ANALYSIS:Any benefit the prime minister gleans from a reshuffle driven by events beyond his control seems likely to be short-lived
DETERMINED. RESOLUTE. Getting on with the job. And staying put. Gordon Brown tried desperately to maintain the pretence of business as usual yesterday as he hit the panic button and rushed forward his cabinet reshuffle in the shocked aftermath of James Purnell’s announcement that he was quitting government in the belief the PM should do likewise.
Cabinet reshuffles are great sport for political journalists, but often fail to resonate much beyond the Westminster village. Brown’s need and expectation of this recasting, however, could not have been overstated. Long in the planning in anticipation of devastatingly bad results in the European and council elections, this was meant to be a moment of rebirth for a failing government facing a general election in its 13th year in office. Instead, it became a byword for an administration plunging deeper into crisis – with a benefit to the beleaguered prime minister some think may yet be counted in terms of days rather than weeks or months.
One measure of the trouble Brown is in is that it could be counted an achievement that he was even able to conduct this reshuffle. Conservative leader David Cameron suggested Brown’s ability to command his cabinet had disappeared following Hazel Blears’s decision to jump
before she was pushed on Wednesday. Cameron returned to his theme yesterday – proclaiming this government “collapsing before our eyes” – after John Hutton became the fourth minister to go in as many days and the media waited keenly to see who would follow.
Olympics minister Tessa Jowell – one uber-Blairite not party to an anti-Brown plot – made a good fist of explaining that the significance of those first four cabinet resignations (the fifth was not long in coming) had become distorted in the media frenzy.
Each, she said, entirely fairly, had been occasioned by different circumstances.
It is hardly unprecedented for departing ministers to signal their intentions ahead of an expected reshuffle. Hazel Blears clearly resigned as communities secretary to inflict maximum damage – the local government minister quitting the day before local government elections, if you please. Blears had already put her position in doubt with a barely coded attack on the government’s “lamentable” failure to communicate with the British public, and her seeming mockery of Brown’s now-notorious appearance on YouTube. She was taking her revenge, too, for the prime minister’s condemnation of her “totally unacceptable” behaviour in relation to her use of her parliamentary expenses while he spared colleagues, such as the also-now-resigned
Geoff Hoon, similarly accused of avoiding tax on profits from the sale of second homes.
The departing home secretary, Jacqui Smith, had told Brown some months before that she intended stepping down – the suspicion at Westminster being that her best friend Blears leaked news of her plans as part of the effort to destabilise the prime minister.
As with the departure of Blears, Smith’s going should have been a help to Brown in seeking to renew his government. Long before her own hideous embarrassment over her use of her expenses – she maximised the benefit of the second home allowance by designating a room in her sister’s London property as her principal residence, so spending the money on her family home in her constituency – it was clear that Smith was not the stuff of a distinguished or authoritative home secretary.
In the first wave of excitement yesterday it was naturally assumed that the departing defence secretary, John Hutton, had chosen to follow James Purnell’s example. Another leading Blairite, Hutton had once been one of Brown’s most outspoken critics, suspected, indeed, to be the anonymous minister predicting that he would prove “a f****** disastrous prime minister”.
But no. Hutton had told the prime minister weeks ago of his “personal decision” to leave government, and the Commons at the next election, for family reasons. Unlike Purnell, Hutton insisted he fully supported the prime minister and wanted to do everything he could to ensure the re-election of a Labour government.
Some might have thought the best way to realise that ambition would have been to stay a while longer. That said, Jowell was thus entitled to argue that these resignations should each be seen in their individual context.
It was generally agreed that Purnell had shown considerable courage, risking a promising career and a likely promotion to quit the cabinet telling Brown that his continued premiership made a Conservative victory more likely. But there would be questions about his judgment, too, as some semblance of confidence returned to 10 Downing Street with the evidence that Purnell’s solo run had not triggered the larger-scale cabinet revolt he had plainly hoped for. Indeed, Purnell’s biggest disappointment came swiftly, when the man he would like to see succeed Brown – foreign secretary David Miliband – declared that he was remaining in the loyalist camp (at least for now).
That caveat should seem wholly inappropriate because, again as Jowell observed, the question of the prime minister’s authority is surely answered by each and every minister accepting appointment to his government. Except, of course, that these are not normal times and this was not the reshuffle Brown actually wanted to execute.
Assuming Brown survives to face prime minister’s questions next Wednesday, we can certainly take it that Cameron won’t find the question of prime ministerial authority now settled. For sitting at the heart of the government still is a chancellor of the exchequer, Alistair Darling, whom Brown wanted to replace with his most trusted ally, Ed Balls.
Peter Mandelson dismissed this when it was put to him by the BBC’s political editor Nick Robinson, suggesting he knew of no grounds for the very idea. All week, Mandelson has played a blinder for the prime minister who stunned Westminster (and the Labour Party) when he recalled his friend-turned-enemy from the European Commission last autumn.
If Brown does actually survive, it will unquestionably be in large measure due to the role performed by the ultimate Blairite. Yet the old Prince of Darkness was deeply unconvincing in arguing this one, as he was in suggesting that Brown hadn’t had his hand forced at all, but was acting yesterday in line with his earlier promise to reconstruct his government.
Hard of heart would have been those who didn’t feel for Darling in the Commons last Wednesday when Cameron tormented Brown with the simple question – would he confirm that his chancellor would still be in Number 11 Downing Street in a week’s time? Having previously denied him thrice, Brown, yet again, refused to put his friend out of his misery. Nor was it a matter of a prime minister necessarily keeping options open and the media drawing the wrong conclusions. The chancellor felt sufficiently threatened to let it be known that he would prefer to leave the government altogether than be moved from the treasury. Sources close to the prime minister, meanwhile, privately confirmed the newspaper reports that Balls was the preferred candidate. All off-the-record, and thus deniable, obviously. Yet nobody will believe the denials now. Nor are voters likely to be impressed by Mandelson’s contention that Brown has delivered a “new government”. New? With the same foreign and business secretaries and chancellor as before?
As it happens there were appointments yesterday which, in any normal circumstance, should strengthen the government. The man tipped to succeed Brown, Alan Johnson, has the instincts and image to survive the political graveyard that is the home office. John Denham – a man who resigned over the Iraq war – could prove a much more effective communities secretary than Hazel Blears. Back in their constituencies, however, Labour MPs are unlikely to encounter grateful constituents telling them these were just the changes necessary to work the magic on Brown’s premiership.
Brown hardly commanded the loyalty of his MPs yesterday. They appear to have decided, rather, to delay the moment of death.
It is now down to the MPs to decide if they can face the thousand cuts seemingly presaged by the election results already in and those to come tomorrow. Norman Lamont once cruelly taunted John Major, saying he gave the impression of “being in office but not in power”. The Parliamentary Labour Party must now decide if the message from the electorate is that Gordon Brown stands in the same condemnation. We should not have long to wait.
Frank Millar is London Editor of The Irish Times