“I did the sex and the rock’n’roll but not the drugs”

26/01/2010

Does Alan Johnson have the X-factor to be the next Labour leader?

by Adam Forrest
Walking toward Westminster on Remembrance Day, it is impossible to ignore the icy solemnity in the air. Long after the two minutes silence at 11am, tourists along Whitehall take pictures with less fuss and noise than usual. Elderly gents remove bowler hats and hold them to their breast as they walk past the Cenotaph memorial to ‘The Glorious Dead’.

Inside a muted Parliament, Alan Johnson has just returned from the service at Westminster Abbey across the road. “We do do these things well,” he says of the “very moving” ceremony. A sincere assessment, no doubt, but the former postie is not typically one for the grand formalities of governance. As we walk the corridors to the Home Secretary’s office, passers-by greet him with matey affection. “Oh, hi Alan! Alright?”

It is difficult to imagine such relaxed affability around predecessors like Charles Clarke or Jackie Smith. The likeability factor – now the most valued commodity in politics – is why so many fancy Johnson, the genial everyman with an easy smile, as the next Labour leader. Supporters suggest his common touch would be an appealing foil to Eton-educated David Cameron. Nodding to the little Queens Park Rangers plaque sitting on his office shelf, Johnson says he’s been a fan “man and boy” - not a phrase you’re likely to hear from either of the Miliband brothers.

He continues to shrug off suggestions he is favourite to replace Gordon Brown after a likely election defeat next year (more of which later). But if he is to inherit the mantle there are still all those “events dear boy events” to negotiate, and awkward, embarrassing events seem to cripple Home Office ministers with alarming regularity.

Has the sacking of Professor David Nutt, the scientific advisor who dared criticise government policy on the re-classification of illegal drugs, destroyed Johnson’s aura of invincibility? He doesn’t appear too bothered by the row, which has seen five other academics resign. There are no regrets about his handling of the affair and he remains scathing of liberal attitudes to drug use.

“There’s a kind of class system with drugs, with the cocaine-sniffing middle classes in Hampstead,” he scoffs. “But almost definitely the (deprived areas) are the places where the pain and trauma of addiction would be felt the most. These are the most vulnerable people.”

Some would suggest the pain and trauma in drug-torn communities cannot get much worse, and more radical ideas than tinkering with classification are required. A new report by campaign group Transform advocating the legalisation and careful regulation of drug use is, unsurprisingly, given short shrift.

“The public would be aghast if they thought we would legalise drugs,” he points out. “The argument is that legalising will regulate it and you’ll be able to reduce crime. What the police say is that’s rubbish. Legalising will increase drug use. Drugs cause harm. There are virtually no circumstances in which drugs are not harmful.”

His clarity on the subject will certainly do him no harm with tea-drinking middle-England. Right-wing bloggers in the capital however, would dearly love to discover a youthful indiscretion or two. Did Johnson, a one-time Mod who gigged his way round late-60s London with several bands, never dabble in illicit substances? “I never did. I left school at 15. And a bit later when others were going to university and doing their experimenting I was working as a postman and I had three kids to raise. I did the sex and the rock and roll, but I left out the drugs.”

Worse yet for style-conscious Tory strategists, the 59-year-old must be a candidate for hippest MP in the House (the competition is not fierce, admittedly). His most treasured possession is the 45rpm he ‘cut’ with his band The Area. Still an avid music fan, he adores Super Furry Animals and current favourites include Elbow, Noah and the Whale and The Boy Least Likely To. Does he have a sneaky Saturday night preference for Strictly or X-Factor? “Oh, I don’t watch either of them. You should make up an answer for that these days, shouldn’t you? I still prefer decent music.”

Long before London began to swing, there were the grim facts of life to deal with. Johnson was orphaned at the age of 12 after his mother died, and he was raised by his older sister on a council estate near Notting Hill. He stacked shelves at Tesco before becoming a postman at 18. He says the cockney urchin back-story “wears a bit thin”, but accepts the added responsibility that comes with being a Labour politician from a working-class neighbourhood. How does he feel returning to the scarred estates of his childhood?  Is he disappointed his party hasn’t been able to do more for the very worst off?

“We’ve lifted 600,000 out of child poverty and we’re on route to do more,” he points out. “All those inequality figures are distorted in the sense that overall standard of living improved (under Labour). So while you lift people out of poverty, you still have a gap. We’ve lifted just over a million pensioners out of poverty.

“Now, on health,” he continues, gearing up to defend the record. “The expert on this, Professor Michael Marmot, points to the fact the health inequality gap hasn’t closed, in fact it’s got a little bit wider. He also points out that the health of the poorest has been lifted and is now at the level that the rest of society was nine years ago. Their health improved to a greater degree than any other social class. So it’s a tremendous achievement.”

The end of big public spending approaches fast however. David Cameron has dubbed the days ahead an “age of austerity”. Aware of the need to find substantial savings, some in the Labour Party have hinted at scaling back some of the universal ‘middle-class’ benefits that made them so popular: pension credits, child tax credits, the winter fuel payment.

Does Johnson think a return to more targeted means-tested benefits is inevitable? “I doubt it. Benefits that are universal should remain universal, not least because the complications you would get in a system where you start means testing. In some instances you can do it - pension credits for instances. But the kind of thing the Tories are looking at (cutting) are working family tax credits I wouldn’t like to see interfered with.”

If the polls are to be taken seriously, much of the country does not despise or fear the Conservatives and their pledge to cut public spending where necessary. Since Labour concede the need to reduce spending too, the challenge is to present a choice between two very different economic futures. Johnson, a former Marxist and union leader, clearly has a visceral hatred of the Tories, insists his opponents are incapable of inventing any measures designed to help ordinary folk.

“It is a watershed election because what they’re advocating is a policy of inaction – it’s laissez-faire from the Tories. They haven’t changed. David Cameron’s basic job is to say we’ve failed and they’ve changed. We haven’t failed. Sure, we aren’t living in a land of milk and honey. But you don’t get the national minimum wage, 3600 sure start children’s centres, pension credits, all these things, without government intervening. It’s
wise government.”

The Labour loyalist damns Cameron as “a talented politician but insubstantial.” He also slates the work of Ian Duncan Smith’s think tank the Centre for Social Justice on inner-city Britain as merely an attempt to put up a touchy-feely facade. “I’m really pleased that Iain Duncan Smith has discovered poverty,” he sneers witheringly. “God, it must rankle with people who have spent there lives in charities dealing with it. The Tories oversaw a situation where one in three kids in this country were growing up in poverty. They should still be wearing sackcloth and ashes for it.”


Neither Johnson nor his Labour predecessors at the Home Office can claim to be innocent in the art of countering perceived weaknesses. Tony Blair’s rise to power was helped by talking “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime” as shadow Home Secretary in the early nineties. Is there a danger that image shapes policy? 

“There is a danger,” he says a little hesitantly. “I suppose it’s ‘are you going to be John Reid or Roy Jenkins?’ (Jenkins was the famously liberal Home Secretary who decriminalised homosexuality and suspended capital punishment)

"I don’t see being tough as the be all and end all of being Home Secretary. The view of the moderate majority is not at those extreme ends, neither closed door or open door on immigration. The temptation to look tough on crime, well, if you’re living in an area persecuted by criminals you want someone to be tough on it.”

The current Home Secretary concedes successive governments have been “maladroit” in their handling of immigration, and shying away from debate has helped the BNP. He believes a points-based system, flexible to the alterations announced by the PM last week, now has the issue on a more even keel.

“Most people would say the policy is fair. They see the benefits of immigration. It’s (also) a perfectly reasonable debate for people to say ‘there’s a lot of unemployment – why should we be unemployed and see companies bringing over workers from other parts of the world?’”

And so to all those rumours swirling around leadership bids. There are a fair few columnists and politicos who believe installing Alan Johnson in Downing Street is Labour’s last hope of avoiding defeat at the general election. Yet their ‘AJ4PM’ campaign seems to be running out of steam, and the man himself appears genuinely enthusiastic about the abilities of his boss. 

“He’s the best man for the job,” he states with some feeling. “You’re never a prophet in your own land, but the way he’s dealt with the economic crisis is admired all around the world. The attacks on him have a hit a new low. I mean, attacking the way he writes a letter is just so unfair and trivial.

“I actually think it might do some good in the sense that the British public see that the nature of the attack as unfair. Gordon would hate his support to grow because people feel sorry for him – he’s big and ugly enough to stand up for himself. There’s a stature and integrity about him that’s inspirational. Whether he’s as good at all the other stuff…the song and dance act…he wouldn’t suggest he’s as good as many others.”

So he has no ambitions to be Prime Minister? “I don’t want to rule myself out in all eventualities that might arise at some stage in the future,” he grins. “But I don’t think it will arise. I’m getting a bit long in the tooth y’know.”

All part of his humble charm, his followers would say. All the more reason the former song and dance man may well find himself pushed forward at the next available eventuality.