An edited version of this article appeared in The Independent on Sunday, 22 October 2006
I’m afraid that the reality is simply that I have lost confidence in Her Majesty’s Government. This is all very sad. The opportunity of 1997 was as big as that of 1945. Under Neil Kinnock and John Smith Labour had prepared itself for power as a modern Social Democratic party. Tony Blair brought extra gloss but we were already set to win. New Labour has done a lot of rewriting of history.
In my view the ‘97-2000 government did reasonably well. We implemented many of the policies promised under the Kinnock/Smith policy reviews, including the minimum wage, devolution for Scotland and Wales and a stronger commitment to International Development. The spin started early and caused irritation but overall it was a reasonable labour government.
The rot set in with the second term. Blair had become more confident and did not want his legacy to be one of spin and focus groups. We now know, thanks to the publication of the Downing Street memo and other leaks, that he promised Bush that he would support regime change in Iraq in the spring of 2002 and “the intelligence and the facts were being fixed around the policy.” After I resigned from the Government in 2003, I assumed there would be great debate in parliament and party over Iraq in order to hold Blair to account and start to put things right. But I soon found that the system is broken, and this was not to be. All Bills were guillotined. In the big debates, speeches were limited to seven minutes and no one was listening. Under Thatcher we had been able to use the weapon of time to squeeze concessions. Guillotines made this impossible and massively weakened the Commons. Ruthless use of the power of the whips crushed the spirit of the Parliamentary Labour Party.
Iraq and all its consequences was the biggest blow, but then came top up fees and the unwillingness to consider other options like a graduate tax. I was seeing more and more asylum seekers at my advice bureau and it became clear that the system was a mixture of cruelty and incompetence. The endless targets, initiatives and reorganisation in the health and education systems were undermining much of the good the extra money was doing. Labour used to be a party of progressive thinking on criminal justice, but increasingly the policy was dictated by the tabloids and the prison population grew ever larger, as did the costs and the reoffending of those who were imprisoned. Then came plans for mega casinos to regenerate poor areas. And even more seriously, control orders and proposals for 90-day detention. The rhetoric on the war on terror was inane and the policies exacerbated the problem. Increasingly I voted against the government and was saddened, as the Labour Conference became a rally for the leader. The party as well as parliament failed to correct what was wrong.
My unhappy relationship with the whips started early. Hilary Armstrong started making threats early on and said I must not say that we were spying on Kofi Anan or that Tony had deceived the country into war. Because I would not agree, I increasingly became a pariah. I considered not fighting the 2005 election, but friends were sure the party would fight back and convinced me that I should stay. I fought the election on an explicit platform that the government had done some good things and made terrible mistakes and that I would support what was good and oppose when necessary. But sadly there was no fight back. Gordon Brown was increasingly diminished and was forced to say that he supported all that Blair had done. And then Brown supported the commitments to a renewal of Trident and nuclear power without any serious debate. It seemed nothing would change.
My trouble with the Whips was renewed when I spoke at a Greenpeace meeting on Trident at the Hay book festival in 2006. There were 800 people there and the mood was predominantly against renewal. But someone said it was clear the government had made a decision so it did not matter what we thought. I then said there was a high likelihood that the next election would produce a hung parliament, which could give us a changed electoral system, then all such questions could be reopened. The Chief Whip then wrote to say I was not allowed to say this because it would mean Labour MPs losing seats. She was unmoved by the argument that electoral reform had been a manifesto policy in 97 and that it was the government record not my advocacy of electoral reform that was endangering Labour seats.
There was then a stream of stories in the press to say I was to be expelled from the party, have the whip withdrawn or be punished in some other ways. So then I decided I would not stand in the next election and thought that with just a couple of years to run the Whips would leave me alone. But while I was Addis Ababa two weeks ago to help an NGO in trouble, I got media calls about a public rebuke from the Chief Whip. And on my return there were threatening letters saying that informing the Whips of my visit did not mean I had permission to go. So it seemed that they planned to prevent me speaking at the lectures and meetings I have committed to and that a stream of rebukes was inevitable. And so finally the elastic snapped. This is not a Labour government. And I have no confidence in it. The right thing to do is resign the whip and sit as an independent Labour MP. After 23 years in the Commons and 36 in the party I have decided to use my last couple of years to speak freely and accept invitations to speak outside parliament without the Whips’ permission.
Many of my constituents have spent the weekend telling me I should not go, but when I say I will be there until the next election they are more content. Our political system is in trouble. The Middle East is burning. And as Lester Brown says, we need major change in the way we live to rescue “a planet under stress and a civilisation in trouble.” I feel very sad that my relationship with my party has ended up like this. But electoral reform is the key to fixing our politics and changing our country. And there is no point in being in parliament if you are not allowed to say what you think.
Clare Short MP
