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Nineteen
Local Government
Chronicle - 29 May 2007
G minus 19. Nineteen days to go until June 27- and G-Day. The day Gordon finally comes into his inheritance. And now Gordon is chugging around the country like a big bear in the pantomime of Labour’s deputy leader contest between the six dwarves.
Then it will be the new Cabinet. But now we are experiencing the nearest thing in public life to weightlessness: an entire government living in suspended animation waiting to know whether there is life after Gordon. Re-shuffle: one of the most erotic words in government.
But Gordon has a problem. As a post New Labour politician Gordon will want gender balance in his Cabinet. The difficulty – and somebody has to be insensitive enough to mention it – is that Labour’s top women have been, almost without exception, the worst performing members of the Blair administration. You could argue that not one of them deserves to be reappointed.
Let us start with Margaret Beckett. Her caravan beckons. When she got out of Defra she left behind the unmitigated chaos of the Rural Payments Agency’s failure to manage the transition to the new regime of farm support. Her successor has managed to glide on a green cloud above the continuing confusion.
Next in line is Health Minister Patrician Hewitt. Her disaster? Well, the latest one is the recruitment system for junior doctors. Patricia’s problem is that she addresses the world as if it were some peculiarly dim Labrador puppy which she is trying to teach to sit. When you hear some ministers speak you quickly lose the will to live; when you hear Patricia Hewitt’s voice you get the overwhelming urge to commit homicide.
How about Tessa Jowell? No-one doubts that she is both gutsy and hard-working. The problem is that there are real doubts as to whether she is… to coin a phrase… fit for purpose. Her stock response to anyone who has questioned –entirely legitimately – the cost of the 2012 Olympics is to accuse them of something close to treason by wishing the French had won.
Harriet Harman and Hazel Blears, two of the six dwarves who want to be deputy leader, will almost certainly end up in the Cabinet. H&H make an odd couple: one with a demeanour which is almost mournful, the other- Mr Blair’s little ray of sunshine- irrepressibly bright and optimistic. Harriet’s outing at social Security in the early Blair administration was overshadowed by the brief ministerial metamorphosis of welfare free-thinker Frank Field while Hazel has never done a big ministerial job. As Party chairman she no doubt takes credit for local election results which were merely catastrophic rather than cataclysmic but the Archangel Gabriel could not have pulled Labour’s fat out of that particular fire.
And so to Ruth, a Blears backer. I confess to having a soft spot for Ruth. For one thing she is genuinely bright. For another she supports Bolton Wanderers. She used to work for the Bank of England and was a good Chief Secretary under Gordon. She was never well in her skin at Education –politics too close to the atavistic emotions of Labour for this economic rationalist. She has struggled to give a sense of direction to local government policy in the fin de regime environment but is, I think, beginning to convey a sense of purpose, albeit slightly ragged.
She has had one very good and one disastrous recent outing. The good outing was on planning: here are real step changes in a usually very incremental discipline. The disaster was Home Information Packs. Of course she did not invent this barmy idea. But when will she learn that whilst you can conduct a fighting withdrawal you cannot pull off a bombastic retreat. When Ruth, deep voice booming, tries to be fierce it is less Hemmingway than Cynthia Bucket.
Whether Yvette Cooper, as Housing and Planning Minister immediately in charge of both triumph and disaster, will suffer collateral damage remains to be seen. If Gordon has any sense he’ll dump HIPs pronto along with local government re-organisation.
I hope he doesn’t dump Ruth. With a majority of 2,064 and an adverse boundary change it may not be too long before she is able to spend more time with her family….
© Local Government Chronicle
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