There's only one Peter Oborne:
Convulsions of grief were still being felt across
north London last night in the wake of David Miliband’s resignation. The BBC,
which has long felt special reverence for the great man, reported the event in
hushed tones. The Guardian hosted feverish and wistful discussions about
whether Mr Miliband might condescend to return one day to public life.
Tony Blair regretted “a massive loss to UK
politics”. A near tearful Tessa Jowell said “it’s very sad”. Lord Adonis
mourned an “inspirational leader”. A tremulous Yvette Cooper praised a
“powerful speaker” and a “great minister”. Across the Atlantic, former president Bill
Clinton called him “one of the ablest, most creative public servants of our
time”. Lord Mandelson, whose protégé Mr Miliband was, almost begged him to
reconsider.
The rest of us, however, can contemplate the
situation with equanimity. We are, after all, talking about someone who was at
best a minor politician, no towering colossus. Mr Miliband has left only one
lasting legacy, and that was destructive. As foreign secretary he closed down
the Foreign and Commonwealth Office library. It had been there since before the
days of Palmerston, and its absence has done permanent damage to the corporate
memory of the FCO – now that its contents have been dispersed, it will never be
restored. Apart from this one moment of breathtaking
bibliographical barbarism, which only a politician who cared nothing for
British tradition and history would have contemplated, Mr Miliband achieved
nothing.
However, before he fades into obscurity, it is
important to ask what the fuss is all about. Why is the BBC, which would
scarcely have noticed if a former Conservative foreign secretary stood down
from Parliament, unable to contain itself? Why is the Blairite wing of Labour
in such a state of desolation and hysteria? Why the agonised Guardian inquest?
Any detached judge has always been able to see that David Miliband was not
front-rank. He is a hopeless public speaker (whatever Yvette Cooper’s
protestations), and has never once expressed an original thought.
Yet after Labour’s 1997 election victory he was
the poster boy of a new ruling elite which seized control of the commanding
heights of British politics. Anti-democratic, financially greedy and morally
corrupt, this new political class has done the most enormous damage. Since
David Miliband was its standard-bearer, his political career explains a great
deal about what has gone wrong with British public life, about why politicians
are no longer liked or trusted, and about how political parties have come to be
viewed with contempt.
Mr Miliband – and this is the essential point –
set the pattern that so many others, including his brother Ed, have followed.
Obsessed by politics at university (like Ed and David Cameron, he read PPE at
Oxford), he has never had even the faintest connection with the real world.
From life in think tanks he became a Labour Party researcher and special
adviser, before being parachuted into the north-eastern constituency of South
Shields as an MP.
He rose up on the inside track, getting in with
the right people and making sure he stayed there. This meant not rocking the
boat. He wrote Labour’s 1997 and 2001 election manifestos, which even Labour
people now admit were content-free. He was at the heart of the Labour machine
when it spewed out its now notorious falsehoods over immigration and Iraq
(there is a savage irony to the fact that Mr Miliband is going to head a
humanitarian organisation when the government of which he was such a loyal
member created so many of the world’s disasters). When promoted to education minister, he was
personally responsible for issuing false claims that exam marks were getting
better because of higher standards rather than (as we now know) grade
inflation.
I used to speak to Mr Miliband fairly often
during this period, and it is important to make clear that he was personally
not an especially bad man. It was simply that he was completely inexperienced
and had no idea how the world (which he famously defined as a “scary place”
during a Labour conference speech) worked. This meant that he was out of his depth when
promoted to the Foreign Office, where he quickly became an apologist for
British government involvement with torture. I once counted six lies emerge
from his lips on the subject of our complicity over “extraordinary rendition”
during the course of a nine-minute interview with Andrew Neil on The Politics Show.
It is a great pity that Mr Miliband, who is only
47, is not entering politics now, after learning the ropes elsewhere. If so,
this well-meaning man would surely have a serious contribution to make. As
things stand, however, we can learn lessons from his failure, and the most
important of these is that MPs need more ballast when they come into
Parliament.
There was a time when politicians picked
themselves up and got on with it after a setback. When Denis Healey, much the
more serious candidate, was defeated by Michael Foot in the 1980 Labour
leadership election, he did not go into some cosmic sulk. He dusted himself
down, joined the front bench, and served Foot loyally. Willie Whitelaw probably
felt hard done by when he lost the Tory leadership to Margaret Thatcher in
1975. But he was her bulwark and support ever after.
But the Whitelaws and Healeys had enjoyed a deep
knowledge of the world, which told them that a personal setback such as losing
the party leadership was a trivial matter indeed, and other things mattered far
more. Nobody expects this kind of wise judgment today.
When, yesterday, the BBC sent its political editor, Nick Robinson, into Mr
Miliband’s home to ask reverentially about the great decision, he did not ask
why Mr Miliband was leaving his South Shields constituents in the lurch. Nor
did Mr Robinson ask any questions about Mr Miliband’s finances.
Yet these are extremely pertinent to his decision
to resign. The House of Commons register reveals that he has earned an
incredible sum – nearly £1 million – from outside interests since losing the
party leadership to his brother, including £125,000 for 15 days’ work as a
director of Sunderland, a constituency-based football club owned by a
super-rich businessman with interests in private equity. Approximately £60,000
has come his way from the UAE, a gulf state with an unappetising human rights
record, and another hefty chunk from St James’s Place, a company that advises
very rich people how to invest their money.
Like his mentors Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson,
Mr Miliband is one of that unappetising breed of modern politician that has
chosen to profiteer out of public service. It is a pity that the BBC did not
ask him whether his sudden decision to abandon his constituents was not
informed by a desire to keep his huge earnings out of the public eye.
During his short, undistinguished career, Mr
Miliband has done grave damage to British politics. He is part of the new
governing elite which is sucking the heart out of our representative democracy
while enriching itself in the process. He may be mourned in the BBC and in
north London, but the rest of us are entitled to form a more realistic view.
David Miliband has belittled our politics and he will not be missed.
How ironic, the MP for Jarrow is a library-destroying barbarian.
ReplyDeleteHe's not the MP for Jarrow. An important consideration when the CLP insists on a local candidate. It means really, properly local.
ReplyDelete*was* the MP for Jarrow ... didn't they put it in his constituency after a boundary change?
ReplyDeleteI bet it's not in South Shields. There'd have been riots.
ReplyDeleteMy mistake. They moved Whitburn from Jarrow to Shields, not the whole of Jarrow :D
ReplyDelete