New Statesman & Society leader, 19 August 1994
this week, Labour Party members should be receiving their voting papers for the first-ever one member, one vote elections to the constituency section of the party's National Executive Committee. This helps to explain, of course, the unusually high media profile of certain Labour politicians at a time when they are more normally to be found in their favoured holiday locations than floating ideas such as Mo Mowlam's peculiar suggestion about moving the royal family out of Buckingham Palace (whatever happened to republicanism anyway?). There are 21 candidates for seven places, and no one is quite sure what will happen now that they are no longer to be decided by constituency party block votes. The outcome will, however, be crucially important in helping to shape the kind of party that Labour becomes under its new leader.
The NEC is, as it has always been, the most powerful body in the party. Its composition will have a significant effect on the sort of campaign that Labour fights at the next general election. It could even have a significant impact on the next government if Labour wins. This year's election is rather more than a "beauty contest".
Of course, it is extremely unlikely that the NEC results will be a major upset for Tony Blair. The days are long gone when the constituency section returned a 100 per cent left slate as a two-fingered salute to the leadership. Indeed, the danger this year is that the NEC ends up without a single member in the constituency section who is not in the shadow cabinet. Although – because Blair, Kinnock and John Prescott have gone on to higher things – there are three constituency places up for grabs (one of which must go to a woman), if all the incumbents are returned, the consensus among the pundits is that the three most likely newcomers are shadow cabinet members Straw, Smith and Mowlam. This is a danger not because there is any¬thing necessarily wrong with any of them.
Smith in particular would bring a welcome green tinge to the NEC. Rather, it is because, as Peter Hain argued last week in NSS as he set out his platform, it is an inherently bad idea for the constituency section to be a mini¬ature shadow cabinet, bound by the principle of collective responsibility and all the inhibitions on free and open discussion that that entails. Neither does the shadow cabinet adequately represent the spread of political opinion in the party as a whole: instead it covers a narrow range between centre-left and right. A voice or two from the left – and the most cogent on offer this year is undoubtedly Hain's – would not go amiss.
More important than the NEC – and far more trying for Blair – is the shadow cabinet reshuffle that will follow the shadow cabinet elections in late October. Having spurned a reshuffle immediately upon being elected, this is effectively his only chance to change his team before the next election.
He does not have an easy task. He has no option but to use the material the Parliamentary Labour Party serves up to him – and it has a perverse habit at times of preferring the affable incompetent, the fixer or the bully to the intelligent, creative and able. Then he has to make sure that the best possible team is put together without causing offence to fragile egos that could turn dangerous if they feel that they have been snubbed.
But he is helped by two things: his own job at home affairs is vacant, and Jack Cunningham has put in such a miserable performance at foreign affairs that it would be no problem to remove him (if indeed he makes it back into the shadow cabinet – and there are some in the Blair team who are hoping for a Cunningham defeat to avoid the unpleasantness of a sacking). That means that two of the "big three" jobs are effectively open – which in¬creases his room for manoeuvre.
So what should he do? The crucial posts are shadow chancellor and shadow.foreign secretary. With the 1996 intergovernmental conference coming up and the economy still in a depressed state, Europe and the economy are set to dominate British politics in the next couple of years. Labour needs the right people in post to handle them.
Taking Europe first, because that is where the incumbent is so weak, what is needed is someone with an unerring enthusiasm for Europe and a proven ability to find gaps in the Tories' armour. Of the four shadow cabinet members who are serious candidates for the job, George Robertson has the former but not the latter, while Robin Cook and John Prescott have the latter without the former. The ideal candidate is Gordon Brown, who has been a consistent advocate of closer European political and economic union and, crucially, an enthusiast for pan-European alternative economic strategies – but the problem is that he's already got the other key post of shadow chancellor, in which he has done a brilliant job of labelling the Tories as a party of high taxation and low competence, but less well in communicating a convincing alternative strategy of the left.
The answer is to shift Brown sideways and promote Cook to shadow chancellor. In his trade and industry brief, Cook has again shown himself to be Labour's leading thinker. He understands the necessity for getting to grips with the structures of modern capitalism, as well as grappling with the ethics of modern socialism. He has an extraordinary grasp of detail, a sense of the "big idea", and he is a great communicator. Most important of all, his appointment would be a signal that a Blair government really would be interven¬tionist in its economic policies – Labour's greatest weakness on the economy these days is that it sometimes seems as if it wouldn't do anything different from the Tories except on education and training. If Blair wants the best possible government-in-waiting, he really ought to explore the possibility of building his team around Cook as shadow chancellor and Brown as shadow foreign secretary.
