In previous editions we brought you two brothers and an additional Ed. We now look, finally, at the also-rans in the Labour leadership contest. Here is Andy Burnham, Mr Swine Flu himself, who predicted that up to 65,000 Britons would die last winter of the virus. In the end there were 300 deaths.
And here is the sole woman in the race, Dianne Abbott, tv partner of Michael Portillo.
In a recent piece about drink and politics, Kenneth Roy quoted a well-known story about an exchange between Winston Churchill and the Labour backbencher Bessie Braddock.
‘Winston, you are drunk,’ complained Bessie Braddock. ‘Bessie, you are ugly, but tomorrow I shall be sober,’ replied Churchill.
A reader, Hamish Fraser, claimed that it was not Bessie Braddock to whom Churchill directed this insult, but Lady Astor.
Lachie Munro now adds to the confusion:
It was Bessie Braddock; Lady Astor was ‘If I was married to you Winston I’d put poison in your coffee’. As Leslie Stevens once said: ‘No good story is quite true.’
For biographical reference:
whoswhoinscotland.com
For lively discussion of current politics:
scotlandquovadis.net
For intelligent comment on Scottish literature:
scottishreviewof books.org
The notorious Cock Bridge to Tomintoul road
Photograph by Islay McLeod
R D Kernohan
Caricature by Bob Smith
British party conferences haven’t recently been what they were. Perhaps they never were as important as those attending them liked to think or journalists, eager to justify their high season of reciprocal hospitality, sometimes made out.
But this is the most promising season for a while. For all parties are coming to terms with the unpredicted and the unpredictable. All are prey to doubts, discontents, and rancorous rumblings which should ensure the conferences are more than government victory rallies or opposition protest meetings. There’s a sporting chance of good in-fighting among the Lib-Dems, bursts of old time reaction among untamed Tories, and lively echoes round the hall of the Labour recriminations hitherto exchanged in print and interviews.
Even the opening fixture in Liverpool will matter, for the Liberals are as important as they have always wanted to be, though not in the way they hoped. In 1963 Jo Grimond, the best deputy prime minister we never had, booked his place in the rhetorical history of party conferences by declaring that he would ‘march his troops towards the sound of gunfire’. This year there will be crossfire and maybe some muffled explosions.
Inevitably the media will quiver with expectation to see which Liberal ministers contradict their Tory colleagues or each other. Vince Cable will be under textual scrutiny, even though his resignation seems indefinitely deferred while he wrestles with Royal Mail. We shall have jaded metaphors about singing from the same hymn-sheet and keen ears eager for sour notes from a quartet of ex-leaders.
But this will be both the most important conference and the one entitled to most sympathy and understanding. A year ago most Labour people feared their next conference would be a wake and sensible Tories thought it quite likely they would be governing in a hung parliament. But the idea that Liberals would be in a Tory-led coalition was unmentionable, almost unthinkable. Even in the perceptive Scottish Review the notion didn’t hesitantly surface until four days before polling day – which was five days ahead of most of the media. If the media were surprised, the kind of Lib-Dem who goes to the conference was surely and understandably shocked.
On the morning after the election Nick Clegg, even more than David Cameron, had to recognise the force of Harold Macmillan’s insistence that the great challenges in politics come from events: ‘Events, dear boy, events’.
Nothing could demonstrate more clearly the irrelevance in real politics of much that is affirmed at party conferences. Nothing could more clearly vindicate the Tory doctrine, later claimed by New Labour, that the role of party conferences is to advise, encourage, occasionally warn, and learn to follow the twists of a party line. The crucial relationships in British politics are between party leaders and their MPs and within their inner or shadow cabinets; and the most important decisions are often in face of the unpredictable. On the morning after the election Nick Clegg, even more than David Cameron, had to recognise the force of Harold Macmillan’s insistence that the great challenges in politics come from events: ‘Events, dear boy, events’.
Next week Mr Clegg will have to cope with some very troubled Liberals and well-founded anxieties about the future course of his party, but it will be a less testing challenge than the sequence of events he faced in May: TV triumph, electoral setback, and coalition compromise.
Labour’s Manchester conference will be less important than the Liverpool one, though probably more fun than in Brown’s day. We shall all want to see how (or even whether) Blair, Brown, and Mandelson turn up, though the comments most deserving analysis may come from Alistair Darling. But the nearest thing to a real thrill will be the eve-of-conference discovery (unless every commentator and pollster is wrong) of which Metropolitan Miliband, new-edition New Labour or new Old Labour, is to lead the opposition. I doubt if it matters. Poses struck during the deadly-dull campaign may not have much bearing on problems facing a parliamentary leader amid sound and fury from union and other extra-parliamentary opposition to ‘Tory cuts’. Whoever wins will be worried in case some new-age Scargill emerges to stir things up and mess them up.
But Labour conferences are usually fun (for others) after a defeat. Labour is especially vulnerable to a virus which threatens all parties after a bad result, and in a mild form, may even gives David Cameron trouble this year after a good one: the call to go back to basics, old party dogmas, and the inclinations of ‘core supporters’. However it’s Labour whose repertoire offers the best medley of nostalgic laments and old-time revival hymns.
But, though I look forward to some occasional effervescence, I have one serious anxiety about all three conferences.
R D Kernohan is a writer and broadcaster
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