Alan Johnson MP: A Profile

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Alan Johnson, MP for West Hull and Hessle and Home Secretary, seems to be a shoe-in as the next leader of the Labour Party. But who is he, how has he fared in his ministerial roles so far, and how good would he be as leader of New Labour?

The one thing you can say (and often has been said) for Alan Johnson, is that he has the perfect Labour backstory. His dad ran away from home when he was 8, and his mum died 4 years later. He left school without any qualifications, and started working as a shelf-stacker for Tesco. Johnson’s next step, at the age of 18, was to become a postman.

It was through this job that he became involved with the unions. A self-confessed Marxist at this point, he developed a reputation for militancy. He became a full-time union official in 1987, and by 1993 he was the general secretary of the Union of Communication Workers. In this role Johnson helped scupper the Tories’ plans to privatise the Post Office. However, notably, he was the only union boss to support Tony Blair’s plan to scrap Clause 4 of the Labour party’s constitution, which called for “the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange”.

So, he clearly has the perfect working class, old Labour backstory. What of his time in politics? He started in the Treasury, before moving to Trade and Industry in 1999, and then into the Department of Education as higher education minister. It was here that he earnt much of his political kudos, expertly shepherding the highly controversial top up fee reforms through the Commons. Since then he’s headed up the Department of Trade and Industry, been the Minister for Health and has now been promoted to one of the big 3 ministerial positions in government, that of Home Secretary.

What has marked Johnson out during his time in government, apart from his sureness of touch, is that everybody who has worked with him seems to like him. One typical anecdote is that of Denis MacShane MP. MacShane asked Johnson if he could drop off a trivial letter at the Department of Health for him, to which Johnson replied, “Denis, I’m a postie. No problem at all.” This likability, his excellent oratorical skills, his at times astonishing powers of political efficacy, his Blairite tendencies, Marxist roots and old Labour backstory combine to form a formidable political opponent.

And in opposition is where he seems destined to be. Whether he would be a good Prime Minister now (as many people have suggested) is almost immaterial. If the plot to depose Brown came off, he would have been forced into calling an election which he would have then lost resoundingly. GoBro (aka Brown) seems likely to hold the Prime Ministership until the next election, with Alan Johnson taking over the reins after the defeat.

That, in many ways, might be best for the Labour Party. As Johnson is such a likable, unifying figure, handing him the top job just when the party is most likely to tear itself apart could help them avoid the years in the wilderness suffered by the post-Thatcher Tories and the post-Wilson Labour Party. Furthermore, Britain needs a strong opposition. The Tories are largely novices that will be pitched into power in extremely difficult political and economic times. Alan Johnson is the man to hold them account.