Jeremy Corbyn and the Strange Rebirth of Labour England by Seddon Mark; Beckett Francis;

Author:Seddon, Mark; Beckett, Francis; [Francis Beckett and Mark Seddon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 5510613
Publisher: Biteback Publishing
Published: 2018-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

ENTER THE CONTROL FREAKS

Tony Blair’s new Cabinet contained some reassuring faces for the real Labour faithful. First and foremost was Blair’s deputy leader John Prescott. Prescott had manfully borne many a Mandelsonian humiliation in the run-up to the party’s election landslide, once peering into a jam jar on television holding an itinerant Chinese mitten crab fished from the River Thames, saying, ‘Hello, Peter!’

John Prescott was about as real Labour as it is possible to get. A decent, well-intentioned, if somewhat prickly, Yorkshireman, who Blair knew from the outset would be hugely important to keep the unions and the party membership onside. Prescott sometimes found himself excluded from awayday gatherings of the in-crowd.

Some of those on the hard left, who castigated Prescott for not holding New Labour above the Plimsoll line – something that he could quite easily have done, rather missed the point. John Prescott, like his former flat-mate Dennis Skinner, in fact always believed that the ‘worst Labour government had to be better than the best Tory government’, and in any case on that brave May morning in 1997, Blair’s assertion that ‘A new day has dawned, has it not?’ reminded even the fiercest doubters that there was now a Labour government – and what is more, it included people like Prescott who the membership trusted. Prescott and other Labour loyalists to this day would find some of the sharper barbs directed at Blair and New Labour unpalatable and unfair. These stalwarts did their best. To Prescott’s great credit, he never joined the critics viciously circling the Corbyn leadership. In fact, he went out of his way to offer support and encouragement.

Others from the broad left of the party sat around Blair’s first Cabinet, such as the new Health Secretary Frank Dobson, the long-time peace activist Gavin Strang, who held the Transport portfolio, and the redoubtable Clare Short, who became the first Cabinet-level Minister for International Development. Blair had been obliged to give all of these left-wingers ministerial roles, since the Parliamentary Labour Party elected the shadow Cabinet in opposition. Not all were to survive Tony Blair’s first Cabinet cull in the following year.

It has become fashionable to compare the rebelliousness of some on the left back then to the antics of sections of the PLP and the Progress group of Blairite supporters today, under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. But there is both a qualitative and quantitative difference. There was a huge degree of goodwill towards Tony Blair and his new Cabinet from right across what used to be described as the labour movement, even if it was tinged with some fear and concern as to where Tony Blair and his project might head. Blair’s critics, including those elected to the National Executive Committee under the auspices of what was known as the Grassroots Alliance, had bitten their tongues during the election campaign and following it, devoted much of their energy to trying to plot an alternative, more recognisably socialist programme while doing battle with the new centralisers at the top of New Labour and in the party’s Millbank HQ.

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