We are about to see — or should be about to see — a dramatic generational change in British government.
I suspect it will be more important to the future of politics and the Labour Party than any of the supposed differences between Blairism and Brownism.
Of the 23 members of the present Cabinet, all but four are over 50 and 12 have passed their fifty-fifth birthdays. Although they have now been in power for a decade, they spent most of their political lives in Opposition.
Their careers were dominated by the fear that Labour would be out of office for ever. Even when they won an election, they didn’t really believe it could happen again.
As the late Roy Jenkins put it, Tony Blair, initially at least, behaved in government as though he were carrying a precious Ming vase, which he might drop and smash at any moment.
That explains the notorious spin, the desperation to avoid giving offence to the rich and powerful (particularly in the media), the obsession with keeping control, and the fuzziness of many domestic policies.
Gordon Brown, who is 56, shares that mindset. If anything, as his record at the Treasury shows, he is even more cautious, daring to raise taxes only in the small print.
But he has the opportunity to bring into his Cabinet men and women of a different outlook. The question is whether he will take the risk. His chances of winning the next election, I think, depend on the answer.
We know John Prescott and John Reid, both in their 60s, will leave the government. The changeover needs to go far beyond that. Those over-55s will be at least two years older by the next election. The government will be in danger of looking tired and grey.
But Brown may hesitate for a very simple reason: there isn’t a next generation of Labour talent. The Cabinet has only one minister aged between 42 and 50.
The picture in the junior ministerial ranks is similar. The explanation is that anyone in that age group would have started at university — and thus entered the formative years of their political development — between 1975 and 1983.
Those were Labour’s locust years. Although the party was in office until 1979, it presided over high inflation, economic crisis and union unrest, and eventually had to govern without a Commons majority. In Opposition, it made itself unelectable. The party was not an attractive proposition to youthful idealists who were serious about political power.
But anybody who went to university in the late 1980s would have found Labour on the road to recovery under Neil Kinnock, then a more inspirational leader than many now remember.
That explains why Labour, almost bereft of talented ministers in their mid- to late-40s, has an embarrassment of riches among those a few years younger: David Miliband, 41, Ed Balls, just 40, Ruth Kelly and Douglas Alexander, both 39, Yvette Cooper, 38, Ed Miliband and James Purnell, both 37, Andy Burnham and Liam Byrne, both 36.
None of these entered Parliament before 1997. They have never known Opposition. They are the first generation of Labour politicians in history to whom Labour seems the natural governing party.
They have no political memory of the travails and disappointments of the 1970s and early 1980s. Even if they lose an election in future, they will do so in the expectation of soon returning to office.
In other words, they will be far more deserving of the appellate ‘new’ than the Cabinet of 1997 was. They will not be looking over their shoulders at Labour’s past mistakes. They may not want to break dramatically with the Blair years but their instincts will surely be bolder. If they reorganise the NHS, they will stick with it. If they see inequalities of income and wealth, they will find a way of reducing them and will brazen out the protests from the Daily Mail. If they propose to decentralise, they will mean it.
Brown is almost certain to promote one or two of the under-42s, if only because there are few alternatives. Alas, his cautious instincts may keep most of them out of the Cabinet, at least until after the election. And there are indeed risks in promoting 30-somethings to positions where they can flounder under pressure, as Kelly did at the education department.
But the opinion polls suggest Brown’s own accession will not be enough to banish negative public memories of the Blair years, many of which derived from a sort of ministerial nervous tic about reviving the ghosts of ‘old Labour’.
Brown needs men and women around him who can put the past behind them. At worst, they will look a highly attractive team, combining experience with youth, if they have to fight an election from opposition in 2013.
