Is it possible that Labour is staring oblivion in the face? Running a spin room without Peter Mandelson is like celebrating Mass without the Pope, but that was precisely what the Labour Party did on Thursday night after the second televised leaders’ debate. Without the guiding hand and unique insight of Labour’s Prince of Darkness, the hundreds of journalists gathered at Bristol’s Arnolfini Arts Centre somehow managed to make up their own minds about the performances of Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg, with the Lib Dem and Conservative leaders getting the lion’s share of the attention. Yet with that focus on the younger, better-looking leaders, another question, potentially more significant, risks being overlooked. Is Labour on the brink of catastrophe? A ComRes poll on Thursday night gave Labour 24 per cent of the vote among those who watched the debate. Other polls have given the party about 27 per cent. To put that in perspective, in 1983 Michael Foot ran what is regarded as the worst general election campaign in modern Labour history and finished with 27.6 per cent of the popular vote. The bottom line is that Labour’s election campaign is in trouble. Serious trouble. One party veteran offers this judgment: “We are running a dire campaign, have no clear strategy and could come third in the popular vote. That’s not near-death, that’s death.” All parties tend to react to electoral trouble in the same way – fear, loathing and recrimination. After a lot of practice, Labour is good at all three. Yet its current nadir has been met not by conflict but by an almost eerie calm, at least in public. Instead of scratching out each other’s eyes, most Labour personnel are knuckling down. Doubts and complaints about the campaign are being kept private, for now at least. Why? Well, Lord Mandelson’s menacing control of the campaign machine may have contributed, but the knowledge that public rows would only worsen Labour’s plight is a more powerful reason to keep quiet. In addition, there is among some of Mr Brown’s most ardent Labour critics a sense of resignation, sometimes literally so. James Purnell, Geoff Hoon, Stephen Byers and several others who have tried and failed to oust Mr Brown are all leaving the Commons. Many who hope to return to Parliament are demoralised and dispirited. “I accepted months ago that this was going to happen. There’s nothing that can be done to stop it,” is how a one-time Labour coup-plotter puts it. So what now? Can Labour possibly consider its almost surreally serene slide towards disaster? Mr Brown, at least, is in no mood to acknowledge his party’s current difficulties.Asked about the polls yesterday, he replied: “We want a majority Labour government.” If Mr Brown looks like a man in denial, those around him are actively preparing for the party to lose its Commons majority at the election, then remain in power through an arrangement with Mr Clegg.Despite the Lib Dem leader’s abuse of the “desperate” Mr Brown in a Daily Telegraph interview this week, Labour’s would-be deal-makers are undeterred, believing that when it comes down to brass tacks, Mr Clegg’s party is more likely to seek an agreement with them than with David Cameron’s Conservatives. Of course, there might be a price to be paid in defying the electorate and clinging to power through a self-interested deal. Part of that price would be significant public anger at a “defeated” party keeping office. Yet many Labour MPs would happily pay up if the alternative is years in opposition. There could well be another, more personal cost. Mr Clegg’s demands for saving Labour could include Mr Brown’s head on a platter. Far from dismissing the idea, senior party members are again talking about if, when and how Mr Brown should be removed from office. Almost inevitably, the idea of a decapitation is most enthusiastically embraced and debated by acolytes of Tony Blair. One Blairite scenario goes something like this: a delegation led by Alistair Darling, Harriet Harman and Jack Straw tells Mr Brown that for the good of the party, he must make way for Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary. Mr Johnson has previously supported electoral reform and has said nice things about the Lib Dems. He will turn 60 next month, and would serve as a “caretaker” Prime Minister for two or three years while the younger generation of Labour figures – the Milibands and Mr Balls – occupy key posts and prepare to succeed him. Another variation on the story has Lord Mandelson wielding the knife to install David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, as Labour leader and prime minister. Friends of Mr Brown already suspect the Business Secretary of subtly skewing the campaign in Mr Miliband’s favour, ensuring he gets regular media slots. Bownites also note that several key backroom officials at Labour’s London headquarters have stronger personal ties to Mr Miliband than to Mr Brown. Meanwhile, the Prime Minister’s own praetorians – Charlie Whelan, Tom Watson and Ian Austin – are firmly excluded from the inner sanctum. Either way, this dreamy scenario ends the same way. Failure to secure power shatters the Tories, who retreat to the right. A joint Lab-Lib government introduces some form of proportional representation for Westminster elections, ushering in a near-permanent coalition government between the two parties. Welcome to the “progressive century” once advocated by a certain T Blair. Perhaps unsurprisingly, that prospect does not inspire universal joy, even within the Labour Party. And those who hope to stop the final consummation of Mr Blair’s “project” are increasingly pinning their hopes on Ed Balls, the schools secretary. Mr Balls this week came out against any deal with the Lib Dems. “Coalition politics is not the British way of doing government,” he said. And PR would lead only to “backroom deals” and small parties wielding disproportionate power. Mr Balls even raised the prospect of Mr Brown leading the party into the election after this one and going “on to our fifth term”, something that could see him in his job for a full decade from 2017. Hardly serious talk, but Mr Balls convinced some colleagues that his plan is to keep Mr Brown in his job for another year or two, regardless of the election result. He would then succeed his old boss in a stage-managed succession. Even Mr Balls’s detractors say he must be taken seriously. “God knows I loathe the man, but he’s turning himself into a credible leader,” says one Labour candidate. Indeed, there are signs that Lord Mandelson’s influence on the campaign may not be absolute. He directed Mr Brown’s dismal “I agree with Nick” performance in the first debate, then the spin operation that followed, enthusiastically playing up Mr Clegg’s performance. (Inevitably, Mr Clegg and Lord Mandelson are friends.) Yet that shameless pandering to the Lib Dems has raised Labour hackles. Hence Lord Mandelson’s notable absence in Bristol, where Mr Brown departed from the Mandelsonian script to attack Mr Clegg as weak on security. Harriet Harman, the Labour deputy leader marginalised for the first half of the campaign, insisted on attending the debate and yesterday’s press conference. Insiders say she has found common cause with Douglas Alexander, Labour’s nominal election co-ordinator. Both have felt the sharp edge of Lord Mandelson’s tongue in recent days, and neither is pleased about it. Rivalry, jealousy, resentment and ambition. Labour’s top team today contains all the components needed for an almighty political explosion. What no one can say is whether the spark will come before or after the election. And what of Mr Brown himself? Where is this titan of Labour politics, this political and economic colossus? Invariably, on a bus chugging up the slow lane of a motorway, heading to another carefully planned meeting with Labour supporters. Lord Mandelson has devised a strategy that largely relegates Mr Brown to provincial photo-opportunities and leaves him looking less like a world leader than a hostage being moved from safe house to safe house under close guard. The Prime Minister will continue his lonely journey this weekend, insisting that next week’s final leaders’ debate on the economy gives him one last chance to win around undecided voters and secure an unlikely victory on May 6. Yet the harsh reality for Mr Brown is that both his fate and that of his party are being decided far away and without him.General Election 2010:
Is it possible Labour
is staring oblivion in the face?
James Kirkup reports on a party in painful disarray.
Saturday, 24 April 2010
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