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Pickles
Local Government
Chronicle - 11 July 2007
Oh what a wonderfully feast we are going to have: Falstaff versus Mistress Quickly; Yorkshire v Lancashire; Bradford-turned-Essex Man v Manchester Woman; Pickles v Blears!
It’s a cartoonist’s dream. Eric Pickles looks like he has stepped out of a Hogarth cartoon. Rumbustuous of (rightish) view, jovial of manner, seriously impressive of girth, cheerfully resilient to see-sawing political fortunes, Eric is what the French would call “a force of nature.” Yet this former leader of Bradford Council is not all meat pies and pints of ale. If this serious opera buff and keen fell walker enjoys a reputation as a bruiser (and I am far from convinced he is) he is the thinking councillor’s bruiser. Anyone who writes him off as a pantomime turn will be making a serious mistake.
His promotion after year’s playing second fiddle (and a life-time at the coal-face of Tory politics) comes as reward for his role as Cameron’s hit-man for the local election campaign. But Eric is wise enough to know that the Leader’s writ does not carry the force of law amongst Tory councillors – witness the bevy of Conservative-run county councils beating a path to Ruth Kelly’s door to put the case for unitary councils despite the Pickles ukase telling them not to listen to such a siren-voiced temptress!
Nor is Hazel Blears a lightweight. She may be barely pint-sized but she has got real guts. She fought a brave campaign for the Labour deputy leadership refusing –unlike most of the rest of the field- to denounce the policies of her own government. Like Eric she knows local government- in her case as a local authority solicitor. Also like Eric she has her unexpected side- she is a motor-biking fan. The image of the ultra-petite Ms Blears astride a Harley- Davidson will certainly be enough to make battle-hardened town hall apparatchiks go weak at the knees.
Hazel was, of course, Mr Blair’s little ray of sunshine. Presumably she will now become Mr Brown’s Little Miss Sunshine. But can she talk! She can talk the hind legs off a donkey. It is not a rant, nor is it a sermon: if anything she emits a sort of gushing, cheerful chirping.
I suspect this is what DCLG needs at the moment. It has been lacking in both confidence and enthusiasm. Ruth Kelly never gave the impression that she was well in her skin at the department. She did try to give it a sense of direction following the regional government referendum debacle but never managed to shake off the sense of tentativeness and insecurity. Her team was edgy. She remains in the Cabinet with the tough brief of transport.
One of the problems at DCLG was the decidedly lumpy Kelly-Cooper relationship. Yvette Cooper was heavily tipped for the Cabinet. In the event she attends Cabinet without being a member of it which presumably means that she answers for her housing brief when it is relevant to discussion but otherwise keep mum. Blears will probably take Yvette’s status as No2 Plus more easily in her stride.
The appointment of John Healey to take over from Phil Woolas (shifting someone from local government finance to climate change is a tribute to the Confucian philosophy underpinning British government) is interesting. Healey is a card-carrying but non-partisan Brownite having served successively as PPS to the then Chancellor and Economic and Financial Secretary to the Treasury with a short break at Education and Skills. His back ground is in campaigning for disability rights and trades union interests.
More relevant is his co-authorship with Ed Balls of a series of pamphlets on devolution and political leadership. These constitute the nearest thing we have to a Brown agenda for local government. So it is possible that he has been sent to DCLG with a mandate to deliver a distinctive policy framework while Blears focuses on the issues of Britishness – community, identity, citizenship – so constantly evoked by the new Prime Minister. He will be a patient, courteous and well-briefed minister.
Oh- and well done Angela Smith. From bottom of the heap at DCLG to Prime Minister’s PPS. Not bad for an Essex girl!
© Local Government Chronicle
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