show Brown visibly at war with his own party – suggesting no one, anywhere, wants him. Then they’ll all suffer. While the Tories will love to see Labour in disarray, the optimal outcome for the Tories is Brown clinging on to No10 by what’s left of his fingernails right up until a 2010 election. His departure would take the sting out of the anti-Labour vote. Make no mistake: anyone who’s against Labour is for Brown staying as party leader.
In my News of the World column today, I salute McDonagh but don’t hold out much hope for her success. The MPs around her are a brave few, a handful who are not frozen in the headlights of what they fatalistically see as an incoming Cameron government. They are not representative of most Labour MPs whose approach is ‘heads down, expenses up.’ The bulk of Labour, in my view, don’t want to get rid of Brown because they fear the sheer tumult of what will follow and regard it as destructive, not rejuvenating. Part of this, of course, is political philosophy. What the right see as ‘healthy competition’ the left see ‘damaging split’. And that, in the end, is what may save Brown. Not because his party is scared of the Tories, but because it’s scared of itself.
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