Published: November 19th 2010 - at 9:26 am

One of the worst political predictions of recent years was made by Ed Balls on the morning that Gordon Brown became leader of the Labour Party.

We all got up early that Sunday morning to hold a Fabian fringe before the main event – where Balls expressed relief that Labour had finally been “liberated” from the compelling media and political prism of the Blair v Brown rivalry.

If only it had been true.

Blair-Brown tensions remained a dominant frame for discussion of the Brown government. These were ultimately stabilised as a new Brown-Mandelson rapprochement restored New Labour to its natural unsteady state as a duopoly project in Blair-Brownism, from 1994 to 2007, and again from 2008 to 2010.

Three years on, his Brownite history did a good deal to scupper Ed Balls’ chances of getting a competitive run in the Labour leadership contest.

That Balls ended his unsuccessful campaign with an enhanced reputation, even with many political opponents was largely because he did not run as a Brown continuity candidate, instead establishing his own voice, and reputation as a hammer of the Coalition. (This was one reason why the Ed Miliband campaign quickly discarded the early idea of explicitly pitching a “unity” candidacy as their central narrative).

All of that makes some of the comments quoted Dan Hodges’ feature in this week’s New Statesman suggesting the party may be on the brink of a new round of factional civil war – Ed versus Ed, ex-Brownite versus ex-Brownite no less – very odd indeed.

“Ed Miliband’s team are terrified of Ed Balls and Yvette”, says one Brownite insider. “They think they’re going to come and try to kill him. And the reason they think that is ­because they will.”

That may be good copy – but it makes no political sense at all.

Whoever may have spoken to Hodges, and from whatever motives, they could hardly have devised comments better designed to be damaging to their supposed beneficiaries (were they to be taken seriously).

This – mainly the obsession with violent killing metaphors – strongly suggests the secret sources are blokes, and indeed blokes’ blokes at that.

I rather suspect Yvette Cooper might want to be a million miles away from such hyper-macho posturing.

Indeed, this may be the daftest point in the full (print edition) piece.

“They’re already organising,” says one shadow minister. “Yvette has been contacting all the teams identifying one member to be her link person. The cover is she’s doing it as part of the women’s brief. But everyone knows she’s building a base.”

Does anyone seriously think its a bad idea to have a link on gender equality in every shadow team? You can’t get much more Old Politics than that.

There isn’t necessarily anything wrong with party pressure groups and informal campaigns pressing on issue or another, or indeed with strands of party opinion and ‘factions’, if factionalism can be avoided.

One good example is Compass and Progress are showing they can work together in campaigning for Labour supporters to vote Yes for the Alternative Vote.

So its not quite death to the factions.

But let’s leave the assassination fantasies to the RSC. And you can certainly forget about a party civil war when nobody has any footsoldiers ready to fight one.

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A longer version is at Next Left

About the author
Sunder Katwala is a regular contributor to Liberal Conspiracy. He is the director of British Future, a think-tank addressing identity and integration, migration and opportunity. He was formerly secretary-general of the Fabian Society.
· Other posts by Sunder Katwala


Story Filed Under: Blog ,Labour party ,Westminster

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