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Trust me, Gordon, loyalty’s in my DNA
Anne McElvoy and Paul Waugh03.03.09
In the wake of intense speculation about her leadership hopes, it's fitting that Harriet Harman will be taking Prime Minister's Questions tomorrow while Gordon Brown is in Washington.
It's not the first time she has stepped into the ring as his substitute but tomorrow, the scrutiny will be all the fiercer.
She has emerged as a serious contender for the leadership — but also as a gaffe-prone member of the senior team.
Her promise that Sir Fred Goodwin would not get the lavish pension agreed when the Government bailed out the Royal Bank of Scotland has caused consternation in Cabinet. No one rushed to back what appears like wishful thinking.
Her one-woman salvoes are raising the hackles of Labour's pro-business ministers, as much as they delight her core audience in the party ranks.
An enthusiastic embrace of a new Equalities Bill, which suggested the public sector should vet applicants for class background, caused an outcry, and forced her officials into a damage limitation campaign. They insisted Ms Harman was not about to embark on a Soviet-style quota system.
Those who regard her as just an accident-prone attention-seeker, however, can be surprised.
Last April, William Hague, deputising for David Cameron, strode up to the despatch box expecting to humiliate Ms Harman with ease.
To the delight of Labour MPs — and the private amusement of some Tory spin doctors — the woman called variously “Mad Hattie” or “Harriet Harperson” delivered several wounding barbs and left Mr Hague reeling.
First she wondered why it was Hague rather than her Tory shadow Theresa May, who was at PMQs. “Is this the situation in the modern Conservative Party, that women should be seen but not heard?”
Mr Hague ridiculed a Harman tour of Peckham during which she wore a stab-proof vest but she retorted confidently: “If I am looking for advice on what to wear or what not to wear, the last person I would look to for advice is the man in the baseball cap.”
Basic enough repartee but hard to deliver in the bearpit of a baying chamber, as Mr Brown has often discovered to his cost.
When she got back to her huge wood-panelled office, the largest in the Commons as befits its Leader, the mood among her aides was celebratory. She was told by friends that she might have what it takes to become prime minister.
That day was a key moment in her ambitions, colleagues say. “It came as a shock to those who want to pigeonhole her,” says a friend. “But she is a very competent politician who has a grip on a range of issues.”
Of course, allies of the Cabinet minister insist, that there is not “one shred” of truth in claims that she is now jockeying for position to succeed Mr Brown. Loyalty, they say, is “in her DNA”.
As Sally Keeble MP, one of her close political friends, says: “If Harriet was preparing to mount a leadership campaign, it would be obvious to people like me but she is not.”
The rise of Harriet Ruth Harman QC MP to the position of serious leadership contender confounds her critics. First elected nearly 27 years ago, her sheer longevity has deepened as well as broadened her reach within the party: she is the only woman minister to feature in both 1997 and 2007 Cabinets, though she was deeply hurt to lose her Cabinet seat as Welfare Secretary in one of Tony Blair's reshuffles.
Her political strength derives from the strong mandate that no other minister possesses: her direct election by the Labour party as its deputy leader. Squeaking past Alan Johnson by the narrowest of margins, she won thanks to the overwhelming backing of women activists, as well as the votes of London party members. Her strong base in the capital is a significant fact if she should go all the way and run for leader.
During the race, Ms Harman scared the horses with a string of Left-leaning positions. She backed a closer relationship between Labour and the unions, a review of the Trident nuclear defence system, and said private schools were not genuine charities, suggesting they should be stripped of their charitable status. Most presciently of all, she called for a curb on bankers' bonuses.
Within minutes of her triumph, allies of Mr Brown were briefing that she would not be given the Deputy Prime Minister title bestowed on John Prescott. It was also claimed that she would never be allowed anywhere near the weekly set-piece occasion. Jack Straw, it was hinted, was a safer pair of hands.
But Ms Harman has battled away to grab what she sees as rightfully hers as Deputy Leader. Last summer, as Mr Brown headed off for a rare stroll on Southwold beach, she briefly became the first woman to run Downing Street since Margaret Thatcher.
Her few days with the levers of power were revealing, insiders claim. Before taking over, she caused a flurry of consternation within Downing Street by producing a list of demands, including supplementary late-night briefings on the next day's headlines.
Such was her hyperactivity, that Jeremy Heywood, the veteran Permanent Secretary at No 10, was prompted to tell staff: “I know guys, please do not shoot the messenger.”
She insisted that she was telephoned each night at 10.30pm with a summary of the next day's newspapers and to discuss urgent issues. She also wanted her private secretary and special advisers to be included in a 7.30am conference call, followed by a daily meeting at 9am around the Cabinet table.
This fierce ambition is rooted in the grandest lineage in Labour. Lady Longford is her aunt, which connects her to a whole intellectual network of political Jays and literary Pakenhams.
At St Paul's, she was not one of the most academically able high flyers but went on to read politics at York university, qualify as a solicitor and fight her way early to a safe seat in Peckham.
Her marriage to Jack Dromey — he was an activist in the bitter Grunwick union dispute and they met on a picket line — united his formidable skills as a union organiser and her ambition. They are, friends note, a strong domestic team: he covers the home front in the evenings while she travels. “There isn't even the tension there was between Tony and Cherie,” says one, “They each back up each other's political interests to the hilt. I've never heard them argue at all.”
Her political course has taken her far from her privileged roots, though she carries a certainty that she is right and an unflappability that is reminiscent of a born-to-rule dynasty.
In the early 1980s, she was one of a small group of professional women in the Labour Party who strove to combine feminism with Labour values. It included Cherie Blair, with whom Ms Harman argued about abortion rights, and Margaret Hodge.
Bossiness and self-interest are charges most often levelled at her.
In an interview with the Standard, she once revealed why they had chosen three different schools for their children, including one selective grammar and used both Catholic and C of E schools for the children, but not one standard comprehensive.
“I am coming clean about this because it is just better to say how it was,” she said, “I'm not going to quake in my shoes about it. All my skeletons are out there and rattling around.”
It was a classic Harman manoeuvre: claiming kinship with the comprehensive ideal but conceding “we're not there yet”. Crucially, she survived and bounced back to become a favourite of the Left. “There's a bit of the Thatcher in her,” says one constituency colleague, “She just always assumes she's right.”
An element of Westminster sexism lurks in some of the attacks on her. There's even a comedy blog parodying her earnest style. Her fashion sense is strictly 1980s: high heels and white, lemon and pink jackets. You won't find her shabbily turned out though. She always sports camera-ready make-up and discreet jewellery. Declaring that she would spend no more than £50 on a handbag caused howls of irritation from smart Labour high spenders but was right on message for the hair-shirted party ranks.
Her Cabinet colleagues can be merciless about her self-belief. One tells of a moment when, after a dry session on economic statistics, ministers “rolled their eyes at each other” as she spoke up perkily about her “Harriet's High Street” campaign to meet shoppers across the country.
Her supporters on the back benches are growing more vocal. “People rate a record and she's got one,” says Lewisham MP Joan Ruddock. “She also has great dynamism and energy. That's why she's so popular in her constituency, which has a huge party membership.”
“She is of all the ministers of her rank the best connected with the electorate,” says a leading charity figure who knows her well. “She stops people in the supermarket in Camberwell and asks what they think the Government should be doing.”
Another campaigner counters that she lacks the finesse as a minister to deliver her ideals.
“What she says on equalities and women's pay and maternity leave is fantastic and gets it out there,” she says. “But I'm afraid she lacks the ability to argue effectively in Cabinet against people like Peter Mandelson (the Business Secretary). As a result, we end up with a lot of promises but little else. She compromised very fast on equal pay audits of private companies, for example.”
Despite these failures, she still knows how to pitch herself as the conscience of the party. In a series of messages that were not so much dog whistles as loud-hailer announcements, she referred to “our friends in the unions”, said there had been “robust” discussions in Cabinet on Royal Mail.
Drawing attention to the need to extract due punishment from the bankers may have backfired in practical terms but kept her in the headlines on an issue on which many people in and outside Labour want retribution.
The jibe at Westminster is that Ms Harman is just about smart enough to realise she's not smart enough to be leader. But should Labour have a disastrous night in the 4 June local and European elections and decide that the game is up for Gordon, the joke may be on those who underestimate “Mad Hattie”.
The bookmakers have just installed her as 10-3 favourite to succeed Mr Brown.
Reader views (8)
That's just what this country needs right now - Harperson as PM - the last nail in its coffin?
In the past, every time we were in danger of going under, our leaders saved us. It looks as if that fortunate state of affairs is going into reverse now - our leaders are aiding and abetting our destruction.
- Mary West, Chelmsford, England
PLEASE, labour, PLEASE let Harriet Harman lead you into the next election!
- John Punshon, Milton Keynes, England
I am hoping for a BNP shock result to smash the establishment statas quo. People will show on polling day that the three parties in Westminister are all finished.
- Joe, Swanley Kent
'She may succeed Brown, but it will be followed by years in opposition to a Tory run government.
- P. C., rainham. essex.'
Yes indeed. That may well be the 'game plan'. Remember unelectable Worzel Gummidge Foot and Windbag Kinnock? Then, during the Blair years we had 14 pints a day Hague, followed by Quiet Man Duncan Smith and Something of the Night Howard, for the Tories. These things are all manipulated by the 'puppet-masters' behind the scenes. It has been ordained that the next stage of the New World Order 'agenda' should be executed by a Tory government in the guise of a 'change' of regime. It was ever thus.
- David Moon, Seaford, East Sussex, UK
If she succeds in replacing Brown, then there is enough time before May 2010 to get Jack Straw through the prime minister slot. After all they are on one of the last final salary schemes left.
- Michael Murphy, colchester
These two deserve each other. Both would stick a knife in each others back!
- Dee Jay, Fleet Hampshire
She may go down well with the activists but my sense is that she is an opinionated, opportunistic machine politician with a background of wealth and privilege - in fact pretty typical, failed New Labour!
- Edmundb, Banbury, Oxon
She may succeed Brown, but it will be followed by years in opposition to a Tory run government.
- P. C., rainham. essex.
