John Smith - twenty years on

Twenty years on from the death of John Smith, on 12 May 1994, and it's almost as though he never existed. Admittedly he was the leader of the Labour Party, in opposition, for only just under two years, and served in cabinet - as trade secretary - for barely six months, in the dying days of Jim Callaghan's government in the 1970s. But he was a significant figure and deserves a higher standing than I think he currently enjoys.

When Smith took over the Labour leadership from Neil Kinnock in the aftermath of the disastrous 1992 general election defeat, much of the talk among commentators and politicians alike was that Britain might very well be turning into a de facto one-party state, on the model of Japan or Mexico. As the newly elected Labour MP Tony Wright put it: 'We live in a dominant party system, where political changes occur through shifts in the dominant party.'

John Major had just won the Conservatives' fourth victory in succession, despite the country being in the pits of a recession that could hardly be blamed on anyone else, and the likes of Giles Radice were asking, perfectly seriously: 'Can Labour ever win?'

By the time Smith's leadership was cut short by his heart attack, that talk seemed a long way distant. Opinion polls had Labour with a twenty-point lead over the Tories, and were showing that nearly 80 per cent of the electorate agreed with the statement 'Labour is a much more moderate and sensible party than it used to be'. He had changed the party, and the public perception of the party, leaving a perfect legacy for his successor, Tony Blair. Victory in the next general election, whenever it came, was certain.

Some of this was due to Smith's own persona and politics. He was a mix of the old right and the mainstream left in the Labour party. On the one hand, he had, in 1971, joined Roy Jenkins in rebelling against the party whip, siding with Ted Heath's government in the vote to join the European Economic Community (as we used to call it). On the other, he had remained in the party a decade later, when Jenkins and others split to form the SDP. Asked why he hadn't defected, his answer was simple and revealing: 'I am comfortable with the unions.'

And that felt about right. He seemed quite comfortable generally: unflappable, reassuring and convivial. He was unmistakeably part of the Labour movement, but couldn't be painted as an extremist. He gave the appearance of speaking common sense; to quote Tony Wright again, he had 'the great gift of making ideological declarations sound like a request to call and rad the gas meter'.

He could also, despite the contented image, be a radical thinker. The party was reformed on his watch, not simply by reducing the power of trade union leaders, but also by introducing all-women shortlists. On a wider stage, I was particularly taken by his call for the remaking of the United Nations Security Council, suggesting that it be expanded to include ten permanent members, with the addition of Germany, Japan, India, Brazil and Nigeria. (Though I always felt the Arab League needed to be included as well.)

In a nice tribute to Smith, published today in the Guardian, John McTernan argues - I think correctly - that he would have been a successful prime minister. He wouldn't have won such a big majority in 1997 as did Blair, but he would have made far better use of it. McTernan suggests he would have gone on to win a second term and, having refused to join America in the invasion of Iraq, a third.

I'm not quite so sure about that last bit. He would have been in his mid-sixties by then, and I suspect pressure from the next generation would have persuaded him to stand down before attempting a third election. There were some notably disloyal members of that generation - primarily Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Peter Mandelson - who took great delight in plotting and in undermining those with whom they didn't agree. Indeed even during Smith's brief tenure, there was a lot of talk about a potential coup by Brown and Blair to oust him from the leadership.

But all this praise shouldn't obscure the one great failing of Smith.

Apart from his own personal virtues, the other reason why he made such extraordinary progress in the polls after 1992 - and one of the reasons why the Conservatives haven't won an election since then - was Black Wednesday, when Britain was forced out of the ERM. This gift for an opposition landed in Smith's lap within a month of him taking over the leadership. The Tories' reputation for economic competence (which had somehow, miraculously, survived two massive recessions) was severely damaged and is only now recovering. John Major, claimed Smith, had become 'the devalued prime minister of a devalued government'.

But Smith himself had been on the same side of that argument as had Major. As shadow chancellor, he had been an enthusiastic cheerleader for the ERM. He was wrong. And it was quite a big thing to have been wrong on - probably the most important policy decision of the time.

Worse still, he gave no indication of recognising that he had been wrong. His enthusiasm for the European project - going all the way back to that vote in 1971 - overrode other considerations, and it's hard to avoid the conclusion that, had he been elected prime minister, he would have made the same mistake again, but on a larger scale. Under a government led by John Smith, Britain would almost certainly have been in the first wave of countries joining the single currency.

Which, ultimately, is why, in John Smith, the Labour Party chose the wrong man to succeed Neil Kinnock. The right choice - as I've claimed here before - was the only other candidate in the leadership election, Bryan Gould. For an account of how that would have turned out, can I direct you to the Inane Ramblings of a History Graduate.