Posted on 05/13/2003 9:02:35 PM PDT by Stultis
May 14, 2003
Clare Short
MINUTES after Clare Short’s resignation speech a Blairite MP accosted a Brownite MP and shouted: “Your girl’s gone over the top this time.”
Ms Short, a close ally of Gordon Brown, had blown it. This was the view of Tony Blair’s supporters on the back benches, who came out in droves to rubbish her yesterday. MPs in the Brown camp went to ground, as though ashamed.
As one Labour backbencher put it: “The Brownites wanted a little nudge, a delicate stiletto to the head maybe, but she put a bloody great hobnailed boot in.”
With only one Labour MP in 410 daring to speak up for Ms Short, it appeared that she had badly misjudged the mood in savaging the Prime Minister and calling for an “elegant handover” to Mr Brown.
Even Ann Keen, parliamentary aide to the Chancellor, who was seen kissing Ms Short in the lobby before her resignation speech, distanced herself. The kiss had been seized on by the Blairites as evidence that Mr Brown had been behind some of the vitriol in the speech. Friends of Ms Keen went to great lengths, however, to make clear that she had been approached and embraced by Ms Short and not the other way round. They also pointed out that Ms Keen had looked pained and had shifted uncomfortably throughout Ms Short’s speech.
Only Bob Marshall-Andrews, who has long given up on the prospect of promotion by either Mr Brown or Mr Blair, congratulated Ms Short for her bravery.
The most vehement of Labour rebels had hardly a good word to say for the former International Development Secretary. Many felt let down by the crude timing of her departure. Tam Dalyell, the Father of the House, thought that by failing to resign when she first threatened to, she had done nothing less than hand Mr Blair a licence to wage war. “Why the hell didn’t she do this earlier?” he said. “If she had spoken out when there were 139 rebels everything could have been different. Blair could have lost the vote, and we know that if he had done so he would not have supported war. If you believe the Americans would not have gone in without us, she could have stopped this whole thing.”
A former Labour minister who resigned some years ago was furious at her claim that she had been worried about the Government’s direction since the time of the Millennium Dome. “That didn’t stop her taking the Government’s shilling for all the years since then. It’s all very well for Clare to go parading her conscience, but she ought to put her money where her mouth is.”
Peter Kilfoyle, who resigned as a Defence Minister, said Ms Short did not have the credibility to act as a rallying point for rebel MPs. “When she did not resign over the Iraq war, she lost a great deal of credibility so I don’t think she will be seen necessarily as a focus for backbench rebellion,” he said. “I don’t think many people would quibble with her analysis . . . I think what they would quibble with would be the timing.”
If those were the views of left-wing rebels normally sympathetic to Ms Short then the Blarites needed scraping down from the ceiling. Martin Salter, MP for Reading West, said: “I thought her resignation speech was an unconvincing cocktail of bad timing and personal bitterness. As a result I think she has little prospect of becoming a rallying figure for any wing of the Labour Party.”
“Barmy” and “lost it” were other insults bandied about by the Blair loyalists. Some were so upset that they leaked the minutes of a meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party last Wednesday, which was addressed by Ms Short. They pointed out that she had painted a very rosy picture of the prospect for UN humanitarian involvement in Iraq then, completely contradicting her damning indictment of the lack of UN involvement in her resignation speech.
Some MPs found particularly galling Ms Short’s claim that Mr Blair had become obsessed with his place in history. “The one obsessed with their place in history is Clare Short,” fumed a normally restrained Labour backbencher.
Chris Bryant, Labour MP for the Rhonda, who has himself been critical of the Government, had no time for Ms Short’s line of attack. He said: “I think she rather undermined herself by dancing the hokey-cokey in the last eight weeks and by being so nasty in her speech. There are a lot of important issues facing us in the coming months, health service reform in particular, and I believe there is still plenty of room for debate in the Labour Party. Clare Short won’t make any difference.”
Nevertheless the Blairites were not exactly cockahoop about Ms Short’s resignation. As one party whip and Blair loyalist observed, there are now four former Cabinet ministers on the back benches who are critical of the Government and that is more than any administration, however big its majority, should feel comfortable with.
With such heavyweights as Robin Cook, Chris Smith, Frank Dobson and Ms Short on the rampage no legislation is safe, especially when Labour backbenchers are starting to rebel at the drop of a hat. As a senior Labour whip said: “They don’t believe we can lose a vote because of the huge majority. They are in a false sense of security. Now we’ve got all these leftie Kinnockites agin us on the back benches and we’ve got to put the Jack back in the box. The next time there is a big row, Clare could be back as a standard bearer and people will have forgotten how big a fool she made of herself this week.”
Some believe that the Prime Minister has a “life-cycle problem” rather than a policy problem. After six years in power, Mr Blair is now experiencing the natural wastage of ministers who are feeling cheesed off with life in Government.
One minister suggested that this was the real reason for Ms Short’s resignation. “Clare wanted a government in her own image. It was her ego which was at play here. When she saw she couldn’t get what she wanted she p****d off.”
It is a measure of how damaging Ms Short could have been that before the speech the whips were dispatched to tell MPs to expect the worst. The speech would be vitriolic and extremely personal about Mr Blair, they said. They calculated that MPs were less likely to react with embarrassing heckling or cheers if they knew what was coming.
Whether by accident or design, MPs sat in stony silence as Ms Short delivered her damning verdict. The bitter attack did not raise so much as a smile or a whimper. Some believe MPs were stunned, others that they were under orders from both camp leaders, namely Blair and Brown, to keep quiet. Meanwhile friends of the Chancellor believe that Peter Mandelson is behind the attempts to implicate Mr Brown in the Short speech. They claimed that Mr Mandelson was already using Ms Short’s resignation to rekindle the old rows between Mr Blair and Mr Brown. Some conspiracy theories never change.
Blunkett attacks 'childish and petty' Short
By Christopher Adams, Political Correspondent
Published: May 14 2003 5:00 | Last Updated: May 14 2003 5:00
David Blunkett has rounded on Clare Short, the former international development secretary, accusing his old cabinet colleague of a "petty and childish" attack on the prime minister's leadership.
The home secretary angrily dismissed Ms Short's claim that Mr Blair had stifled ministerial discussion and insisted she had been the most vocal participant in cabinet and meetings about the Iraq war.
Mr Blunkett, commenting on rumours that he had thrown a radio at the wall when he heard of Ms Short's description in March of Mr Blair's Iraq strategy as "reckless", told The Sheffield Star newspaper: "I wouldn't waste a radio on her."
He said Ms Short's behaviour and resignation had lost her a good deal of respect.
"It is sad for her because she had built up a lot of credibility as international development secretary and over the last six weeks she has squandered it all," he added.
"I have sat in cabinet with her for six years and I have sat in the war cabinet with her over the last six weeks, and no one spoke, no one intervened, no one had their say more than Clare Short."
The prime minister yesterday appointed Hilary Benn, the son of veteran Labour left-winger Tony Benn, to the Department for International Development as a minister of state, giving the department an extra minister under Baroness Amos, who has taken over as secretary of state.
In a mini-reshuffle that promotes Blairite loyalists and suggests the prime minister is likely to wait until after a decision on the euro before making wider changes, Mr Blair brought in Paul Goggins, the Labour MP and former parliamentary private secretary to Mr Blunkett, to replace Mr Benn as junior Home Office minister.
That there was no replacement in the Foreign Office for Baroness Amos was expected, leaving her African portfolio covered by Bill Rammell, another Foreign Office minister.
Downing Street said the additional minister at Department for International Development reflected "the higher profile and greater importance which the government had placed on international development issues", as well as the need to have a ministerial spokesman in the Commons.
Good news that the anti-war left is finally being bloody-well shut up in Jolly Old, but it wouldn't be all bad if Labour were to crackup over it. Don't get me wrong. I appreciate without reservation everything Tony's done on Iraq, and admire his principled stand immensely. But he's still Labour. Even if preferable to outright socialists, he's still a "third way" liberal in the mode of Bill Clinton. He may not have interns under the desk or subpenoed (sp?) files in the closet, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be pulling for Iain Duncan Smith and the Conservatives!
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