We need to talk about Tony

Oh Tony – it didn’t have to be this way…

In an otherwise quiet week in Westminster, the bombshell – of sorts – that you were advising Rebekah Brooks in the wake of the NOTW collapse has ignited interest in the phone hacking trial. Anyone who assumed that phone hacking would be terminally damaging for the Tories but wouldn’t hurt Labour was mistaken. Your (seemingly now former) closeness to Murdoch and your friendship with Rebekah Brooks have placed you back in the firing line. Let me count just some of the ways in which this email is embarrassing:

– Use of the phrase “Hutton style” report: Even if you didn’t use that phrase, what Brooks took from your conversation was that the best way for her to get out of trouble, in your experience, was to face an inquiry similar to the one you faced from Lord Hutton. Anyone who wanted to call the Hutton Inquiry a whitewash now has the ammunition to do so.

– You were undermining Ed: This email followed a phone call on July 11th. On July 5th Ed Miliband has been calling for Brooks to resign over phone hacking. Now obviously she is/was your friend, but the optics of this look dire. It’s hard not to see this as you actively working against the Labour leadership.

– Timing, timing, timing: Was your first reaction, upon hearing that a paper with more than 100 years of history was closing, to call Rebekah Brooks and offer your help? Was your first exaction really, as the scale of phone hacking became clear and drastic action was taken, to wonder how you could help Rupert out of this tight spot? If so you were perhaps the only person in the whole Labour Party to feel so.

And yet, I’m afraid that whilst this email may be the straw that has broken the back of the famous camel, it’s by no means the worst thing you’ve done recently. I mean throwing yourself behind Brooks and Murdoch as they tried to dig themselves out of trouble is bad. But it could be worse, you could have tacitly endorsed a military coup that overthrew a democratically elected government.

Oh wait – you’ve done that already.

Now I hold no candle for the Muslim Brotherhood – that’s an epic understatement – but you surrender the right to call yourself a democrat when you support the rise of a military junta over governments you don’t like. And what’s worse, Tony, is that previously your seeming dedication to democracy had been one of your real redeeming features. Now I didn’t support your ill advised war in Iraq, but many people I respect did. Some backed it because they thought a tooled-up Saddam Hussein was a threat, but many more did so because they saw a brutal dictator crushing his people, and backed your “liberal interventionist” rallying cry to bring democracy to Iraq.

And now look what you’re condoning. Shame on you Tony, but shame on me and so many others for not criticising you over it sooner. I’m sorry that it took this email to goad me into such a response…

As many LabourList readers will remember, despite leaving Parliament in 2007, you returned to play a small but useful role in the 2010 election campaign. Despite my misgivings about some of your decisions in office, you are the great political communicator of my lifetimes (certainly in British politics) and I had hoped you might play a similarly useful role again. Now the window for such an opportunity is incredibly small.

Since Ed Miliband became leader, it has often felt like your interventions – with one or two exceptions – made the likelihood of a new Labour government less likely rather than more. Perhaps it is time, with only just over a year until a crucial general election, for you to consider what action you might take to make a Labour government more, not less, likely post 2015. Maybe that might help rehabilitate your reputation amongst those of us who are frankly beyond disappointed with you now, but who once thought, in your words, you were a pretty straight sort of guy.