One of the missed opportunities of my life occurred late in 1974 when the then Conservative leader, Edward Heath, announced an election for the party leadership.
The bookmakers were offering 50/1 against Margaret Thatcher. I had a hunch about her but, alas, I didn’t have enough confidence in it to place the bet.
According to Ladbrokes, the 50/1 outsider for the forthcoming Labour leadership contest is Charles Clarke. But I shall not be backing him, nor Alan Johnson, the 8/1 second favourite.
Short of Gordon Brown being caught harbouring an asylum seeker, the result of the leadership election is as certain as one of those polls that Saddam Hussein used to hold. The Labour Party is a sentimental old thing and, whether it thinks Brown the best candidate or not, it will vote for him because the poor man has waited an awfully long time and it would be a shame to disappoint him.
But what are the odds on Brown surviving for, say, two years? That is a different matter. There is only one precedent for a prime minister succeeding to office after so long as the heir apparent. Anthony Eden, Winston Churchill’s designated successor from 1942, finally got the job in 1955.
In less than two years, he was out, disgraced by the disastrous Suez adventure. A man who would have been remembered as one of the great foreign secretaries was instead reviled as the worst PM since Lord North.
Could Brown, at present established as a great chancellor, suffer a similar fate?
In some ways, it is Blair, not Brown who resembles Eden, most obviously in his reckless plunge into an unnecessary war. Like Blair, Eden was light on intellect and strong on personal charm, and his appeal, too, ran across party lines. But the Brown-Eden parallels are intriguing nonetheless.
Like Brown, Eden’s claims preceded those of the man he eventually succeeded: in April 1939, 38% of the public backed him to replace Neville Chamberlain against only 7% for Churchill.
Eden’s reputation, like Brown’s, was for hard work, obsession with detail, control-freakery and lack of small talk. His experience, like Brown’s, was confined almost entirely to a single department of state. And his relations with his leader, at first very close, became ever more embittered as Churchill refused to stand aside and policy differences grew.
On his last night in Downing Street, Churchill said: ‘I don’t think Anthony can do it.’ By then, I suspect, Eden shared that view. He had waited so long that self-doubt had eaten into his soul. When he took over, he scarcely changed the Cabinet.
Newspapers called for ‘the smack of firm government’. So Eden tried to prove he was up to the job — not least to himself — by acting as a strong leader in the Churchill mould.
In fact, he went further than Churchill ever did, because Eden was always there to restrain him. Once Eden was in charge, the delicate balance between the two men that had sustained the country through a war and the Tories through six years of opposition and four of peacetime government, was fatally disturbed.
Eden dared not appear soft. Just as Labour is now desperate to bury memories of Old Labour, so in the 1950s the Tories were desperate to bury those of pre-war appeasement.
I already see Brown taking a path similar to Eden’s. He has backed nuclear power stations, spoken up for public service reform and supported the replacement of Trident.
These are attempts to distance himself from the Left and to show he can be as Blairite as Blair. I wouldn’t be surprised soon to hear a Brown pledge to keep troops in Iraq.
What might be his equivalent of Suez when he comes to power? It is impossible to predict, but I expect Brown to make a dramatic gesture to show conclusively that he isn’t Old Labour.
It might be the abolition of national pay bargaining in the public sector or an end to pensions at 60 for government employees. It might even be the end of inheritance tax.
Any of these would be bolder, and more New Labour, than anything done under Blair, at least on the domestic front. They are the sorts of things that Brown stopped Blair doing, partly because of the enormous political risks.
The story of New Labour is the story of the relationship between Brown and Blair. Remove one leg of that partnership and the whole balance changes; perhaps there can’t be a New Labour any more, even if Brown wants it to continue.
You’ve heard of chaos theory. Don’t bother asking your bookmaker for the odds on the next Labour leader. Ask for the odds on the one after that.
