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Buckets
Yorkshire Post - 24
July
2006
At last! Blessed release. Release from the sticky, steamy, torrid corridors of Westminster. Release from the sweltering misery of London with its swarming tourists and dysfunctional transport. Release, for a while at least, from the supplications of constituents with their problems about the Child Support Agency, tax credits, immigration applications, housing, hospital referrals and waiting lists. At last, in the last week of this blistering, panting, energy-sapping July heat-wave, the Parliamentary recess has begun.
So as they head for the villa in Tuscany or the beaches at Cape Cod or the second home in France just how do they feel, these inhabitants of that claustrophobic, intense, competitive world which is Westminster? Who will be heading off with a spring in their step and a song on their lips? Who will load the car with a leaden feeling of political misery? What will they be feeling about themselves?
Let’s start with the Government. Who are the holiday hopefuls? Step forward the vultures who are circling the decaying political corpse of John Prescott, the legion of would-be deputy leaders of the Labour Party. What would they like the palmists to be saying about them?
Winner No 1 is John Reid, Home Secretary. He has dominated the final days of Parliament with no fewer than three statements on Home Office reorganisation. If he were to write his own caption it would read something like: “Tough guy. Takes no hostages. Gets things done. Sorts things out.” He is taking the Home Office by the scruff of its neck and he has got nothing to lose. It may be scorched earth politics but it’s non-stop action.
Step forward Alan Johnson, Education Secretary. Johnson has got two huge assets: narrative and charm. Orphan-to-union boss, Johnson is the British equivalent of log-cabin-to-White-House. Blairite without sycophancy (he told union bosses that they were living on Planet Zog) he has risen without trace but is universally liked (except for a handful of union bosses!). Bucket and spade at Skegness or something slightly grander, Johnson will have a mellow feeling over holiday.
Peter Hain, who is his own chief admirer, also feels good. The perma-tan ex anti-apartheid campaigner who has distanced himself from Blair on nuclear energy thinks he has a clientele in Parliament and outside. So, we are told, does David Miliband, new Environment Secretary, aged 41 going on 25. He is genuinely bright and personable. He has made a good start at DEFRA (but will he take the tough decisions about badgers??). Blair said he was the cabinet’s Wayne Rooney (after Rooney had his metatarsal injury but before he was sent off!) which shows how little Blair knows about football! Miliband is Blair’s spiritual successor, we are told – how nice to muse upon that prospect while lingering over the grappa and expresso.
Step forward also John Hutton. He was promoted to Works and Pensions secretary and has delivered the pensions proposals (i.e. he kept both Brown and Blair happy) and has now despatched, a long way after time but welcome nonetheless, the disastrously inefficient Child Support Agency. The make-weight is becoming a heavy weight. A pleasant thought to toy with over the pinot grigio.
Let us not forget Hazel Blears, Labour party chairman. The diminutive Blears is known for her expression of permanent rapture when in the presence of the Prime Minister. She is on the edge of the top tier of Labour leaders even if not all her colleagues share her irrepressible enthusiasm for every word which passeth the lips of her leader.
What about the Tories? There is a clutch of happy holidaymakers here. David Cameron, ahead in the polls, manifestly respected and feared by Labour backbenchers, making enough of the weather to secure constant media attention, must think he can never have it so good again. If ever an opposition leader were presented with an open goal he is it (as Blair was in the final dying agonies of John Major’s government.) The Cameroons will depart for the holiday villas and beaches in fine fettle. Their generation has taken over the Tories.
So will Francis Maude, the often apocalyptic ayatollah of Tory change. Five A-list women have been selected for target seats. The revolution is being delivered. Oliver Letwin, the thinking man’s thinking man, will also be modestly happy. He has just moved his office to be next door to Cameron’s, perhaps to keep a closer eye on some of Dave’s more uncharted excursions. He is nurturing the policy groups to provide the intellectual substance of the Tory recovery.
David Davis has had an impeccable six months. Defeated in the election he has been seen to have got stuck into the most high-profile brief –Home Office- and to have been loyal, dogged and effective. William Hague has been, as always, brilliant and multi-skilled, never overshadowing his leader but looking at ease in his skin in a way he never managed when he himself was leader.
The Tory High Command (and bits of the low command like Chris Grayling who has found something to say about the railways) will feel the warm sand between their toes with a sense of mission, so far, accomplished.
I’m not sure about Ming Campbell. He had a good finish to the term leading the anti-Blair charge over the NatWest Three and, of course, the Lib-Dems nearly won the Bromley by-election. Ming is too intelligent to think he is out of the woods but in this long, long Parliamentary session he has had a goodish extra-time and may watch the sun setting behind Edinburgh castle with an appreciate inhalation of the odour of his single malt.
Gordon Brown will no doubt have a nappy and anxiety ridden holiday- not for him this year Cape Cod and the relaxing company of an economics treatise. And Tony Blair, that eternally Panglossian optimist, that eager volunteer of the international stage, that bewitching and beguiling artist of political empathy – well, he thinks all is for the best in the beset of possible worlds. He will have his holidays and he will return convinced that he can turn things round, that his unique touch can turn base metal into electoral gold.
Poor John Prescott. There’s not really much more to say….
© Yorkshire Post
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