Hilary Benn for PM

Amidst the factional infighting in the British Labour Party as to who will be next to lead the sinking ship, there is only one MP who has the prospect of at least minimising the scale of that inevitable electoral defeat. He misguidedly stood in 2007 for the deputy leadership of the Party, only to lose heavily to the day facto female quota, shoe-in candidate, Harriet Harman. Then of course, a decade later Hilary Benn notoriously cooked his goose by delivering a brilliant Foreign Secretary-style speech in the Commons with his party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, sat right next to him on the opposition front bench.

The speech in the style of a foreign secretary of the old school that was in diametric opposition to the official stance represented by the hapless Corbyn. That act of perceptible treachery, although to some in the party also a noble principled and powerful stance on the need to confront Islamic State, sealed for some the notion that the sins of the father had been visited upon the most impressive son. Tony Benn reserved his cynical manoeuvrings against his party leader until the devastating general election defeat of 1979. His son, Hillary, did it brazenly with the party leader right alongside him 

Despite all of this, if there is one person who could conceivably come from the centre of the party, and unify it on the basis of not being associated with any of the dirt of the current political scene, and of course having gravitas, intellect and rhetorical emotional heft in spades, then surely there is no one who can compare to Hillary. 

Of course, for his deep but principled pragmatism on Europe, economic management, and TransAtlantic relations to be properly utilised, Hilary Benn needs sufficient Parliamentary Labour Party nominations. I suspect that’s where the unimaginative average Labour backbencher, or indeed Cabinet member, will continue to fail to see the strength that’s bizarrely largely ignored by the media and the commentariat, hiding there in plain sight. Always out of camera shot, he’s the one sitting further along the front bench, the man with responsibility for the so-called nation of Northern Ireland.

I only pray that someone in the PLP will wake up and realise before it’s too late that Starmer’s lack of intellectual and intelligence curiosity, Ange’s Bet Lynch-routine, and the Pillsbury Dough Boy friend of Mandy, just can’t and won’t cut it. (Andy’s semi-permanently exiled to Manchester despite or because of his popular schtick). Pray too that Hilary will see the historic opportunity amidst the donkeys currently offering national leadership. If that isn’t enough of a hurdle, it would then of course  require sense to prevail amidst the anti-democratic, anti constitutional, power that the dwindling national party membership would wield in choosing the PM. I am probably wilfully deluded in thinking that a touch of the old school from a man of 70 plus would appeal to the great unwashed. Shame, because i have no doubt that, given the chance to serve his country in the ultimate way, that he would rise above the image of a now largely forgotten father, and convey both charisma and leadership. This is what the party, and more importantly, the country needs. Whether it wants it is another matter. Either way it would probably prove to be a relatively brief period of highly capable but inevitably doomed national leadership on a par with that of Gordon Brown’s premiership, and of course that of Hilary’s father’s post-election nemesis, Jim Callaghan.

Labour leadership election: The Bland and the Boring

We hear a lot about how politics these days is all about personality, presidential contests etc etc. So why is it that the Labour leadership contest, crammed full of candidates, literally jostling for position on a tiny podia somewhere near you, is so lacking in personalities? I say this mindful of the partial exception of Dianne Abbott, whose delivery revolves around a self-righteous celebration of her electoral pulling power in Hackney.

So, for the “real” candidates: four men with barely a personality between them: the likely victor David Miliband comes across as a petulant comprehensive head master in a well healed home county. His brother Ed, slightly less petulant, sparring with his slightly older brother for who can best package their answers to encompass the median party demographic without alienating the narrow socio-economic band who will actually determine whether they ever get to be prime minister. Ed Balls, hideous to look at, wide-faced and slippery, the infamous “emissary from Planet Fuck”, as Mandy alleges he was known in the Blair Camp, oh so superficially left-wing in a field of 40-something blokes way to the right of Ted Heath. Oh, and not forgetting Andy. Nice guy, very nice guy (I mean that, I worked on the same floor as him at the palace of Westminster when he and I were mere MPs’ research assistant). But if Milly Sr is a middling school’s middling head teacher, well, Andy is probably the PE teacher. I am sorry, do I appear a snob? I mean I wanted Alan Johnson on the ticket so we could put him up against Lord Snooty. That doesn’t prove I am not a snob, I guess. However, what I really look down on is average-ness dressed up as significance. This is not confined to the Labour Party of course, but at least the Tories produced a guy with plausibility as a PM. Of course when he beat the seemingly more preferable (marketable?) David Davies (how classless a name is that?), many would have doubted he was made of the right stuff. Maybe one of the Millies will grow into the job. But am I betraying my age (I am 46) when I say that as a Labour supporter who remembers (just about) Michael Foot winning the 1980 leadership election (against Healey and Shore), Tony Benn’s challenge for the deputy leadership in 1981 (against eventual winner Healey and John Silkin), the 1983 face-off involving Kinnock, Hattersley, Shore and Heffer), that the calibre of the candidates, their defined and passionate personalities, their intellect, makes the current boyish posturing look like a minor scrap among soiled ex-secretaries of state for who is the most “deserving” of the job. Of course it’s arguable that 1994 wasn’t much of a contest either, with some plausible leaders whose philosophies were in marked contrast to the Blair-Prescott stitch-up declining to stand and Beckett hardly making an impression. However, at least these were personalities and Beckett did at least seem to represent something different to the modernising juggernaut that had been chomping at the bit under John Smith.

In 2010 I am still hearing about the debate the candidates want to have, and nothing about their ideas, policies, least of all philosophy, unless that is you count a “fairness agenda” that everyone from Cameron to Mr Leftie Balls buys into. British social democracy was at one time passionately and intellectually argued for by party leader Hugh Gaitskell and by Tony Crossland (whose cabinet experience was less than his admirer, David M). After New Labour, social democracy has been reduced to ensuring “opportunity for the many” by reforming welfarism and providing tax breaks for the wealthy. I guess therefore that it’s hardly surprising that these limp wrists can’t get off the starting blocks.