MORGAN, an UNSUITABLE CASE for TREATMENT

Is there a more wan figure on the world’s political stage than that of Morgan Tsvangirai? He has known Robert Mugabe for more than thirty years, having begun his political rise in Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party when he was immediately marked for preferment. Now, I have never met Mr Mugabe and I only know of his career through the highly partial medium of the British media. But this much I know: that Mugabe is the wiliest African leader since Jomo Kenyatta and the least scrupulous since Idi Amin. If I know that, Tsvangirai must know it too.

Morgan no free man

How come, then, that he has allowed himself to be so comprehensively outmanoeuvred in the Zimbabwean elections held at the end of last month? Did he not guess that Mugabe would stop at nothing to defeat him in the presidential ballot that has overwhelmingly extended the old fox’s rule for another five years to add to the 33 years he has already enjoyed? Mugabe is 89 years old.

In the presidential ballot, Mugabe defeated Tsvangirai by nearly two-to-one. In the House of Assembly, ZANU-PF won three times as many seats as Tsvangirai’s MDC grouping and hence has a sufficient majority to introduce whatever constitutional changes that Mugabe fancies. For the MDC, the election was an utter disaster.

Mugabe: giving nothing away – absolutely nothing

Whistling in the dark, Tsvangirai now says that “the fraudulent and stolen election has plunged Zimbabwe into a constitutional, political and economic crisis. Instead of celebration, there is national mourning”. In fact, there is remarkably little evidence of either crisis or mourning. Zimbabweans know that Mugabe stole the election but they also know that there is precious little that they can do about it. The wider world deplores the myriad scandals and manipulations that accompanied the vote but Obama and Putin, Cameron and Merkel have much more pressing problems to face.

Tsvangirai says that the MDC will “boycott government institutions” and challenge the election result through the courts. Good luck with that. The unspecified government institutions will not notice (save that, without an MDC presence, it will be that much simpler to carry out Mugabe’s wishes) and the courts will doubtless find the evidence of ballot theft inconclusive – after all, the judges are all Mugabe appointees. So unless something very unexpected happens, the outside world will hear no more of Morgan Tsvangirai and probably very little of Zimbabwe until such time as Robert Mugabe passes peacefully in office and we discover whether he has arranged anything effective about the succession.

A stylish poster campaign

The absurdity of it all is that, for the past five years, Tsvangirai has been Zimbabwe’s prime minster, in office and in power in a coalition with ZANU-PF under Mugabe’s presidency. Was he asleep at the wheel? Did he not anticipate that Mugabe would strain every sinew to ensure that the coalition would be ended at the 2013 election? Could he not have taken pre-emptive action to guard the sanctity of the election? Suddenly to bleat after the event that it’s turned out to be unfair seems, at the very least, ineffectual.

Democracy Zimbabwe style: but what's in those boxes?

Mugabe allowed observers of the ballot only from friendly neighbouring nations and, hearing their complacent views of the conduct of the election, you realise that they would not have been much of a challenge to buy off. Tsvangirai should have insisted that a large UN team be allowed to monitor the election. Indeed, it ought to be a condition of continued membership of the UN that all member nations allow UN observers to attend national elections. There is no country – not even Britain or the United States – where some sharp electoral practice cannot be detected.

What is an open secret in Harare is that Tsvangirai has spent considerably more of his time as prime minister in chasing women than in shoring up his power base and planning to try to outflank his ruthless opponent. His first wife Susan was killed in a head-on car crash that Tsvangirai was the only Zimbabwean outside ZANU-PF not to blame on Mugabe’s intelligence officers. Perhaps he was glad to be rid of her. He very quickly ceased to behave like a mourning widower and he remarried last autumn, though his philandering has evidently not been scaled down since.

Getting spliced for a second time

The tragedy is that the coalition of MDC and ZANU-PF achieved a fair amount in repairing the damage caused by Mugabe’s heedless conduct of the national economy while unrestrained by coalition. Tsvangirai, having ensured a fair ballot, could have fought on his economic record. He might even have won. Instead, he survives only as an ineffectual footnote to one of the longest and most destructive reigns in modern African history.

UNEASY LIES the ED that WEARS the CROWN

Barely has he been Labour leader for five minutes and the Cassandras of the commentariat are writing his political obituary. Ed Miliband must be fed up with the media already, let alone with the Tory Party. The soubriquet ‘Red Ed’ – as though Dave Nellist had returned to the House after a long and thorough fanshen under the combined tutelage of Derek Hatton, Derek Robinson, Linda Bellos, Frances Morrell, Danny Le Rouge, Robin Blackburn, Tariq Ali, Jeremy Corbyn, Eric Heffer, Joan Maynard, Ian Mikardo, the WRP and the Angry Brigade and had promptly mounted the kind of putsch not seen in Labour politics since Ken Livingstone ousted the late Andrew McIntosh from the leadership of the old GLC – is as illiterate as it is puerile.

The other canard that the Tories and the right wing press are striving to establish as fact is that Ed Miliband is the mindless creature of the unions, taking his orders each morning from Moscow via Bob Crowe. Here’s the quote (in full) that Tory MP Priti Patel gave for this morning’s Observer: “As the trade unions exert a vice-like grip on Ed, there will be no fresh thinking as Labour reverts to its ideological comfort zone. Instead of taking responsibility for his part in bringing Britain to the brink of ruin, expect nothing more than Miliband having his strings pulled by union barons”.

It’s tempting to confine one’s response to: “That’s Mr Miliband to you, young lady”. But as this quote was clearly given to her by Tory Central Office and reproduced obediently and verbatim by her, we should pay it heed as reflecting the official line. The evidence for the origin lies in the final two words: Priti (if I may make so familiar) is way too young ever to have had recourse to the phrase “union barons” by herself.

Ed in tooth and claw

So the Tory line – hot-wired into those of today’s Tory papers that I have set eyes on (The Sunday Times as hard copy and The Sunday Telegraph on line) – is that Ed Miliband’s warning to his brother against a return to the “comfort zone” of New Labour is to be twisted round and used against him, that Labour disagreeing with any of the Con-Dem measures to reduce the deficit is evidence of Labour recidivism (so forget “the opposition’s duty to oppose” of hallowed tradition, as well as the fact that Miliband has said he will not oppose any measure purely for the sake of it), and that Miliband cannot be taken seriously until he has done personal penance for all Labour’s misdemeanours, including enclosures, the Glencoe Massacre, Suez, the sinking of the Belgrano, poll tax, Cecil Parkinson, David Mellor and Neil Hamilton.

But let’s look at this seriously. The “unions’ vice-like grip” is the one that – if the evidence of steadier news outlets like the BBC be any guide – is going to be hardest to shrug off. So what is the evidence? Well, Ed Miliband is sponsored as an MP by the T&G. So are Ed Balls and Andy Burnham. So are Gordon Brown and Harriet Harman. So is Frank Field, who is now doing a job for the Con-Dem coalition, David Cameron having decided to perpetuate the “big tent” policy of Brown and Blair before him. Blair was also sponsored by the T&G. Burnham is further sponsored by Unison, as is Miliband’s close ally Sadiq Khan.

And anyway look at the voting patterns in the leadership ballot. In the first count, before Diane Abbott was eliminated, Ed Miliband got only 4.5 percent more of the union vote than did his brother and only 6.5 percent more when the elimination of Ed Balls had led to the last configuration of the numbers. To make such sweepingly categorical claims for what the vote means when it is so close – only 1.3 percent difference in the whole voting college – is mere ignorant folly.

Ed Miliband addresses conference

Still scared of Miliband’s strings being pulled by the unions? The fact is that Labour depends on financial help from those unions, just as the Tories and the Lib Dems need funding from business. The difference is that union funding is open and transparent and comes with no detectable strings attached, pulled or otherwise. If Ms Patel can point to any legislation in history enacted by a Labour government and show that it was dictated by unions in the teeth of what Labour MPs and/or the party membership wanted, I will eat my cloth cap.

There was a resonant exchange on BBC1’s Question Time ten days ago, a special edition featuring all five Labour leadership candidates. A London firefighter in the audience said that she and her work colleagues were being “sacked on November 25th and forced to sign a new contract with unfair working conditions”. Moderator David Dimbleby asked the panel if firefighters were justified in going on strike. Diane Abbott waded in on “what ordinary workers have to do when faced with losing their jobs”. Perhaps believing that he had had a good shake on an earlier question, Dimbleby permitted Andy Burnham only a yes-or-no answer and he said yes. David Miliband was more cautious which drew a few groans from the audience and spurred him to say sharply: “any politician saying yes glibly to firefighters going on strike has to think very, very carefully about the consequences”. Ed Balls agreed, sticking to points he’d already made about the importance of negotiation. And Ed Miliband agreed too, emphasising that “a responsible government and a responsible fire authority would do everything possible to get round the table and discuss”. Not much evidence of union string-pulling there.

I wished Dimbleby had permitted Burnham and Abbott to speak further to their supportive instinct for firefighters downing tools, if that is what it comes to. It has always seemed to me that denying workers in supposedly essential services the right to strike is no more than a means to reduce their rights. Withdrawal of labour is the only action workers possess that is as powerful in their hands as dismissal is in the hands of management. If health workers, police, firefighters and other front line services are penalized by management because management can, because the workers have no power to fight for their rights, the inevitable upshot will be that workers will leave the service and that management will be obliged to seek cheap labour from overseas. Such measures bring their own complications.

The Miliband brothers take distinctive stances

Strike action is habitually portrayed in the media as a deplorable eventuality because it inconveniences the public. The implication – often very clearly intended – is that the workers are at fault in resorting to stoppages. Look at the coverage of action by staff at BA, for instance. But industrial action is frequently precipitated by management intransigence, insensitivity and sometimes deliberate provocation, all eventualities impossible to illustrate in news footage and newspaper shots. Because this cannot be shown, reporters lazily portray the calling of strike action as the moment of breakdown so that unions are habitually seen as the aggressors. If Ed Miliband really wants to do unions a favour, he should sit down with news managers and hammer out a new approach to the way industrial relations are portrayed in the media.

Not that he would get very far. The media is far more interested in David Miliband’s next move than in any statements of policy or philosophy by the new party leader, certainly if Nick Robinson’s reports for the BBC today have been any guide. What job will Ed offer David? What job does he want? Will he walk away? This is all ludicrously presumptuous. Voting on the composition of the shadow cabinet does not begin until October 4th. Ed Miliband will not decide on filling the posts until he sees to whom he has to offer them. He may well have some dispensations in mind but the MPs’ election of the cabinet members can spring some intriguing surprises. It would be good if reporters could put their soap opera instincts to one side and stop writing about the Miliband brothers as though they might be some kind of grown-up version of the Mitchell brothers in EastEnders.

Finally there is this constant refrain about Labour “taking responsibility” – and, worse, “apologizing” – for the conditions that furnish the rationale for the Con-Dem coalition to make its ideological assault on public services. Miliband is wise to stick to his line that the Labour government made mistakes and that ‘New Labour’ is dead and buried and it’s time to move on. But he has nothing to apologize for concerning Labour’s handling of the economy. He needs to remind the coalition that the then wholly independent banking sector was not implementing Labour government policy when it financed bad debts in Britain and especially in the USA. Alistair Darling kept Britain out of double dip recession, something George Osborne may yet prove unable to do.

In any case, this politics of the gesture that butters no parsnips is not for grown-ups. The coalition will soon enough have plenty of mistakes of its own to be sorry for.

COITION GOVERNMENT or WHO GETS SHAFTED?

The Cameron/Clegg era has begun. One day – possibly one day quite soon – we shall look back on that first joint press conference and laugh. The instant commentaries were largely favourable, citing the relaxed demeanour, the assumed mutual respect, the body language. Even the fact of the session being in the Downing Street garden excited comment but hey, Tony Blair held key press conferences there and it’s also where John Major launched his put-up-or-shut-up fight back against the backbench critics of his government, after which John Redwood (remember him?) resigned from the cabinet to mount a challenge immortalized by The Sun as “REDWOOD v DEAD WOOD”.

Cameron said as much as he decently could and sought to make it all seem very natural and straightforward. Clegg’s prepared statement was awful, like something left over from the election campaign or a peroration he might have wished he’d used in one of the television debates. This was a callow miscalculation.

The press questioning harped dully on the arrangements, even unto a second administration – I would guess that little serious thought has yet been expended on how they will play the 2015 election, the date of which evidently will soon be determined by statute. But it reminded me of nothing so much as an in-coming US president, assuring us all that the vice president has a real and important job to do. That’s never how it turns out in practice, prompting Cactus Jack Garner, Franklin Roosevelt’s VP, to remark that the post “wasn’t worth a bucket of warm shit” (history’s version: “a bucket of warm spit”).


Clegg and Cameron's first joint press call


One of the trajectories to plot under the new regime will be that of the growing disillusionment, resentment and sheer day-to-day boredom evinced by Deputy Prime Minister Clegg. There was a bit of banter about how “Nick” will take Prime Minister’s Questions when the PM himself is away and Cameron threw away a line about a lot of foreign travel – I can’t find the passage on the net – but that immediately reminds us that DPM Clegg won’t be going to Washington and Moscow and Jerusalem and Paris, he’ll be kicking his heels in Downing Street trying to reform parliament like some junior policy wonk. John Prescott took the odd PMQ for Blair and Harriet Harman for Brown and all it underlined was their relative irrelevance.

We’re told that as many as twenty Lib Dems will have jobs. I wonder where that leaves the other 37. Are they obliged to support the government? Presumably they will be whipped to do so. But if among their number are Simon Hughes, Norman Baker, Nick Harvey, Norman Lamb and the former leaders Charles Kennedy and Menzies Campbell, they may well prove to be – let’s say – an independent-minded group. And what will the party do at by-elections? Because of the death of the UKIP candidate during the general election campaign, the ballot in the constituency of Thirsk and Malton has been delayed and will be held a fortnight tomorrow. What those voters have to say will be quite as interesting as what the candidates have to say. The Lib Dem candidate there is called Howard Keal so I imagine he will say “My defences are down” or perhaps “Where is the life that once I led?”

Naturally everyone who isn't a Labour MP is putting a hopeful smile on it all. But I still bet that, for all the determined talk of strong, stable government, this arrangement will not last much beyond eighteen months. Why? The remark that legend has credited to Harold Macmillan is the answer: “Events, dear boy. Events”.