Political profiles

Developing the press profiles of various politicians that I started on this site last year, there are some pieces on the Lion & Unicorn site (where I do most of my posting these days) that may be of interest.

On the Labour side (click on the names for links), there's:

Angela Eagle

John McDonnell

Tom Watson

 Hilary Benn

And, representing the Conservative Party, there's:

Theresa May

Michael Gove

There's lots of other good stuff there as well. Not just pieces by me, but also the work of Dan Atkinson, Sam Harrison and Paul Saffer. Do have a look.

As voting closes...

Voting on the leadership and deputy-leadership of the Labour Party has just closed. And, as an interim guide to form, I've checked up on the traffic generated on this blog by the portraits I wrote of the various candidates. There are, it has to be said, no surprises.

The share of the total number of page views achieved by each candidate is as follows:

Leader:
Jeremy Corbyn    58%
Andy Burnham    15%
Yvette Cooper     14%
Liz Kendall           13%

Deputy leader:
Angela Eagle        28%
Stella Creasy        26%
Caroline Flint        18%
Tom Watson        16%
Ben Bradshaw     13%

The order in the leadership category reflects the result that pretty much everyone expects, though I want to put on record one last time my dissenting view: I still think Yvette Cooper is going to win. I'm not sure what conventional wisdom says about the deputy leadership, but I believe Tom Watson is still favourite.

If it goes to form, then, by this time on Saturday, the Labour Party will be led by Jeremy Corbyn and Tom Watson, two white men with an average age of 57, who both came into politics as unelected advisers to trade unions. Let no one say that the party hasn't embraced modern Britain in all its wondrous diversity.

The Labour deputy leadership

Where do we stand in the Labour Party deputy leadership election? Having spent some time wandering through the newspapers and around the internet, looking at the careers of the candidates, I now have to decide who to vote for.

These are the runners, pictured from left to right: Caroline Flint (age 53), Angela Eagle (54), Ben Bradshaw (54), Tom Watson (48) and Stella Creasy (38).

So what can we say about these five? Well, first, that they don't actually make for a bad field, and second, that they do have a great deal in common.

In particular, they're all unashamedly professional politicians, with only Bradshaw's previous incarnation as a radio reporter departing from the normal career path. (And that wasn't straying too far: the separation between media and politics was barely discernible in the 1990s.) Their time in Parliament has mostly been characterised by loyalty, though Watson and Flint did separately resign from government, seemingly in would-be coups aimed against, respectively, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. And all are, insofar as such distinctions mean anything any more, on what would have been see as the right of the party in the 1980s. At least, though, they were all educated at different universities.

Given that the deputy leadership position is not of the greatest significance - Denis Healey once said it was worth only 'a pitcherful of warm spit' - perhaps one shouldn't spend too long deliberating. Apart from anything else, it's hard to see the final choice really attracting much attention, given the Jeremy Corbyn story that'll be breaking one way or another at the same time.

But still, it does matter. At the very least, it 'sends a signal', as politicians like to say. And in the context of the Corbyn story, the signal might actually mean a little more than usual this time.

A victory for Bradshaw or Flint would indicate that the smooth operators are still with us. And I don't think that's where the Labour Party should be heading. They're the kind of politicians who remind me of a great line in one of Hugh Trevor-Roper's letters: 'In general, actors have no minds, only memories and poses.'

Elsewhere, I struggle to see Watson as anything other than a burly bruiser with authoritarian tendencies. Again, he seems to me to represent a politics that Labour should be leaving behind.

But both Eagle and Creasy are good, strong candidates. Electing either one would send a strong signal that Labour is a serious, radical party.

Judging entirely by media coverage (which is all I have), I'm impressed by Eagle's consistency, commitment and decency. I know she studied PPE at Oxford, and Lord knows we've had more than enough of them in recent times, but sometimes we have to overlook youthful mistakes. More importantly, she's retained an unusual degree of individuality for someone who navigated the New Labour years more or less successfully. Maybe it's the early role models standing her in good stead; when asked her favourite book, she rather splendidly nominated Mae West's autobiography Goodness Had Nothing to Do With It.

It's hard to resist that, and I hope Eagle gets a very senior position in the new shadow cabinet. But as my first choice for deputy leader, I think I've concluded that Stella Creasy is the better option, for the following reason.

One of the great myths peddled by Blair was that the Labour Party could achieve nothing unless it were in government. He was wrong. And since the Labour Party has spent most of its existence in opposition, and there's a good chance that the next decade will add to that record, it's important to recognise that he was wrong.

At its best, the Labour Party has been able to transform people's lives at the grassroots, even when it hasn't occupied Downing Street. It was built on a sense of mutuality and community self-help, the sense that, in Harold Wilson's words: 'The Labour Party is a moral crusade or it is nothing.' Many of the old traditions have died, of course, victims of affluence and neglect. But if the party is to have any hope of rebuilding, it needs to do so from the ground up, rediscovering the fact that power is not the preserve of Westminster.

Creasy seems to me to be the one who sees that most clearly, and has thought most carefully about the future. And, talking of signals, I like the fact that she is one of only twenty-four Labour and Co-operative MPs, having been endorsed by both parties.

She is, of course, absurdly young, and has little experience of life or parliament and none whatsoever of government. But she does at least look as though she's ready for the long haul, and will still be there on the other side.

This concludes my look at the deputy leadership candidates. Next week I shall go through the leadership hopefuls to try to work out who to vote for in that election.

He won't harsh your buzz: a portrait of Tom Watson

PLEASE NOTE: A fuller and much better version of this piece can be found here on the Lion & Unicorn site where I now do most of my posting.

It's hard to ignore Tom Watson, the current front-runner to become deputy leader of the Labour Party. He's no shrinking violet.

Born in 1967 - midway between the two Miliband brothers - he shared with other New Labour MPs an early commitment to a political career, progressing to Westminster in 2001 from the National Union of Students, via a stint as political officer to the Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union (AEEU, now part of Unite). Despite the orthodox credentials on his c.v., however, he didn't look as smooth and sleek as most of his contemporaries. And he wasn't averse to employing much more overtly class-conscious rhetoric.

During Blair's first term he had the wit to see - earlier than many others - that a sharp decline in voter turnout needed addressing. Together with Mark Tami, another official at the AEEU who was also elected in 2001, he wrote a Fabian Society pamphlet calling for the introduction of compulsory voting. It was hardly an original proposal, but noteworthy because there was something about the tone that didn't fit with the bland vocabulary of New Labour.

'When the British electorate speaks, we only hear upper and middle class accents,' said Watson. 'Compulsory voting would challenge the elite and give real power to working people.' This, it's worth remembering, was at a time when the Labour Party had 418 MPs.

There was also a note of slightly aggressive sneering as Watson and Tami dismissed the idea that, were the policy to be introduced, there might be protests: 'Some retired colonel from Hampshire would be bound to make a stand against what he saw as the intrusion of the state,' they mocked, 'and no doubt the BBC would film him wearing all his medals whilst he ripped up his polling card.'

Watson was elected to represent West Bromwich East as part of Tony Blair's second landslide victory and began immediately to crop up in news stories, ready to give an opinion on attention-grabbing, if easy, issues.

In 2001, for example, it was reported that Gary Glitter - recently released from jail, following his conviction for possession of child pornography - had recorded a new album. Watson thundered into action, 'It is disgraceful that this convicted paedophile should be allowed to peddle his wares,' he told the media. 'Obviously, young children are the biggest buyers of pop music and they are bound to come into contact with this new recording.' He wanted David Blunkett, the home secretary, to ban the record, and also called for the website of Glitter's official fan club to be closed down.

This, of course, was arrant nonsense. Glitter had served his time, and the idea of preventing him from resuming his life was an insult to justice. Anyway, a man of Watson's age should have known better than to claim that Glitter's thirty-year-old music was now aimed at 'young children'. But it got him in the papers and it established him as a rent-a-quote politician.

He kept himself busy in those early parliamentary years commenting on a wide range of such stories: demanding that Margaret Thatcher's statue shouldn't be placed in the Commons lobby, that foxhunting should be banned, and that Prince Charles should buy British cars. He also set up one of the first blogs by an MP, and was highly praised for it, though if the following quote from his website (reported in the Herald in 2003) is accurate, the acclaim may have been misplaced:

Teens! The BBC politics for kids/teens site is, like, totally whacked! Ditto for the parliament education site, which even has a section for younger yoof. Fanta-stick! So, cut it with the bling bling and do something for the community, man. Join in and take action with any of the groovy sites we've listed, or just drop Tom a line for a quiet rap by the electronic e-mail. He won't harsh your buzz or diss you down the line.

Tom Watson was then thirty-six years old.*

Meanwhile he was keeping his political nose clean as an ultra-loyal MP, on the Brownite side of the party. (Gordon Brown's camp did tend to attract the heavier-set male MP.) He showed no sign of dissent, and most importantly he was dutiful in backing Tony Blair's decision to invade Iraq. 'Voting against the government harms it and harms the party,' he declared. Having done absolutely nothing at all to upset the whips, he was brought into government in 2004 as a junior defence minister.

In September 2006, however, he finally broke from his position of loyal support and abruptly resigned from his government job, writing to Blair to explain why: 'It is with the greatest sadness that I have to say that I no longer believe that your remaining in office is in the interest of either the party or the country.'

It was apparently an attempt to force Blair himself to resign, so that Brown could inherit the office of prime minister. And it worked. Blair responded by announcing that he would step down the following May.

Watson was rewarded by being brought back into government under Brown's premiership, but he resigned again in 2009, in the midst of the expenses scandal, from which he emerged with no great moral credit.

More recently he has made a name for himself by attacking Rupert Murdoch's news empire over phone hacking and by alleging the existence of 'a powerful paedophile network linked to Parliament and Number 10'. Worthy campaigns, no doubt, but happily they're also sufficiently high-profile to ensure that he's still courted by the media (except, obviously, for those outlets owned by Murdoch).

* Added note: When I tweeted a link to this post, Tom Watson tweeted back: 'did you scroll down the page of the "teens" section?' Yes, I did scroll down to the bit where it says that this was 'designed as a parody of how some politicians "connect" to young people.' I'm not sure, however, that he scrolled down my post to the bit where it says that these portraits 'are drawn entirely from their media coverage'. This is about the public perceptions of politicians. Which is why the quote is attributed to the Herald not to his site directly.

This is the first of a series of posts in which - unless I lose all will to live - I shall be looking at each of the candidates in the current Labour Party elections for leader and deputy leader, with portraits drawn entirely from their media coverage.

We won't be the young ones very long

In June 2003 The Times reported that Tony Blair was planning a government reshuffle, but was struggling to find MPs to bring in, because so many had 'blotted their copybooks by rebelling over Iraq and foundation hospitals'. This ruled out a number who had previously served in a junior capacity and might otherwise to be expected to make a return:

The shortage of comeback candidates leaves the field virtually clear for the 2001 intake of MPs. James Purnell, Mr Blair's media adviser in the first term, is already being addressed as 'minister' by backbench colleagues. Andy Burnham, a former special adviser to Chris Smith, is also expected to get the call-up. Tom Watson, a union official before he came to Parliament, and Chris Bryant, the indefatigable euro campaigner, are tipped for government.

Meanwhile Andy McSmith was writing in the Independent on Sunday that the problem with the 2001 intake was that more than half had 'defied the whips on important issues', while others had 'committed the lesser offence of going against the prime minister's wishes'. Only five of the forty new MPs had 'what the whips would regard as clean voting records'. The five he identified were David Cairns, Tony Cunningham, James Purnell, Sion Simon and Tom Watson.

In the event, Blair rather botched the reshuffle, and none of the 2001 intake were brought into government, but happily it was only a hiccup: the good boys were duly promoted a few months later.

Two of those government appointees, Burnham and Watson, are currently back in the news, the bookies' favourites to inherit the party as leader and deputy leader. So they've done well for themselves.

A bit too well, really. In a solid, competent, unexceptional government they'd be ministers of state. Not actually in the cabinet, but relatively serious figures. Nowhere near the leadership, of course. Yet there they are. Having been promoted too early, they're now in with a good chance of being over-promoted. And maybe those two things are related.

The rapid advance of a young generation of political advisers and officials into Parliament during the New Labour era was followed by an equally rapid clamber into government. Despite the vast size of the parliamentary party, there simply wasn't enough competition for places. Which is why the current slate of candidates is so poor.

Still, I've got to vote for someone, so in future posts I shall start going through the candidates to see if anyone can surprise and inspire me.