The Beast is slain

On seeing the news of Labour’s disastrous by-election result in Glasgow East, Harriet Harman, the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, is reported to have said ‘this is my moment’. David Milliband, the Foreign Secretary, is reported to have arranged a nationwide tour on the absurd excuse of informing the public on the work of the Foreign Office (kow-towing to the Chinese, failing to take a stand on Zimbabwe or Burma, accepting everything Brussels throws at us – should be a laugh a minute). Indeed Milliband seems to be coming out. He writes a piece in the Guardian today. It is an odd monograph, seeming to say ‘let’s stand on our record and the Tories are empty vessels who don’t agree with us’. I rather think that to connect with the voters he will have to accept that much of Labour’s record is dismal. He needs to start apologising and showing Labour has changed, in the way Cameron has done for the Tories. A new leader will need to be seen as a new broom.

So is it all up for Brown in August? Some papers report that at least 10 ministers are threatening to resign if Gordon doesn’t throw in the towel.

At the same time, Boris Johnson writes that none of the contenders have the courage to stand against Gordon Brown, who will lead Labour into the next election. Others say that the brightest and best see themselves, doomed to defeat, as William Hague figures, history’s also-rans, if they lead the party now. They would rather sit this next election out and then become the new brooms.

My own view is that the Queen should not permit a second successive prime minister untested before the electorate, and that anyone attempting this, should Her Majesty roll over, would suffer for it at the hands of the voter.

But I think in this leadership fervour, this Kremlinology (did Jack Straw actually say.. or was he careful not to say..’) we are missing one of the most crucial political moments since the war. Gordon Brown will go, now or in 2010, and we will see the passing of the last major political figure who believes that more taxing and more spending, more of the ‘sometimes the gentleman in Whitehall really does know best’ type of interference in the daily lives of the people, is really the way forward. From the nationalisation of the railways and of Northern Rock to the man arrested for smoking in his own van, or the way literally millions of people are both paying taxes and receiving benefits, this has been the crowning characteristic of New Labour. Yet few of the other potential candidates seem to share this: Purnell and Milliband seem more late liberal-Blairite, and Alan Johnson has admitted (to the Fabian Society!) that the government is unable to tackle obesity and people must make choices for themselves.

For the other candidates, Jack Straw, an interferer out of habit, and Harriet Harman with her soppy feminist credentials, they will be constrained by the simple fact there is no money left in the kitty and will eventually realise that little has been achieved with all this spending.

And so breathes his last gasp the final heir to the Attlee-Crossman-Benn consensus of the mid-20th century; ‘All good things around us are sent from Gordon above.’ We can wait a year or so now we are sure the beast is really slain.