To win a war, you need an army. And Tony Blair has been constructing his own model army for some time. It is now approaching a state of battle-readiness. It will make a formidable machine. Its targets are all those who threaten the dominance of the Prime Minister - and, yes, that goes for the boys in the Treasury.
For want of a better name, we must call Blair's army the Kinnockites. Its lieutenants are now in cabinet, and making a name for themselves there. Step forward Charles Clarke, former chief of staff to Neil Kinnock, now the controversially named party chairman.
The pugnacious Clarke has made such a splash in the six months he's had the job that he is being mentioned in despatches as a possible Labour leader of the future. His disdain for the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, is spoken of in awed terms across the new Labour network, and he has not flinched from taking him on over the succession to Brown's protege Henry McLeish. Clarke won: Scotland's new First Minister, Jack McConnell (almost certainly), is allegedly barely on speakers with the Chancellor. Clarke has the ear of the Prime Minister and plays the all-important day-to-day role of managing Labour Party affairs on his behalf.
That gives him an awesome leverage which the Brownites, who have enjoyed an easy dominance of the established Labour Party machinery, are rightly worried about. High office looms.
Another lieutenant, whom the most aggressive people around Blair see as central to their plans, has not yet been properly noticed. Forward march, Patricia Hewitt, Kinnock's former press secretary, now Trade and Industry Secretary. She has made two bold and eye-catching decisions in as many months. The first was to declare war on fat-cat pay by announcing that shareholders will be allowed to decide how much dosh their company directors should receive. The second was to give working mothers the right to ask for sensible working hours. Hewitt has managed both moves without too much fuss from bosses in the business sector.
All of this might seem merely a fairly encouraging performance by a freshly appointed cabinet minister. Yet Hewitt's significance is that she is being talked about as the eventual successor to Gordon Brown himself. The prospect of Britain's first female Chancellor is on the cards. She is, in the words of one Blairite minister, being very seriously groomed for the job.
Look at her background, I was told: three years with Andersen Consulting for some experience of the world outside politics; economic secretary at the Treasury for a year; minister for e-commerce; and now Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. She is not yet a deft public speaker, nor yet well enough known outside the circle of political obsessives. But she is probably the only contender for the Treasury who would enable the Prime Minister, if he finally fell out with Brown, to ditch him.
This thought may seem impossible. Most commentators think so. However, there is an aggressive edge to the rising Kinnockites that should not be underestimated. Look at a third lieutenant, John Reid, Kinnock's former political adviser, whose canny mix of toughness and charm has managed to save the tenuous thread by which the Northern Ireland peace process hangs.
Alastair Campbell needs no introduction - but remember that he was originally lined up to be Kinnock's press secretary, had Kinnock won the 1992 election. If he is Blair's blood brother now, he is Neil Kinnock's son - and stays in close touch with his former mentor. Let's not forget Hilary Coffman, who provides Blair with the same sterling service as she gave to Kinnock for many years.
The Kinnockites do not parade together in public, though this small, tight band of brothers and sisters remains close. There are no regimental reunions - apart from an impromptu session that took place in the wee small hours at the Metropole Hotel in Brighton a few weeks ago. Kinnock himself, Charles Clarke, John Reid, Jan Royal (Kinnock's long-standing personal assistant) and others in the inner circle found themselves drinking up the champagne left over from Kinnock's daughter's wedding and having a high old time. Only Hewitt, who was trying to nurse her lost voice back to strength, was absent.
The Kinnockites share three characteristics: a toughness born of those long years in the wilderness, an unusual degree of media savvy, and a guarded suspicion of Gordon Brown. (It must be said here that there is one glaring exception: Sue Nye was also a member of the Kinnock inner circle for several years, and now works happily for Brown.) There are old scores being paid off here. Back in the 1980s, a formidably brainy Scottish clique, comprising John Smith, Gordon Brown and Donald Dewar, just couldn't hide their sense of intellectual superiority when Kinnock was around. Kinnock's team will never forgive that.
Payback time may yet be coming. Nobody who watches closely denies that Tony Blair has grown in relative importance at Brown's expense. The balance of power in the government is shifting. The Chancellor's men have not been too worried because they knew that, in the end, their man was irreplaceable - that there was a point beyond which the Blairites could not go. They have always thought he was unassailable.
Is this still true? Brown may be the brightest man in the new Labour family, but he has piled up powerful enemies. If one day there were a sudden announcement that the Chancellor, to universal regret, had decided to move to some grand job in international finance, making way for Hewitt, there are a few old Kinnockites who would look one another in the eye and quietly smile.
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