SAME AS IT EVER WAS
List of Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
1990-1997: John Major (Conservative)
1997-2007: Tony Blair (Labour) [1]
2007-2008: John McDonnell (Labour) [2]
2008-2010: Mervyn King, Lord King of Lothbury [3]
2010-????: David Cameron (Conservative) [4]
[1] When it came time for the associated hacks and journos to determine the legacy of Tony Blair there was plenty of fodder for column inches. Those sympathetic to the man would highlight the achievements of peace in Ireland, devolution for Scotland and Wales, record public spending and sustained prosperity. Blair had united everyone, standing by the special relationship with the United States in the global War on Terror whilst being the most pro-European Prime Minister in British history, all underpinned by his unprecedented electoral success.
The detractors, and there were many, said Blair had blood on his hands. He had falsified reasons to start a war that already had a death toll in the hundreds of thousands and would eventually climb to over a million. He had torn the soul out of the Labour party to chase power and in doing so had opened up Britain to ever creeping privatisation far beyond what the Tories might ever dreamed of getting away with. Although the transition of the NHS to the Team GB Healthcare Plan was still some time away in the future, in 2007 this legacy was already apparent. It was safe to say Blair had long become a divisive figure and what his legacy would be was very much a matter of dispute when it came to choosing his successor as Labour leader.
The 2007 Labour leadership election was supposed to be a coronation, the agreed handover of power to Blair’s former friend and ally Gordon Brown. Brown had negotiated a power sharing agreement shortly before Blair became Labour leader which had given him not only the Chancellorship but an unprecedented level of control over the treasury. In exchange he had agreed to support Blair’s leadership bid on the understanding that in a successful Labour government Blair would hand power over to him at some point in his second term.
This promise had come and gone, Blair continued on as Prime Minister into a third term and Brown’s control over the economy tightened. The friendship fell by the wayside as did any form of working arrangement; the feud threatened the stability Labour had enjoyed since the mid-eighties. Blair’s dreams of a new liberal interventionist world order burned in the fires of Iraq while at home he was called a murderer by members of his own party and didn’t have access to his own budget until it was read out in the House of Commons. These strains, augmented by an existing heart condition and new drinking problem, compounded for Blair to finally agree to go in 2007. But this didn’t mean he didn’t have supporters who were happy to simply let Brown takeover.
The conflict between Blair and Brown had come to characterise the ‘New’ Labour party they had built, it was a match of personalities rather than any great ideological divide but this didn’t prevent both sides from becoming heated. ‘Brownites’ saw ‘Blairites’ as obnoxious and duplicitous whilst in turn they were regarded as aggressive and resentful. There were many who had hoped to paper over these cracks, some Blairites saw potential for advancement in a new Brown ministry whilst some Brownites welcomed them in the hopes that once Brown was established as leader these divisions would become irrelevant in the new regime. There were many Blairites who feared they were right and that Blair’s legacy must be defended and to achieve this they looked to the leadership election and David Miliband.
David Miliband, the young, articulate Environment Secretary had enjoyed a meteoric rise in the party from student politics to policy wonk to becoming a junior minister barely three years after first becoming an MP. In spite of being the son of a famous Marxist academic, Miliband bled New Labour and had been behind the project from the very beginning. Many felt he was too junior to go up against Brown’s decades of experience and record of success. This had initially included Miliband himself who had aspired to bag a great office of state under Brown and work towards becoming his successor.
In the cattiness of the ensuing leadership contest it is unclear what motivated Miliband to abandon what seemed a far more straightforward, albeit protracted, route to power and instead risk everything on a challenge in 2007. All that has been offered beyond the official statements was gossip that Brown had been overheard saying Miliband had no place in his future government as part of a particularly charged rant against the obstruction of Blair and his followers. Regardless, there were more than enough MPs still loyal to Blair to give Miliband the votes he needed and more. There was even a plan for those unnecessary extra votes, for if David was going up against Goliath, why not force Goliath to fight on two fronts?
[2] Whether John McDonnell gained the nominations required to get on the leadership ballot as an unwitting pawn of the Blairites, or vice versa, is unclear. At the very least the last few MPs nominations he received were not the sort of people who would usually support a Bennite in what remained of the hard left of theLabour party. For all the talk of “opening up the contest” few considered McDonnell a serious contender, let alone McDonnell himself. His entire strategy had been to represent the left of the party and try to force policy discussions which might not have taken place in a straight Brown-Miliband fight. This proved to be true as his two opponents fronted their campaigns on building on the New Labour legacy whilst implicitly rehashing all of the old Blair-Brown animosity. McDonnell on other hand had clear (if dusted off) ideas and, in the old Bennite tradition, a clear understanding of internal party mechanisms.
‘New’ Labour had been more than a branding exercise for Blair, the party itself had been ‘updated’ in his image. Gone were the old parts of the party constitution calling for common ownership of the means of production, gone too was the direct influence of Trade Unions and left-wing groups on future leadership elections in favour of a One Member One Vote system. Instead union members interested could choose to register as supporters of the party for a small fee in exchange for a vote, a move that was also opened to members of the general public. In Blair’s eyes he had done away with outmoded ideas and entrenched powers and made the party more open and forward thinking, it hadn’t occurred to him that it was the perfect conditions for a mass movement for in 1994 one didn’t exist. He hadn’t yet invaded Iraq.
McDonnell was a darling of the anti-war left and those who previously had sworn never to vote Labour again signed up as supporters in droves. The party had left them after all, why not help bring it back? Beyond that he was much more affable and relatable than the usual tabloid caricatures of the loony left. Brown and Miliband were both economists but McDonnell had started his political career on the shop floor doing a normal job. Whilst his ideas were labelled old fashioned or proven to have failed they appeared fresh in the new neoliberal world Blair had helped create and original in comparison to the fratricide Brown and Miliband focused most of their attention on. The first Labour leadership polling changed that but by then it was already too late.
McDonnell had struck a chord somehow, he reflected a change in a way that was oddly reminiscent of Blair. New Labour had once been the toast of Britpop but after ten years of blood and privatisation it had become stale in spite of the relative prosperity it had delivered. Perhaps it was complacency borne of an easier life that drew people to him or perhaps a yearning for something more, but either way the lifetime backbencher was suddenly gaining on the two ‘serious’ candidates. The Murdoch press turned its guns on him, the sudden surge of supporters revived old fears of Trotskyite entryism and the markets warned of an economic disaster that might be brought about by a new wave of nationalisations. MPs who had nominated McDonnell only a month previously now warned that he would destroy the country whilst Brown and Miliband had emails leaked of them preparing a joint statement opposing McDonnell’s agenda. It was all a bit hyperbolic and contradictory in face of McDonnell’s dignified speeches to packed halls about removing the stain of the Iraq war and an escape from the New Labour melodrama. Blair’s own intervention, which seemed to imply he might need to flee the country if McDonnell were to come to power, proved particularly tone deaf.
On the alternative voting system the Labour party used McDonnell came ahead in the first round and managed to squeeze out Brown in the second. Theoretically if all of David Miliband’s supporters had given Brown their second preference McDonnell would have been defeated, perhaps the final conceit of the feud between two former friends. The winner spoke energetically of change and new beginnings but already looked overwhelmed by the meteoric success of his campaign. By the time the lifelong republican was travelling to Buckingham Palace there were already plots to bury his agenda in its infancy.
McDonnell had a clear set of policy proposals; worker representation on company boards, nationalisation of the railways, a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty and withdrawal from Afghanistan and Iraq as quickly as possible however he quickly found himself facing a parliamentary party, a civil service and a military which viewed him as an interloper. His attempts to build a Cabinet immediately became a farce as most with ministerial experience became wary and others who might have previously sought promotion chose to wait until the anachronism was over and a more sensible choice for the top job took over. There was a lot of talk of letting McDonnell have a chance with the implicit byline that he wouldn’t be around for long, there were even proposals that the leader of the Labour party need not necessarily be the Prime Minister and that McDonnell should become a sort of spiritual leader whilst the sensible work of government was left to those with experience. The Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King calmed the markets on the basis of the British economy’s underlying health and that the current disruption would be temporary but even as that minor panic subsided a far larger, global crisis loomed on the horizon.
After a few chaotic weeks it was clear that McDonnell wasn’t keen on giving up any time soon and had managed to assemble his notorious ‘IKEA’ cabinet of old friends and members of the Socialist Campaign Group. A relatively tame budget was passed on the basis of existing spending plans finally surrendered by former treasury employees in the name of the nation’s financial stability whilst the army continued to prevaricate on any immediate withdrawal from the War on Terror arguing that only a phased withdrawal would prevent chaos in the Middle East. A chilly conference season followed where speculations about a coup fell flat, McDonnell had little to show for this time in office but promised a great deal for the future. Internally he was focused on managing through until the Christmas period and revamping his legislative agenda in the New Year. Events in the darker nights would spell far greater opportunities than he might have imagined.
The collapse of the housing market in the United States revealed a series of bets on bad debt made on behalf of much of the global financial system. Everyone had been in on it and the United Kingdom with its powerful financial and service sectors became particularly vulnerable. McDonnell who had spent his entire political career railing against the neoliberal policies of Blair and Thatcher suddenly looked prophetic. The majority of the British public who had previously seen him as a deranged ideologue, or perhaps simply well meaning but naive, began to listen to his rhetoric about making sure those responsible for the crisis be made to pay. There were also those, including the majority of Labour MPs, who felt that a vindicated McDonnell who had a mandate for his programme was The One Thing They Didn’t Want To Happen.
The collapse of the British financial sector loomed and with it the British economy. Unprecedented state intervention was now required, far beyond what even the left of the Labour party could have gotten away with demanding previously. McDonnell now made new demands; State buyouts or nationalisations with terms demanding the breakup of the large banks and governmental oversight of the remnants, a wealth tax to cover spending and criminal prosecution against those who had gambled with peoples mortgages and pensions were all proposals that resonated with the public but threatened economic and political meltdown. McDonnell was cast by much of the press and many from his own party as a petty extremist happy to destroy the British economy if it meant his ideological agenda could be fulfilled. The Parliamentary Labour Party had wished to give the Prime Minister more time to dig his own grave but removing him now became a matter of urgency. After attempts to plead with him to resign over health or inexperience flopped, the process of a Vote of No Confidence went ahead in earnest during the Summer of 2008.
[3] McDonnell lost the vote heavily with less than a tenth of the parliamentary party coming out in his support however the vote provided no mechanism for his removal and he refused to resign, instead daring those who had voted against him to stand against him in a vote of the party membership. It was doubtful that the Prime Minister would have been able to attain the nominations necessary to stand in another leadership election now relegated only to his allies but whether an incumbent leader would automatically be allowed on the ballot remained uncertain. The decision would be left to the party’s National Executive Committee, a body which many complained was unfit to determine whether not Britain should be allowed to descend into chaos.
Before the NEC could vote on the matter, articles of impeachment were brought against McDonnell from within the House of Commons. The legal basis of such an act was murky in the uncodified British constitution although it had been fleshed out somewhat in the 2004 campaign to impeach Blair over the misrepresentation of the war in Iraq. The majority of the PLP opposed to McDonnell agreed with the leaderships of both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats that McDonnell had to go for the sake of the nation over party interest, even if concessions would be required. Neither David Cameron nor Nick Clegg were not happy with the idea of selflessly saving Britain’s economy only for it to result in Labour’s electoral advantage. McDonnell needed to go but in exchange for their support what would replace him would not be left solely to Labour.
The Articles of Impeachment sailed through the Commons, the case being heard and rubber stamped by the House of Lords who were more than happy to put an end to the political career of a man who wanted to put an end to them. With McDonnell no longer an MP Labour’s Deputy Leader, Harriet Harman, briefly became Britain’s second female Prime Minister whilst party machinations constructed a true successor for troubled times.
[4] Mervyn King never had any intention of becoming Prime Minister, it was partly for this reason that he was the perfect figure to lead the National Government formed in the aftermath of the agreement signed by all three major parties in the rose garden of 10 Downing Street. King’s frequent television appearances as Governor of the Bank of England during the year’s heavy financial news had made him a public figure, and more importantly one who was regarded as apolitical and trustworthy. His elevation to the role of Prime Minister was directed via peerage rather than a by-election out of fear the latter may prove too risky (as John McDonnell would show by retaking his own seat as an independent candidate) with special provisions being made for the newly christened Lord King of Lothbury to speak in the House of Commons when required.
This was not to say that King’s cabinet was apolitical with all parties having manoeuvred to get themselves the most power to put them in a strong position at the end of the agreement, dated to be the 2010 General Election. With McDonnell disqualified due to not being an MP at the time, David Miliband successfully became Labour leader and Foreign Secretary. David Cameron, no longer Leader of the Opposition, became responsible for Business and Innovation, leaving the Home Secretary position to his ally Chris Grayling. Nick Clegg became Minister for Europe, heartened that King had requested David Laws serve as Chancellor.
The first National Government since the war ached and groaned as three parties tried to work to the letter of the Rose Garden Agreement and with each other. Nonetheless, the House of Commons became a rubber stamp as a series of tough decisions sailed through in bailing out British finance and restructuring the welfare state in order to pay for it. David Miliband rebuilt and enhanced the special relationship with the new Clinton administration, David Cameron was never far from a market stall praising those real Britons who loved having a punt and having a go whilst Nick Clegg preached the British financial solution to the continentals in multiple languages. All the while the anticipated but severe recession burned through good will and the parliamentary expenses scandal made it non-existent. Nick Griffin’s BNP and McDonnell’s People’s Assembly did unsettlingly well at the 2009 local and European elections even as the rise of both ironically tempered the tide of anti-establishment sentiment somewhat as a potent far-left and far-ring often do.
King had steadied the ship and happily handed over power back to the British people as Parliament dissolved itself for the 2010 elections. He retired to a controversial legacy but remained aloof from party politics, even while happily weighing in on whether this or that decision was sufficiently in keeping with Rose Garden like a white haired Oracle of Delphi.
[4] David Miliband felt he could retain the majorities of the Blair years and was emboldened by his new campaign manager, John McTernan, to aggressively defend the New Labour brand and all it had brought for Britain. Afghanistan, Iraq, McDonnell, Rose Garden and the end of the Welfare State became difficult achievements to campaign on when faced with the general public however. David Cameron who had used this Rose Garden brief to subtly campaign for the previous year and a half was well aware of this and provided an alternative to the mess that Labour had created and begged him to help clear up. All of the old consensus of politics had been shattered by the need to do what was right, why not keep going in that spirit and build a Big Society on the ruins of Big Government?
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Mondeo Man feels a great deal older than he used to although not quite as dysfunctional as the Ford he has managed to keep running since the early nineties. The market for trade disappeared during the financial insecurity, as did his wife when belts needed to be tightened and the only thing left in abundance were arguments over this or that purchase.
The money that does know come into his end-of-terrace comes through the car in cab fees and takeaway deliveries, the apps keep him working all hours which is why it’s particularly frustrating to be left on hold to various government call centres, arguing that as his mother now lives with him he no longer has a spare bedroom and ergo is exempt from the Mandatory Life Rent clause. His mum is watching the telly in the other room, The Daily Politics; a load of nonsense. Politics was always hard to understand but now we can’t decide whether it’s overly simplistic or overly complex. The same group seem to switch places in arguing whether or not this or that decision is sufficiently ‘Rose Garden’, like that rocking horse in Casablanca. It’s all just gibberish, drowned out by the slightly less irritating hold music on the other end of the line.
Mondeo Man’s Mum seethes at them all. This country used to be great, she used to have a house, and now it’s all being sold down the river while her son scrambles to find a pot to piss in. She dearly wants things to get better but there isn’t much she can do at her age. All she has is her small pension and as much as she would love to pass it on to her son when she passes, she has decided instead to leave it to the future. The men who wore nice suits to cover their old tattoos explained it all to her whilst her son was out delivering foreign food to God knows who or what.
Through managing her estate, those men can help her build a real legacy.
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Special thanks to
@Comisario for his help with this one
