Background reading
With the news that Shriti Vadera, one of Gordon Brown’s closest aides, is to become a minister at DFID you might want to read this profile of her by Martin Vander Weyer, who was once her speechwriter.
The Spectator
Friday
An admirable choice
Gordon Brown’s appointment of the former first Sea Lord Sir Alan West as Home Office Minister for Security is an immensely savvy move. West as a non-political figure will reassure a, sadly, cynical public that the terror threat is not being exaggerated for political gain. His reassuring presence will also give the government’s response to these incidents credibility, taking the pressure off Jacqui Smith to instantly develop stage presence. I do hope that these appointments will make those—including a majority of MPs—who back a fully elect second chamber realise the flexibility that an appointed element brings.
Smith passes her first test
It’s often forgotten that a terrorist attack – successful or thwarted - is simply a mammoth political opportunity. Good performances can last for years. Rudi Giuliani is running for president based on his post-9/11 acts. John Reid was smart enough to milk the Heathrow terrorist drama last summer for all it was worth. Today Gordon Brown was okay, but used strange language (“this recalls the need to be vigilant”– as they don’t say at the Dog & Duck) and Cameron (“we should thank the public” – aw shucks!) wasn’t much better. How Blair would have dazzled! Anyway, I found the new Home Secretary Jacqui Smith quite plausible in her role.
Spare a thought for Mrs Brown
Which young Treasury wonk has which top job? It’s all too exciting, or too depressing or something. But spare a thought, if you have one lying fallow, for poor old Sarah Brown who I suspect has been dreading this moment for years. I saw her a few weeks ago in St James’s park, just wandering around among the flower-beds. She gazed at the famous pigeon-eating pelicans for a while then turned and walked slowly back to the Downing street, dragging her feet as if returning to prison. Ok, I know Sarah Brown should be media-savvy -- she ran a high-profile PR agency until 2001 -- but I get the feeling that far from inoculating her, the years of Hobsbawm/Macaulay schmoozing have instead left her allergic to the press.
They are still there
Further to James’ post, I am reminded of Gerry Adams’ famous line about the IRA: “They haven’t gone away, you know.
The foiled London bomb
One of the great delusions of our time is that once Blair, in the UK case, and Bush, in the American one, stepped down from office the terrorist threat would disappear. The news that a car bomb attack was foiled in London last night illustrates just how wrong this belief was. Although, the fact that the vast bulk of planning for the 9/11 attacks was done during the Clinton presidency should have shown people how wrong-headed this idea was in the first place. One of challenges facing the new Home Secretary Jacqui Smith is developing the authority to reassure the nation in these kinds of situations. At the moment, she has no public profile to speak of and lacks the commanding presence that John Reid had during the airline plot.
Dinner with Supermac
To the Cafe Royal to an excellent dinner hosted by the National Sporting Club with John McEnroe as the star turn. Before he took to the stage, Supermac chatted to me and my father (a nifty tennis player in his day and many times Malta champion) about how the game has changed. I asked him whether he would - as he hinted at the end of autobiography - enter politics, and McEnroe gave what gave what can only be described as a non-denial denial. Fascinating, too, that he admits that it still gives him goose-bumps when he talks to Bjorn Borg on the phone. All great endeavours are based on the weird brew of competition, rivalry and friendship. Speaking of which, McEnroe declared himself mystified by the fall of Blair - and did a pretty good impersonation of Gordon Brown.
Thursday
The Coffee House Debate
Welcome to a debate between Tim Montgomerie, editor of Conservative Home, and Matthew d’Ancona on how the Tories should respond to the Brown challenge. Tim Montgomerie starts things off: Dear Matt,I’m glad to be doing this exchange of thoughts with you again and many congratulations on the Coffee House blog. It's quickly become essential reading.Brown has had a good few days and it's beyond doubt that he should not be underestimated. I think David Cameron should expect some tricky opinion poll ratings in the next couple of weeks. If the party can hold its nerve over the coming period, however, I am hopeful that Project Cameron can still succeed. To read the rest click here Matt responds: Dear Tim Thanks for doing this.
Coming soon, the Tory reshuffle
Shadow Cabinet members are being told that David Cameron’s reshuffle will happen next week, and that it will likely match Brown’s new team man for man (or woman). So David Davis may end up losing prisons after all – I guess the old Home Office has been split into three, if you count Tessa Jowell’s new responsibility for “youth justice”. Perhaps it was just too juicy a target in its old form. As our leader this week says, Cameron needs to raise his game – but I don’t expect much to happen until Andy Coulson starts work on the 9th of July. Brown has a few more stunts to pull off, perhaps a Tory peer or two tomorrow. Meanwhile Cameron can work on what I hear is his biggest reshuffle problem: finding enough women to promote.
Spice up your life
To mark the Spice Girls getting back together we have dug out of the archive Simon Sebag Montefiore’s celebrated interview with them from the Christmas 1996 issue of The Spectator. Click here for the Spice Girls views on Europe, Tony Blair and moral philosophy.
What Miliband means
The Miliband appointment shows that he’s one of the winners from the deputy leadership contest. If Benn had run an impressive campaign the job would have been his. Miliband will be viewed as the cabinet’s senior Blairite but on the Middle East he has very different views than his patron. As The Guardian reports this morning, “he privately regards the intervention in Iraq as a great error.” Crucially, during the Lebanon crisis he was a critic in cabinet of Blair’s refusal to call for a ceasefire. Indeed, as Jack Straw, has argued it was Blair’s almost total isolation on the Lebanon that accelerated his departure.
Sons of the manse
International aid is the new imperialism. Seriously. The same Christian zeal which inspired the first colonialists-cum- evangelists is back now with two politicians whose fathers were Church of Scotland ministers – Gordon Brown and Douglas Alexander. Wee Dougie is his long-serving disciple, so his being sent to DFID is very important. Here’s why. The bible our DFID evangelists will be clutching as they head off for Africa is the New Labour orthodoxy, as seen in Brown’s Commission for Africa which last year laid out his manifesto for Africa. It suggested for example that schools should be run by the state (despite proof that private education works best for the poor).
3 to go
Benn to environment, Hoon as expected will be Chief Whip and by my count all we’re waiting for is Northern Ireland, Defence and Chief Secretary to the Treasury. But likely some surprises to come with the minister of state appointments. As Darling boasted on the Today Programme this morning, “I think you will see when the announcements are made later today that we will be reaching out beyond the narrow confines of our own party. "To appoint people who are not necessarily members of the Labour Party and may not have had an association with us in the past, I think that’s a good thing.
The last few posts
The Guardian is tipping Blears for transport, James Purnell--interviewed in this week's magazine--gets Culture. Still no word on Ruth Kelly's fate.
Anybody Home?
Update: Jacqui Smith, the BBC is reporting, will succeed John Reid The big question is who is going to Home. John Denham some are saying, but I can’t imagine he’d be on board with Brown’s more hard core proposals on terror. Both Blears and Hutton are staying in the Cabinet and haven’t been given jobs so far, yet it would be a major shock for either of these ultra-Blair-loyalists to get such a big job. In this febrile atmosphere, if no one is announced soon a rumour is bound to start that Charles Clarke is coming back.
Brown as Nidgett
Strength, energy, service, change, trust, steadfastness, change, resolution, purpose, change ... Has anyone noticed how like Peter Simple’s Lieutenant General Sir Frederick ‘Tiger’ Nidgett Gordon Brown sounded yesterday? In November 2005 Nidgett brought his great strategic mind to bear on the seemingly intractable problems of the Middle East, problems that Mr Brown will have to address, or pretend to address, before long. The new Prime Minister might learn something from Nidgett’s insights: ‘In my view your average common or garden Arab man in the street, or rather in the dried-up wadi, is a bit of a scrounger, a bit of a lounge lizard and a bit of a barrack room lawyer....
The world of Miliband
David Miliband to the foreign office, the youngest holder of that office since David Owen. It is a huge job. In the words of Sir John Coles, former Permanent Secretary to the FCO: “The job comes as a terrible shock to them, just the sheer amount of travelling, for example, and the enormous range of subject matter. A Foreign Secretary can be concerned at one moment about drugs in Thailand, the next moment about civil war in Sierra Leone, and on it goes. I mean, it is an extraordinarily disparate and wide agenda” But Miliband has the brain for the task. He might recall the example of Ernest Bevin who on his first weekend was left with five red boxes and a note saying “Foreign Secretary, we thought you would like to do these five red boxes over the weekend.
Unspun Brown
At least for the first couple of days Gordon Brown got both the style and substance absolutely right – no repudiation of the past but an absolute commitment to moving on. And it is clear what the new direction of travel will be. A more personally responsive health service, free from the straightjacket if targets. Affordable houses to buy and rent. A more sustained attack on child poverty. More important – at least in terms of winning the next election – there will be no more celebrity politics. Glitz and glamour are out. The hard truth and hard decisions are in. No favours for friends. No free luxury holidays. No spin. Fresh air blows through Downing Street.
A motto to live by
'I will try my utmost' promised Gordon Brown on the steps of 10 Downing Street yesterday, quoting his old school motto. They’re funny things, school mottoes. Single sex schools tend to fall into different camps – boys’ tending towards the bellicose (Sons of Heroes / Wellington School) or self-aggrandising (Floreat Etona / David Cameron’s Eton College), while girls’ are more humbly aspirational (Our daughters shall be as the polished corners of the temple / Frances Holland). Do any other public figures live their lives today under the influence of their old school mottoes? Tony Blair’s from Fettes was simply ‘Industria’ and Menzies Campbell at Hillhead High, Glasgow had ‘We will maintain’.
