A long time in politics

By the time the next issue of The Spectator hits the news-stands, Tony Blair will have battled his way through his last EU summit; the Labour party will have elected a new leader and deputy leader; and Britain will have a new Prime Minister who will be busy forming his government. Harold Wilson’s over-quoted remark that a week is a long time in politics is, in this case, entirely apposite (Joseph Chamberlain’s version was that ‘there is no use looking beyond the next fortnight’).

Such intelligence as has seeped out of the Treasury suggests that Gordon Brown’s reshuffle will be wide and deep: but it should be stressed that planning such a reorganisation is very different from its execution. The departing Prime Minister was notoriously bad at reshuffles — who, including Margaret Beckett, would have guessed that she would end up as Foreign Secretary? — and it would be a welcome break from the Blair era if Mr Brown formed his government with more method and less madness. But as he will quickly discover, the methodical strategies of a Chancellor are not enough in No. 10. A Prime Minister must be preternaturally nimble, capable of making decisions in an instant and turning on a dime a thousand times a day.

Whether or not he mimics his first days in the Treasury with a coup de théâtre comparable to the granting of independence to the Bank of England, the new PM will need to offer swift and unambiguous reassurance to the public. He has not been elected by the voters, nor in a meaningful party contest: the first Prime Minister since Eden in 1955 to enter No. 10 in such circumstances, and the first Labour leader since Lansbury in 1931 to take the helm of his party unopposed.