Has Harriet Harman “Gone Rogue”

 

 

Is Harriet Harman going rogue I wonder? It seems like Harman is increasingly looking like the British equivalent of Sarah Palin (albeit a left wing one). Those of you who followed the White House race closely last autumn will no doubt recall how in the final weeks John McCain’s campaign became plagued by the antics of his running mate. Sarah Palin the V.P nominee, soon came to realise that they were facing defeat, and immediately began to develop her own agenda to set herself up as future Republican frontrunner. The efforts by the official McCain campaign to rein her were just pushed aside as she did what she liked, frequently going off message and even contradicting McCain.

 

Palin became more interested in raising her profile and supporter base, positioning herself for the 2012 White House race, rather than concentrating on the immediate election battle. In the words of many commentators at the time she had “gone rogue”.

 

In my opinion that is precisely the situation that is developing now with Labour’s deputy leader, Harriet Harman. She’s come to her own view about the election outcome after seeing the increasingly dismal polling and for her the objective is to position herself to become best placed to take over from Brown when the time comes.

 

The Daily Mail has a good article backing up what I have being saying. It quotes a Labour insider as saying; “There is a pattern of behaviour developing with Harriet that is entirely about what happens after a Labour defeat. You can see it in much of what she is doing at the moment. It is all about sucking up to the Labour party and the unions.”

 

She is drawing up policy initiatives and making sometimes inflammatory statements that are designed to make her popular within the party. This is especially true of the left wing members and with the unions, all this is irrespective of whether they go down well with voters at large as they of course don’t have a vote in Labour party leadership elections.

 

Harman has firmly jumped on the “hang a banker” bandwagon and is infuriating people like Mandelson who understand that Labour needs the support of business. She is even trying to reopen class divisions in society, pandering to base instincts and anti middle class sentiment, which is a bit hypocritical when you consider that she is practically part of the aristocracy. On top of this there’s also a suggestion that Harriet is trying to use the G20 summit in London as a platform, by proposing a parallel women’s G20 summit (a nice picture with Michael Obama could not hurt). This will surely only add to the fury at Number 10.

 

Brown could just sack her, or demote her as some Labour party members have suggested to “put her in her place” and “show her who’s boss.” However the problem for Brown is that Harman faced an election in 2007 when she surprisingly defeated five prominent Labour figures to become deputy leader. This was including Alan Johnson, another cabinet minister whose name is being linked to a future leadership challenge at the moment. She owes her position to that victory and it’s very difficult for action to be taken against her. Add to this the gender issue and you have a very dangerous mix. Brown needs to tread carefully or things could become worse.