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Cabinet goes on the road to show it's 'listening to Britain'
Joe Murphy and Nicholas Cecil04.08.08
Gordon Brown launched the first phase of his fightback today with plans for the Cabinet to hold meetings outside London.
In a symbolic show of "listening to Britain", ministers will gather in the West Midlands for their first formal meeting after the summer holiday on Monday 8 September.
"The Government wants to listen and to learn from the experiences of people in the country," said the Downing Street official spokesman.
The meeting - planned to be the first of several Cabinet roadshows - will be combined with visits to local services - such as hospitals or schools.
A reshuffle is pencilled in for the week before, which means it would be the first big public event involving the new Cabinet. Later that month Mr Brown will step up his political recovery plan with speeches to the Trades Union Congress and the Labour Party conference in Manchester.
The Prime Minister has eight weeks to show he can win the next election, critics say. Pressure on him increased last week when Foreign Secretary David Miliband called for a "radical new phase" of Labour thinking, signalling himself as a leadership contender-Mr Miliband's Cabinet allies James Purnell, Andy Burnham and John Hutton will also give a show of strength at the conference when they join former ministers Peter Mandelson and former Health Secretary Alan Milburn, to address a rally of the Blairite pressure group Progress.
In addition, a group of ex-ministers - believed to include arch-Blairites Stephen Byers, the former Transport Secretary, and former Home Secretary Charles Clarke - say they will roll out their own policy packages to pressure Mr Brown to fill what they call a "vacuum" of ideas in government.
The turmoil increased with the leak of a memo reportedly written by Tony Blair attacking "vacuous" leadership. "The real problem was not the brilliance of the Tory conference, but the hubris and vacuity of our own," it read. Written last autumn, it said Mr Brown "junked the [Tony Blair] policy agenda but had nothing to put in its place". There was no denial it was written by Mr Blair.
Reader views (4)
If they really did want to listen, they would cut fuel duty, clamp down on immigration, build more prisons and hold a referendum on the Nice Treaty and our relationship with the EU. But they never listen, this is more window-dressing from this scum government.
- The Gene Genie, Croydon
I am simply staggered that they are still trotting out this "listening and learning" line, and that the press lets them get away with it. It's so old that it's got whiskers on it, and so discredited that it's up there (or down there) with "shock and awe".
If the government was really listening - or hearing, or active listening, or whatever moniker you wish to apply to the exercise - the message will come through loud and clear. It is "We would like to speak so you can listen and learn from us - we would like a general elecion - now."
Did you hear that, Gordon, Alistair, the various Eds, Harriet, Jack, et al?
- Tim, Atlanta, GA USA
He can give me and thousands of pensioners their 10p tax rate back, if he really is listening!
- Jean, London England
A "Whitehall Official". Makes a change from "sources close to". But makes the story just that. Fiction.
- Colin, barking essex
