This post on PoliticalBetting.com from Labour voter Richard May sums up Margaret Beckett's opportunistic career perfectly. It also illustrates why Tony Blair will ditch his previous plans to despatch her to the backbenches...Beckett will probably stay when, if she was sacked, she’d cause too much trouble on the backbenches (as Nick Brown has since leaving the government - in his case, Blair should have remembered LBJ’s dictum). Those of us in the Labour Party are all too familiar with her opportunistic gyratios on the party’s left-right spectrum:
a) Elected to Parliament for Lincoln as a Bennite, defeating Dick Taverne
b) Takes a job as Schools Minister, from which post Joan Lestor had resigned in protest at the IMF cuts
c) Becomes a Bennite again, after losing Lincoln, and looking for another seat. Excoriates Neil Kinnock, asking why he didn’t give ‘thirty pieces of silver’ for the collection at the Tribune rally, after he refuses to back Benn’s challenge to Healey for the deputy leadership
d) Leaves the Campaign Group, and becomes notoriously stringent as Shadow Chief Secretary
e) Publicly refuses to back John Smith in his bid to introduce OMOV, saying the vote is a matter for him
f) During the 1994 leadership contest, proposes scrapping all Tory trade union legislation, including the requirement for pre-strike ballots and secret ballots for union elections
g) Becomes a(n ostensibly) loyal New Labour minister
At least the likes of Hodge, Boateng, Hewitt et al only flipped the once…Bending over backwards to be fair, what will also probably keep her in the Cabinet is a reputation for solid, no nonsense performances in interviews. She’s regarded as Princess Anne with northern vowels.
Richard is certainly right about Nick Brown, but Blair can't say he wasn't warned about that one. I have been told that Blair hates him so much he can't bear to have him in the same room but this is one instance where he should have swallowed his dislike.
ReplyDeleteI think he's wrong about Margaret Beckett though. Her whole career demonstrates that she is not a natural rebel, quite the reverse, and I couldn't see her becoming one even if she was dispatched to the backbenches against her wishes. I actually think the truth here is that, although he knows she's a Brownite, Blair actually thinks she's a really good minister, partly on account of the fact that she is so very adept at changing her views to suit different political circumstances. Blair is of course the past master at this. As the ultimate pragmatist himself, I am sure he admires pragmatism in other people, particularly if like Beckett and Blunkett they have come from a different ideological place to him.
I remember watching a debate prior to the 1997 election between Beckett and Iain Lang (who incidently was a highly underrated minister). Lang was promoting Tory achievements on the economy and made the boast that Britain had the highest level of inward investment in Europe, Beckett responded by pointing out that we also had the highest outward investment! Lang was somewhat incredulous as he pointed out that this was a good thing.
ReplyDeleteMuch amusement though we all derived from her face off with Mellor on Newsnight a thousand years ago, my favourite Beckett moment is still her expecting to have her hand kissed as Labour 'leader' during the Smith / Blair interregnum. Oh to see ourselves as others see us....
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