Part II: A New Breed of Socialism
From The Economist: July 6th 1997
One of the first acts of the new Labour [1] Treasury, under the leadership of Chancellor Brown has been to grant independence for the Bank of England in order to devolve monetary policy away from the Cabinet and to prepare the legislation for a minimum wage bill, currently to be set at £5:50 [2]. Although opposed by the Conservative opposition, to which Michael Portillo was elected to the post of leader in last months leadership election, many commentators have been supportive of the Smith Government, which has also pledged to establish regional assemblies for Scotland and Wales [3], as well as to work upon coming to a solution to the decades old civil conflict in Northern Ireland.
Despite recent opinion polls showing one of the largest Labour leads in history, Prime Minister Smith has been under fire for past few weeks over alleged diversions in his Cabinet.
Cabinet Room, 10 Downing Street: August 30th 1997
It had been a long, hot summer for the Government and the windows of Downing Street had been flung wide open to catch the limited summer breeze. Tensions had been running high for the entire Cabinet meeting, of which the hot weather was only partly responsible for.
“So how are we going to get this damn nationalisation bill through the House” It was a rare outburst from the usually dignified Prime Minister, and reflected the immense pressure that the national leader was under. He gave an angry look towards the Home Secretary; Blair was clever enough not to make public admissions of his personal disapproval of the moves towards state ownership, but his silence on the matter, both in the House and in public spoke volumes.
“We musht act decishively upon thish matter John, failure to do sho would be tantamount to a betrayal of the electorate” the Trade and Industry Secretary stated. Sat beside him, the Minister for Transport, John Prescott nodded sagely [4], fanning himself with notepaper. Smith muttered under his breath, Benn had been continuing to wage war on the reformers in the Cabinet in response to the formation of supporters that Blair had managed to gather around himself. Although the Government was still enjoying a media honeymoon, unless Smith managed to find a solution to the Party infighting soon, he felt that he would become yet another sort lived Labour PM.
The Chancellor had already stated that the legislation would be possible, but not without an increase in tax revenue. Smith knew that Brown was unhappy about this; after all, the work the two had done about breaking the links with the big spending of the 1970s had been a major part of the election [5]. Yet equally, Smith could not afford to be seen as letting down the left, Benn may have been old, but he had almost complete dominance of the leftwing backbenchers who would together be able to bring down the Government with one vote. Smith quickly made up his mind, “We must have an increase in Income Tax then, does anyone oppose a rise to 24 pence in the pound?” After a few murmurs of dissent from the usual suspects, mainly Blair, Dobson [6] and Straw. There was a grudging agreement to support the rearrangements to the Budget.
Smith dined late that night in the apartments over No. 11, “It is intolerable Elizabeth!” he complained to his wife “The Cabinet is too divided into their own little factions, Benn controls Mowlam [7] and Cunningham but Blair has total control over his blasted “reformers”! I need some excuse to shake things up a bit, the Conservatives will never be trusted as long as Portillo is in charge but I cannot be seen as being indecisive. There are a dozen and one things that need my attention but if I put one person in change of something, the other bloc opposes them.”
He picked unhappily at his dinner. “And what is worse is that the longer I leave things been the worse the situation gets! I hope, no, I need something to turn up soon to help unite the Cabinet. Reforming the House of Lords is going to be a great test for us even if we have total unity, it would be impossible for us to do anything disunited."
He pushed his chair aside and yawned, "I'm going to have an early night, we have a free day tomorrow" The Prime Minister had no way of knowing that he would get his wish that very night [8]
[1] Note, this is new Labour not New Labour; a single capital letter can make a lot of difference!
[2] Considerably higher than in OTL, and shows the greater support that Smith gives to the Trade Unions than Blair gave
[3] Again, devolution was a program originally decided upon by Smith, although by not in such wide-ranging way as what really happened.
[4] Transport is not amalgamated in this timeline and is header by John Prescott, who is not Deputy Leader.
[5] Just as OTL, Labour pledges to have a campaign of economic “prudence”
[6] Minister for Health as in OTL
[7] Has a higher position than OTL as Minister for Education and Skills
[8] A ballon for the first person to guess what has not been butterflied away!
. Keep it up.