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Dear Tony
As your next question session with MPs from my part of the alphabet isn`t until next year, I`ll put this in writing. You should think of stepping down. The Hutton Report will exonerate you. It may not be totally believed but will extricate you from present difficulties. That should let you step down next year in the glow of making us the natural party of government and walking on water for seven years. Not a bad record. Which is another reason to go. Before it gets tarnished and the water gets choppy.
I don’t say “go” because Hugo Young, Clare Short and the growing mob of multifarious malcontents already have. Their advice is sour grapes and a good argument for staying. But you should listen to a semi-loyal backbencher whose advice is unalloyed by ambition, ego, or the power jostlings of the big boys and concerned principally with the interests of the party. Unlike the pigmy clamour of “go now” which would be a disastrous scuttle, I’m saying prepare the way for an orderly transition. Make your mind up now. Warn the likely contenders so they can set out their stalls and build their teams and Gordon can loosen his stays and smile. Then announce next May.
Nothing to do with Iraq. You over-egged that pudding but we did get rid of a nasty regime and maintained the American Alliance in preference to the Axis of Weasels. The long-short war has lumbered us into a long-term commitment which will be expensive, bloody and certain to generate intense anger if domestic programmes have to be cut to pay for it. On the other hand, we do need to increase taxes. Paying for something we’re honour bound to do, which the PLP and Parliament voted for, and the people wanted, is a good excuse for a tax hike that’s necessary anyway.
The real reasons are more basic. With modern pressures Leader/Presidents should be disposable. The electorate and the media get bored, alienated and malevolent. What was once fresh and clever becomes a liability and the once delightful, discredited. We know our leaders too well. If electors outside California could recall leaders they would. They can’t. So they become malevolent. Look at how much the change from Thatcher benefited the Tories. We’ll soon need the same bounce.
You’ve run out of mates, policies and time. No use saying “look at the big picture”. That doesn’t show the improvement people wanted. No use looking to Relaunch No. 8. That will only be another burble about radicalism, privatisation, the Euro and a few IDS jokes. No use abandoning spin then bringing Mandy back, though you’ll stumble without Alistair to hold your hand.
Labour’s gone from the super to the ordinary with no great achievement between. You’ve nothing new to offer apart from your new role as world crusader, punishing wickedness in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone or Iraq, That’s an amazing transformation from your normal compromising caution but something neither the party nor country particularly relishes.
In 1975 Harold Wilson decided to retire because he had no new answers. Now you’re in the same situation. Blairism, the Third Way and New Labour are all exhausted. Without much higher economic growth the only way to improve our shoddy public sector is higher taxation – Yet we’ve no plans to boost growth. Co-operation with business becomes embarrassing when the private sector is scandal prone and greedy. Being a nicer conservative party (and much better at that job than the Tories) becomes irrelevant when tough times demand tougher measures in Pensions, Transport, Investment, Local Government and Housing, as well as Education and Health which are still hurting.
So unless we go for “Let’s Grow with Labour” we can offer only compassionate conservatism because the bankers in control of our interest rates keep them higher than anyone else’s and use the overvalued pound as a weapon against inflation, however great the damage to production. We’ve tied our hands against everything we need to finish a job you’ve merely started.
It would have made sense to say at the last election “You know Labour Government works. Now let’s build on that”. We didn’t. But someone else can. That means a change of image, approach and leader.
Gordon is the inevitable alternative and he’s much more of a redistributionist than you’ll ever be. He’s also complicit in many of the retrograde polices but relieved of the need to defend the controlling position he got as part of the Granita deal, he could be a different man. Gordon knows how the levers work and where the pain is but can’t currently do much about either without surrendering some power. As PM, when his future and the party’s depend on growth and fairer taxes, not PFI and candle ends, that compulsion goes.
It’s not only Gordon, of course, but if our leadership election, doesn’t become personalised and divisive it will be a renewal. Each candidate can set out their stall and their agenda. The party can decide which road it wants to travel. A serious choice will demonstrate the maturity you’ve brought us to and party and unions will get back the influence they’ve been deprived of.
You could, of course, soldier on. You’re our most eloquent Prime Minister ever, though now viewed as too clever by half. You’re a great explainer but less believed. Your strategy isn’t felt to be delivering. With a majority to do anything, we’ve not done much. Now we’ve wasted the last year.
So going before it all turns sour is easier and better than the Indians to wagon train approach which will come later. It’s entirely your decision. No compulsion beyond the rising tide of grumbles and disenchantment. Labour is always too kind to leaders and doesn’t have the Tory skill at knives in the back, bodies in the river. Yet your achievement was so great because you look over a party with a galloping inferiority complex and now power has rebuilt confidence and brought a battle hardened team at the top, Labour’s a different animal.
The final stage of its maturity can only be the dismantling of presidential leadership by clique, party management by fairy tale, top down control, and the propensity to kick party and unions to please the media. Labour’s ready to return to team government and can now venture out on its own without repeating the nervous breakdown of the early eighties.
If you let us. This decision is between you and your conscience. It will mean giving up the pleasure of showing off your skills, and being the “great explainer”, as well as the freeloading celeb circuiting and the power from holding all the threads that work. But you’re becoming the last barrier between Labour, and the confidence and maturity you set out to rebuild. |
