Socialist Standard
August 2005
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The
Outsider
The bookies would not have been overjoyed at the result of the
election, seeing as the favourite came in with a clear lead over the
rest of the field. The likes of William Hill had hardly had time to tot
up their losses after Labour’s “historic” (as they keep reminding us)
third successive victory than they had to get on with calculating the
odds for the leadership contests of both the big parties. In the case
of the Tories the outlook for the bookies is not so gloomy because
there is likely to be quite a large field of runners, even if
Territorial Army ex-SAS hero David Davis will probably be a narrow
favourite. But the race for the Labour leadership promises to be more
menacing, with Gordon Brown another odds-on favourite who will cost the
bookies some money if he finally, after all those years of manoeuvring,
in-fighting and hostile briefing, gets to stand smiling on the doorstep
at Number Ten.
Except that, as Brown himself – and the bookies – know all too well, it
is not that simple. In organisations like the Labour Party there are
very, very few MPs who do not regard themselves as likely candidates
for the leadership. To illustrate this point: when Tony Blair announced
he would eventually hand over the reins the Guardian columnist Simon
Hoggart played a cruel joke to expose the vanity lurking in the
unlikeliest of breasts. He asked a low-ranking Labour minister, who
does not have a shred of realistic hope of becoming his party’s leader,
whether he should consider making himself available for nomination. At
first the minister demurred but a little more flattery from Hoggart
awakened his atrophied ambitions. He murmured that now he came to think
of it he had recently been approached by quite a few MPs. Hoggart did
not tell us what has happened to that hapless man in the reshuffle.
Reid
He may have found some consolation in history. When Anthony Eden
resigned the Tory leadership in 1957 the front runner to take over was
R A Butler and little attention was given to the chances of Harold
Macmillan. But in the event all the energy Macmillan had expended over
the years in seeing off his rivals brought him success. When Macmillan
in his turn resigned in 1964 Butler was again a favourite for the
succession, with Hailsham not so well fancied. But Alec Douglas-Home
came from the back of the field to take the job. The Labour Party in
the 1930s was led by George Lansbury , who at the party conference in
1935 won a standing ovation for his speech in a debate on the sanctions
against Italy for the attack on Ethiopia. Lansbury’s speech was
flavoured by phrases like “I am ready to stand as early christians did
and say ‘This is our faith’” but he was emphatically defeated in the
vote, which left him little choice but to resign. The main contenders
for the job – the favourites – were Herbert Morrison and Arthur
Greenwood but they were beaten by Clement Attlee who, as the outsider,
was rated as mousy and colourless but who turned out to be nothing like
that when it came to doing the job of Prime Minister.
So who are the outside chances now, in the contest to replace Blair?
Prominent among them is Dr. John Reid, MP for Airdrie and Shotts where,
as the saying goes, they weigh the Labour votes rather than count them.
What is Reid’s form as a leadership contender? By the standards of the
Labour Party, it is pretty strong. In 1973 he joined the Communist
Party and later CND but then went over to the Labour Party and a job as
one of their research officers, followed by a stint as political
adviser to Neil Kinnock – which, in view of Kinnock’s well-earned
reputation for political blunders and electoral disasters, Reid would
do well to gloss over. He got into Parliament in 1987, for Motherwell
North which, through various changes of name, has been held by him ever
since with never less than 61 per cent of the vote. His resignation
from CND provoked approval from Julian Lewis, the famously combative
right-wing Tory MP for New Forest East, who wrote to the Sunday Express
in August 1999:
“It is true that Dr. Reid was previously a
nuclear disarmer, but it is also true that he
was one of the first to recognise his mistake,
and genuinely campaign for a
sensible nuclear deterrent policy.
“As a former professional anti-CND campaigner,
I am ready enough to criticise
unsuitable Labour appointees, but Dr. Reid
does not fall into that category: he
would be as good a Defence Secretary as any
Labour government could provide.”
There is no record of whether Reid was embarrassed by back-slapping
from such a quarter but he has developed a skin tough enough to survive
in the notoriously ruthless relationships among the warring comrades of
the Scottish Labour Party, where a popular slogan is “a long memory is
much better than a good memory”. This was the setting for Reid’s
burning antipathy towards Gordon Brown, dating from the early 1990s
when Brown was chairman of Scottish Labour. It is that passion which is
likely to drive him to oppose Brown in a leadership contest, winning
votes as the “stop Brown” candidate.
Defence
When Labour won the 1997 election Reid’s talents (if that is the right
word) were recognised in his appointment to a succession of high
profile ministerial jobs until, in the reshuffle in May, he was placed
as Defence Secretary. It was rumoured that he coveted Jack Straw’s job
as Foreign Secretary but perhaps his notorious difficulty with the
silkily diplomatic touch counted against him; or perhaps Straw sulked
and simply refused to go. Another rumour had it that Defence is the job
he always prized since it fitted his bellicose personality and anyway,
in spite of his much-trumpeted humble origins, he loves taking the
salute at military march pasts. A probable reason for his multiplicity
of government jobs is that he is what is known as “a safe pair of
hands”, which is a diplomat’s way of saying that he can be relied on
unblinkingly to justify – in Parliament, the press, on TV – whatever
the Blair government does, no matter how indefensible it is. His voting
record is tediously obedient, including on cuts in funding benefits for
lone parents and students, on means-tested Incapacity Benefit, on air
strikes against Afghanistan and on the war against Iraq. That is how he
earned a reputation as “Reid the Rottweiler” and “Teflon John”.
Attentive fans of Jeremy Paxman will know that the TV interrogator
weighed in by describing Reid as Blair’s “attack dog”, to which Reid
responded, as would be expected from one of Her Majesty’s Secretaries
of State, Privy Counsellor and trusted lieutenant of the Prime
Minister, by calling Paxman “a West London wanker”.
Reid has consistently shown a readiness to reshape what he still, in
spite of all evidence to the contrary, calls his principles in order to
solidify his standing in the Labour Party. Of course he may change;
there have been countless examples of leaders who have won power on one
set of promises and have then outraged their supporters by performing a
dramatic u-turn. We know that with Reid anything is possible;
there are practically no bounds to what he will say or do, within the
confines of support for the capitalist system and its government.
Without that ability he would not survive in the hurly-burly of
politics. Anyone looking for a promising outsider for the Labour
leadership race could do worse than lay a shrewd bet on the Rottweiler
— soon, while the odds on him are so
attractive.
IVAN
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