POLITICS

Perhaps Philip Gould should have stayed in the wardrobe

BRUCE ANDERSON

To judge by the extracts which have already appeared, Philip Gould's new book, The Forthcoming Revolution, to be pub- lished on 29 October, will be much the most important guide to New Labour that has yet appeared. Mr Gould is a successful advertising man, who. was introduced to Peter Mandelson in the mid-Eighties by a common friend, Robin Paxton, a television executive. That was an important moment in modern British political history, for Messrs Gould and Mandelson instantly realised that they had an identical world view. Together, they became the principal architects of New Labour.

They invented Blairism while Neil Kin- nock was still Labour leader, and that was their problem: Mr Kinnock could not play the part they had devised from him. But at least he tried, unlike John Smith, who had little time for ad-men's ruses. Like most Labour modernisers, Mr Gould is convinced that Labour would have found it hard to win the 1997 election if Mr Smith had been in charge. We shall never know, but there are reasons to question the modernisers' thesis.

To be fair to them, they were not only worried about John Smith because he refused to appease their vanities. Still trau- matised by the unexpected defeat in 1992, the modernisers were convinced that any suggestion of tax increases would be ruinous for Labour; they recalled the damage which the Tories' tax bombshell' had inflicted.

John Smith had devised some of the tax measures which the Tories' propaganda had exploited so ruthlessly, which is why John Lloyd, Barry Cox and one or two other Labour modernisers tried to persuade Tony Blair to stand against him after Neil Kin- nock had resigned. Mr Blair wisely refused; he had too good a grasp of political reali- ties, and of his own longer-term interests, to be seduced by such blandishments.

Anyway, John Smith won, and, despite 1992, he continued to believe in the socially therapeutic effect of higher tax rates for the rich. If he had still been leader, Labour would certainly have been committed to a 50p top rate, and possibly more.

Would this really have impeded Labour's chances? Mr Gould, for whom politics is primarily 'a question of presentation and media and public acceptability and the need to win the South', evidently believes so, a belief reinforced by his focus groups. On the other hand, Mr Smith did have great authority and formidable debating skills; he was rarely seen in public without a twinkle in his eye. As I am Scottish, it may be hard for me to judge, but I would have thought that John Smith was just the sort of Scotsman who would appeal to the English, despite his private conviction that the Scots were morally superior to the English because they were happy to pay higher taxes (a questionable assessment: most Scots who support higher taxes do so because someone else would be paying them). Mr Smith would have been a consid- erable electoral performer, with moral weight. But moral weight is not a topic which figures in Mr Gould's focus groups.

Along with Peter Mandelson, and with Mr Blair's eager complicity, Mr Gould has invented post-moral politics. For him, poli- tics has only one purpose: to win elections. Mr Gould admits that he himself is often bored between elections, and he is not alone in this. Half the present government are only happy when they are refighting the last elec- tion; they find the process of governing much less interesting.

Since the weekend, however, most minis- ters have been enjoying themselves, because of the arrest of General Pinochet. Never mind the hypocrisy; never mind the scandalous treatment of a staunch ally, who came here in old age to seek medical treat- ment. Never mind the benefits which the general conferred on Chile, including a peaceful transition to democracy. Never mind General Pinochet's unanswerable claim to be in the very front rank of Latin American statesmen in the era of indepen- dence (not that there is a lot of competi- tion). Never mind any of the serious consid- erations which ought to be exercising a responsible government; most of the pre- sent ministers are not interested in respon- sibility. They are delighted to be reminded by the Pinochet affair of the pre-Blair era in which Labour politicians were still allowed to have beliefs. But it is a commen- tary on this government's ultimate worth that ministers can only enjoy themselves if the government is behaving irresponsibly.

Or if they are. The other day, I was at a lunch when the Armed Forces Minister, Doug Henderson, made a speech. Mr Hen- derson is an amusing and reasonably able fellow. He is also a typical member of this government, in that he used to be a fiery left-winger, but is now relentlessly on mes- sage. But Mr Henderson has still not learned how to be a grown-up minister.

Before making his speech, he apologised to his audience; it had been written for him, so he had to deliver it. He then put his head down and read his way through a text of adequately crafted commonplaces, with no attempt to animate the words or make them his own.

Most of his audience knew the game. They knew that no minister would write his own speech for such an event, nor do they expect ministerial private offices to produce Churchillian prose. But they do expect the minister to take himself seriously. If he does not, why should anybody else? Mr Henderson's text informed us that he had spent the morning in high-level discussions about Kosovo. He read that passage in the same lustreless fashion as he read every- thing else, which reassured some of his audience. Judging by what they saw and heard, they did not object to Mr Hender- son's presence during such discussions, as long as there was no question of his being allowed to take any decisions.

A neighbour who has to endure a lot of such occasions told me that this was the third time he had heard a Labour minister in effect disavow a speech he was about to deliver. In post-moral politics, junior minis- ters are not embarrassed to wear their pup- pet-strings in public. As for their private behaviour, the tabloids now have at least two ministers in their sights.

Apropos of puppetry, our author also tells us that while Tony Blair was massaging various Labour shadow Cabinet members before the abandonment of Clause Four, He, Mr Gould, often had to hide, once in a wardrobe. It was still not advisable to let the shadow Cabinet know where the real power lay in Mr Blair's Labour party. They know now, however. Mr Gould is the god- father to Derek Draper and the 17 people who really rule Britain.

At the moment, Mr Gould and his kind are masters of British politics. They intend this to continue; Mr Gould has entitled his book The Unfinished Revolution, a suitably Bolshevik description of a plan by a handful of apparatchiks to seize control of the Labour party, and of Britain. But Philip Gould may have been unwise to be quite so blatant in his public avowal of cynicism. The day may come when Mr Blair will wish that he had stayed in the wardrobe.