There’s some pretty tough competition at the moment for the award for the weakest statement of support for the Prime Minister by a Cabinet Minister. But John Hutton is probably the front-runner for his comments on the Andrew Marr on Sunday.
Marr asked Hutton whether he was on the side of the rebels or Gordon Brown. Here’s how Hutton replied:
JOHN HUTTON: Well I’m, I’m on the side of the government and the Prime Minister. I’m in the Cabinet. It’s my job to support…
ANDREW MARR: So, so… So you would tell those people…
JOHN HUTTON: … the work that the Prime Minister is doing and the work that the government is doing. And I…” This was incredibly weak stuff. Hutton was saying that he supported the Prime Minister not because of his vision for Britain, his courage, his inspiring personal qualities or anything like that but because it is his job to do so. It is the kind of thing that lawyers say when they’re asked why they defend clients who clearly appear to be guilty.
Yet James Purnell has also chosen to use this line. When Martin Bright, the New Statesman’s brilliant political editor, put it to James Purnell that Hutton had been deliberately leaving himself room to back a future leadership challenge, Purnell responded as follows:
“One of the great wisdoms of politics is not to answer hypothetical questions and that’s a hypothetical question. As John said, the job of the cabinet is to support the Prime Minister and that’s what we’re going to do.” A final question: While you remain in the cabinet? “We support the Prime Minister.”
Now, considering all the comment about how weak Hutton’s defence of Brown was you would have thought that Purnell would have used a more supportive formulation. But he didn’t. This combined with his comment on Monday night that the rebels “are entitled to do anything they want to” and his fascinating Fabian Review interview in which he uses language sure to resonate with the Labour grassroots suggests that Purnell is positioning. He is certainly doing little to shore up Brown’s position.
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