Guess what? Blair has given Brown another date for his departure
Shortly before setting off on his Australian and Far Eastern tour, Tony Blair had a long discussion with Gordon Brown about the succession. The Chancellor was extremely clear. ‘Brown wanted a handover date by the end of the year,’ says my source, ‘with Brown coming in around the time of the party conference and Blair going out. It was all to be settled by conference.’ This conversation went into the intricate detail concerning the various constitutional and party mechanisms which need to be brought into play to secure a smooth succession. The role of John Prescott was raised. Brown wants Prescott to stay on as Deputy Prime Minister at least for a short time after the changeover of power, but to step down as deputy party leader. He feels there should be an election for the deputy leadership in parallel with the leadership decision. The Chancellor is insistent that his premiership must mark a complete break with the Blair style of government. In particular he claims that he wants to govern with the grain of the Labour party, in sharp distinction to the Blair method.
Blair was surprisingly conciliatory. My sources tell me that he has now taken the drastic step of giving Brown a precise date for a handover of power. Indeed this was the date the Prime Minister referred to during his pronouncements from Australia. It has been reported all week that the timetable to quit, though now clear in Tony Blair’s mind, remains a matter of obscurity to the Chancellor as well as everyone else. I am assured this is not the case. The Chancellor has been granted the key information, and this is now the cause of an angry rift.
The trouble is that Gordon Brown believes that on two occasions in the past he has been given a date for a harmonious transition and on each occasion Tony Blair has changed his mind at the last moment. He therefore feels entitled to regard the latest assurances as relatively valueless and is pressing Tony Blair to take one further step. ‘They had a conversation,’ says an informant, ‘in which Brown told the Prime Minister that he must put the date in the public domain, and Blair would not agree.’ This conversation must still have been burning in the ears of Blair when he made his comments on the succession in Australia last week.
The Brown question now dogs most waking minutes of Tony Blair’s life. Brown is all over the Prime Minister, completely merciless and unrelenting. He is psychically dominant and never gives up. Every time Tony Blair gives him a concession he demands three more. He will continue wearing down Blair until the moment when he finally gives up the ghost and physically quits Downing Street. Part of this attrition operates on a face-to-face basis. Part of it works in other ways. Gordon Brown has now completely captured Whitehall, and uses this mastery to impose his will and thwart Tony Blair. ‘Ministers consult No. 10 but refer to the Treasury before reaching decisions,’ says one insider. Even Blair loyalists now admit that, as a result of this rivalry, there is now ‘paralysis’ at the heart of government.
The Prime Minister can do nothing in mainstream domestic policy without the explicit consent of the Treasury. One of these no-go areas is health, which is why the latest Downing Street briefing, that Tony Blair will not stand down till he has ‘sorted out’ the NHS, are preposterous. There is in fact no evidence of any kind that Tony Blair has the faintest idea what to do about the NHS crisis. But even if he has finally come across some spectacular new insight, Gordon Brown would not allow him to put it into effect. The Chancellor is slowly strangling the Prime Minister to death.
This stifling lack of political space is an important reason why Tony Blair has suddenly acquired an interest in House of Lords reform, an area he previously regarded as low priority. The great merit of the Lords at this late and desperate stage of the Blair premiership is that Gordon Brown is not that bothered. Tony Blair is free to operate with a certain amount of autonomy, cooking up schemes with the help of his docile ally Charles Falconer, who has no expectation of preferment of any kind under Brown and therefore remains loyal. There is now an expectation that there will be legislation in this autumn’s Queen’s Speech over Lords reform, which has suddenly been converted into a ‘legacy’ issue. This move, however, comes very late in the prelegislative timetable. In due course Tony Blair is liable to discover that the constitutional tinkering he envisages is far more complex than it looks. The enterprise is almost bound to end up in the same kind of embarrassing shambles as the vainglorious announcement of the abolition of the post of Lord Chancellor three years ago. No matter. In the short term Lords reform may provide Downing Street with the refreshing illusion of decisive action.
An increasingly arrogant and dismissive Treasury is not the only problem faced by Tony Blair in his struggle for survival. His position as party leader has been made uncomfortable by the resurgence of the National Executive Committee. Like Mount Vesuvius, this once pivotal Labour party body was conventionally held to be extinct, or at worst dormant. The loans-for-peerages crisis, however, brought the NEC dangerously back to life, and now it is beginning to belch furiously about the succession. A new wisdom is rapidly establishing itself among Labour MPs, who now hold that the transition of power from Blair to Brown cannot be regarded merely as a private matter. One senior backbencher, who reflects a substantial body of party opinion, tells me, ‘Blair needs to give notice to the Labour party when he intends to stand down, allowing it time to make the arrangements — for nominations, hustings, etc. — to elect a new leader. If, however, he really does intend to go on to the end, he needs to announce the fact now.’ Tuesday saw an interesting new event, the congregation of the Compass Group of centre-left Labour MPs. The official reason for the meeting was to monitor the Education Bill, but in practice this was a new forum of opposition to the Prime Minister. The soft Left has been loyal to the Labour leadership for two decades. It gave its support to Neil Kinnock in his great battles against Militant and followed Tony Blair gratefully into power in 1997. Its loyalty has been stretched for some time, and now it has snapped. In the wake of the May local elections this soft-left alliance will chart a new future for the Labour party. Tony Blair remains Prime Minister for the time being, but he has been cast adrift.
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