Sunday Herald Business Leader
Tony Blair at least had the grace to apologise to the British electorate for the chaos of the Labour leadership jostling over the last few days when he made his statement on Thursday.
Blair, as a politician who has won three elections, knows how the public does not like a split party. But more than that, the question we must ask is: how high was the quality of government we have all been receiving over the past few frenetic days? How much thoughtful consideration and serious work has actually been going on in the upper reaches of government in the last few days? Precious little we would think.
But the problems go much further back than that, however, if the evidence of former government advisers speaking on the Channel 4 30 Minutes programme broadcast on Friday evening is to be believed.
Obviously, we must pause to consider whether the witnesses are speaking out of anger over lost jobs or policy suggestions defeated.
But if there is anything to what they said, then it is a serious case to answer and Blair and Brown should think carefully about it now.
Ros Altmann suggests that part of the problem over the government’s proposals on the question of pension reform – an issue crucial for all our futures – lies in the Brown-Blair rivalry.
If that is true, we are not well-served by our current government.
As we have argued before that Blair’s bringing in of Adair Turner and his colleagues to work on a commission to come up with a plan for the future of our pension was a very good move. What they produced was, on the whole, a good scheme. The problem has lain more in what government has done, or not done, since it received the commission’s report.
If the evidence of the advisers is correct – and pause to remember that they were mainly No 10 rather than No 11 advisers, and may be biased in that way – they lay the blame more at Brown’s door than Blair’s.
We need good government. We need careful thinking and well-designed policy, well implemented, to solve issues such as the UK’s pensions problem.
It does not appear that that is what we have received.
Now that a deal has been done between the two men – although the problems has more often seemed to be with their respective camps rather than the two individuals themselves – we hope that a corner can be turned.
It can only be hoped that Blair and Brown will now get on with running the country, managing the government and the party. It can be hoped that they will even at this late stage deal better with the pensions issue.
If they do that, they may have earned the right to continue to govern. If not, then the answer lies in the voters’ hands.The economy is too important to play second fiddle to politician’s egos.
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