A high-octane story combining politics and tragic soap opera

WESTMINSTER HAS sprung into life again. Before Ron Davies's resignation, we were still coming to terms with the new political terrain where ministers do not fall out in public, where most Labour MPs are happy to respond to the demands on their perpetually vibrating bleepers and where policies are implemented only when the public and, wherever possible, the media are squared in advance. Suddenly we are back on familiar territory.

I happened to be in the broadcasters' Millbank headquarters at Westminster when the resignation was announced. I had been there many times before during the Major era when such volcanic eruptions seemed to occur most weeks. It was like going back in time. Here was a high octane story combining high politics and compelling tragic soap opera. Cameras were dispersed, interviewees were sought and magically obtained in the space of a couple of hours. What is more, we knew it was a story which would run. There were too many unanswered questions.

On one level, our excitement was misplaced. Of course a single resignation does not signal a return to the swings of the Major era. The high drama may have been reminiscent of those turbulent years, but the choreography was entirely different. This is the first such departure from government where the resignation was announced before the revelations (or in this bizarre case, the hint of revelations). It is a drama where the lessons from the previous era have been fully and ruthlessly learnt.

In this case, attacks on an excess of control freakery are wide of the mark. If the story of Davies's nocturnal trip to Clapham Common had emerged first, there would have been days of hounding from the media which would have culminated in his resignation anyway. In the Westminster village we want it both ways. We affect disapproval at the immediate ending of Davies's Cabinet career, we would have affected equal disapproval if he had clung to office in the face of a relentless media assault. It is better for the Government and, indeed, for Davies, that he went right away.

Unlike Major, Blair has also been relatively fortunate, as far as a Prime Minister can be, in his first Cabinet resignation. Well before the election, he had seen Alun Michael as a likely Secretary of State for Wales. The two of them worked well together when they were in the Home Affairs team in opposition. All that has happened in terms of the often awkward symmetry of reshuffles is that Michael's moment has come a little earlier than anticipated.

So has the Westminster village got over-excited about a story with no consequences for anyone but Davies and his family? I do not think so. For Cabinet resignations, even those which are not related in any way to Cabinet policy, carry a wider message which go way beyond the immediate ingredients of the story. They act as a reminder that a government, however strong on the surface, is vulnerable to unexpected external events. That reminder feeds itself into the prevailing political situation and often serves to symbolise it.

The significance, for example, of the David Mellor departure from the Major government has been underestimated. The Mellor story about his affair with an actress broke in the summer of 1992 before the ERM debacle. It happened when John Major was at the height of his powers, having unexpectedly won an election. He was still at the phase of his premiership when he assumed, on good grounds, that he had a Midas touch (as distinct from the "reverse Midas touch" which John Smith described shortly after the enforced devaluation when he pointed out that Major presided over a country where the Grand National did not start and hotels fell into the sea).

Major was determined to keep Mellor in the government and was clearly confident he could do so. The Sun had other ideas. The Sun won and relations with Major were disastrous from the moment their battle began in July 1992. Mellor finally went shortly after the ERM crisis. Major's inability to keep him signalled that the all-conquering PM had been rendered hopelessly weak within months of a triumphant election win. The resignations which followed were all symbols of a rule drawing to a close, a quality shared by those that scarred the final years of Tory government in the early Sixties.

The Davies resignation signals the ending of New Labour's opening era, which seemed to transcend all the normal political rules. For the first year or so in power the Government talked about hard choices in the context of a relatively strong economy and therefore were able to make them without much political pain. At the same time really hard choices appeared to magically evaporate.

The single currency became an issue for the second term. The welfare reform Green Paper, launched with a great fanfare, promised more Green Papers, but gave the impression that hard choices had been made. The transport revolution was declared without motorists being hit. The Liberal Democrats have been wooed without the longer term consequences being specified.

Now a Cabinet minister resigns and the spell is broken. At a time when the Government really will have to make some hard choices, voters are reminded that it is not above politics. An event with a whiff of the past has taken place for a government which is meant to be so new and different. But the message this autumn is no government can be that new or different.

For the departure comes at a time when the unprecedented Blairite inclusivity will be challenged more than it has been before. Today the Jenkins report on electoral reform will be published and Blair at some point will have to declare one way or another.

At Prime Minister's questions in the House of Commons yesterday, William Hague exposed the dangers of sitting on the fence for too long. When Blair comes off it some in his broad church will be hurt. The single currency is launched in a few months. The apparent ease with which this thorny topic was booted in the long grass will come under intense scrutiny. Can we lead in Europe and be outside its main project for very long? Welfare reform will have to match the rhetoric. On reflection, the departure of the two ministers responsible for delivering the big idea last July was a sensational story, much more so than it seemed at the time in the midst of a Cabinet reshuffle. But we were still under the spell then. We are less so now.

Past Tory resignations have symbolised an arrogance with power. This young administration has been tainted a little by its realities. In the end, no administration in Britain is immune from the consequences of economic under-performance, global downturn, or continuing ambiguity over both Europe and constitutional reform. Nor from the human frailties that remind us that even this unusual government is composed of politicians, some of whom have the same weaknesses as others who have ruled before.

Steve Richards is political editor of the 'New Statesman'