Decency and Integrity

Peter Oborne writes:

I was doing the early shift on the Evening Standard political desk when I heard that John Smith was dead, 20 years ago today.

The news desk rang to say that he was at St Bart's Hospital after suffering a massive heart attack, and probably would not live.

It was unbearably sad.

Several fine politicians have died before their time since the Second World War. Hugh Gaitskell would probably have become Labour prime minister had he not died suddenly in 1963.

Many believe that Edward Heath’s Conservative administration was doomed to fail from the moment that Ian Macleod suffered his heart attack just after the Tory election victory of June 1970.

However, I can’t think of any political deaths which have mattered more than John Smith’s.

Supporters of Tony Blair used to claim privately that Labour would have had difficulty winning the 1997 general election under John Smith.

I don’t believe that: it was obvious that the Tories were doomed to electoral oblivion by the time he died in the spring of 1994.

I do accept that the Right-wing press would never have got behind John Smith in the way they did behind Tony Blair’s New Labour.

Probably, Labour would have won by fewer seats. But they would have entered power without making the concessions made by Blair.

There would have been no alliance with the Murdoch press. Peter Mandelson would never have happened: Smith viewed him with great suspicion.

Alastair Campbell (a strong critic of Smith) would never have become press secretary. I’d guess Dave Hill would have got the job.

John Smith never really saw the point of journalists. This was one of the admirable things about him. 

Fundamentally, he was a very old-fashioned politician, a throwback to the days of Clem Attlee or Stanley Baldwin and all the better for it. John Smith believed in doing things and not saying things.

There would have been no New Labour, and the modernisers would never have got near power. Labour would never have formed an alliance with the super-rich, and there would have been more taxation.

I would guess that Britain would never have invaded Iraq. John Smith would have kept us out of that war, just as Harold Wilson kept us out of Vietnam.

After he died, John Smith was cut out of the record by New Labour. It was almost as if he had never existed.

So it is very pleasant today to see the generous tributes being paid by Ed Miliband.

They are not merely overdue – they make very good sense. John Smith represented decency and integrity.

If Ed Miliband is to be a great Labour leader, he needs to walk in the magnificent but lost tradition of John Smith, and not follow the path of Tony Blair.