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Slick Willy Backs Golden Gordon
Former US president Bill Clinton says Gordon Brown will make a good PM - and former international development secretary Clare Short says she's stepping down as an MP because she's "ashamed" - though not for the reasons you'd expect.
In an interview in the Spectator, Clinton spoke of how he has known Brown since 1990, praised his economic record and tipped him as a good PM. The Guardian adds that Clinton is a potential guest speaker at the forthcoming Labour Party conference. It's unlikely that Bill will want to get too involved in internal Labour politics - not least the current round of vicious infighting - but the former president is still remembered fondly by many New Labour members who despair of prime minister Tony Blair's subsequent attachment to his successor.
Clinton's seal of approval won't confirm Brown's own succession, chances are that's fixed already, but it will remind rebellious Labour MPs of the chancellor's pedigree. New Labour rose and came to power during Clinton's presidency: There was always a shared sense of values between Clinton's Democrats and New Labour, and Brown himself professed to be very interested in the Clinton team's economic schemes.
That said, for some Labour MPs, any affection at all for US presidents is distasteful: That's probably why Brown is likely to face a challenge from the party's left as well as its Blairite right.
However, as the Independent reports, one of the most prominent voices on Labour's far left is retiring from parliament at the next election. Clare Short, who formerly held the post of International Development Secretary, is stepping down after 23 years as an MP because, she says, she is "profoundly ashamed of the government."
"There are many good things that New Labour has done since 1997, mostly things Labour committed itself to before the New Labour coup," she writes, before going on to attack Blair's support for "US neoconservative foreign policy:"
"He has dishonoured the UK, undermined the UN and international law and helped to make the world a more dangerous place."
She went on to attack the basis of New Labour itself: "In addition to the arrogance and lack of principle of New Labour, there is an incredible incompetence. Policy is announced from No 10 to grab media attention and nothing is properly thought through."
Short now claims to hope for a hung parliament, which she says will favour electoral reform. Ominously, Short says that she intends to spend her post-Commons days "speaking the truth" - "Sad to say, it is now almost impossible to do this as a Labour MP."
Short's appointment as Development Secretary in the early days of New Labour's government was mooted as an example of how Blair's "big tent" could house train even Labour's most irritating hard left firebrands. It also served as a reminder to Short's colleagues on the left that Blair could deliver power to a party which had been out of government for 18 years.
Short was hoped to play an important role in what was then described as Britain's new "ethical foreign policy" - a concept that might raise a wry smile post-Iraq, but which was very dear to Labour supporters at the time.
However, it's more likely she will be remembered for her failed attempt to ban topless "Page Three" photographs in national newspapers in 1986.
