A little over a week ago, Stephen Byers must have thought he had cracked it as Trade and Industry Secretary. After a lacklustre year in the job, he made the type of announcement that Blairite modernisers dream about. Byers declared with pride that he would lend British Aerospace £530 million to develop a super jumbo jet, fitted with shops and restaurants.
Bingo! The project would create thousands of jobs. The production of a spanking new jet had a forward-looking and modern ring about it. Yet the government was being financially prudent. Byers would get his money back. As a sparkling bonus, he had hit upon a Third Way in government support for industry. Byers stated that this was “not about leaving everything to the market place or propping up failing industries, but supporting innovation and enterprise, improving productivity and developing skills”. He was pressing so many Blairite buttons that he was flying without the aid of a jet.
Within 24 hours, he came crashing down to Earth. Even before he had a chance to fantasise about the first photocall in his new jumbo, the Rover story broke. Suddenly, he was facing the more urgent task of “propping up” what BMW evidently regarded as a “failing industry”.
Byers’s Third Way, which was leading him down a gilded path towards a jumbo jet with hairdressers on board, was looking more hazardous. Should he intervene to help Rover and its thousands of employees? If so, what form should the intervention take? His Third Way seemed to offer no answers. Instead, his suggestion that the government would cast around for an alternative bidder for the company was a little reminiscent of 1970s-style interventionism. Similarly, his attacks on BMW are unlikely to do much for Britain’s reputation as a good place for foreign companies to invest.
The political aim of all this activity is obvious: the heartlands are being hit, and a community is being torn apart. Byers needs to show that the government is responding to the crisis. But he is in danger of creating an impression that he was responsible for it in the first place, and that the likely job losses are therefore his fault.
In reality, Byers cannot be blamed for the sale of Rover. There is no reason why he should have known about the clandestine negotiations carried out by a few individuals at the top of BMW. Those who claim he should have been more alert to the rumours surrounding a possible sale are being wise after the event. More importantly, even if he had got an inkling of what was going on, it is doubtful that he could have done very much to prevent the sale from going ahead. In the same preposterous way that a home secretary gets the blame when a prisoner escapes, Byers is getting the flak now.
His confused reactions to the sale are more revealing than the sale itself, reflecting a wider ambiguity in his approach to the job. When he arrived at the DTI at the end of 1998, he told officials that “Enterprise” and “Fairness” would be his guiding principles. They were applied with panache when he announced the aid for the jumbo jet. But, some of the time, these bland, simplistic totems (who is against “Enterprise” and “Fairness”?) have led to incoherent policy initiatives of which his “rip-off Britain” campaign was typical. Briefly, last summer, he was the consumers’ champion, although it was never clear what practical proposals would emerge from the campaign. Motivated by his “Fairness” motto, he berated business for overcharging in certain industries. When business leaders expressed alarm at this kind of interventionism, he appeared to retreat. “Enterprise” started to prevail over “Fairness”. Soon, he was popping up to make it clear that he had never christened his crusade “rip-off Britain” and that it was really up to the consumers to be more stroppy and shop around. The substance never matched the early headlines.
More recently, Byers has been gyrating around the issue of the euro. In an interview with me in January, he revealed that business leaders wanted to be in the euro early in the next parliament. He implied that that was his view, too. The reaction was revealing. Friends of Robin Cook expressed delight. The Treasury was furious. “What’s he doing pushing the boat out?” asked Treasury insiders, suspecting some subtle political positioning for a far-off leadership contest. The Treasury always suspects a cabinet minister of playing games when he departs from the euro text. In this case, they were wrong. Byers was speaking out for “Enterprise” in the same way that Peter Mandelson did over the euro. Subsequently, Byers briefed some journalists that he would be pushing the boat out even further in a “Britain in Europe” speech. In the event, the speech was a damp squib. As ever, the Treasury had got its way and Byers was back in his box. Again Byers’s stance seemed confused.
It is his performance over recent months that makes him more vulnerable now. By the end of last year, some in the Blairite court were expressing disappointment, making disparaging comparisons with the Mandelson reign. “Where is Byers? What’s he doing?” they asked.
Certainly, Byers was an erratic performer in the media in his early months at the DTI. When he launched the DTI’s proposals for the Post Office (largely inherited from Mandelson), Byers assembled his ministerial team to discuss the media strategy. His introductory comments went something along these lines. “I will dress up as a postman and be filmed delivering some letters. Ian McCartney will be interviewed by Jeremy Paxman on Newsnight.” An apoplectic McCartney refused, with the result that no minister turned up to explain the government’s proposals, allowing Paxman to make the point that Byers was willing to be a postman for an hour, but refused to do a more challenging interview.
Until last week, Byers had been an extremely lucky politician. He was appointed to the cabinet in the summer of 1998, as Chief Secretary to the Treasury. At the time, this was interpreted as a signal that, in the battle of the rising Blairites, he was ahead of Alan Milburn. This was not the case. Blair did not want to move Milburn from the Department of Health, where he was a junior minister with more radical instincts than his boss, Frank Dobson. As a result, Byers was given a head start in the cabinet. Within months, he was propelled to even greater heights when Mandelson suddenly resigned. The combination of Mandelson’s home loan and Blair’s need to keep Milburn at Health gave him his political opportunity.
The DTI is a giant, ill-defined department. Many of its occupants make very little impact there. Michael Heseltine failed to make waves. Margaret Beckett spent much of her time second-guessing Downing Street. Mandelson flourished briefly, but not long enough to be fully tested (although he was better cast in that department than in his current one). Byers, to be fair, has handled much of his awkward in-tray with competence. He took the decision, for example, to veto Rupert Murdoch’s takeover of Manchester United without consulting Blair. Against some expectations, the world did not fall around his ears. Even the Sun was gentle.
But in such an unwieldy department, it is not enough to respond effectively to events; you have to be ready to anticipate them, too; otherwise, the unexpected will come along and swat you aside. The sale of Rover is a perfect example of this.
Content from our partners
Related
