How are the Red Princes and Princesses also rising?

It was almost two years ago that a post appeared here about the Red Princes and Princesses – the children of prominent Labour politicians who were thought likely to follow in their parental footsteps ("the son also rises"). A good article on the subject, What Labour’s Red Princes tell us about Britain, by Sophie McBain appeared in the New Statesman in June. She concluded:

… if you felt like being kind, you could say that Labour’s Red Princes have benefited from “high social capital”, but perhaps you would prefer the term “nepotism”. The children of MPs enter politics with an understanding of the Westminster system, as well as ready-made political connections and influential backers, which all help if you are looking for a parachute into a winnable seat. In this way, at least, Labour reflects the society it aspires to represent: the UK has the lowest level of social mobility in the developed world. 

… How does a party of political princelings and Westminster insiders convince anyone it can represent the working classes? …

With just over seven months to go before the election on 7 May 2015*, I thought it would be interesting to find out how they (and some other notables’ offspring) are getting on in the constituencies reported to be of interest to them. I expect that now that the Scottish referendum is over and an influx of Scottish Labour MPs seeking English seats has been averted, more will be learnt.

I will add/amend as information becomes available, but so far, and in alphabetical order:

EMILY BENN 
Child of: Benn dynasty
Age*: 25
Constituency: Croydon South - Majority in 2010: 5818 (Con, 28%)
Status: PPC (Prospective Parliamentary Candidate, ie will be Labour candidate in 2015)

STEPHEN BENN 
Child of: late Tony Benn
Age*: 63
Constituency: Lords hereditary member
Source: Daily Mail 8 April 2014

EUAN BLAIR

Child of: Tony Blair

Age*: 31

Constituency:    Coventry North West - Majority in 2010: 6288 (Lab, 13%)

and                   Bootle (Merseyside) - Majority in 2010: 21181 (Lab, 51%)

Status: ?

JOE DROMEY

Child of: Jack Dromey and Harriet Harman

Age*: 31/32

Constituency: Lewisham Deptford - Majority in 2010: 12499 (Lab, 30%)

Status: interest denied
Source: Daily Telegraph blogs 3 September 2013

GEORGIA GOULD

Child of: Late Philip Gould and Lady Gould (Gail Rebuck)

Age*: 27

Constituency: Erith & Thamesmead - Majority in 2010: 5703 (Lab, 13%)

Status: Failed to become PPC in 2010

STEPHEN KINNOCK

Child of: Neil and Gladys Kinnock (Lord Kinnock and Baroness Kinnock)

Age*: 45

Constituency: Aberavon - Majority in 2010: 11039 (Lab, 36%)

Status: PPC

SUSAN MITCHELL

Child of: Austin Mitchell

Age*: 50s?

Constituency: Dulwich & W Norwood - Majority in 2010: 9365 (Lab, 19%)

Status: Withdrew from PPC

Source: London Evening Standard 24 February2014

DAVID PRESCOTT

Child of: Lord Prescott (John Prescott)

Age*: 44

Constituency: Hull East - Majority in 2010: 8597 (Lab, 25%)

Status: Failed to become PPC

Constituency: Greenwich & Woolwich - Majority in 2010: 10153 (Lab, 25%)

Status: Failed to become PPC

Source: Parliament Street 15 April2014 

WILL STRAW

Child of: Jack Straw

Age*: 34

Constituency: Rossendale & Darwen - Majority in 2010: 4493 (Con, 9%)

Status: PPC

* Age on 7 May 2015

For once, British politics and art

This blog has pretensions which include UK politics and British art but only occasionally does one post manage to cover the two. Back in February a post about Spielberg’s Lincoln mentioned that Tony Blair’s wife, Cherie, is probably a descendant of Lincoln’s assassin John Wilkes Booth. Weeks later, wandering through my local branch of Poundland (a chain in the UK pricing all items at £1, ie about US$1.50 or €1.20) I came across a copy (a lot of copies to be honest) of Cherie’s autobiography, Speaking for Myself. I thought it would be interesting to see if she acknowledged her reputed notorious ancestor – not a mention. But I did come across something which was just as interesting.

Euan Uglow (1932-2000) was a British painter who specialised in the human figure, particularly female nudes, and also still lifes and landscapes. His work in UK public collections (eg Zagi 1981-2 right and owned by the Tate) can be seen on BBC Your Paintings. In her autobiography (pages 62 to 64) Cherie Booth, as she was at the time, explains how she met Uglow and agreed to sit for him:

… [he] handed me what he called "a blue dress" that he wanted me to wear. The blue dress turned out to be just a piece of material he had stitched together, almost like a hip-length waistcoat. It was completely open down the middle. The pose he wanted was very straightforward. I had to have one leg out in front and the other behind, as if I had been caught in the middle of a stride. It had never occurred to me that I would be expected to pose naked, or as good as.  

… During the first few sessions, as I stood desperately trying to hold the pose, I thought, 'What on earth am I doing this for? But at the same time it went through my head that one day I might want my children to know that I wasn't such a dull-o, bluestocking Goody Two-shoes after all.

Eventually other demands on her time forced Booth to give up the sittings:

[Uglow] told me not to worry and that he'd get another dark model to take my place. He had never got round to doing my face, though you could still see it was me. I think he did try to get a replacement, but it didn't work out, so he decided to leave my painting unfinished. It still exists somewhere, but where I don't know. I would love to have it, of course, but his paintings are very valuable, even more so now that he's no longer alive.

There doesn’t seem to be that much mystery about the unfinished painting’s recent location. Earlier this year Striding Nude, Blue Dress 1979-80 was one of the Uglow works on Marlborough Fine Art’s website (below).

Uglow paintings don’t seem to come up at auction very often – I can find nothing comparable to the one Booth sat for since the rather smaller Beautiful Girl Lying Down went for £22000 at Christie’s in 1993. Nonetheless, even at a likely six figure price now, it seems surprising that the Blairs have never bought Striding Nude, Blue Dress given their wealth. A reason might be:

In all the time I was going to Battersea to model for Euan, Tony never knew that I was posing nude. … Tony, when he eventually learned the truth, was very uncomfortable with it. He still is.

But we are told later that the Booths’ first child is called:

… Euan, after Euan Uglow and also a school friend of Tony's who had died far too young. (page 105)

UPDATE 21 MAY 2014 

Lot 97 at Bonhams auction of Modern British and Irish Art on 28 May is listed as Euan Uglow’s Striding Nude, Blue Dress, painted 1978-80, provenance The Artist's Estate and estimated at £60,000 to £80,000.

UPDATE 3 JUNE 2014 

"Sold for £74,500 inc. premium"

Red Princes and Princesses

The strange death in China last year of a British businessman, Neil Heywood, the arrest and trial of Gu Kailai for his murder, and now the disgrace of her husband Bo Xilai, have probably made people in the UK more aware of the dynastic nature of the Chinese Communist Party. In the US, China is analysed closely, and anyone looking to learn more about the ‘princelings’ should find Jeremy Page’s 2011 article in the Wall Street Journal informative. The WSJ interactive graphic shows Bo Xilai’s antecedents and also the elite positions now occupied by other children of Mao Zedong’s comrades.

Once a concept like princelings is established it travels and then gets transferred. The UK political blogger Guido Fawkes ran stories last month about Will Straw (son of Jack) “spending time in the Lancashire seat of Rossendale and Darwen” and Euan Blair (son of Tony and Cherie) apparently being interested in selection for the Labour seat of Coventry North West. But he was able to cap this shortly afterwards with news that Joe Dromey (son of Jack and Harriet née Harman) was “devoting a lot of time to work in the safe Labour seat of Lewisham Deptford”. This story was run under the headline The Red Princes: Third Dromey Trying to Get on the Gravy Train (left).

The Labour Party’s annual conference began at the end of September , so good timing for Guido and not surprising that Toby Young in the Sun on Sunday on 30 September came out with:

In case you’re in any doubt that Labour is the true party of inherited privilege, I give you the Wedgwood Benn dynasty. Tony Benn, that old socialist warhorse, was the son of Viscount Stansgate, a Labour Secretary of State, and his son, Hilary Benn, went on to serve in Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’s Cabinet. The latest addition to this fine, aristocratic line is Emily Benn, Tony’s granddaughter, who was selected to stand as the Labour candidate in East Worthing and Shoreham in 2007. To cap it all, this was when she was 17, before she was old enough to vote!

More accurately, although selected at 17, Emily Benn was old enough to vote by the time of the 2010 election in which she came third, behind the LibDems, and the Tory, Tim Loughton, who increased his majority.

Although Guido has, so far, only picked on our ‘Red Princes’, their Chinese analogues include Princesses, as Damien Ma reported in the Atlantic last year in Meet the Red Princesses and Princes: The Chinese Elite's Globe-Trotting Kids. No doubt some Red Princesses will be surfacing here before long – the Blairs have a daughter as well as another son, Nicky. And before the last election, Georgia Gould, daughter of the late Philip Gould, was reported to be interested in the Labour selection for Erith and Thamesmead shortly after graduation. According to the Daily Mail she had taken over as Chair of the Oxford University Labour Club from none other than Nicky Blair!

Of course, political dynasties are not uncommon among the Conservatives either, perhaps not quite so intertwined, but we can expect the Daily Mail and Guido to give them a miss. Damien Ma put his finger on something relevant though, when he concluded:

It is far from clear whether any of them [the Red Princesses and Princes] will have political aspirations in the future, and if they do, whether their experiences will decisively shape their world views. The average Chinese -- actually, average anybody -- would struggle to identify with what they represent or to determine whether they will be forces for change or stasis in China over the next decades.

Our political class certainly isn’t short of people from the PPE/researcher/adviser mould now.  Their clone-like offspring are likely to be at two removes from reality rather than one. In the 2020s, when they are all at each other’s throats as were their parents in the last decade, it should make for lively political reporting, if not good government. Let’s hope Leveson doesn’t stifle the Guidos before then. I would put my money on Straw Jr, who was accepted into the civil service fast-stream, no mean feat, and is at least prepared to take on a currently Tory-held seat rather than a safe Labour one, and also bet on Nicky Blair of whom we hear little - but remember the significance in British politics of birth order!

Of course, a reasonable conclusion is that there can’t be that many good graduate jobs around, if all that these wealthy and well-connected kids can aspire to is Parliament. Also, perhaps being an MP with a safe seat is far more congenial, by comparison with most paid work, than many of us plebs realise or the current incumbents care to let on. But the princes in particular should take heed of ‘famous father syndrome’ which can easily afflict those who follow in parental footsteps. One of the best-known sufferers was Randolph Churchill. When it became known that his surgically-excised growth was benign, Evelyn Waugh famously remarked that "It was a typical triumph of modern science to find the one part of Randolph which was not malignant and to remove it."

ADDENDUM 2 OCTOBER

In his Guardian Labour Conference Diary Michael White reported for 1 October:

Tony Blair's former press chief Alastair Campbell is "thinking about" standing for election at the next general election, he revealed yesterday. Asked on LBC radio whether he had ambitions to become an MP, he said: "All I'll say to you is I get a lot of people asking me, particularly when I'm up here, and I do think about it and I am thinking about it and I don't think there's a fantastic rush. We sort of know when the next election is."

Which constituency Campbell has in mind has not been reported yet.  He has two potential princes and one princess, and a partner, Fiona Millar, who was rumoured to be interested in taking over Glenda Jackson's seat. 

Ed Miliband, the Blairs and the Olympics

A few posts back, I commented wryly on Tony Blair’s looking for a new big job as his 60th birthday looms:

I feel I’ve got something to say. If people want to listen, that’s great, and if they don’t, that’s their choice …

Well, something seems to have turned up. According to the Office of Tony Blair, he addressed the Labour Sports Dinner at White City on 11 July, and said:

… it is an honour to be here tonight to support our Party, whose values and principles I have always believed in and always will. And to support Ed, support his leadership, support his drive to make our Party win. Leaders need support. What they usually get is ‘advice’. So Ed, you don’t need my advice but you will have my support.

The dull-as-ditchwater Ed Miliband website has yet to put up his speech nor did @Ed_Miliband tweet about it, but the Labour Party site pre-announced ‘Ed Miliband MP, speaking at Labour’s Sports Dinner, will say’ including:

Mr Miliband will announce that Labour’s Policy Review will consider how best to learn the lessons from the Olympic Games and maximise both its economic and its sporting legacies. Tony Blair has agreed to contribute his ideas and experience to Labour’s Policy Review on these issues. The work will be co-ordinated by the Office of the Leader of the Opposition, along with input from the Office of Shadow DCMS Secretary Harriet Harman, and Shadow Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell.

Juliette Jowit in the Guardian the next day under the headline, Meet the new Labour adviser: Tony Blair, reported that:

Tony Blair is to take his most active part in the Labour party since retiring from frontline politics, contributing ideas and experience to Ed Miliband's policy review. Blair, who stepped down as prime minister five years ago, will be giving advice on the Olympic legacy and in particular how to "maximise both its economic and its sporting legacies", Miliband said last night.  

… The controversial move – perhaps especially within the Labour party – was announced at a fundraising event when Miliband and Blair symbolically shared a platform to make speeches. Miliband, who was more closely allied to Gordon Brown during the 13 years of Labour government, declared that Blair's help for the party marked a "coming together of the Labour tribe".  

… The joint appearance was organised by Alastair Campbell, Blair's spin doctor for his first six years as PM, the former Labour general secretary Lady McDonagh, and Richard Caborn, sports minister during the successful Olympic bid. Other guests at the event included the former deputy prime minister Lord Prescott.  

… With much of his own party – and the country – still angry about the legacy of Blair's decision to take Britain into the Iraq war, and Labour's clear departure from socialism under his reign, Miliband will be aware that Blair's new role will not be universally welcomed. Last night aides played down Blair's policy position, saying it should not be "over-interpreted". "It's something Tony knows a lot about," said one insider. "He's got the sports foundation and he was instrumental in bringing the Games to London."

Tony Blair's new quartet

Miliband’s motives in getting closer to Blair have since been the subject of some speculation. Followed shortly afterwards by his appearance at the Durham Miners Gala, it could be that Ed is working at sealing over any party fissures with the Blairites on the one hand and the Old Labour union base on the other. After all, the next election may be sooner than 2015. Not surprisingly then, Blair’s re-entry into British politics hasn’t been welcomed warmly by the Tory press. The headlines of Peter Oborne’s article in the Daily Telegraph on 14 July, Tony Blair's back - and he's dangerous for the Tories and Labour, The former prime minister’s rapprochement with Ed Miliband is a coup, but his business interests may come back to haunt the Labour Party, and Paul Scott’s in the Daily Mail two days later, Return of the Perma-tan PM: He's earning £20m a year and gained a taste for deep-sea fishing. But suddenly Tony Blair is courting Labour again - and dreaming of a startling comeback, sum it up without having to read further.

But there is also the issue of who takes the credit and who manages to avoid any blame after the London Olympics. It’s interesting that there are three critical articles (by Nick Cohen, Andrew Gilligan and Charles Moore) in July 14th's Spectator homing in on the deficiencies of the London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Act 2006, obviously the responsibility of the last Labour government, and on the theme of the Olympic authorities’ and the sponsors’ tastelessness and heavy handedness in protecting their brand interests. Fraser Nelson weighed in again on the Spectator’s Coffee House website, The Battle with the Olympic Censors.  At which point it is only fair to quote the Culture Olympics Media and Sport Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, on BBC1's The Andrew Marr Show on 15 July to the effect that the sponsors are covering half the cost of the games.

Labour will presumably want to get its share of any credit – ‘Blair who won it for London in 2005’ – and Miliband can also deflect any resentment about the ‘corporatist dystopia’ identified by Cohen onto the ancien régime – ‘those Blairites again’. Even better, should people start wondering whether it was such a good idea in the first place for the UK to have hosted the Olympics.

En passant, while “sources” in the Daily Mail and elsewhere can’t always be trusted, the conclusion of Scott’s article slips in something we might hear more of:

Sources close to the family say 28-year-old Euan, Tony and Cherie’s eldest son, has quit his job at the London office of U.S. bankers Morgan Stanley in preparation for his own career in politics. He is said by friends to be keen to find a Labour seat where he can stand as an MP.