Labour's two warring camps are ready to press the red self-destruct button

By Mary Ann Sieghart (THE TIMES, 12/05/06):

THE FIRST SIGN of a political party having a nervous breakdown is that everybody in it feels aggrieved. Each side is convinced that the other has behaved badly, and that the only appropriate response is to behave even worse. What follows is an escalation of aggression, increasingly in public, until voters are left bewildered and, ultimately, disgusted by the sight.

It happened in the last Major administration. Every time one minister said something provocatively Eurosceptic, up would pop Kenneth Clarke to counter it with something even more provocatively Europhile. Political journalists did not have to do any digging around for news: their phones would be continually buzzing with Tory MPs determined to denounce each other.

This is how the Labour Party looks now. “We’re pressing the self-destruct button,” admitted one former minister. “Do we believe we can snatch defeat from the jaws of victory? Sure!” The Blairites feel aggrieved because they believe that the Brown camp has been deliberately destabilising the Prime Minister. In response, Tony Blair gave big concessions this week: promising “ample” time for his successor to bed in, which has been widely assumed to mean a transition sometime next year, and a promise that he will endorse Gordon Brown for leader. “What more can he do?” asked an ally.

Yet still, the following morning, on GMTV, Mr Brown was virtually threatening to organise a coup like the one that unseated Margaret Thatcher unless Mr Blair named a date for his departure and shared it with “senior colleagues”. Downing Street is adamant that the Prime Minister has already spent many hours discussing with his Chancellor when and how he will depart office. Mr Brown can now be confident, apparently, that it will happen sometime next year. Why does that not satisfy him?

The Brownites claim that the lack of a date creates uncertainty and instability — to which Blairites retort that the only source of instability is the incessant calls for Mr Blair either to name a date publicly or to go now (the two are equivalent in Downing Street’s book). If Mr Brown wants a stable and orderly transition, he should tell his parliamentary supporters to shut up.

But the “ultras” on the Blairite side can’t resist joining the fray either. John Reid, the new Home Secretary, was at it over the weekend, denouncing Mr Blair’s critics as “old Labour dinosaurs”. He must have thought he was providing covering fire for the Prime Minister to maintain his position. So the concessions Mr Blair made on Monday came as a surprise.

A difference is emerging between the ultras — people such as Mr Reid, Tessa Jowell, Stephen Byers and Alan Milburn — and Downing Street. They want the Prime Minister to stay for as long as possible. He now concedes that this is not feasible.

They also want to force Mr Brown into a declaration that he will be as new Labour as Mr Blair. Ideally, he would agree publicly on a transitional programme of policy that was full of new Labour reforms. But, in the last resort, if such an agreement cannot be achieved, some are pressing Mr Reid to stand against him in a leadership contest: not as a quixotic attempt to win, which he wouldn’t, but as a way of ensuring that the Chancellor has to match any new Labour promises that his rival would make.

In such a contest, Mr Blair would be obliged to support Mr Brown. But his private advice to the Chancellor tallies with that of the ultras. He believes that the party’s only hope of beating David Cameron’s Tories is to be riotously new Labour, because that is where the voters are. When he goes, the only question is who will be the inheritor of new Labour. If Mr Brown does not take up the mantle, Mr Cameron surely will.

But what are these great new Labour reforms in the pipeline? Mr Blair always trots out pensions and the energy review as examples. It looks as if Mr Brown is now signing up to an agreement to link the basic state pension to earnings, albeit starting somewhat later than recommended in the Turner report. But this is hardly a new Labour reform: if anything, it smacks of old Labour. In the early days of this Government, it was the modernisers who opposed Barbara Castle’s attempts to re-establish the link.

And what is particularly new Labour about agreeing to build more nuclear power stations? Arguments about cost and disposal of waste and the threat from terrorists are pragmatic, not ideological. Most of the education and health reforms are already either on the statute book or nearly there. They merely have to be implemented. The only criticial decision remaining is whether to replace the Trident nuclear weapon system; and No 10 is not convinced Mr Brown is keen to push ahead with it. But that is a good reason to let Mr Blair do so and take the flak from the parliamentary party before Mr Brown takes over.

The Chancellor must see, however impatient he feels, that every success he wins at the hands of Mr Blair harms him and the party in the eyes of the public. Yes, he extracted a big concession this week, but at the cost of a six-point drop in the opinion polls as Labour looked divided, treacherous and incapable of governing in the interests of the country. If Mr Brown wants to become leader of a party doing well in the polls, he needs to display much more loyalty to the Prime Minister and his policies — and to persuade his acolytes to do the same.

“If the Kurds and Sunnis and Shias can form a government of national unity, it should not be beyond our wit to agree a programme for government in the Labour Party,” bewailed a Blairite to me, before going on to admit that relations between Mr Blair and Mr Brown are so soured that it may not be possible.

He might had added that civil war in Iraq is now an imminent prospect.