Biscuitgate won’t decide the election – but Gordon still might need a lucky break

By Paul Richards

Governing is like riding a bike. You have to maintain the momentum to keep going. Slow down, and you wobble and fall off. Tony Blair understood the need for setting a Bolt-like pace in government. The first and second terms of Labour were characterised by furious flurries of announcements, initiatives and ideas. Some, like Sure Start, Asbos, or classroom assistants stuck, and changed the pattern of British society. Others, such as spot fines for yobs, didn’t.

Blair took decisions. Often he took decisions in his pants before breakfast, and communicated them to a waiting aide before most of us were awake. By breakfast, the decision was being transmitted through Whitehall and ministers knew what to do. In the regular ‘stock-takes’ for departmental officials and ministers, Blair would give the impression of being the best informed person in the room. At the couple I attended when a health special adviser, Blair gave senior officials an intellectual work-out over some aspect of health service reform that they will never forget.

When Prime Ministers take too long to take decisions, or when the decision is communicated by aides in a way which leaves room for interpretation, the result is a government that looks like it is wobbling. The pace of modern government doesn’t allow time for drawn-out deliberation and in-depth reading around a subject. It needs aides who can distil the policy choices into a set of clear options on a side of A4, a decision taken overnight, followed by a strong set of directions to cabinet colleagues and the government machine. I don’t get the impression that this is how the Brown No.10 operates, although I would love to be persuaded otherwise.

A sclerotic tempo at the heart of government opens Labour up to the (mostly) unfair Tory charge of ‘dithering’. Yesterday Iain Dale produced a top ten of Gordon Brown ‘dithers’ (with, I suspect, a little help from researchers at Conservative Central Office). They ranged from ‘the election that wasn’t’ to this week’s fiasco on Mumsnet over what biscuit the Prime Minister likes to eat. The question was asked several times by the nation’s mums before a Prime Ministerial communiqué was issued. Anything with chocolate was the answer, but by then the damage was done. There might be a website with more influence with middle England’s mums than Mumsnet, but I don’t know of it.

Politics often operates at the level of metaphor. One’s choice of biscuit may seem inconsequential and trivial compared to the Copenhagen Summit or the reform of global capitalism. But for many, a man who can’t decide what biscuit he likes, is a man who can’t make the big decisions either. Brown was plainly decisive when it came to nationalising the banks, but in the minds of some, that matters less than knowing you prefer Kit Kats to Hob Nobs.

Biscuit-gate won’t decide the next election, any more than the idea that John Major ate peas or tucked his shirt into his underpants. It’s still the economy that matters most, although the expenses scandal will have a major impact on local electoral contests.

The Tories have a 17-point poll lead according to yesterday’s ICM poll for the Guardian, which would give them a 100-seat majority. Labour would be reduced from 349 seats to fewer than 200 (about where the Tories are today). That’s 150 Labour constituencies which would lose their Labour MP.

That’s if the election was today. But it’s not. There’s still time for Labour to show that we mean business, and aren’t, as the poet said, waiting for the end.

I saw Ed Miliband speak the other day to over 100 party supporters, none of whom shared the despondency and defeatism of some of our MPs. Not only did he have a compelling rationale for why anyone should vote Labour, he also had a devastating critique of Cameron’s belief that whatever the problems in modern Britain, ‘big government’ is to blame.

If Ed Miliband is in charge of writing the manifesto, we have a good chance of a document we can take to the country with some confidence.

And I bet Ed Miliband knows how to ride a bike.

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