Tonight:
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A collective sigh of relief from Labour: Gordon Brown is not doomed to crash and burn. Gentlemen, we can rebuild him.
Yesterday he asked for a fresh start, deploying one of his best assets, the classlessly engaging Mrs Brown as his warm-up, admitting to “concerns” (as they call near-despair on Planet Labour) about his rule and promising not to mess it up again. Jackie Wilson was the backing track but the real message was Gloria Gaynor — I Will Survive.
“He's just reapplied for the job of Prime Minister,” whispered one minister. He got it, for now. “A big day for us,” said one insider with feeling. Mr Brown had started the week with a bog-standard TV appearance which combined his alarming trademark combination of sounding reassuring while leaving those watching unreassured.
Throughout the conference, bars and restaurants heaved with ministers indulging in candid calculations about the ifs and buts of changing leader. Menacing loyalists threatened Beria-style loyalty tests for heretics, matched by heretics vowing they would not go quietly.
Ruth Kelly's family reasons are genuine but the manner of her departure is a reminder of the unhappiness at the heart of the Government. Ms Kelly may have felt she was due to be reshuffled out of Cabinet anyway (she had long since made clear she was happy at Transport and did not want to be moved).
Her timing, the morning after Mr Brown's triumph, is still significant. She has ranked as a quiet critic of the PM — an unflashy minister but one who is very sure of her views and hard to sway. Unlikely to have any immediate effect in destabilising Mr Brown, her resignation gives him a freer hand in a reshuffle in which he has otherwise limited manoeuvre and is thought to want to bring in the immigration minister Liam Byrne and move out the chief whip Geoff Hoon.
It does, however, place outside the tent a minister who has strong opinions on the dangers of the party moving to the Left if it loses the next election badly, and who would be a strong supporter of David Miliband in any leadership challenge.
Having suffered the slings and arrows of a crop of former Blairite Cabinet figures in the past months, Mr Brown now has another potential critic roaming free, so her future conduct will be watched with some anxiety by No 10.
What has changed since Sunday is the pace of revolt. Mr Brown passed his speech test with flying colours. His key rival, Mr Miliband, did not have his breakthrough. The young pretender stroked the piano keys rather than attempted the Emperor concerto. That left his audience in the hall wondering what a Mili-change would amount to. Certainly, there was not the zap-pow emergence of an irresistible shooting star talent. Mr Miliband's rise, if such it is, will be slower and more contingent on events.
“This is no time for novices,” said Mr Brown, pointedly putting both the Jam Generation Davids back in their youthful boxes.
Whether this is a good thing in the long run is uncertain. The first response of Tory strategists is relief: “He did well enough to stay, but no sign that he has the capacity to change,” says one leading Cameronian.
The financial crisis has been the PM's best friend in his hour of need. It restores his claim to unique expertise. I scoured the speech for a sign of gratitude to the dogged Chancellor, Alistair Darling. In vain.
Yet the question lingers in everyone's minds: who would contend with the present situation of extreme financial turmoil better than the incumbent?
This boast is useful but time-limited. It bears fruit only if he does something about it of which voters approve.
I have one other big criticism. The speech was in essence a benign application of tax and spend: responsive to people's instincts and frustrations on popular issues like cancer drugs and long-term care — and today the fanfare of a pilot of universal free school meals. It did not set a new agenda.
New Labour's underlying problem is that it is beginning to lag behind in the battle of ideas. The party's comfort zone was left intact: reining in bankers and being nice to the NHS is what it likes to do anyway. The odd radical-ish commitment to “choice” (a word he used to avoid like the plague) or “excellence” in education was thrown in but we were left wondering what he really means and how he intends to get it. It promised reinvigoration, then pledged to do the same things a bit better.
Big political speeches are waymarks. True, they can help change the way a leader is seen — but only if he really wants to make that change.
Tony Blair, as one old aide reminded me this week, used his 2001 speech after September 11 to define himself as a key player in an altered world and carve out a new role and image for himself. Mr Brown intends to do the same with the fallout from last week.
One other caveat for the Brown team as they sip the champagne of pure relief. This conference is even less a guide to what people really think of Mr B than any other gathering of the faithful. Labour activism is beginning to sink perilously close to its core, as the recent by-election disasters demonstrated.
The vast majority of delegates in Manchester are now special-interest groups — crusaders against domestic violence, for disability rights, or campaigners on African debt relief.
What is missing is what Mr Blair brought to the party and which it still badly needs to fight David Cameron's revival: ordinary professional people who have become attracted to what New Labour stands for and have a stake in its future. If Mr Brown cannot bring them in, the fighting strength of his party will remain reduced to the loyal rump. For that reason he needs to be more generous than he has been to his young Turks, like those in the Progress movement, who are thinking afresh about the role of the state and the way public services are run. The party needs space to think and grow.
In the hardball of politics, a Miliband-Brown stand-off is now official, even without the contentious Heseltine reference. It is suspended, but not cancelled.
I asked one strong ministerial backer of a leadership challenge what he made of his early claim to me that Mr Miliband now had the cojones for a move against the PM. “I think his cojones have gone back in for a bit,” he said.
Now he has to bide his time. With Ms Kelly's departure Miliband has one fewer ally in Cabinet. Mr Brown will ensure she is not replaced by another.
The PM has earned a period of grace. Let's recall, though, why he got into this crisis to start with. He did so because he sank so low in public esteem that a sizeable body of opinion in his own ranks thought he had no chance of winning the next election. If this week has begun to change that, he can consider himself resurrected.
If the gap with the Conservatives stubbornly refuses to close or internal dissent breaks out again, his troubles will return with renewed force. The Gettysburg address introduced by Marilyn Monroe would be unlikely to save him then.
Reader views (3)
Thank gord for that, at last The pm has stood up to the critics inside his party and to Cameron and his buddies in the media. Labour did have the vision to fix the roof while the sun was shining! lets see those disloyal ministers currently plotting and schemeing against the PM redirect their efforts into a serious examination of Team Camerons alternative policies for dealing with the financial crisis etc. As Brown said "its no time for novices"
- Bj, London, United Kingdom, 24/09/2008 17:58
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Only in the minds of a few commentators who have always been pro Labour/G Brown has a silly nonsensical speech changed anything. Bravo? Stole the show? You must be joking. Nothing has changes in the minds of those who matter and have to deal with the consequences of this shameful political party.
- Kr, Cap Ferrat France, 24/09/2008 16:33
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What amazes me is that one speech, drafted by a speechwriter is supposed to make all the difference. Why doesn't anybody take him up on his "no tme for novices"? After all, it was him who was the engineer of a fake debt-based economy, he provided the climate for banks to behave as they did. And now this person wants to stylize himself as the saviour?? Surely somebody ought to say something!
- Delphine, Oxford, 24/09/2008 14:57
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