I sometimes like to imagine that the great and the good in the Labour Party actually read what I write, and the sacking of John Healey as the party’s spokesman on the National Health Service led me to think that perhaps they do. I have more than once suggested in this column that Healey was useless in conducting Labour’s fight against Andrew Lansley’s plan to “reform” the NHS out of existence. The result of his failure has been that Shirley Williams of the Liberal Democrats has become the de facto leader of the battle against the Lansley bill – although with a considerable amount of help from Polly Toynbee, The Guardian’s tireless columnist.
This is pure conceit, of course – it didn’t need me or anyone else to draw Ed Miliband’s attention to this truth about Labour’s campaign. Healey’s disastrous lack of success must have been obvious to anyone paying attention to the debate. (I recently asked a roomful of retired journalists whether they could name Labour’s Shadow Health Secretary and not one of them could.) Like Wayne Rooney on an off day, he just didn’t seem to be trying, even though he was standing in the mouth of what was, from Labour’s point of view, an open goal. So when Miliband announced his new Shadow Cabinet team, minus Healey, I lit a candle in my heart.
I confess that the flame flickered just slightly when I read the name of his successor. Andy Burnham is an arch-Blairite if ever there was one, and his record in office as Health Secretary might not (I put this delicately) have won the total approval of the NHS’s founder, Aneurin Bevan. But I reassured myself with the thought that Burnham was, at least, a big hitter who would be more than a match for the curiously inept Lansley. I sat back to watch the battle intensify.
And then, lo – Burnham revealed the tactic he proposes to employ against Lansley. Crudely summarised, it is to concede a chunk of the proposed changes in exchange for Lansley withdrawing the bill as a whole. Once he had done that, said Burnham, he would be ready to co-operate with the Government on reforming the commissioning of NHS services, with the aim of giving GPs a greater role
in the commissioning process – which, Burnham argued, was really the central purpose of the legislation.
At which point, the candle in my heart went out. Good God, is Burnham proposing to join the Lib Dems around the coalition table, negotiating its future legislative programme along with Nick Clegg, Danny Alexander and company? Is that to be the role of what is officially known as Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition. I have sometimes wondered what the word “loyal” means in that context, but it never occurred to me that it meant active co-operation with the government of the day. The mind boggles as to what the next manifestation of such a tactic might be – similar deals on welfare benefit cuts?
Meanwhile, I have been puzzling over the brouhaha that followed Ed Miliband’s speech at the Labour conference. The right-wing press denounced it as a disastrous lurch into left-wing, Marxist, class-war politics, which they believed would lose Labour the next general election. Some on the left welcomed it with exaggerated enthusiasm as a return to old-fashioned Labour values which would re-energise the labour movement. The only thing almost everybody was agreed about was that it wasn’t very well delivered and was poorly constructed.
I wasn’t in Liverpool, so I can’t be sure about it, but my own gut feeling is that, if that was a left-wing speech then I’m Leon Trotsky.
It mildly suggested that some capitalists are really predators, although it conceded that most of the rest were thoroughly good chaps, doing a lot of good to the community. This is the kind of view that is frequently proclaimed by Vince Cable, and in much more forceful and effective language. Although I suppose there may be some far-out right-wingers who believe Cable is a crazed Bolshevist, I don’t think many on the left would share that view. He is just a chap with a talent for telling it like it is. Not so long ago, he was “Saint” Vince.
So, all in all, Miliband’s keynote speech struck a distinctly minor key. Yes, we can be grateful that it was the kind of speech that could never have been delivered by Tony Blair. It marked a discernible switch from the grovelling approach of New Labour towards the City and all its works. But a clarion call it was not. However, I have high hopes of the new economic team on the front bench, so long as Ed Balls can be persuaded to stop saying “sorry” all over the place. I was delighted to hear Harriet Harman declare that it was time for the apologising to stop. She is absolutely right: stop bashing yourself and start bashing George Osborne, Ed.
He will be helped in this by the departure of Julian Glover, a columnist and leader-writer on The Guardian, who is joining David Cameron’s staff as his speech writer. I have long suspected Glover was a closet Tory. Now I know I was right. I wish him no personal ill will – I don’t even know him – but The Guardian’s comment pages will be greatly improved by his departure.
