The reshuffle loser – Des Browne
The great survivor was the first casualty of yesterday’s Cabinet reshuffle.
It’s a miracle Des Browne survived this long. Acting as defence secretary through some of the prickly moments of the Iraq war, the Iran hostage crisis and Labour’s gradual collapse in Scotland made it seem as if he was virtually indestructible. Sources indicate he was offered a different post this morning, a post he turned down. Mr Browne does not look so indestructible anymore.
Despite entering parliament with Tony Blair’s government in 1997 as MP for Kilmarnock and Loudoun, he was always seen as a Brownite. Nevertheless, he made impressive progress through the ranks of the government. Starting as under-secretary at the Northern Ireland Office, he later became work and pensions minister before moving to the Home Office with responsibility for immigration. He was then packed off to the Treasury as chief secretary before being made defence secretary in a 2006 reshuffle.
It was there he came up against his first big problem. After allowing the captured British navy personnel to give interviews to the media, a bitter backlash developed when their testimonies failed to show the Royal Navy in a good light. One admitted crying because his captors took away his iPod. Calls for his head – always made more in hope than genuine outrage – eventually fell away, but questions over his judgment remained.
But it was Gordon Brown’s judgment which eventually put maximum pressure on Mr Browne’s position. Giving one man both the defence brief and that of the Scottish Office was a mad, bad decision. It irritated everyone. Scottish nationalists could point to the dual role as evidence Westminster didn’t care about events north of the border and every military controversy was worsened by the implication the government wasn’t taking defence seriously enough.
It’s still hard to understand what the thinking was in Number 10. The responsibilities were simply too much for any one man to undertake. Mr Browne ended up relying heavily on his Scottish Office deputy, David Cairns. When he resigned, just before this year’s party conference, in an attempt to provoke a rebellion against the prime minister, Mr Browne had to take the load back. It was just another problem in a Scottish Labour performance which can only be described as disastrous. Alex Salmond’s new Scottish National party (SNP) administration proved very popular and started to pile pressure on the Westminster government on a daily basis. Wendy Alexander decided to resign after a minor breaking of the rules led to her being banned from Holyrood for a day. And then, like a cherry on the cake, Labour lost one of its safest seats – Glasgow East.
But that paled next to the effects on his defence brief. Tory commentators and – equally importantly – several senior military figures were outraged at having only half a man looking after defence while the country faced its most severe and extensive military engagements since the end of the second world war. Whenever troops died, or equipment was found to be faulty or in low-supply, or forces were said to be over-stretched or human rights abuses by British troops were uncovered, the question of his dual role again raised its head.
Now, he is gone. Plans for a combined devolved government position seem to have been put on hold, but that was evidently not enough to save him. Neither was the support of several senior military figures. Whatever Mr Browne was offered, it was clearly not impressive enough to keep him government. His departure takes a man widely perceived as both an unspectacular minister and a safe pair of hands from the administration.
It also opens the door to John Hutton to take over as defence secretary. Given his headstrong and right-wing approach to the Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, you can expect him to be a more provocative and high profile secretary than his predecessor.
Ian Dunt
