THERE WERE already two mysteries about the Foreign Secretary; now there are three. Margaret Beckett has become the triple enigma of the Cabinet. The first mystery was why Tony Blair decided last month to sack Jack Straw. The Foreign Secretary was then one of the few successes in a Cabinet that was already beginning to fall apart. He had established a good relationship with the United States and an excellent, if slightly flirtatious, one with the Secretary of State herself, Condoleezza Rice. This was an asset to British foreign policy.
In European affairs Mr Straw had proved himself a reliable but not uncritical minister, with the great merit of always reading his brief and having some skills at networking. At home, he was a good parliamentarian. Above all, he was a senior minister who had not embarrassed the Government. He was not a Clarke, a Blunkett, a Byers or a Prescott. One would have expected the Prime Minister to cling to such a rock of stability.
Two explanations have been given, neither of which is convincing. The first was that Mr Straw’s rejection of the use of force in Iran — he said it would be “nuts” to bomb Tehran — had angered the leading neoconservatives in Washington.
However, Mr Straw was stating British policy and, so far as we know, the policy has not been changed. On this theory, Dr Rice’s flirtation, which stretched from Blackburn to Baghdad, was intended to protect Mr Straw from the hostility of Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary. In doing this, she was fighting her own Washington turf battle to win back the State Department’s control of foreign policy from the Pentagon. Surely Mr Blair would not let Mr Rumsfeld sack a British foreign secretary?
The second explanation is based on British political integrity. Mr Blair and the beleaguered Blairites still want the Prime Minister to stay in office as long as possible. They are under increasing pressure from Gordon Brown’s faction, which is in the ascendant. Mr Straw is suspected of making unduly friendly remarks about Mr Brown. He was therefore no longer a reliable member of the Blairite team. He paid the penalty for an independent mind, like one of Stalin’s ministers being sent to the gulag. The gulag in his case was demotion to Leader of the House of Commons.
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Whatever the true reason, Mr Straw’s demotion had nothing to do with the interests of Britain, or any trivia of that kind. He was a highly competent foreign secretary, and he was replaced by an unproven and inexperienced one. That is the second mystery. Why Margaret Beckett? Her next step as a minister had been expected to be oblivion in the House of Lords.
One should not go too far. Mrs Beckett has not been an incompetent minister, though Environment was proving a bit too much for her. Defra is a pretty dreadful department, second only to the Home Office as the destroyer of ministerial reputations. She had once been deputy leader of the Labour Party. She had been a satisfactory Leader of the Commons. She is a safeish pair of hands, a remarkable survivor, able to hold her own on Newsnight and the Today programme.
Yet she has never held any post connected with foreign affairs. On the most favourable estimate, it might take her 18 months to read herself in. In 18 months’ time she will be due for the chop, as Mr Brown is not at all likely to keep her as foreign secretary. Mr Blair has therefore changed a successful and established Foreign Secretary for a rather unexciting novice, though of considerable parliamentary experience.
A further, and even stranger, mystery arose in Brussels last Friday. It is settled British policy, expressed by Mr Blair himself on occasion, that the European Union should become more transparent and more democratic. In Europe, Britain stands for openness. This policy had almost everyone’s support, Europhiles and Eurosceptics, Government and Opposition, all three parties. At the EU summit both the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary were in attendance. There was a motion that “all council deliberations on legislative acts” should be open to television. On this motion, the British position could have been put either by Mr Blair or by Mrs Beckett.
Either way, it would be the Government’s position. As the Prime Minster was present, he could have made a gracious little speech welcoming a small advance towards greater transparency. He had the power to decide or to change the British line. Instead, he put up Mrs Beckett to argue against the reform. She was heard in complete silence, the silence of embarrassment. She put the case against openness — the case against British policy. She argued that ministers would negotiate privately on the telephone if their official negotiations were being filmed.
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The same argument was used against reporting the affairs of Parliament 200 years ago. In pre-democratic England it was illegal to report speeches in the House of Commons, and Samuel Johnson, in the Gentleman’s Magazine, had to make up the arguments used on both sides. Mrs Beckett was returning to 18th-century obscurantism.
It is very odd that the Foreign Secretary should have taken this line, but it is disgraceful that the Prime Minister should have instructed her to do so. Surely, if he wanted to change British policies, and support secretiveness in Brussels, he should have got up and said so. Perhaps he should have told the House of Commons first.
The result was that Britain was isolated once again, by 24-1, but on this occasion in the worst of causes. Our Prime Minister and the new Foreign Secretary committed Britain to the anti-democratic principle of secret European legislation, secretly arrived at.
Wrong to fire Jack Straw; wrong to appoint Margaret Beckett; wrong to oppose openness in Europe; wrong not to defend his own wretched policy, but to leave that shameful task to a subordinate minister. How much longer can Tony Blair blunder on?