After a fraught nomination process mired by procedural conflict, the stage had been set for tough policy debates among the remaining leadership candidates. Alastair Campbell excitedly wrote in his Daily Mirror column, “now the phony war is over, I hope the real debate about policy can begin.”
The next leader would inherit a party with fissures over taxation, updating public services, how to tackle the vested interests rotting British government, European integration, and how to simultaneously win over voters in the South East and North West. Policy wonks across Westminster were sharpening their knives and tucking in their napkins, hoping for meaty policy to sink their teeth into. But the only thing on the menu was stale carrion.
In hindsight, Campbell and others’ view that the leadership campaign would produce generous servings of policy to chew over was short-sighted. The left-wing candidates in both the leader and deputy leader races hadn’t secured the necessary nominations and there wasn’t a strong diversity of views represented.
In Gould we trust?
The Labour leadership contest was a two-horse race. Only John Smith and Bryan Gould had garnered the 20% of MP nominations needed to run. Gould had also met the threshold in the deputy leader race and was running for both offices simultaneously in what commentators believed was an attempt to maximise media coverage. By leveraging the heightened interest in the leadership race, he might be able to bolster his deputy campaign.
In a field of leader and deputy leader candidates that either seemed devoted to continuity or tinkering with internal party processes, Gould was perhaps the only candidate that attempted to offer (some) answers to the most pressing policy issues.
An outspoken Eurosceptic, he had clashed with Neil Kinnock over the privatisation of key industries and nuclear weapons. Gould opposed Britain’s membership of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism that pegged the pound to the German mark. On tax and spending, he was vehemently opposed to means testing, which he saw as a barrier to assisting those with the greatest need.
On the other hand, John Smith was a cautious pragmatist and pushed for a continuation of the reforms started under Kinnock. On tax and spending, he promised to establish the Commission of Social Justice to re-examine policy, but avoided promising specific reforms, while his pro-European integration stance stood in direct contrast to Gould’s scepticism.
“Our tax proposals appeared to set a cap on people’s aspirations, particularly in the south of England where we need to attract support”—Bryan Gould
“If you want to give higher pensions and child benefit and give more cash to schools and hospitals, you have to find the money for it”—John Smith
Like Smith, Beckett was the continuation candidate in the deputy leadership race and ran her campaign on her support for internal party reform, devolving power, and strengthening the role of women in the organisation. John Prescott, the third deputy leadership candidate, argued for internal reform that would see the deputy leader work full-time on campaigning. Prescott clamoured for the restoration of working-class party membership and was critical of the influence of ‘spin doctors’ and ‘image-makers’ under Neil Kinnock (a qualm that had clearly dissipated by 1997).
Bryan Gould’s frustration was palpable; he railed against “a premature election, a ridiculous electoral college, and campaigns that have done their best to avoid political debate.” He accused his rivals of appealing to vested interests in the City of London and warned that if the party didn’t break from Neil Kinnock’s policies, it was in danger of “sleep-walking” into another election defeat with John Smith at the helm.
The unholy unions?
Allegations of the trade unions colluding to rush John Smith and Margaret Beckett into the leader and deputy leader positions were still fresh in the candidates’ minds. With 40 percent of the electoral college vote, the outsize role unions played in the leadership selection process loomed over the campaign trail. Bryan Gould was the first on the campaign to publicly question the influence of the unions in leadership selection and stressed the need to re-evaluate the relationship with what he believed was an electorally unpopular bedfellow that handed the Conservative-aligned media ammunition to use against Labour’s campaigns.
John Smith and Margaret Beckett, the preferred trade union candidates for leader and deputy leader, were initially cautious. They had financially benefitted from the union link and, although they would later acknowledge the need to reduce their influence, they were slow to speak out against the union relationship. John Prescott, defended the union connection, but was also in favour of reform.
With the policy front offering slim pickings, the relationship with the unions emerged as one of the main issues of the election, and all three deputy leadership candidates and both leadership candidates were in agreement. All accepted the need to re-evaluate the relationship with the trade unions, the only daylight between them was the tactics and timing for how the party should go about it. Far from offering sparks, the leadership contest was once again stuck in the damp mud of Labour Party processes.
The battle for the constituencies
The electoral college ballot for both the leader and deputy positions would take place on July 18th, with trade unions wielding 40 percent of the vote, constituency Labour party branches 30 percent, and MPs and MEPs taking the other 30 percent.
Each union’s vote size depended on the number of union members paying the political levy, but there were no requirements on how the unions chose which candidate to back. They could hold a ballot among union members, with the union’s vote going to the most popular candidate, but this was expensive. While all the party leadership candidates urged the unions to hold ballots, they knew that for many, the decision of which candidate to support would be made by the executives without consulting union members. Even in unions that balloted their members, executive endorsement was key and the battle for the union vote often took place behind closed doors with campaigns courting executives directly.
Candidates also didn’t bother trying to court MPs that hadn’t endorsed them in the nomination process, assuming the task of getting MPs to change allegiances would be too great an ask. Constituency Labour Parties (CLPs) therefore emerged as the fiercest battleground.
There were differences in each candidate’s approach to the CLPs. All of them knew that the CLPs were focused on local elections until May 7, but after those had taken place, they channelled resources into reaching local branches. Margaret Beckett distributed literature widely and got local representatives with ties to the community to speak to groups on her behalf. Smith and Prescott took a more hands-on approach, travelling extensively and speaking at specially arranged CLP meetings. To win support among branches, Gould even suggested ideas for revamping the CLPs themselves, including the introduction of babysitting voters to help members attend meetings.
Shouting into the void
Despite the candidates’ best efforts, they struggled to generate much interest in either leadership race. An ICM Research poll in May showed half of the electorate was indifferent to the outcome.
The major talking point around the role of trade unions in party procedure wasn’t remotely applicable to the lives of ordinary people and didn’t lend itself to local evangelism. The comfortable lead Smith had enjoyed from the beginning also created a feeling of inevitability and powerlessness; the deputy leadership, although a closer race, was not important enough to garner much attention.
The contest also lacked an anti-establishment candidate to bring any real acrimony. Had Ken Livingstone or Bernie Grant secured the necessary nominations, they would helped establish ideological boundaries. Without them, divisions blurred and apathy set in.
On July 18th, John Smith won the Labour leadership in a landslide win with 90.9 percent of the electoral college to Gould’s 9.1 percent. Smith won 38.5 percent of the 40 percent allocated to the trade unions, 29.3 percent on the CLPs 30 percent, and 23.1 percent of the Parliamentary Labour Party’s 30 percent share. Margaret Beckett secured the deputy leadership with 57.3 percent of the electoral college to John Prescott’s 28.2 percent and Bryan Gould’s 14.5 percent.
The next day, the Times wrote: “Low-election climaxes with a dull thud.”
In the end, Gould’s inability to build factions within the trade unions and among MPs had prevented him from ever launching a meaningful leadership challenge. However, if he had run for the deputy leadership without the distraction of a concurrent leadership bid, he might have fared better ( for more on this look out for a Q & A with Bryan Gould next week).
Stronger leader, weaker party
John Smith’s overwhelming victory allowed him to fill the shadow cabinet almost exclusively from his supporters. Figures that had been closely involved in his and Beckett’s campaigns were rewarded with top shadow cabinet jobs, including Gordon Brown (Smith’s campaign manager) as shadow chancellor and Tony Blair (Beckett’s campaign manager) as Shadow Home Secretary. Bryan Gould, who was gunning for a post in foreign affairs or the Treasury, got the much less attractive Shadow Secretary of State for National Heritage.
Smith was in a commanding position. He had inherited a party with limited ideological division among the upper ranks and got his preferred deputy leader. The Labour Party came out of the 1992 leadership elections on less sturdy footing. The perceived collusion between the party and the trade unions early in the campaign had put the unions on the defensive and nudged the party further down the path to resetting the role and scope of trade union involvement in party functions. The leader had emerged from the fight almost unscathed, but the party had been bloodied and would need medical attention under Smith.