COULD HE NOW OUST CORBYN?
When hilary Benn made his maiden speech in Parliament in 1999, his father Tony, the veteran Left-winger, sitting in front of him in the Commons chamber, wept with pride. Given that Benn Snr was an implacable opponent of the Iraq war (which hilary voted for), and a close friend and confidant of Jeremy Corbyn, he would perhaps not have been so enthused by his son’s bravura performance in Wednesday’s Syria debate.
Within seconds of sitting down, after a standing ovation from MPs on both sides of the chamber, hilary was being abused by internet trolls who claimed the ‘warmongering’ speech would have appalled his father, who died last year aged 88.
But a recurring theme in Tony Benn’s best-selling political diaries was a sense of overwhelming pride in his second son, even though they disagreed politically.
When hilary telephoned his father in May 2003 to tell him that Tony Blair had offered him the job of Minister of State for International Development, Benn ‘laughed out loud and danced around the office’.
In October of the same year, hilary was made Secretary of State for International Development. Benn recalled in his memoir how his first reaction was: ‘The lad’s in the Cabinet at 49. Oh, it was so fantastic.’ It must have been quite a moment for Benn, who remembered all too well his two sons wandering around the Commons when they were young.
hilary first entered the Commons as a small, fair-haired boy, with his older brother Stephen. his father’s diaries relate that the two children ‘behaved simply beautifully... those tiny heads with the hair so short just poked above the back of the seat and looked like two little eggs all ready to fall like humpty Dumpty. We met a lot of people and went over to the Jewel Tower before we had strawberries and cream on the terrace. They were so excited.’
hilary is the fourth MP from the Benn family, and the third to serve in the Cabinet. his fiercely ambitious father, who was desperate to become Labour leader, had to content himself with being Industry Secretary under harold Wilson.
his grandfather, Viscount Stansgate, was Secretary of State for India from 1929-31.
So will hilary be the first Benn to become Labour leader, or even Prime Minister? After the Syria speech, the bookmakers have made him a favourite to succeed the hapless Jeremy Corbyn. But to do that he would have to win over the estimated 70 per cent of Labour party members who oppose military action in Syria.
his support for the retention of the Trident nuclear deterrent, and his desire to remain part of nato, would also alienate many party activists.
So will this week’s passionate oration – hailed as one of the finest in the Commons since the Second World War – prove to be a flash in the pan?
Until the past week 62-year-old Benn was hardly mentioned as a potential Labour leader.
When he stood for the party’s deputy leadership in 2007, he came a poor fourth out of six candidates. he does not have a strong following on the backbenches either.
Painfully shy, the best his colleagues say about him is that he is moral, decent, courteous, earnest, and hard-working. Others say he is just plain boring.
even his hobbies – gardening and watching sport – are blamelessly middleclass pastimes.
BUT after the chaos of the past couple of weeks – when Corbyn wrote a letter demanding that his MPs should support his opposition to bombing in Syria, but was then forced by a shadow cabinet revolt to allow a free vote – Benn is being talked up as a caretaker leader if Corbyn is toppled.
The most likely flashpoints could be the fallout from yesterday’s Oldham byelection if Labour performed especially badly, and next May’s local elections in London and Scotland.
Some Labour MPs are looking at Benn, who entered Parliament in a by-election in Leeds Central in 1999, because he is the most experienced member of the shadow cabinet, having served in Cabinets for seven years.
But does he have the charisma, flair,
vision and authority to reunite a horribly divided Labour Party?
Hilary James Wedgwood Benn was born in London and went to Holland Park school, the flagship for comprehensive education in the 1960s and 1970s.
At Sussex University, he gained a degree in Russian and European studies. At university, he met his first wife Rosalind, but she died of lung cancer six years after they married.
He had become a full-time trade union official when he met and married Sally Clark, a special needs teacher, who now runs his Westminster office. They live in a £3million house in Chiswick, West London, and have four grown-up children. Benn also has a £300,000 flat in his Leeds constituency.
Intriguingly, Hilary has long been well to the right of his father politically, having been pushed towards the centre ground by the experience of Labour’s long years in opposition in the Thatcher and Major premierships. The 1960s and 1970s radical had become a moderate. While Benn Snr was on the hard Left (he was a former president of the Stop the War Coalition) Hilary is on the soft Left.
‘I’m a Benn, not a Bennite,’ he’s fond of saying. While they always shared a loving bond, it is thought there were strong disagreements between them over Hilary’s support for Tony Blair, as well as creeping privatisation of the NHS, and academy schools.
LIKE his father, he is a vegetarian teetotaller. Like his father he is also a diarist. He has kept once since he was eight. Just like his father, too, they were initially written but, in recent years, recorded on tape. His diary entries of the last few days should make fascinating reading. For while Benn has tried to remain loyal – in public at least – to his current party leader, behind the scenes in recent days there have been pitched battles.
Yet asked on Radio 4’s Today programme if he wanted Corbyn’s job, he replied: ‘I have no interest in leading the Labour party. ‘I am doing my job as the Shadow Foreign Secretary to the best of my ability.’ Few believe him.
One former Labour minister, Lord Rooker, said in the aftermath of the Syria debate that Corbyn should be ousted.
If a minimum of 20 per cent of Labour MPs (i.e. 46 at present) nominate a willing candidate to stand against the leader, a leadership contest is triggered. If that happened, however, Corbyn would have an automatic right to be on the ballot paper.
Even if Labour MPs unite around Benn, the risk for his leadership bid is that Corbyn – who is even more popular with party activists than when he won the leadership in September – could simply win again.
One furious Left-wing MP, who hated Benn’s speech on Wednesday night, nevertheless paid him a back-handed compliment by saying that he sounded more like a party leader than Corbyn.
Using saloon bar language, he said: ‘I am watching this f****r, and I’m thinking “Is he the new leader, or what?” ’ He just might be.