Not for the first time, the biggest excitement of this
week's Labour conference came before it formally opened. The dramatic resignation of Bryan Gould from the Shadow Cabinet has overshadowed
everything else that has happened in Blackpool this week.
Although Tribune
disagrees with Mr Gould over Europe and economic policy, the issues on which he
decided that he could not accept Shadow Cabinet collective responsibility, we
regret his decision to go.
It is not that his position is incomprehensible. Mr Gould's
core beliefs about management of the economy (he remains a stalwart of the
"Keynesianism in one country" school) are radically at odds with the
"co-ordinated European reflation" approach taken by the Labour leadership
and overwhelmingly endorsed by this week's conference.
It is hardly surprising that Mr Gould decided that a life of
back-bench freedom was preferable to four years of sitting on his hands,
particularly given his experience between 1989 and last April. Then Mr Gould
kept quiet in the face of what he saw as a disastrous Labour economic policy
shift, away from the interventionist industrial strategy he had elaborated as
trade and industry spokesman and towards an approach emphasising only "supply
side" measures, mainly education and training.
The prospect of another frustrating period of not
disagreeing in public with what he saw as party policy was understandably
unattractive for Mr Gould. What made it even worse was that, having been so
roundly beaten in the Labour leadership contest this summer, he was in an even
weaker position inside the Shadow Cabinet than he had been in the three years
before the general election. Knowing by last weekend that he was also certain
to lose his seat on the National Executive Committee, Mr Gould walked.
No one can blame him for doing so, but there is something
deeply disturbing about
the circumstances. The
impossibility of his predicament came about only because of the enforcement
last week of Shadow Cabinet collective responsibility on Europe and economic
policy. Yet there was no need to foreclose Labour's debate on these issues,
apart, possibly, for last week's emergency House of Commons debate on the economy.
However essential it might be for any political party to present a show of
unity in the couple of years before a general election, there is no convincing
argument for Labour doing any such thing right now.
It is less than six months since the party suffered a
humiliating general election defeat. It has still only begun to chew over why
it lost and what it should do next. Two years of free and frank debate, with
the tolerance of the widest range of views at every level of the party is essential
if Labour is to have any hope of getting to grips with its predicament.
The departure of Mr Gould is a worrying sign that the
Labour leadership thinks that the debate is not necessary. It also inevitably
casts a shadow of doubt over the seriousness of John Smith's promise during the
leadership campaign to operate a more relaxed disciplinary regime than his
predecessor. The least we should now expect from Mr Smith is a ringing
declaration of the value he places on dissent in the Labour Party.
