Purnell versus Grayling
Fraser Nelson reports on how the political rivalry between James Purnell and Chris Grayling has radically reshaped British policy
During the festivities marking Liverpool’s coronation as Europe’s culture capital, two rival politicians bumped into each other. James Purnell, youngest member of the Cabinet, was there in his official capacity as Culture Secretary. In the crowd was Chris Grayling, the Tory Party’s welfare spokesman.
“Welcome to the north, Chris,” said Purnell, suggesting that Grayling had made his first trip beyond the Watford Gap. This little exchange summed up their relationship.
Just three weeks later the pair had become direct rivals. Purnell had been promoted to Work and Pensions Secretary with an explicit mission to close the lead that Grayling had opened over welfare reform. Most political dogfights create more heat than light but their battle has radically reshaped British policy.
When they faced each other in Liverpool just after the new year began, a quarter of the city was on out-of-work benefits. The same is true for Glasgow. In Manchester and Birmingham, it’s a fifth. Some estimate that, during the Blair years, a full 82% of the “new jobs” were taken or created by immigrants. Despite Labour’s reforms, including the new deals, tax credits and pathways to work, millions of Brits remained within the welfare system. The Purnell versus Grayling rivalry means this system is now repudiated by both parties.
The battle over Freud
It all started at the Tory Party conference in Blackpool last year. The Conservatives were preparing for a general election they expected to lose, and by some margin. The tactics were to present a thin blue line of radical new policies, to scare Brown away from an election. Cameron unveiled Swedish-style education reform and Wisconsin-style welfare reform, both the most radical of the genre. His bluff worked, Brown cancelled the election and the rest is history.
The Tories, finding themselves still standing, needed to produce a policy to back up their conference bluff. Grayling got to work and used the discarded template, which a banker called David Freud had prepared for Tony Blair. Grayling seized the agenda, stuck a blue rosette on it, added a few more plans of his own and launched in January. Freud was at the launch, sitting like a star footballer transferred from a rival team.
Grayling expected to be shot down, and denounced as a heartless Tory. After all, even Blair abandoned this subject eight years ago as it caused such outcry with disabled protestors chaining themselves to St Stephen’s gate in Parliament. Welfare reform had been known as the third rail of British politics – no one touches it and survives. Yet Grayling had grabbed it, and was electrified rather than electrocuted. Immigration in those eight years had convinced many voters that there are jobs to do, and too many people paid by the government not to do them.
Purnell watched Grayling closely. He has impeccable Blairite credentials and had been a Minister in the Department of Work and Pensions watching his then boss, John Hutton, try to enact welfare reform. Freud had been commissioned by the Blairites so he would not be compromised, and yet here was Grayling reaping the benefits of his work. One text message sent to Radio 5Live was typical of the public reaction: “I work six nights a week for my family – no one else’s.” The policy approval rating was 85%.
The aspirational classes
To Purnell, these people – the tabloid readers, the 5Live listeners – are the ones who decide British elections. Educated at the Royal Grammar in Guildford, he speaks with a near obsession about the “aspirational class” – the strivers, the people who want to get on in life, the people who work six nights a week for their families. In Purnell’s analysis, Labour deservedly lost power in the 1980s by forgetting these “aspirational” people with whom Thatcher so powerfully identified. It is not much of an exaggeration to say it’s his mission in politics to make sure this doesn’t happen again.
On 24 January, Purnell was put in a position to do something about it. Brown took the gamble of having him replace Peter Hain as Work and Pensions Secretary – and aged just 37, he took on Whitehall’s most troublesome and complex department. His appointment left many perplexed. Until then, he had been known only for the disastrous incident where a hospital had faked his picture, after he turned up late for a photocall. To his enemies, he was the epitome of the spin politician who had been brought in to make Gordon Brown look younger.
It is worth exploring this caricature of Purnell in some detail. First, consider his dress sense.
He buys two expensive suits a year and chooses Paul Smith, right down to the pointy shoes with trademark purple laces. Then, his hairstyle. “If he wanted to conceal how serious he is, he couldn’t do better than those awful sideburns,” one of his friends once told me. He has (so far) refused to shave them off. He does not put on a class warrior act, as he does not pretend to be much of a warrior.
According to his background, he should have been a Tory. Educated at the fee-paying Guildford Royal Grammer School and some comprehensives in France – the son of a civil servant and an accountant – he enjoyed a Middle England upbringing. Had his grandfather not been a committed CND activist, infusing his family with left-wing politics, Purnell may have ended up in the other party. His move to politics came when he was at Oxford. Chloe Wasserman, the granddaughter of Hugh Gaitskell, a former Labour Party leader, suggested he should become an intern. His golfing partner, Tim Allen, recommended contacting Tony Blair.
The young Purnell was then worked to the bone by Blair, Brown and the group of people who would go on to become New Labour (incidentally, Allen went on to be Blair’s deputy press secretary).
After the 1992 defeat, Purnell had a brief career in London’s media world. Like Grayling, he worked for the BBC in the business development side.When Labour won the election, he spent some time as a special adviser to Blair while serving on the board of the Young Vic theatre. In 2001 he was elected as MP for Stalybridge and Hyde.
Relaxed attitude
Yet Purnell has never seen himself as a Westminster creature, and has a life outside politics – something that many Cabinet members admit they lack. He is softly spoken, and shies away from making grandstanding or self-aggrandising speeches. He is relaxed but his Cabinet fan told me that his public persona is a little bit too relaxed. If he were any more laid-back, he’d be horizontal. His enemies conclude this is because he has nothing to say. They could not be more wrong.
Purnell takes the very old-fashioned view that politicians should be judged by their actions. And his response to Grayling was remarkable. Within weeks of entering the job, he had proposed a range of government initiatives along the Freud proposal, which he had supported all along.
Within a few weeks of entering office, Purnell had an agenda which few MPs, let alone the general public, could distinguish from the Tory proposal.
This time, it was Grayling’s turn to be dismayed. He had six full days publicity from his welfare plans, something of a record for a policy launch (normally, only a sex scandal keeps the press interested for so long). Purnell, he said, had not come up with any policies. It was a con. What sets Grayling apart is that he soon found figures that seemed to prove it. The Treasury produces forecasts of the number of people expected to be on benefits, for financial planning reasons. These showed that, while Purnell was predicting radical change, his department was budgeting for no change at all.
In many ways, this manoeuvre is basic. But it is the type of powerful, defensive mechanism that the Tories have previously been terrible at. Many in the Shadow Cabinet have a second (or sometimes third) job and devote their extra time to earning money. Grayling devotes his to hunting down facts and figures with which to embarrass the government. This is why he had become known, and used, as the Tories’ premier attack dog – with a license to roam across all departments, putting his insatiable energy to use.
Political assassin
No one looking at the smiling, bald Grayling would consider him a political assassin. He grew up in a tiny Buckinghamshire village called Jordans and – like Purnell – went to one of England’s ancient (and feepaying) Royal Grammars. His first stop was not politics, but the BBC trainee scheme. After a spell working at Channel Four, editing its lunchtime business news programme, he went back to the BBC where he worked on plans for pay-per-view television – in the form of special encrypted broadcasts that could be decoded by subscribers. The project collapsed.
The Battle of Margaret’s Shoulder
After a while working for PR firm Burson Marsteller (and as a member of Roy Jenkins’ Social Democratic Party) he was elected MP for Epsom and started a quick rise up Tory ranks.
His gift for “black ops” – Westminster-speak for the work of political hit men – was noticed in the 2005 general election campaign.
Grayling came across one Margaret Dixon, who needed a shoulder operation so dangerous she stood a 30% chance of survival. So she bade an emotional final farewell to her friends and family before going into hospital. Yet she had to repeat this three times, as her operation was cancelled repeatedly. Grayling passed her case to Michael Howard and the Battle of Margaret’s Shoulder became perhaps the most successful Tory ambush. He had researched her case thoroughly, so it would stand up to the scrutiny that Labour subjected it to. He ensured the story was bomb-proof, then used it as a bomb.
This worked brilliantly because, as Grayling argued, a real case study is worth a thousand statistical analyses. While there may be plenty of case studies out there, it takes men of Grayling’s determination to sniff them out.
For all the similarities in Purnell and Grayling’s career paths, they are hardly twins. When I interviewed Purnell two years ago I asked what was the last CD he’d listened to. He looked at me sympathetically and explained he doesn’t have a CD player – just an iPod with 5,000 tunes that he plays through his computer. Grayling lists his pastimes as antiques, travel and watching cricket. He is married with two children, while Purnell is engaged to be married.
As things stand, their rivalry has brought around consensus. When Purnell published his Green Paper on welfare reform in July, Grayling said he’d adapt it when in government (a comment calculated to annoy him the most). Both owe the other for providing room for manoeuvre.
Each has watched the other become more radical, and then tried to go further. The result is the
most radical welfare reform policy since the 1942 Beveridge Report, which produced the welfare state.
Significant players
Both men will be significant players over the next ten years of British politics. Now that David Davis has departed the Tory front bench, Grayling is perhaps the best fighter in Cameron’s team. Many senior Tories consider themselves too senior to do the grunt work, and rely on briefing notes handed by subordinates.
Grayling does it all, and is never happier than when on a minister’s scent. His eye for detail is ideally suited to welfare reform, and if he means even a fraction of what he says, it will be the biggest battleground in a Tory government.
Meanwhile, Purnell has the same attention for political detail and is every bit a match for Grayling. In politics, it’s an incredible skill to look as if you are a normal person, dropped with some bewilderment into Westminster.
Both men shy away from dramatic, self-aggrandising speeches. Both are underestimated by their parties, yet are rapidly proving their worth. Grayling and Purnell both sincerely wish for an abrupt end to the other’s career. But neither will hear the last from each other for some time yet.
Further Reading
To read more from Fraser Nelson visit: www.spectator.co.uk
