by Vincent Moss
THE House of Commons’ Chamber is a strange place at present – almost nothing is happening. There is no major legislation going through Westminster. Most of the discussions about major decisions – such as a third runway at Heathrow and the partial sale of the Royal Mail – have taken place among ministers across the road in Downing Street. “Our latest initiative is to have no initiatives that aren’t about sorting the economy”, one former minister wryly tells me.
It seems the old fox is right. Last weekend, it was leaked that the Chief Medical Officer Sir Liam Donaldson was going to push for a 50p-a-unit minimum price on booze. But before he could even officially announce his plan to help tackle alcohol-related deaths, allies of both Gordon Brown and Health Secretary Alan Johnson made it very clear the controversial idea was simply not going to happen. “We’re certainly not going to do this kind of thing in the midst of a recession”, was their explanation.
It’s all very different from the era of Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell when the Downing Street “grid” had a policy announcement for almost every day. The Prime Minister even had a view on the jailing of a Coronation Street character called Deidre Rachid. These days, the idea is to portray Brown and the Government as solely focused on pulling Britain out of recession and tackling the lengthening dole queues.
The PM will embark on a whirlwind tour of Europe and North and South America to try to win support for his economic plan ahead of Barack Obama’s visit to the London summit on April 2 and Chancellor Alistair Darling’s Budget on April 22.
But this strategy has its risks. Backbench Labour MPs are feeling increasingly detached from the process of Government. They complain of too little radical thinking on key policy areas such as health, education, housing and social justice. They are frustrated at the low-level legislation trundling through the Commons. And many see little point at being forced to hang around Westminster for inconsequential votes when they could be in their constituencies, trying to shore up their fragile majorities ahead of a general election which is probably little more than a year away.
As one veteran Labour MP put it to me: “The Tories may be a policy-free party. But do we have to be the same? Where are the big ideas to carry us into the European elections and the next general election?”
Senior ministers are aware of the frustrations on the backbenches. But they point to the looming Easter recess on April 2 when MPs will get 18 days away from Westminster to recharge their batteries. They return on April 20 – just ahead of a Budget which Downing Street hopes will cheer up Labour’s troops with a raft of measures to boost consumer spending and help those who’ve lost their jobs. Everything will be about trying to rescue the economy.
As Sir Liam moaned on Monday when ministers refused to adopt his proposal to tackle excessive boozing: “Where is Plan B?” It seems that Brown and his team have invested all their hopes of electoral success along with piles of taxpayers’ cash in Plan A – rescuing the economy. Let’s hope it works.
Vincent Moss is political editor of the Sunday Mirror
