Gordon Brown appoints three to 'co-chair' election campaign

Joe Murphy, Political Editor
11 Jan 2010

Gordon Brown today appointed three people to share the chairmanship of daily Labour election campaign meetings as he sought to patch up internal divisions.

The Standard has learned that Lord Mandelson, Douglas Alexander and Harriet Harman will all “co-chair” day-to-day decision-making meetings in his bid for a historic fourth term.

Business Secretary Lord Mandelson emerged as the most senior of the trio, gaining the title “chair of election strategy”.

It puts him in control, with the Prime Minister, of the over-arching battle-lines and themes against David Cameron's buoyant Tories.

His rise was at the expense of International Development Secretary Mr Alexander, who keeps the title “election co-ordinator” but appears to have less say over the broad strategy and more responsibility for daily management.

Labour chairman Ms Harman has clawed a bigger role for herself, sharing the duties of chairing campaign meetings. It is not yet clear if she will win the right to front the daily press conferences during the campaign.

All three were tonight sharing the platform with Mr Brown at a meeting of Labour MPs that was being extended to allow time for them all to make speeches.

Each had tensions with Mr Brown in recent days. Mr Alexander is alleged in a new book by former Labour general secretary Peter Watt to have admitted of Mr Brown “we don't actually like the guy”.

Ms Harman used last week's attempted coup to march into Mr Brown's office and demand a bigger election role and to be consulted more frequently as the price of her support. Lord Mandelson was also perceived to have exploited the crisis to gain election influence.

Foreign Secretary David Miliband came under fresh fire today from one of Gordon Brown's most loyal MPs. Geraldine Smith accused him of being “immature” in last week's crisis, adding: “I think David Miliband is probably finished as a potential leadership candidate.”

Mr Miliband paid gushing tribute to Mr Brown this afternoon, in stark contrast to his failure to fully endorse the PM last Wednesday. “He has enormous strengths, he has very, very strong values, real determination to do what is right for people,” he said.

Ms Smith said Mr Miliband would not be forgiven for his conduct last week. “If there is a leadership election I think people will remember David Miliband,” she said. “He hasn't covered himself in glory, he has behaved in quite an immature way. I think Labour Party members are very angry about what's gone on.”

Schools Secretary Ed Balls was defiantly sticking to his “investment versus cuts” strategy. He used an announcement of 270,000 free laptops to low-income families to insist higher spending could co-exist with spending cuts.

“What Alistair [Darling] showed was that within a tough spending round he can, by asking me to make some tough cuts in my programme, keep education spending rising year-on-year.”

Speaking to the Parliamentary Labour Party tonight, Mr Brown will promise unity at the election. The campaign theme will be “aspiration”, he will also say — a sop to Cabinet Blairites who were worried that he was embarking on a core vote strategy.

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