LONDON: At Westminster, there are days of great human drama; and there are dramatic days that actually matter — that shape politics for months or years to come. Wednesday’s rain-streaked drama was both, together. The fall of David Blunkett was a terrible moment for an often fallible, occasionally brilliant man. Its details will be remembered by him, and by tweedy historians, and by no one else. Put it alongside what happened in the Commons, however, and a bigger story is revealed.
For just as Blunkett was assessing the immediate reaction to his rather dignified resignation statement, over the road MPs were tearing holes in the Home Office’s flagship bill on terrorism. After the government scraped through by a single vote on a clause outlawing the glorification of terrorism, the Home Secretary, Charles Clarke realised that his key proposal — to hold terror suspects for up to 90 days without charge — faced defeat. Mr Clarke screeched to a compromise, offering urgent talks to find a consensus, an extraordinarily embarrassing climbdown on such a major bill.
Blunkett’s resignation and the government climbdown are not logically linked. One was caused by a silly and perhaps arrogant error by a minister already under huge pressure, the other by widespread unease about terrorism and traditional liberties. But they are politically linked. Blunkett was one of the last heavy hitters Blair could deploy to push through his radical, even illiberal, agenda. And the vote in the Commons showed that Blair is flailing already.
Let’s stand back and look at the wider political situation. The anti-terror legislation is in real trouble in the Commons — and just wait until it hits the Lords. No 10 can’t get its way inside the Home Office, despite insinuating, relentless briefings against Charles Clarke. On education reform, Blair and his advisers had to arm-wrestle Ruth Kelly towards last week’s white paper, which went down among Labour MPs like the proverbial lead balloon. Patricia Hewitt has had a horrible time from Labour backbenchers on the key issue of primary care trusts and their role as providers.
So what does it all add up to? Not the day Tony Blair fell from power, or finally gave up. The prime minister is a resilient character and determined to make his mark in his third term. On all past form, he will have slept well, bounced up and determined this morning to keep on going. The rest of us, however, are watching an administration in which every day the prime minister has fewer genuinely close allies in the cabinet, and fewer MPs prepared to nod through bills they can’t quite agree with.
Frankly, Labour people are less frightened of him. He had planned to bring ministers to heel with a major reshuffle around Christmas, but yet again he was forced to move in a small way, too early. So another moment to regain the initiative has slipped.
Equally, Labour MPs don’t worry that opposing him will damage the leader’s authority and therefore lose them their seats because, come the next election, he won’t be there anyway. The process is constant seepage of Blair’s authority. What can be done? Not much. It was all predictable — and predicted — when Blair first announced that he would not stand as leader in a fourth election, something those tweedy historians may well decide was the worst tactical mistake of his political life. David Blunkett himself has seemed a little out of control ever since the Kimberley affair broke and, at a human level, everyone can understand that. Once one thing goes wrong, other things follow.
In a similar way, the whole ‘project’ is now wobbling out of control too. The election was a bad shock, cutting the majority and therefore ministers’ room for manoeuvre. Now the prime minister is running out of ministers with real clout and experience who are prepared to back him. That has a knock-on effect in the Commons. On Wednesday, there was a final ‘time’s up’ tap on Mr Blunkett’s window. There’s a growing sense at Westminster that he won’t be the last. —Dawn/The Guardian News Service
