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- guardian.co.uk, Sunday 13 January 2002 00.38 GMT
It's easy to write the script: Labour is rocked by union militancy; talk of another winter of discontent; the transport system in chaos; the Prime Minister returning from sunny climes, not exactly saying: 'Crisis, what crisis?' but announcing he's off again soon. And all the while, the sound of steady, deliberate steps towards the centre coming from the Tory party. An arrogant Government failing to deliver and a chastened Opposition which is listening at last. It's certainly been the Conservatives' week.
Commentators from Left and Right, who rarely agree, all see some unseasonal signs of the green shoots of their recovery. The Tories are 'inching towards reality' says the Guardian 's Hugo Young. They are 'showing signs of returning to life' according to Steve Richards in the Independent, and 'at last have something interesting to say' for the Telegraph 's Alice Thomson. One by one, the old Tory mantras are being turned on their head, from Michael Howard's disavowal of the idea of low taxes above all else to Oliver Letwin's discovery, contrary to Margaret Thatcher's assertion, that there is such a thing as society.
The likeable, self-deprecating Letwin concludes that the old 'prison works' theme does not tell the whole story on crime. Add to that Damian Green's critique of what's wrong with our secondary schools - devised after spending three days helping teach in one. Then there's Caroline Spelman's restraining voice on asylum-seekers and military action against Iraq.
All of them except Michael Howard, who these days bears little resemblance to the 'something of the night' Howard of old, are the 'No-Names'. Oh how we mocked when Iain Duncan Smith found most of his party's heavyweights had gone off in a sulk and he had to fill his front bench with people few voters had ever heard of. Yet the No-Names are winning themselves a bit of reputation for candour, intelligence and fresh thinking.
Whether these changes are coming about because of, or in spite of, Iain Duncan Smith is not clear. Supporters say he's never been the swivel-eyed extremist of his caricature, but has a wide and deep intellectual thirst. That's yet to be proven, but could he turn out to be a modern, smaller version of the Clement Attlee of his party? Attlee, you'll remember, was a balding, uncharismatic man with a steely sense of strategy who allowed others, like Nye Bevan and Ernie Bevin, the space to shine beneath him.
Of course, it's always much easier to think freely in Opposition. There's more time, for a start, and much less media attention. But it is as though the Tories, having suffered what Mr Alastair Campbell might call a 24-carat breakdown, are now in full rehabilitation mode. Confessional, frank, and open, Shadow Ministers are suddenly asking for advice and searching for solutions. Damian Green is not only spending time in schools, he's touring Europe, too. Oliver Letwin has thrown his net wide in looking for solutions to the scourge of crime. It may have been taking things a little far actually to become the victim of a burglary himself, but you can't deny his enthusiasm.
Now look at Labour. It is also in search of new thinking and rightly, for the Third Way has run out of road. But instead of being open and self-critical, Labour seems hierarchical, closed and retentive, clasping policy ever tighter to the centre. Where does Labour look for new ideas? Why, a host of businessmen. Downing Street is stuffed with new units and they're not just the ones chosen from the furniture showrooms by Mrs Blair. There's the Performance and Innovation Unit, the Policy Unit, the Forward Strategy Unit - and on it goes.
Among the luminaries in these units are John Birt, former director-general of the BBC, Penny Hughes of Coca-Cola, Nick Lovegrove, from the management consultants McKinseys, and Adair Turner, a former director-general of the CBI. Each of them is undoubtedly a worthy bigwig, but without, in some cases, a political bone in their bodies.
The units are there to prescribe, order, measure and dictate, not to listen or rethink or even to communicate with the rest of us. Accidentally or not, they simply clench more power and author ity to the centre, at the expense of departments and Parliament. If the Tories have been a bit like a man rediscovering himself after a breakdown, sloughing off the old arrogance, then Labour has been like the man driving himself obsessively towards that breakdown.
But there are no scripts here. Nothing is preordained. These are very dangerous times for New Labour because it is now that it could absolutely confirm the control-freak yet incompetent image that too much of the country suspects. Yet there are also signs that some at least of the party's senior figures realise the danger and are starting to change course. Stephen Byers has sounded like a human being in his interviews on the rail crisis.
His department's critic, Peter Hain, is still in his job after making the latest of many embarrassing but accurate statements. Charles Clarke and Clare Short similarly have been frank in a way that, back in 1997-8, would have had Alastair Campbell in apoplexy. In the Commons, Robin Cook is licensed to work on reforms that the executive as a whole dislikes. I sense U-turns coming on the London Underground and Lords reform, both welcome admissions of earlier mistakes. The euro, admittedly, is still a neuralgic issue and Ministers are watched carefully by both Number 10 and the Treasury. Yet even here we are seeing clear differences of emphasis (Clarke and Brown, Hain and Straw) without the ceiling falling down.
All of this is both good for the country and self-preserving for Labour. What has been lacking so far is a strong signal from the top which puts past failures in context and explains exactly where the party wants to take Britain now. But even that may finally be coming. Tony Blair's new theme is that the public services are in real danger because the Tories and the media wish to talk them down relentlessly as a prelude to a further and dramatic era of break-up and privatisation: only more money, more reform and more political grit can save them.
We don't yet know yet where the Tories will end up in their survey of public services policy but there is enough truth in the Blair charge to rally his own party. If he was able to extend his thinking to admit the excessive control-freakery of the past and to admit a new tolerance and openness of style, then he could yet find that second wind which has so far eluded him. It would be, I admit, very difficult to do. Margaret Thatcher never managed to let go, which was really why she was toppled.
Mr Blair has spent much of his life learning lessons from her success. Maybe it's time to learn from her failure as well. If he can, it is only the end of the beginning.
Andrew Rawnsley is on holiday
