Politics

In an exclusive conference interview with Matthew d’Ancona, the Home Secretary sets out his manifesto for the party’s future once Tony Blair has gone ‘The opportunity is that every end marks a beginning,’ John Reid says. ‘That is the nature of life, and it’s the nature of politics, and therefore we have an opportunity here to begin to shape an agenda for the next decade. People throw around this word “renewal” all the time. Actually, that is something that should be intrinsic to New Labour. It should be done every year.’ Tea time at the Home Office, and Mr Reid, gesturing pugnaciously with every phrase, is warming to his theme.

Because of what John Prescott calls the ‘dustbin of last week’, we now know that a new leader of the Labour party will be elected this year or next. This will be only the second time in history that a Labour leader will have been chosen while the party has been in office. The first was in 1976, when Jim Callaghan succeeded Harold Wilson. Then, the vote was simple: all Labour MPs could vote, and no one else. Today, it is complicated. The electorate divides into thirds — MPs, the party’s members and the trade unions. When a leader of the governing party is chosen, he is certain in fact,

‘New, new, new,’ Tony Blair told a meeting of European socialist leaders shortly after becoming Prime Minister, ‘everything is new.’ Embarrassing at the time, that declaration now seems merely a distant and risible memory. For, after nine years, the one thing this administration cannot possibly claim to be is ‘new’. In his original campaign for office between 1994 and 1997, Mr Blair presented novelty as a good in itself. By relabelling Labour as ‘New’, he signalled not only that the party of old-fashioned socialism had changed, but that it offered a fresh and vernal alternative to the Conservative winter. Underpinning this was the false implication that mere novelty would translate

Given the choice between a drunken Charles Kennedy and a sober Sir Menzies Campbell — to adapt the Times’s famous comparison of George Brown and Harold Wilson — we now know that the Liberal Democrat high command chose the former. There were four frontbenchers gathered in a room in March 2004 when they received first-hand confirmation that they were indeed being led by an alcoholic. This explained his mysterious absences, his slurred words in morning meetings and general level of inactivity. So the quartet, including Sir Menzies, took a unanimous decision: to do nothing. It mattered little. Leadership is not so important to today’s Lib Dems, who have become more

Each autumn the Labour party performs a ritualistic drama. First, trade unionists and left-wingers talk darkly about insurrection at the annual party conference. Blair must go, they say. At conference fringe meetings, such whispers become a full-blown war cry. Next Gordon Brown gives a rousing speech, laying out his rival vision of the future. There is talk of mutiny even as the Prime Minister comes on stage. But as he starts his oration, his audience is quickly spellbound. Rebels fall silent. Then applaud. Then coo. Then everyone boards the train back to London and the new parliamentary term begins. This year the show has finally moved on. It will be

Last weekend I was sternly assured by a shadow Cabinet member that the Conservatives would resist the temptation to attack the government over the terrorism arrests. ‘The only people who benefit when an opposition starts playing politics with the issue are the terrorists,’ he declared. Things must have seemed rather different in David Cameron’s holiday villa in Corfu. A few hours after he arrived at Gatwick airport, partisan hostilities were resumed. Labour’s complaint — that the Tory leader was ‘playing politics’ with terrorism — was as predictable as it was sanctimonious. Since the alleged terrorist plot came to light at 6 a.m. on 10 August everyone has been playing at

Since David Cameron announced plans to change the Conservative party’s logo, derisive suggestions have come pouring in. A white flag to depict ideological surrender, perhaps, a spinning weathervane or a sinking Titanic. There have been so many spoofs that the favourite to succeed the ‘torch of freedom’ — a green tree — also looks like a hoax. It is intended to represent security, environmentalism and Englishness. It is simply bad luck that it is so similar to the national flag of Lebanon. Perhaps there is a subliminal message here. Last weekend, Mr Cameron firmly backed William Hague in saying that ‘elements of the Israeli response [to Hezbollah] were disproportionate… and

The image of Tony Blair and David Cameron exchanging frilly skirts and pearls is certainly arresting, but the Prime Minister’s reference in California last weekend to rampant cross-dressing was, disappointingly, political. For all the comment that his remarks have engendered, however, we have been here before. When the Economist coined the term ‘Butskellism’ in 1954, it was simply observing that, as Gaitskell wrote after being succeeded by Butler as chancellor, the Conservatives ‘have really done exactly what we would have done, and have followed the same lines on controls, economic planning, etc….’ Both parties were effectively interchangeable, working within the same framework of a mixed economy and government responsibility for

On Monday, perhaps for the first time in his life, David Cameron turned right after boarding an aircraft. There is no business class in the RAF Hercules that ferried him to Afghanistan; to enter it by door rather than by loading ramp is luxury enough, and the only in-flight entertainment is an industrial-strength headset to deaden the sound of the engines. Icebergs aside, this was his first serious foreign trip as leader. Since 9/11, Tory policy on the war on terror — with the exception of Michael Howard’s wobble over Iraq — has been largely inseparable from that of Tony Blair; so much so that the Prime Minister has often