Politics
That other, more important, vote
Published 18 September 2006
With unions and party members convinced that the top job is already assigned, the battle for Labour's future is over who will get to be Brown's deputy
Now that the din over the Labour leadership has calmed to a hum, we can turn to the issue that really matters for the future of the country: the deputy leadership.
For all the bluster from former Blairite ministers about Gordon's "character" and their false concern about the new Labour legacy, the Chancellor's position remains unassailable. The real ideological battle will be fought not over who takes over from Tony Blair, but who succeeds John Prescott.
Already some senior figures are urging the incumbent Deputy Prime Minister to stand down, perhaps as soon as this month's party conference. One former cabinet minister told me: "It would be very helpful if John made an emotional speech at conference and said he is going. It would be cathartic: it would allow the arguments, but not be fatal."
Labour activists, trade unionists and MPs now know that if they really want to have an influence over the future direction of policy they must look closely at the pitches of the Northern Ireland Secretary, Peter Hain, the Education Secretary, Alan Johnson, and Harriet Harman, the constitutional affairs minister. (Indeed, by the time you read this column, half the cabinet may well have thrown their hats into the ring.)
The larger unions are said to be so convinced that the top job is Brown's that they are casting around for a deputy to represent their interests, with the Dagenham MP and former Downing Street insider Jon Cruddas emerging as a leading contender.
The speeches of the early front-runners already suggest a shift in emphasis, if not a change of direction. Hain's launch at a Fabian fringe meeting at TUC Congress in Brighton was an encomium to the Blair-Brown leadership, yet it was laced with barbed comments at its limitations. "Policies handed down from on high and communication with the party often feels like a lecture rather than a dialogue"; "too often we seem to treat the unions like they are a small group of troublesome general secretaries"; "we have to find a new way to communicate that the Labour government is there to deliver social justice and individual liberty". Meanwhile, Harman, often seen as a staunch Brownite, used her campaign launch to warn the Chancellor not to stitch up the deputy's job in a deal made in some smoke-filled back room.
There have always been codified ways for ministers to talk about the failings of the Labour high command, but whereas then it would have cost them their jobs, now criticism is seen as the essential prerequisite for a deputy leadership candidate. At the TUC it was difficult to move for ministers "reconnecting with the grass roots", the latest code for the anti-Blair sentiment washing through the party.
On the day Blair and Brown spoke to the Congress at least three other cabinet ministers were seen pressing the flesh of delegates around the conference stands, while fringe events were packed with junior ministers parading their grass-roots credentials. It is no coincidence that two of the candidates for deputy leader launched their campaigns at the TUC. Union votes still count for a third of the electoral college in the leadership election: although the Prime Minister can afford to be dismissive, anyone who wants the second best job in the party cannot.
On policy as well as style, there are also some significant shifts among the candidates for deputy. Johnson urged the party to cast divisions aside and turn its attention to tackling poverty and inequality, optimistically believing this will unite old and new Labour under the banner of real Labour.
More controversially, Hain said the party needed to reassess the limits of the private sector in delivering public services. This was designed as a peace offering to the grass roots. The banners in the hall may have shouted opposition to Blair's foreign policy, but the real concern of the TUC is the creeping privatisation of the NHS, schools and the criminal justice system. Blair and Brown prefer the euphemism "contestability" to privatisation, but union members know what it means on the ground, and this is where the real disconnection with the grass roots lies. The test of a deputy will be whether he or she can take the argument to Brown.
There was a second cabinet minister present at the meeting when Hain launched his campaign. The fringe event was supposed to be on the subject of party reform and renewal, so naturally Hazel Blears, the party chair, was billed to speak. In the circumstances, it is not surprising that her words were largely ignored. But the woman whose task it is to halt the haemorrhaging of party members made an astute, if characteristically perverse, point.
There has never been a better time to join the Labour Party, Blears said, because in doing so you will have a unique opportunity to choose the next prime minister of the country. What she didn't say was that a vote for the post of deputy may prove more significant still.
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