POLITICAL MEMOIRS

Enoch Powell, a British classicist and Conservative politician, most famous for his "rivers of blood" speech about the dangers of immigration, once said that all political careers end in failure. The word "failure" was meant, I think, on more than one level. Failure to change the world in the way one had hoped; failure because the electorate had chosen to boot them out; and, not least, failure to maintain personal relationships through the trials and tribulations of political life.

All Governments seem to go through the same process. A close group of like-thinking, dynamic, people take hold of a political party in opposition, make it attractive, and eventually get it elected to Government. Then the fun starts. Tensions arise, as individuals with power pull in different directions. Ambitions cross other ambitions. Back-sniping starts. People resign or get sacked. There are leaks and smears. A fin de siecle air begins to hang over the Government. It loses office. A year or two later, the memoirs start to arrive, giving "the" version of events, settling scores, shafting former friends. Meanwhile, the cycle is already well underway on the other side of the political spectrum.

I was reminded of all this by the current serialisation of the memoirs of Alistair Darling, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer (Finance Minister) in Gordon Brown's last Labour Government. Mr. Brown and Mr. Darling, both Scottish MP's, go way back as friends and colleagues. But it was clear that their final working relationship was fraught with difficulties, not least because Mr. Brown had been Chancellor in the decade before he became Prime Minister, and so was unwilling to accept his leading Minister's advice, particularly when it came to dealing with the recent financial crisis. When in office, Mr. Darling was bound by Cabinet collective responsibility and the difficulty of getting rid of Mr. Brown as his boss. Now, however, he is free to get his revenge in print. And he has done so.

Because everything political involves money, the relationship between a Prime Minister and his or her Finance Minister is the most important in any Government. Unfortunately, Britain has been more than a tad unlucky in this regard in recent decades. Margaret Thatcher and Nigel Lawson; John Major and Norman Lamont; Tony Blair and Gordon Brown; Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling; they all ended in tears. I don't have any solution to the problem, but I think that Enoch Powell was probably right.

Walter Blotscher