Frank Field: A necessary government information machine, corrupted by spin
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Independent Minds
Harold Wilson asserted that the Labour party was a moral crusade or it was nothing. The McBride affair has left Labour members looking at nothing. That is the reality check that McBride has wrought on the party.
The whole of the government's energy should be spent on governing now and building a programme from which, within and year, we will be seeking permission to rule for another five years. Far from helping sketch out a new roadmap, the McBride activities shine a searchlight on the paucity of the government's programme.
Week after week MPs have been turning up but with almost no serious work to do. There is the odd bill to be sure. But there is no legislative programme to speak of. Labour MPs are left staring into the abyss – that nothingness of Harold Wilson's statement. There is a wish amongst all sections of the PLP for the government to start governing. We wouldn't care too much whether the ideas were Blairite or non-Blairite, as long as we could give the impression of supporting a government that was using the next year to mark out why we should stay in office.
We have lived through an age of record public expenditure provision, but are now entering one of increasing cuts. There have been some beneficial results from this huge tax-payer largesse, but they in no way match up to what radicals predicted would be the outcome.
Have we been on the wrong track, and if so, what should now be our approach? Or is the task to look much more carefully at how each pound of tax-payers' money is spent so we get a bigger bang for our buck? Instead of this debate, we see the energy at the heart of No 10 going into trying to smear the opposition.
It is this contrast between how we should be behaving and what has been exposed that is the real killer. A necessary government information machine has been corrupted by a spin that seeks not to inform but control and, if needs be destroy. McBride sat on the Prime Minister's political War Cabinet. If this is the war the Prime Minister thinks the country wants he is in for a very rude awakening. In the meantime, Labour supporters are left bewildered and wondering what happened to the moral crusading side of our mission.
Poor old Labour party.
The author is Labour MP for Birkenhead; www.frankfield.co.uk
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Comments
The notion that all this will be resolved by Gordon Brown 'bringing in' team B, with him still at the head of it, is risible. This moral compass he has seems to only point at the next iceberg! Are we doomed to follow him to oblivion? Is our system of governance so rigid that nothing can be done to spare us from the paranoid Madness of PM G?
And any notion that the spinning genies released from these various odious bottles can be corked, much less unhired, is as daft as pretending nukes can be un-invented.
I admire your courage and honesty, two virtues which disqualify you from office in this rancid, venal and corrupt government.
You are a member of a select club of decent politicians who have been sidelined for having those virtues:-
Jim Prior, Ian Gilmour, Kate Hoey, Diane Abbot, Anne Widdecombe, David Davis, Tony Benn, Jack Straw.
Cameron et al CAN'T be as bad as this lot but I still doubt their ability to deal with the shambles they will inherit.
A government of national unity to include Cable, Clarke, Davis and yourself is my dream.
This is the man who accepted a 'donation' from Canatxx Energy Ventures who just happened - coincidentally you understand - to be having a spot of bother with Lancashire County Council getting planning permission to store gas in old salt pits under Preesall in Lancashire.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/p
The firm's previous record of excellence includes this explosion in Kansas:
http://www.geotimes.org/oct01/feature_k
Which might explain the concerns in the locality likely to play host to this project.
Frank: my admiration for a decent politician like yourself is tempered by the fact that there are too few of you to make a difference.
Your 'moral crusade' was hijacked by Blair.
I just wonder if you saw the degree of this corruption coming.When you were asked to think the unthinkable with reforms and then dumped,did you see the real heart of NuLabour....or did you hope that things would get better and you believed the Blair/Brown machine.
Other ex cabinet ministers are coming out with stories of how they were dealt with by the spin machine and all stepped away.The machine got stronger,more controlling and more nasty and nobody said/did anything......even the press did nothing as it was in their interests to keep the spin going.
Always thought you spoke a lot of sense.....any thoughts.
Unfortunately, the problem with New Labour is that it's full of career politicians. In itself not a bad thing, but because its leadership has operated using a Presidential style, this has ended up proving to be a huge weaknesses. During the Blair years I lost count of the number of times that he offered the ultimatum of "back me or sacke me" to the Party. And, invariably the career poodles rather than bring about change, chose instead to save him.
The same has essentially happened under Brown, but he's operated more like a political version of Ronnie Kray to get his way, using the Whips and back room deals to cling on to his ever diminishing power base. And, again, the career poodles, somewhat incredulously, have refused to reach out for change when its stared them in the face.
Given what the country has had to endure since 1997, I don't think in the future we're going to be seeing the term "moral crusade" and Labour Party being used in the same sentence, certainly not in any credible way. It'd be fair to say that - the tired blogging cliche - "morally bankrupt" is going to be sticking to New Labour - or what's left of Old Labour - for at least a generation.
And, as far as "road maps" are concerned, there's nothing like seeing one of these to get most people voting for anyone else but Labour.
I thank you
Firozali A. Mulla