TWO former Cabinet ministers have e-mailed all Labour MPs, calling for an ‘open debate’ on the party’s future.
The two are Charles Clarke, the ex-Home Secretary who wanted to give the police the power to hold suspects for 90 days before charging them or freeing them, and Alan Milburn, who pushed through Foundation Hospitals as Labour’s Health Secretary.
They wrote that Labour needed to show that, after 10 years in office, it had the ‘vision and policies’ for Britain’s future.
With Blair poised to quit, the two right wingers are now making their bid for the leadership of the Labour Party.
Milburn, who resigned as Health Secretary in 2003, ostensibly to spend more time with his family, was in fact put in cold storage so that he could re-emerge as that rarity, a scandal-free Blairite, or an ex-Cabinet minister who was not sacked.
Clarke has re-emphasised his right-wing credentials by recently suggesting that people should be made to pay for their NHS care.
In their e-mail, they wrote: ‘After ten years in office we will need to demonstrate that we have the vision and the policies to successfully meet the future challenges faced by our country and the wider world.
‘Like many others in the PLP and the wider party we believe that requires an open participatory debate.
‘There are some welcome signs that the debate is beginning to happen within government, in various think-tanks and in contributions made by a range of colleagues.
‘From our discussions with fellow MPs and party members, however, we believe there is an enormous appetite for the debate to be taken forward and given more focus.’
Up to now, two contenders from the left of the party, John McDonnell and Michael Meacher, have emerged to say that they intend to challenge Brown.
The Milburn-Clarke e-mail announced when their campaign is to be launched under the cover of an open debate.
‘We are inviting all Labour MPs to the launch event which will take place at 10.30am on Wednesday 28th February . . . all Labour colleagues from both the Commons and the Lords are most welcome to attend.’
Both right wingers are determined that the full Blairite programme should be carried out, and they are fearful that Gordon Brown will not do it.
The problem with Brown as far as they are concerned is that he is too loyal to the Labour Party.
The Blairites have taken much of their thinking over from the Stalinists, including ‘what does the colour of the cat matter providing it catches mice’.
This means that just as Blair was desperate to form a coalition with the Liberal Democrats in 1997, but was prevented by his landslide majority, Clarke and Milburn are not too worried which party is able to carry out the full privatisation of the Welfare State, as long as it is done.
This is why they are the perfect coalition partners in a national government with the Tories. They are jumping over themselves to be in place if and when the call is made.
At the next general election the WRP will be calling for a vote for Labour to keep the Tories out.
However, we do not doubt for a moment that the present Labour Party is doomed to perish, and be replaced by a workers’ party with a socialist programme.
At the moment, united in the same party, are the supporters of imperialist wars to reorder the world and their opponents in the trade unions.
The same division exists on domestic policy. There are those who support the venture capitalists and are receiving donations off of them, and the trade unions whose members are under the most vicious assault from the same venture capitalists.
The Blairites want to reorder the world so that US and UK imperialism rules.
The trade unions have the task of reordering the Labour Party, ejecting the Blairite rabble and the Brownite boss worshippers and taking the party forward as a socialist party.
The revolutionary leadership of the WRP has a vital role to play in this historic struggle for the organisation of the British socialist revolution.
