It turns out that Jack Straw was one of the “greybeards” who always advised, sagely, against an autumn election. Gordon Brown must now be kicking himself that he didn’t listen earlier to his Justice Secretary’s wise words of caution. It could all have been so different.
Hang on a minute. Isn’t this the same Jack Straw who indulged in the most shameless piece of electioneering of the whole Labour conference by spinning that the government would legislate to protect “have-a-go heroes”? His interview on Today the day after Brown’s “vote red, get blue” speech was part of a calculated shift to draw in Tory floating voters ahead of a snap poll. Apart from the toe-curling examples of Straw’s bravery in the face of street violence, it was an egregious act of authoritarian populism from a man who failed to propose any such legislation as home secretary between 1997 and 2001. One thing is certain: if Brown had decided to call a November election that, too, would have turned out to be Straw’s idea.
Before the fiasco of the election-that-never-was, Brown was credited with being the most cunning political animal in the Labour pack. But at times like this he looks like a pussycat compared to Straw, the supreme survivor of the new Labour project, who has spent his entire career reinventing himself. I have often wondered why no one has written a biography of Straw, considering how close he has been to the centre of the action for so long. Part of the problem for anyone considering the project is that his politics are so ill-defined.
His record: a young man hired as adviser by Barbara Castle for his “guile and low cunning”, he became a fashionably Eurosceptic leftist in the 1980s, but turned into an ardent new Labour cheerleader when the mood shifted. He was respon sible for making the case for an EU constitution, but then bounced Tony Blair into a referendum in April 2004 while his boss was on holiday. When first the French and then the Dutch voted against the proposed treaty, his glee in a call to Blair in June 2005 was such that the then prime minister is said to have put the phone down in disgust with the words, “What a tart.”
Straw is the man who invited the Islamist Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) into the heart of government and hung Denis MacShane out to dry when he dared suggest that British Muslims had a responsibility to root out terrorists. He later decided to assert his Enlightenment credentials by objecting to Muslim women covering their faces in his MP’s surgeries. He was a fierce opponent of electoral reform, dismissing Lord Jenkins’s proposals in 1998 as “ingenious” and “complex”. Now that several members of Brown’s inner circle are con sidering a move to the Alternative Vote system, Straw says he supported this option all along.
As foreign secretary, Straw was, of necessity, signed up to war in Iraq, but he fashioned for himself an ingenious get-out in case things went wrong. On the eve of war, when there was no realistic chance of turning back, he sent Blair a confidential memo suggesting that, after all, maybe Britain shouldn’t join the Americans in invading. This has allowed him to distance himself from a conflict in which he played an intimate role.
This most Janus-like of politicians has an almost uncanny ability to play the liberal and the authoritarian at the same time. He should be given serious credit for introducing the Freedom of Information Act and the Human Rights Act. But he has spent much of his time in government undermining the principles of both. As the NS has reported, he has blocked the release of the missing first draft of the allegedly “sexed-up” dossier on weapons of mass destruction. Despite a ruling by the Information Commissioner to release the document, it remains to this day locked in the Foreign Office while mandarins prepare to appeal the decision.
Straw was also foreign secretary when his department developed cosy relations with the MCB at home, and abroad undertook discreet dialogue with the Muslim Brotherhood, the banned Islamist group. Following publication in the NS and elsewhere of these disclosures, a Foreign Office official, Derek Pasquill, was charged under the Official Secrets Act.
Hot-headed youth
The split between the cabinet’s “Young Turks” and “greybeards” has been hugely overstated in recent days. The younger generation in cabinet has been bruised by accusations of poor judgement. “We were just providing information to the man who had to make the decision,” one told me. The real scandal is not that the likes of Ed Balls and Douglas Alexander became excited at the idea of crushing the Tories when they looked weak, it is that older members, who should have known better, did not have the gumption to make their voices heard long before the Labour conference. Where Margaret Thatcher famously had William Whitelaw (her “Willie”) and Blair had a whole range of older, wiser heads, including Brown himself, our new Prime Minister has no one but Alistair Darling, Geoff Hoon and Straw – none of whom has the authority to tell him what he doesn’t want to hear. As a former minister said: “If he was so sure he was right, why didn’t Jack do anything, or say anything, more publicly?”
Straw effortlessly made the leap from Blair to Brown just when it looked like his career might be on the slide. It is easy to forget that the man who acted as campaign manager for Brown’s leadership bid was a campaign manager for Blair 13 years earlier. There is no other senior figure in the Labour Party who would have been able to do both jobs.
There is already talk that Brown’s line-up is a mere “interim government” and that a reshuffle is in the offing. One sign of Brown breaking with the past would be to pension off Straw, but I suspect he will be around for some time to come. There is great uncertainty around the Labour Party, but there is one constant: Jack, as the saying goes, will always be alright.
Content from our partners
Related
