Levy affair pushes Labour left into leadership bid?
- 13 Jul 06, 03:20 PM
John McDonnell, Labour MP and chair of the has called journos to an "important announcement" tomorrow morning. Unless he is going to replace Steve Mclaren as England manager I think it is safe to assume he is going to announce his candidacy as a leadership challenger to Tony Blair.
This has been on the cards for a little while now but the timing, and the choice of McDonnell, were not a foregone conclusion and seem a little bit early compared to intel received by me previously...I am making calls but here's what I surmise at present...
The next key date in the campaign to oust Blair was supposed to be the conference of the , next Saturday (22 July). I think this will still be the formal launchpad for a leadership campaign. For those too fascinated with who comes in and out of the revolving door at No 4 Millbank, the LRC is the key forum where labour-loyal leftwing union general secretaries meet left MPs - and it overlaps with various non-Labour left campaign groups and unions. The LRC is standing/backing a slate for the Labour NEC election.
Here is the lay of the land as I understand it:
- the big four unions do not and will not support McDonnell's candidacy. They are not wedded to Gordon Brown though and are at present concentrating on policy demands for the post-Blair era. They are focusing their efforts through the official conduit "TULO".
- the left of the PLP was divided over whether Michael Meacher would stand or McDonnell. Meacher was seen as a way of dragging in some tacit support from the big unions but it became clear that he was not exactly seen as Mr Dynamite in the corridors of the big four.
- a key moment in the coalescence of the forces that will publicly or tacitly get behind McDonnell was the rally to defend public services, held in Westminster Central Hall 27 June, with several hundred grass roots activists, and covered in depth by, er, nobody.
However: McDonnell's candidacy is not seen (by the SCG or LRC) as some kind of "stalking horse" to force Brown to stand. It is serious. They believe they have the best part of 12 months to go on the stump within what is left of the labour party at CLP level and make a serious effort to win the leadership. They believe, rightly or wrongly, that the local parties are in a worse state than in 1978/79, the last time the left launched a concerted push - and, should the party be unfortunate enough to lose power at the next election (a fear some close to the hub of power have begun to share quietly with their friends) it will be game on.
McDonnell seems to have got the go-ahead from his constituency party this week and somewhere between last night's TUC drinks do and Dave Osler's posting at 6am, the war of Tony's replacement was declared.
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Paul, Do you really believe McDonnell's supporters that they'll be 12 months before a leadership contest? Tony Blair in PMQ today gave the impression of somebody who had not only painted himself into a corner but was looking at the window for a rapid exit. The Met's forensic software is trawling dozens of Labour Party hard disks for deleted emails, files and images going back years. It's very hard to believe that the Met won't find any suspect comments, secret diaries, off the record quotations or dodgy internet misuse amongst all those disks. There is a potential for this to go nuclear at any moment. The Prime Minister must have been advised of that and will by trying to leave as quickly as possible.
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There's something on The Editors' blog about whether "speculation" should be included in news broadcasts. Reading stories like this makes me inclined to think that it should be, particularly where the story (a leadership election) is likely to be huge. What goes on behind policians' closed doors (apart from John Prescott's) is fascinating to me. However, there is a problem with timing on this subject.
Events in the Middle East have rather overtaken other stories today. Blair must be quite pleased to see the fuss about Levy has been buried by faraway bombs and not local spin.
At this point in time, I'm not sure whether the Left will gain or lose from pushing their campaign up a gear. Tomorrow's breakfast meetings would be a great place to be a fly on the wall.
I'm no longer of the opinion that Blair will be smoothly passing the baton to the prudent hands of Gordon Brown at the time of his own choosing. A leadership election seems increasingly likely, but it's a question of timing.
The Left needs to concentrate its energies when Blair is under pressure from the media. Since most media eyes are likely to be pointed toward Lebanon and Israel for the coming days, weeks or months, I suspect Blair's opponents will struggle to find the knockout blow they desire for quite some time.
It would be indredible if the Police turned up something that could put Blair back on the front pages, but politics has a habit of springing surprises. I don't recall seeing any blogs a week ago predicting an all-out war in the Middle East, but that now seems highly likely. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?
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Arty it was not speculation: both me and Nick Robinson found out at the same time and blogged about it because it was true. However McDonell's people were maintaining a strict embargo. Following my blog I had all of it confirmed within 1 hour by 2x sources within the LRC. I know more and will blog more in a bit.
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Robin, I beg to differ. The more cock-ups Mr. Blair presides over, the more he seems convinced of his own infallibily. The timetable for an orderly hand over seems further away than ever.
Remember Margaret Thatcher's departure only came after her grasp on reality had become so tenuous that a real heavyweight (Hestletine) stepped forward to force the issue.
I sense that history may be about to repeat itself. It is difficult to see how much longer Brown can afford to rely of the PMs personal assurances. Should he not now be considering can open challenge?
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Robin, I beg to differ. The more cock-ups Mr. Blair presides over, the more he seems convinced of his own infallibily. The timetable for an orderly hand over seems further away than ever.
Remember Margaret Thatcher's departure only came after her grasp on reality had become so tenuous that a real heavyweight (Hestletine) stepped forward to force the issue.
I sense that history may be about to repeat itself. It is difficult to see how much longer Brown can afford to rely of the PMs personal assurances. Should he not now be considering can open challenge?
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Paul, I put "speculation" in inverted commas precisely because your exclusive is the sort of thing that other people have said the 主播大秀 shouldn't report. There is an argument that says the Beeb shouldn't announce something happening in politics until it's been officially announced. I wanted to make clear that I support the 主播大秀's journalists desire to break news rather than just report it after the fact.
As I predicted in my comment above, virtually no one has noticed McDonnell's announcement because of the headline-grabbing occurrences in the Middle East. It's a shame for both you, Nick Robinson, and McDonnell, that your exclusive has been buried by external events.
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I think this is great news let麓s hope it麓s more successful than the conservatives "back to basics" campaign.
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I think Brown will be forever the nearly man, for one thing he has hung on being the second fiddle for so long that people have got bored with him as politics goes in fashions in a way just like everything else. (The second thing being that he is a neo con like Blair, his policies will be exactly the same). I also think at the risk of sounding reverse sexist that it would be better for him not to have the top job just now as he has very small children and he would miss a lot of their formative years and you can't get that time back once it's gone. I don't mean he shouldn't work at all but actually being the PM would be very demanding of his time and he should set a good example of the work life balance to other parents (like me!) My old driving instructor drove a London night bus when his daughter was small and regrets that he missed a lot of her growing up.
Kevin Maguire announced several weeks ago on his page in The Mirror (Our Man In The Corridors of Power column) that John McDonnell couldn't win. As soon as I read this I knew that he would. I feel it in my political bones.
We must ask MPs to nominate according to their conscience in the light of recent events and surely they won't all nominate Bush's lapdog the warmonger Blair, not if they want to save our public services from a fate worse than under Thatcher either.
Kevin's articles such as the one with John McDonnell exposing the fat cats are often very good as they balance out the way so much of the debate in the media has become so right wing but he's not infallible and stranger things have happened than a candidate has come from nowhere (in the general public's eye, obviously McDonnell is well known within Labour or among those of us old enough to know about GLC days - I was too young at the time but remember my Dad a local council surveyor getting us the badges during the campaign to save it and I studied it for A level!) The MPs that nominate Brown are signing their own P45s for the next election I'm afraid, the writing's on the wall as it was for Twiglet and the Queen of Bethnal Green., wheras McDonnell also has the economic experience to take on Brown (unlike any of the other possible candidates touted like Hain et al) as he was in charge of the GLCs finances as Deputy Leader at what today would be a very young age. So this is definitely a serious challenge.
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McDonnell is a match for Brown as he also has economic experience from GLC days and has established an economic policy unit at the LRC (LEAP)
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Top notch
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