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Jon Cruddas – A dangerous mind

June 19, 2012 10:51 am

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There a very few things in politics that are genuinely dangerous. A cover up perhaps. Or a blatant lie. But these are things that politicians do to themselves. They are mistakes that are sown and reaped. They can be avoided.

Sometimes opponents have attributes that are dangerous. A winning smile. A way with words. The common touch. Flair. But there’s one attribute in opponents that politicians should fear above all.

Not giving a toss.

That’s something Jon Cruddas has in spades, as he made abundantly clear in his interview with the Observer on Sunday. If he thinks Ed Miliband isn’t serious about changing the country, he’ll walk away. Not in a fit of temper (I hope), but because he’s not interested in jobs or the other baubles that so often seem to interest politicians. He has persistently turned down the opportunity to enter the ministerial and shadow ministerial ranks. He decided against running for Labour leader, balking at the idea he might become Prime Minister.

And perhaps surprisingly for a politician married to a politician, Cruddas has the much sought after “hinterland”. Take him out of the Westminster bubble and he’ll go fishing, or live in the house he’s building on the West coast of Ireland. That’s quite a contrast with most modern politicians, who look like they’d be unable to breathe outside of the rarified wood panelled confines of SW1.

So why does this make Cruddas dangerous?

Because he will feel free to say what he wants and not worry about the consequences. He can upset the Daily Mail and won’t give a toss. He can challenge the party, and won’t be scared of the backlash.

In years gone by, politics had no shortage of people who didn’t give a toss, who just wanted to get things done, who put aside personal ambition for party and public. Wise old heads, on their way down from their peak, would take the brickbats and accept the knocks to get things done. Now only a few (Ken Clarke springs to mind) are willing to take on that role. Despite being nowhere near the end of his career, Jon Cruddas has effectively taken on that role anyway.

He has chosen to be dangerous.

Good on him.

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  • Dr What

    They said much the same thing about Iain Duncan Smith when David Cameron appointed him Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. In his case it was 100% true. Smith has turned out to be deadly.

    • treborc1

       Deadly or brain dead.

      • Winston_from_the_Ministry

        Bit insensitive towards those in a vegetative state isn’t it Robert?

        • treborc1

           I would not go that far with IDS

          • Jack Daw

            Or insult any member of the vegetable kingdom by making such a comparison either.

          • treborc1

            true I apologize, my  carrots seem insulted

          • Jack Daw

            At least you know your onions.

    • Jack Daw

      This is true.

      Politicians triumph as far as evil doing goes by a mixture of lies and public ignorance of what the consequence of a political policy is. Take the benefit cap for example. Sounds fair right? Benefits being capped at £500 a week for both single and dual parent families alike so that no family, whatever and however complicated its circumstances, can receive more in benefits than if they were working? Thing is ministers neglected to point out is that families IN WORK earning £500.00 a week ARE also entitled to claim Child Benefit, Child Tax Credit and if they live in a high rent area, Local Housing Allowance (Housing Benefit) . But that doesn’t matter does it when everybody, including Ed Miliband and Liam Byrne judging by their previous speeches and articles, hates and aspires to punish benefit claimants by driving them into poverty and misery.

      Whether Cruddas turns out to be a different kind of politician is moot.

      He is after all a very close friend of heinous James Purnell.

      • Quiet_Sceptic

        Since when did £26k a year in after-tax income equate to poverty and misery?

        • Jack Daw

          Well, what about a bereaved widow struggling to bring up seven children, two of whom are disabled, and look after a mother-in-law with advanced Altzheimer’s disease when the cheapest house you can find which can accommodate your family costs £1,000 per month?

        • Wu Cheng-en

          If we limited, say, how much healthcare a person could receive to the average amount of healthcare needed by most people currently alive in the UK nobody would be able to have a heart, liver or kidney transplant coupled with years worth of anti-rejection drugs, care and treatment afterwards or any similarly expensive surgery or similar. Receipt of benefit should be based on NEED not capped based on earnings possible for an AVERAGE family because families in need are not necessarily average in respect to their need any more than the transplant patient is average in respect to his or her procedure.

          The benefit cap as is strips the benefit system of its ability to cope with extraordinary need. 

          This is a bad thing.

  • john p Reid

    I’m not sure if this An accurate view, but to Not care if He upsets the party maybe admirable, But he’s got to be able to show he’s got smthing to show for it, Radical ideas Smoe hat were in the 2005 and 2010 Manifesto’s that aren’t talked about, the living wage changing the abortion laws in Northern Irelands, there’s even some ideas from 1983 that are more relevant now than ever, whether upsetting the party means accepting as a party we are millions in debt and that Unison won’t be able to bail us out forever.  but Even If we can say it’s not the economy that’ll be the 2015 Issue, we still have to have ideas relative to the lives of people in buiding their lives in the future.

  • Dave Postles

    No, it’s alarming.  He professed in that interview an intention to recruit Purnell, Blair and MiliD to input into the policy review.  To many folk, that mere statement will be anathema.  The entire interview was negated by that single comment.  

    • treborc1

      We now have three different labour parties, we have labour England, labour Scotland and labour Wales.

      In Wales we are talking about this… and we do not need Cruddas.

      http://www.vaughangething.co.uk/policy-group-to-explore-living-wage-for-wales/

    • http://twitter.com/mistyblulabour dave stone

      I read that as an indication that the door was open to Purnell and co. If they want to come in  and participate (not take over) then fair enough. But if they don’t then they exclude themselves and shouldn’t bother with sniping from the sidelines.

      • treborc1

        Every party has people who are basically lapdogs for the leader, Welfare reforms had to have a Minister and Purnell was desperate, Freud and his group needed  the type of politician who had no real ability just a mouth piece, so politicians get away with it for years before being found out, people like Madleson Purnell even Brown.

  • AlanGiles

    Am I the only one who thinks that there is less to Mr Cruddas than meets the eye?

    • http://twitter.com/mistyblulabour dave stone

      Perhaps we can’t expect perfection but he’s a mega-improvement on his predecessor!

      • treborc1

         Maybe of course he’s keeping his powder dry at the moment in 2014, I suspect we will see where Miliband is going

    • treborc1
  • Cari_esky

    Labour need toughness.  It needs people not to give a toss about The Daily Mail or The Suns attitude.  It needs to get tough on bread and butter issues such as housing, tax avoidance/evasion, the lack of jobs that have been blighting many areas of the country for far to long.  Radical ideas for a changed society for the better.  If Thatcher could do what she did for her side then someone in Labour can do it for our side.  
    If it means bringing in Purnell and people in the same mould as Tony Benn then do it.  Most Labour voters don’t care about internal conflicts, what they want is action.  

    • treborc1

      The unemployed could receive up to 70 per cent of previous earnings for up
      to six months – and free childcare. To pay for all it, we should cut
      back on those benefits – free bus passes, free TV licences, the winter
      fuel allowance – that many, not least the well off, do not value. Even
      universal child benefit, Purnell says, should no longer be considered
      sacred. Alongside this, he argues, we should reassert the contributory
      principle by, for instance, ensuring that those who pay in receive a
      higher pension than those who do not.

      So do not be born disabled then.

      • Jocelyn

        “… free bus passes, free TV licences, the winter
        fuel allowance…”

        All of these benefits go to pensioners these days don’t they?

        So under Purnell’s latest folly you’d get more benefits and free childcare for six month if you lose your job temporarily although when you lose your job permanently when you retire you have to stay at home (no bus pass) in the freezing cold (no winter fuel allowance) and twiddle your thumbs (no free TV license). 

        Yep. 

        That plan has got James Purnell’s greasy fingerprints all over it! 

        • treborc1

          Totally agree, problem is of course does Cruddas and Eagle agree with Purnell, when I worked with a charity, we wrote a letter to Eagle about fuel prices going up and the increases in benefits  did not keep up, she wrote back instead of moaning about what you can afford or cannot afford, maybe it would be better if you put as much effort into finding a Job, anyway the price of gas and electricity, use your DLA and stop moaning.

          I suspect we will see a review of policies a dam sight closer to Progress then labour.

      • GKar

        If Purnell is going to become a latter day Robin Hood somebody should tell the idiot that it’s the rich he’s supposed to rob to give to the poor not the aged and the elderly. Blimey. You’d think he’d know that wouldn’t you? I blame his lack of moral fibre, compassion and decency on being privately educated in France myself. 

  • Bill Lockhart

    The implication that upsetting the Daily Mail and not worrying about it is somehow the act of a  courageous carefree maverick is simply laughable. Every politican left of  Mussolini upsets the Daily Mail, which is able to do precisely nothing about it given that it’s readers are credulous and querulous old ladies who vote Tory anyway.  Nobody gives a toss about upsetting the Daily Mail.
    Mark has been spending too long in the political bubble: to reiterate, British politicians aren’t brave, or even “brave”.

    • Brumanuensis

      Someone should have told Gordon Brown, who seemed obsessed with winning Dacre’s approval. 

      • treborc1

         Beat me to it, to many of the labour party saw the Daily Mail as a  gauge of whether it was doing good or bad in it’s eyes.

        • GKar

          I prefer the Sun. Even bigger boobs in the Sun than in the Shadow Cabinet itself!

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Paul-Barker/1546990341 Paul Barker

    Depend how you read his tosslessness, you could say that he likes spouting  but not taking responsibility for his ideas.

    • Jocelyn

      What ideas?

  • http://www.facebook.com/siobhan.omalley.737 Siobhan O’Malley

    “Cruddas says he will be knocking on the doors of David Miliband and James Purnell in coming weeks to ask them to play their part. He talks confidently of “reforming the band”, by which he means enrolling the biggest New Labour beasts, including Tony Blair, behind project Ed.”

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/jun/16/jon-cruddas-mp-labour?newsfeed=true

    Nuff said.

    • Jack Daw

      So there was no point in Ed Miliband becoming leader of the Party after all?

      • James

        Or of being born at all it seems to me.

      • treborc1

         Could be, we do not know yet, only an election will tell

    • AlanGiles

      I am surprised Crudds is so naive. Like many right-wingers in Labour they still have this dream that if we can put the clock back 15 years, all will be well – we will all forget the lies, the greed, the decit, the cronyism and most especially the wars, and it will be as if the last decade never happenedf.

      I am only surprised Crudds doesn’t attempt to bring Stephen Byers, Pat Hewitt, Geoffrey Hoon, John Hutton and Alan Milburn back too then the illusions would be complete.

      I honestly believe that these people have forgotten just how genuinely glad the British publis and many Labour supporters were to see Blair go in June 2007 – have the forgotten the genuine sighs of relief.

      I suspect Blair himself knew thi, and realised if he carried on he would eventually be thrown out like Mrs Thatcher was, and his pride made him jump before he was pushed. I suspect Blair thinks distance lends enchantment and because Gordon Brown wasn’t an overwhelming success, he would be welcomed back by the country. I really don’t think this is true. He, D Miliband and Purnell, especially, are a reminder of the sleazy past, with all the defrauding on expenses.

    • ROB SHEFFIELD

      “Cruddas says he will be knocking on the doors of David Miliband and James Purnell in coming weeks to ask them to play their part. He talks confidently of “reforming the band”, by which he means enrolling the biggest New Labour beasts, including Tony Blair, behind project Ed.”

      Sensible guy- Cruddas is also not one to countenace for a second the nonce-sense being spouted by the sectarian left regarding Progress.

      Happy Days !!

      • Fonzie

        Happy Days was cancelled in 1984.

  • Solange Chat

    If Cruddas is so bereft of original ideas that he needs to consult somebody as pernicious and poisonous as James Purnell why the heck was a man with a vacuum like that between his ears trusted with Labour’s Policy Review in the first place? Liam Byrne goes and Jon Cruddas arrives. Quite possibly a case of frying pan into the fire it seems to me.

  • Baron Fraud

    I like Jon Cruddas. I like his stripe. We can do business together.

  • PaulHalsall

    Cruddas friendship for Purnell and Blue Labour still confuses me.

    Although she is not perfect, I prefer Dianne Abbott .Meanwhile, I do think Ken Clarke has some decent, if patrician, instincts.  I quite like Lynne Featherstone, and I wish Vince Cable would join us.IDS is interesting. Much of the welfare change is disgusting, but so far almost all of it is a matter of implementing Purnell’s decisions.  IDS at least seems to have more empathy with those on benefits (inc. me) than Purnell did, and some of his policies make sense.But it is Gove who is doing the most longterm damage of all the current ministers.

  • Daniel Speight

    I read the interview in The Observer and have to say I’m hopeful. Maybe he can discover Labour’s roots again and lead us back to the path of social democracy, but as someone else said, he is a very reluctant messiah.

  • Jocelyn

    So Freud told Purnell what to do and Purnell will tell Cruddas what to do…

    Why not simply cut out the middle men and stick with Iain Duncan Smith?

  • James

    So Jon Cruddas wants to enlist his pal James Purnell’s help as per Labour’s policy review, eh? 

    Proverbs 26:11 As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool repeats his folly.

  • Wu Cheng-en

    Why consult James Purnell again? Everything this man has been associated with has ended as a train wreck. Why on earth would anybody want to seek advice from a person who has single-handedly  caused so much misery and harm to others and cost the country a fortune to pick up the pieces strewn in his wake after he spat the dummy and walked away from an already sinking ship? I just don’t get it. I really don’t understand it at all.

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