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Baby Labour
Emily Hill22.04.09
In 1997, New Labour proudly dubbed its election-winning crop of female MPs “Blair's babes”.
Twelve years on, a new political breed is fast becoming the centre of attention: Blair's babies — the offspring of prominent New Labour politicians who are looking to prolong the political dynasty.
Foremost among the next generation is Georgia Gould, daughter of Blair's polling guru, Lord Gould. She is battling for selection in Erith and Thamesmead. New Labour bigwigs Tessa Jowell, Alastair Campbell and Baroness McDonagh have all turned out to bat for the 22-year-old and, as a result, Georgia is “proving about as popular locally as a cup of cold sick”, as one blogger puts it. As a measure of this, a ballot box containing postal votes for the selection meeting was sabotaged at the weekend.
Another up-and-coming hotshot is Gould's school friend, Alex Birtles, the daughter of the former Health Secretary, Patricia Hewitt. Still in her early twenties, Birtles has already established a reputation for lecturing education secretaries — complaining to Margaret Hodge that the AS-level syllabus was too “confusing” and managing to secure an audience with Charles Clarke to discuss Classics at her school, thanks to an invitation hand-delivered by her mother.
The Blair babies start as they mean to go on. Emily Benn, granddaughter of Tony Benn and niece of Environment Secretary Hilary Benn, first got her taste of the campaign trail as a toddler in 1992. At 17, she became the Labour candidate for East Worthing and Shoreham.
Both Emily and Georgia went to Oxford University. Gould succeeded Blair's son Nicky as chairman of the Oxford University Labour Club. Will Straw, son of Justice minister Jack Straw, was President of the Oxford Union before decamping to America, like Euan Blair, to further his political education.
Straw the Younger blogs for LabourList — the website set up by Derek Draper, who is mired in New Labour's Smeargate scandal.
But nepotism can't account for everything in the ranks of the New Labour youth. Sunder Katwala, general secretary of the Fabian Society, explains: “Politicians as parents can be a blessing and a burden. The Guardian claimed that because [Will's pamphlet Yes We Can] was published by the Fabian Society it surely involved nepotism but in fact he worked for a Washington think tank and had talked to a collection of US insiders, so we said yes. If he'd just been the son of a minister we'd have said no …
“It's off-message but Will says what the Labour Party needs is a cultural glasnost'. That's the kind of punchy stuff we need.” And it is, of course, not at all likely to please his father.
MEET THE NEW LABOUR BABIES
Name: Will Straw
Age: 29
Dynasty: Son of UK Justice minister Jack Straw.
Political career: Will Straw first came to public attention when he was dragged to the local police station by his father after an undercover Daily Mirror reporter bought £10-worth of cannabis from the Pimlico schoolboy.
He has gone on to a bright career at Oxford, gaining a 2:1 in PPE and becoming president of the Oxford Union where he loudly campaigned against top-up fees and was known for his “dictatorial style”.
After university he worked at the Treasury until 2007, when he won a Fulbright scholarship to Columbia University. He is now associate director for economic growth at the Center for American Progress and co-author of Yes We Can: How the Lessons from America Should Change British Politics, published by the Fabian Society.
He is also co-author of The Change We Need which looks at how Labour can take lessons from Obama's success.
Expect to see him: Writing columns for ProgressOnline and Labour blogs from America on how Labour must change.
Name: Emily Benn
Age: 19
Dynasty: Granddaughter of Labour veteran Tony Benn and niece of Environmental Secretary Hilary Benn. Her mother used to advise Tony Blair.
Political career: Plenty of work experience in the prime minister's office but desperate to be seen in her own right. Is pro-academies and, being a keen violin player, music education. A punchy member of the Oxford Union and the Oxford Labour Club who wants to make it clear that “[I] am not a loser that stays in my room all the time”.
In 2007 she was selected as the Labour candidate for East Worthing and Shoreham while still doing her A-levels. If elected, Emily will be the fifth generation from her family to enter Parliament and youngest MP ever — although to win she needs to overturn an 8,000 Tory majority. Daughter of Tony Benn's eldest son Stephen, Emily joined the Labour Party at 14 while still a student at St Olave's School in Orpington.
“It annoys me when people say I got the candidacy because of my granddad,” she has said. “I'm my own person. I'm hoping that one day I'll just be Emily Benn rather than Emily Benn, granddaughter of Tony Benn'.”
Expect to see her: Studying at Oxford University. Could follow in granddad's footsteps as the next and youngest ever MP — if she can fight off the Tories.
Name: Euan Blair
Age: 25
Dynasty: Son of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Political career: Euan has generally kept a low political profile, perhaps due to being found “drunk and incapable” by the police in 2000 when he was 16.
He went to Bristol University, where in 2002 a scandal erupted over Cherie's use of a known fraudster to negotiate the acquisition of two flats for him and his guards. Eyebrows were again raised in 2006 when Euan was awarded a £50,000 scholarship for an MA at Yale. Fellow students wondered how he had secured such a sum off the back of a 2:1 in ancient history.
Then he was criticised by a Tory MP for working as a runner on the set of the film V for Vendetta, which depicted the Palace of Westminster being blown up by a freedom fighter.
He completed a three-month internship for Republican congressman David Dreier on Capitol Hill in 2006 but walked out of work experience with Democrat Jane Harman. Left Yale last year with a postgraduate degree in international relations.
Expect to see him: At investment bank Morgan Stanley in Canary Wharf.
Name: Nicky Blair
Age: 23
Dynasty: Son of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Political career: Nicky's skateboard played a crucial role in the Northern Irish peace process as Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams made themselves at home in Number 10 by trying to ride it down the garden path.
Nicky Blair may have paid homage to champagne socialism by doing work experience at Krug but his political credentials could seem disappointingly old Labour for his father Tony.
This month, Nicky, 23, who teaches history at a West Midlands comprehensive, went out on strike with the NUT. Last year he protested against the 2.45 per cent pay offer for teachers.
He has also expressed doubts on Labour's human rights record, endorsing a student campaign against Campsfield House, a British immigration detention centre, because he believed Labour did not have a humane attitude towards asylum seekers.
As co-chair of Oxford University Labour Club he persuaded Hilary Benn, Alan Milburn, Tessa Jowell and Hazel Blears to speak during the notoriously quiet Trinity term. His experience of life on the stump was not so propitious. At the last election, Nicky suffered a “volley of abuse” when he knocked at a voter's house. His elder brother Euan was then subjected to an even bigger barrage of curses when Nicky mischievously suggested he try the same door.
Expect to see him: Teaching at a West Midlands comprehensive school as part of the Teach First scheme.
Name: Alex Birtles
Age: 22
Dynasty: Daughter of former health secretary Patricia Hewitt (and school friend of Georgia Gould).
Political career: In 2003, aged 16, she challenged then education minister Margaret Hodge on the AS-level exam system at a Q&A session, saying too many exams ruined teenagers' lives. Secured an audience for herself and members of her school's Classics department the same year with then education secretary Charles Clarke after he was accused of belittling the teaching of Classics.
Reader views (8)
So - have I got this right? - a sixth former gains selection as a Labour candidate for Parliament - and she doesn't think that it has anything to do with her surname? I wonder what the others on the shortlist thought. This gives a whole new meaning to nepotism - at least some of the current Labour MPs have had a job of some sort - but then she has had "plenty of work experience in the Prime Minister's office". Not necessarily something to boast about these days I would have thought
- The Lady Of Foy, UK
Nothing but parasites these wealthy leftys !
- Joe, Swanley Kent
You could call it 'hereditary meritocracy'.After the war the Yugoslav communist Djilas, wrote 'The New Class', depicting how a generation of successful revolutionaries turned government into a family business - and got locked up for pointing it out.
At this rate, everyone in the Cabinet will be a banjo-playing albino within a year or two.
- Mdj E10, london uk
Labour's nepotism has been alive and well since 1997 and the only change is that it now encompasses a wider part of the fraternity.
However, we all know the consequences of in-breeding and, as today's budget demonstrates, it is now rampant in the Labour DNA.
- Bingham Macnamara, lymington, hampshire
Jobs for labour's boys and girls. They've run out of grown ups (most sacked by Blair or Brown) so now we have a socialist childrens' crusade. As you now can't get a job in journalism or acting, for example, unless you have a parent in journalsim or acting to get you in, so in politics. That's the real meaning of decadence.
- Peter Haldane, London
Why would anyone vote for a 22 year old. She's just out of university has no idea what is wrong with the country because she has never had to make a living or pay taxes or raise children or care for her parents or anything. It's all theory, all from books and watching her relatives screw it all up. Get a career and then become a politician. If you have the same experience as all the other career politicians around you, what use are you anyway?
- Alex C, London
Yuk!
Thank goodness my kids weren't reared to be arrogant, fanatical, divisive or vindictive!
No wonder the unelectable Campbell and McDonagh[?] have never ever been given any democratic mandate.
Fascinating, too, that Campbell who supposedly hails from a decades long 'safe Labour Burnley seat', isn't considering entrusting his home, 'Old Labour' town with his own kids' education!
'Do as I say', eh Alistair?
- Dave, Cumbria
That's all the country needs, a bunch of nepotistic privileged champagne socialists none of whom have a real job or live in the real world. These offspring of the ZaNuLab cabal are just looking to inherit their money grabbing parents place on the Troughminster gravy train. Anyone with half a brain should show them they are not going to be getting what they no doubt feel are their 'entitlements'. You only have to look at the way Gould has been parachuted into Erith/Thamesmead ahead of more qualified candidates. These people have no concept of reality for the ordinary people, as for Straw, surely one is enough? Maybe Straw the younger will indeed be the Straw that's breaks the nepotist ZaNuLabs back! Lets hope so!
- Ed, Hants
