Orange appeal: Peter Hain
Just in case anyone wasn’t wholly satisfied by the prospect of one thrilling leadership campaign, another was launched upon an unsuspecting public yesterday. Or, to be precise, a deputy leadership campaign. Peter Hain, the perma-tanned, multi-tasking Cabinet minister who is Secretary of State for both Northern Ireland and Wales, fired the gun in the race to be the next deputy leader of the Labour Party.
There isn’t actually a vacancy, of course. John Prescott has resolutely declined to hang up his croquet mallet. But before anyone accuses Hain of being the wrong man for the wrong job at the wrong time, he clarified that he was actually announcing that he would be a candidate when the election takes place, after Prescott and Tony Blair depart next year. He was making his early move in order to pledge fealty to Gordon Brown and to try to see off Alan Johnson, a possible leadership, and very likely deputy leadership, contender. Johnson, a former postman, appeals to the left-leaning members of the party whom Hain wants to woo.
Hain has a radical pedigree. Born in Kenya and brought up in South Africa, he fled to Britain with his family in 1966 because of his parents’ opposition to apartheid. He was a top figure in the Young Liberals before joining Labour and becoming MP for Neath in 1991. He was a junior minister in the Foreign Office and the Department of Trade and Industry before becoming Leader of the House.
“My South African experience is relevant here,” he has said of Northern Ireland, reflecting on how conflict between the apartheid elite and the African National Congress was resolved. “In the end the deal there was done between the two most polarised parties. They did the deal.” It might be too much for him to bring Blairites and Brownites together.
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On his second marriage, to Elizabeth, a Cardiff headhunter, Hain describes a household dominated by ministerial boxes. He has admitted that “Cabinet ministers are terrible examples for proper family life”. He has a reputation for free thinking that can have side-effects. He has frequently been required to extricate his foot from his mouth. He was once rebuked by Downing Street for suggesting that the rich should pay more tax. It’s possible, however, that in saying these things he’s being canny. Such sentiments appeal to the sort of old Labourites that Prescott kept on board.
But the key question is: can a man so orange ever attain high office? When this newspaper once delicately inquired if his distinctive hue was connected to sun lamps, he retorted that this was “the most deeply offensive question I’ve ever been asked”. Perhaps he’s just flying too close to the sun.