Well, phew! I am almost at a loss. Any time this month until early last week, I could have covered pages on the political state of affairs here but, against all the odds, the status quo wobbles on with Gordon Brown as our almost painfully damaged prime minister. After the alarums and excursions, we are dismayed and deflated. The only person who has been frankly enjoying himself is Lord Mandelson, now chief panjandrum and, if he so much as snaps his fingers, Lord High Executioner as well.
We met him at a party ten days ago, in the midst of the political chaos on the eve of the local council election results, looking as smooth, sleek and unruffled as the prime minister looks harassed, exhausted and ruined. This architect of New Labour now holds all the strings and is personally propping up both the discredited administration and his old-friend-turned-enemy-turned-friend, the prime minister. The impression is that he will continue to do so for as long as it suits him and he enjoys playing the power game.
As former Conservative leader and shadow foreign secretary, William Hague, said last week, “The unelected prime minister has managed to produce the most powerful unelected deputy since Henry VIII appointed Cardinal Wolsey, except Cardinal Wolsey was more sensitive in handling his colleagues than the noble Lord Mandelson ... denied the opportunity to become the Foreign Secretary... has gone around instead collecting titles and even whole government departments to add to his name, now adding up to The Right Honourable the Baron Mandelson of Foy in the County of Herefordshire and Hartlepool in the County of Durham, First Secretary of State and Lord President of the Privy Council and Secretary of State for Business and Secretary of State for Innovation and Skills. It would be no surprise to wake up in the morning and finding he had become an archbishop.”
Mandelson is the supreme political yo-yo who now finds himself, under the current limping regime, almost unassailable. What’s to lose after all? If he falls, as presumably he must, with the government in due course, his political acumen has ensured his place in the history books. And who cares about the hollow titles of office filling his portfolio?
I had thought of comparing him with Talleyrand, the master of his political world, always in the vanguard of the wind of change, diplomat extraordinaire, man of remarkable culture and charm, and referred to by one of his masters, Napoleon Bonaparte, as “shit in a silk stocking”. Mandelson, though, is more the politician and less the diplomat and charmer. He can turn it on in private, but appears to care less with his colleagues, and his public image is more Machiavelli than Prince of Benevento, although Machiavelli, we often forget, was also a diplomat, philosopher and poet. Whether Lord Mandelson will eventually retire to his estates to write great philosophical and political treatises remains to be seen, but I think his name is more likely to live on as the arch-manipulator during a period of extraordinary, and hopefully brief, turbulence in the live arena of our political history.
We have been shamed, and continue to be so, by the venality of our MPs and further by the inability of our prime minister to lead either his government or the country. After the mass exodus of rebellious ministers, some now attempting to crawl back into favour (with their constituents, at least) in order to live to fight another day, the prime minister should have resigned and left his poisoned chalice to another. As it turns out, and Lord Mandelson, scion of the Labour party as his grandfather (Herbert Morrison’s heir after all), must believe that it is better to let one who is already ruined burn out on the Labour funeral pyre of the next general election, leaving future leaders unsullied to nurture the phoenix when it is reborn. It is a poor look-out for the country if Brown continues to be supported to the final wire, a general election in a year’s time. Our ministers, our political system and our honourable members are so discredited that the rebuilding of any respect must start with a new government of whichever party as soon as possible and with however few electors can be bothered to vote at all.
As for the rats leaving the sinking ship, the women especially, previously known as ‘Blair’s Babes’ and now, I imagine, by less frilly epithets, none of them should be allowed near Parliament again. However bright they may be, their images in general, Jacqui Smith, the former home secretary in particular, have always been poor and unimpressive despite a determination, on my part at least, to be pleased to have women in major political roles. Had the rebellion worked and Gordon Brown resigned, and had a new leader called an immediate election, the rebels might have been seen ultimately to have done the right thing. As it is, they have discredited themselves by showing no loyalty to their beleaguered leader and failing to produce a viable alternative. The former community secretary, Hazel Blears, has been the most blatant of the rebels, attacking the prime minister after her own expenses debacle, on the basis of attack being the best form of defence perhaps. She flounced off into the sunset and is now apologizing all over the place in order to save her skin from de-selection by her own constituency party. I suppose that depends on whether they think she was a better rebel than an honest MP.
For the Conservative Party, triumph has come, fairly inevitably under the circumstances, in the council and European elections. It is hard to imagine that the Conservatives will not be equally victorious in the general election whenever it is, but they will have to work hard to put a positive spin on a forthcoming campaign and manifesto when the country and its votes are focussed only on negatives. The Conservative leader, David Cameron will find it difficult to avoid accusations of smugness and complacency, and will need to produce hard policies and act on them immediately. I am personally very far from sure that the current Conservative policy crop is well thought out, and what we either want or need, but are running out of, are viable alternatives. The Liberal Democrats had their vote eaten away by the mass of smaller parties in council and European elections, including the far-right British National Party. But they are in a good position at least to talk sense and their leader, Nick Clegg, is growing in stature. They won’t form a government, but their voice should be heard.
We will get a new Speaker in the House of Commons in the next week, and that is another battle likely to be fiercely fought, although one hopes more within the confines of the House of Commons than in the public gaze. There is a large field of candidates including Parmjit Dhanda, a London-based Sikh and former Labour minister, and a cross-party view that the next Mr or Madam Speaker should be a Conservative after a run of two former Labour MPs. Michael Martin’s unimpressive and contentious tenure of the office and his forced departure leave the new Speaker with much work to do: to recreate respect for the role inside Parliament and to begin to repair the image of the House of Commons outside.
I doubt that this great office of state is all that desirable at the moment in spite of its perks and the large number of wishful candidates. It is one of the few to which Lord Mandelson can no longer aspire from his lofty seat in the House of Lords.
