So Ian Huntley tried to kill himself again this week. I cannot imagine many people would have shed a tear if he had succeeded, and I count myself among them. Of course the very people who will write letters to this newspaper castigating me for such a callous, “unchristian” view will be the very same people who happily allow the legalised murder of thousands of unborn children each year. The difference is that the children who are aborted don’t have any choice in whether they live or die. Ian Huntley did.
*********
Enoch Powell’s maxim, that ‘all political careers end in failure’ is almost always the case for Prime Ministers. Only one Prime Minister since the war, Harold Wilson, has resigned at a timing of his own choosing, and even in his case there are still suspicions among conspiracy theorists that the security services forced his hand. All other Prime Ministers have been ejected from office through ill health (Churchill, Macmillan, Eden), election defeat (Attlee, Douglas Home, Heath, Callaghan and Major) or in Margaret Thatcher’s case through betrayal.
On Margaret Thatcher’s tenth anniversary in office she was advised by Lord Carrington and her husband Denis that she should step down in a blaze of glory. She ignored that advice, convinced that only she could solve the problems which still bedevilled Britain. Tony Blair is very much of the same mindset. It seems he has learned nothing from her fall. The question is, will be forced from office in the same ignominious manner? Many believe that the Tory Party is still suffering from the aftershocks of her overthrow more than fifteen years later. I suspect that whatever form the transition from Blair to Gordon Brown takes, the Labour Party will suffer from post-Blair convulsions for some years to come.
*********
Over the past few weeks I’ve been setting up a new Internet TV Channel, which will broadcast political discussion programmes each evening from mid October. The TV part has been relatively simple, but kitting out a building and an office has not.
It now takes BT between twenty and thirty working days to install telephone lines. It is almost impossible to order office furniture for a delivery time of less than two weeks. It’s taken three weeks to set up a new company bank account and the bank gleefully informs us that we won’t be allowed to trade on the internet in our first year despite the fact that the company is entirely internet based.
Whatever we want to do, petty bureaucracy and a lack of customer service gets in our way. Sometimes I wonder why anyone ever bothers to start up a new business in this country anymore. Entrepreneurs whose businesses fail suffer from a social stigma, and those who succeed are accused of being fat cats. All three political parties would do well to remember that without new business startups there would be no new jobs, no new tax revenues and therefore no money to pay for improved public services.
***********
As I write this column Tony Blair is still Prime Minister. But who knows what will have happened by the time Charles Clarke reads the EDP over his Saturday morning jam butty.
Mr Clarke has made some interesting interventions over the past week, which have led to Westminster watchers fiddling with their beards as they ask the question: what is he up to?
Apart from earning EDP Political Editor Chris Fisher the newspaper equivalent of air miles, Charles Clarke’s stream of invective in the last few weeks (and especially yesterday, when he accused Gordon Brown of being ‘stupid’) has merely served to muddy the waters. Until yesterday, many commentators believed that having fallen out with Tony Blair, he was cosying up to Gordon Brown. This was clearly wrong. Some are even speculating that Mr Clarke is positioning himself for a leadership bid, pitching himself as the Heineken candidate – someone who can appeal to the parts of the Labour Party that Gordon Brown or John Reid cannot reach.
Charles Clarke is a big man, a proud man. He still firmly believes he was wronged by Tony Blair when the PM sacked him from the Home Office, a job he dearly loved. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, Mr Clarke will go to his political grave believing he was doing a good job as Home Secretary. He also believes he should still be listened to by the Labour Party ‘great and good’.
The trouble is, no one’s prepared to listen to policy visions in the Labour Party at the moment. They talk about renewal in the full knowledge that it is code for ‘ditch Blair’.
Some political commentators believe that an extended leadership contest could do for Labour what a six month contest did for the Conservatives. It wouldn’t, and it would be irresponsible of any Prime Minister to set such an elongated process in train. Labour do not enjoy the luxury of Opposition (not yet, anyway). They were elected to govern. The electorate already believe that the Labour leadership is self indulgent and divided. The best thing they could do is get the whole thing over as quickly as possible. Only then will anyone want to get back to discussing the issues rather than personalities.
If Gordon Brown does emerge as the winner (my money’s actually on Alan Johnson) I think it is virtually impossible for him to restore Charles Clarke to Cabinet status after yesterday’s outburst, when Clarke called Brown ‘stupid’. It’s a shame for him and a shame for Norfolk. The county has virtually always had an MP at the Cabinet table, but nowadays none of its three Labour MPs are even junior Ministers, let alone members of the Cabinet. I don’t see that changing in the foreseeable future.
