BROWN CLOUD CHRONICLES:

Prime Mover: Tipped as a successor to Blair, former health minister Alan Milburn now has a remit to ‘confront Gordon’. It may permanently thwart the Chancellor’s hopes of reaching Number 10 (James Cusick, 9/12/0-4, Sunday Herald)

The early afternoon sun streamed into the small manicured garden at the back of Downing Street on Thursday. After the ructions of the previous day when he brought Alan Milburn back into the government, and having chaired the Thursday morning Cabinet meeting, Tony Blair was taking it easy, sitting sunbathing on the small lawn.

For the junior ministers shown into the Downing Street garden , the relaxed surroundings contradicted reports about how Blair’s government was under siege. More than one minister who learned of their reshuffled job outside in the afternoon sun, said they were “almost shocked” at how nonchalantly relaxed and cheerful the Prime Minister was.

The appointment of Milburn, the former health secretary, to the multi-jobbed role which he himself described as being put “in charge of general election planning, overall strategy and policy presentation, and the formulation and development of policies that will lead to the content of the next Labour manifesto for the coming general election”, clearly allowed Blair to relax for the first time since June when rumours suggest he seriously considered announcing that he would step down as Prime Minister before the end of the present parliament.

Downing Street last week would only say that they “did not recognise” any suggestion that the Prime Minister had seriously considered going. But having overcome the alleged wobble, Milburn’s appointment, and what lies behind it, indicates a new-found stamina and determination by Blair to continue the New Labour project still at the helm . [...]

Last week, those close to Milburn claimed the role that Downing Street had outlined to him during a first approach contained the simple objective of “confront Gordon.”

Ideologically that wouldn’t be too difficult for Milburn. Son of a single mother, and raised in a mining village in Durham, Milburn’s street credentials appear distinctly old Labour. Educated at Lancaster University (BA in history) and then at Newcastle University, he went on to become co-ordinator of the Sunderland Shipyards Campaign and subsequently a trade union co-ordinator.

Less than 10 years after formally joining the Labour Party he became MP for Darlington in 1992. His conversion to New Labour was as swift as his subsequent rise into the Cabinet where, alongside Stephen Byers (still his close friend), he came to be recognised as a modernising thinker able to envisage and articulate new ideas for lessening state power and control while challenging the established view of what Labour needed to stand for in order to hold on to power.

To stand up to Brown’s alternative vision of Labour’s ideology – just as radical and as innovative but with a greater emphasis on the state’s role as a distributist power – Milburn demanded both strong armour and strong weaponry from Blair.

Here's a perfect example of why Tony Blair matters and Bill Clinton didn't--Mr. Milburn is being brought aboard to keep the Third Way headed Right, not veering Left as Gordon Brown would have led it.

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 12, 2004 3:01 PM