Time for a change

By Chris Cook

Gordon Brown’s fine and statesmanlike announcement has now started the race for the Labour leadership, and David Miliband is in every sense the front-runner. He certainly has quick reactions.

But there is still a very tricky negotiation for Labour to go through to reach a coalition agreement with the Lib Dems.

One of the positive aspects of the absence of a UK constitution is that it means it is possible to consensually arrive at simple and flexible ad hoc partnership agreements which would complement existing conventions and precedents.

Firstly, while Gordon Brown must necessarily be involved in the negotiation, I do not consider that he should be Prime Minister in the new government. However, there is a lot to say for him retaining a ‘consigliere’ cabinet role (eg Minister without Portfolio) during the current financial crisis, and during the transition to new governance takes place. One of the advantages of this approach is that it frees up one of the top jobs.

Secondly, to give the PM post to any senior Labour politician would of course give him/her an unfair advantage in the upcoming leadership election. It seems to me that the requirement is for a ‘caretaker’ PM – who is not Gordon Brown – in what is essentially a ‘non-executive’ role, whereby decision making is delegated to cabinet members individually and collectively.

I therefore suggest – developing an idea of Will Hutton’s in the Observer – that the really smart move for Labour here would be for Nick Clegg to be ‘caretaker’ PM in a coalition, and this would solve a great many problems. As Hutton suggested, the coalition would be time-limited: it could also end with an election under the voting arrangements – which could be ‘no change’, if that is the public’s choice – which follow a referendum to take place in the next year or so.

In the meantime, an additional top level cabinet vacancy is made available – which will help negotiations with the Lib Dems – and Ministers will not only have more decision-making power, but will be subject to meaningful collective oversight from a cabinet which is no longer a talking shop at best and a cipher at worst.

One of the outcomes of such a partnership approach would be that the current senior Labour and Lib Dem politicians – including those not currently in ministerial office because of differences with Gordon Brown – could actually be better judged by their achievements in office during what will inevitably be a testing and turbulent time.

I think that while everyone has been almost exclusively focused on how we vote to put politicians in power, we have paid little attention to how they exercise power once they attain it. Our governance is lacking in checks and balances on our executive, and the dangers of an elective dictatorship – open to abuse by the misguided, unscrupulous or cynical – have been all too visible. So the current position is that a UK cabinet has collective responsibility, but little power, since that is wielded by the PM with few restraints.

It has been said that the Tories are the party of Property; that Labour is the party of Class; while the Lib Dems are the party of Power, in that their principal concern lies in the way that power is exercised by those who govern us.

I think that a coalition government led by Nick Clegg and the emergent Labour leader should not stop at reform of the voting system, but could be expected also to address reform of the system of Cabinet governance itself. This is particularly the case at perhaps the most sensitive and turbulent time of transition seen for a great many years, when the burden of the necessary decisions should not all fall solely on one – fallible – person.

I believe that Labour should therefore make Clegg an offer he cannot refuse: Prime Minister – but not as we know it.