http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/p ... 791037.ece
Patrick Foster, Media Correspondent
It is more than 40 years since Alan Johnson’s hopes of musical stardom were brutally extinguished. In the summer of 1966 the young rhythm guitarist, a veteran of a handful of North London pub groups, had finally cut his first single, Hard Life.
It was not to be. His group, The Area, were ignored by the industry. Shortly afterwards their instruments were stolen and Mr Johnson ditched his dream of becoming a rock star, opting for the steadier beat of a postman. Today the cut of his suit may be more generous, the hair greyer, but the slicked-back style remains the same. Mr Johnson, 58, is still a mod at heart.
For the Health Secretary music is not a predisposition but an obsession. He refused to join MP4, the parliamentary band, claiming that “music is too important for me to trivialise”. His son Jamie once remarked: “If you asked him whether he dreams of being Prime Minister or the lead singer of the Super Furry Animals, it would be the Super Furries every time.”
Music has played a defining role in his life, so it was perhaps ironic that it was within the tuneful territory of Desert Island Discs that Mr Johnson uttered the words that have characterised his political ambitions. Asked on the programme why he did not take on Gordon Brown for the leadership of the Labour Party, he replied: “I don’t think I would have been good enough, frankly. I don’t think I’ve got the capabilities. You get to a level and look around and think, ‘Perhaps I could go to the next level’. I don’t think I could go to that level, which is the only level up from being a Cabinet Minister.”
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How Alan Johnson moved to a rather more pedestrian beat
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TrueBlueTerrier
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How Alan Johnson moved to a rather more pedestrian beat
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Alan Johnson: the man who could be the ideal Labour frontman
Alan Johnson: the man who could be the ideal Labour frontman would rather be a pop star
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/p ... 791039.ece
Alice Thomson and Rachel Sylvester
Alan Johnson could be the perfect Labour leader. Orphaned at the age of 12, he grew up on a council estate in Notting Hill, around the corner from where David Cameron now lives. A former postman, he has the man-of-the-people touch and a natural smile that makes him as comfortable on the daytime TV sofa as in the Cabinet room. A former union boss, he also has the party contacts that could help him to the top job. Although he still describes himself as working-class he is not a class warrior: “The little orphan Alan bit wears a bit thin,” he said. “I’m 58 – it was a long time ago.”
Some MPs think his calm, unchippy demeanour and optimism could be the ideal antidote to Gordon Brown but the Health Secretary told us that he has no desire to lead his party. “We have been through all that,” he said. “I couldn’t even get deputy leader. That finished the little bit of ambition I had inside me. I’m not interested.”
Although he admits that his childhood is the perfect foil to the Tory leader’s upbringing, he insisted: “Cameron’s as powerless about where he was born and the family he was born into as I am, so I don’t buy that ‘back story’ stuff. The ‘back story’ would last two seconds. What you need is someone who can tackle the [economic] problems. I haven’t got any false modesty but I don’t aspire to that job.”
When we asked him whether he would prefer to be a pop star or the prime minister, he replied, without hesitation: “Pop star.”
Mr Johnson is, however, quickly becoming Labour’s kingmaker. For weeks the courtiers at the Palace of Westminster have been waiting to hear him pronounce on the party’s predicament. With the world in economic crisis, he believes that the crown should stay with Gordon Brown, for now. “I have never been a great Brown cheerleader but when I see Gordon at the centre of these events, dealing with this maelstrom, I think he is the best person at the moment.” The rebels who are calling for the Labour leader to go are, in his view, wrong. “They are not nutty but I disagree with them,” he said. “This is a time when we have to focus absolutely on the public, not examining our navels.”
He did not think that Mr Brown should challenge his “bastards” to “put up or shut up”. He said: “I would phrase it more politely. I would just say shut up. I don’t want a John Major situation. I don’t want someone put up. It’s a diversion, we should be much more confident about our record.”
The public would see it as self-indulgence if the party had a leadership contest during such turbulent times. Neither Mr Brown’s conference speech nor the Glenrothes by-election should be held up as deadlines, he said. “In my view we can’t spend our time thinking we can just change leader every five minutes. We need to stick with the leader we’ve got.”
When we asked whether Labour would have to call a general election if it swapped leaders, he replied: “I don’t think we should do it and that might be one of the reasons why we shouldn’t do it.” Labour should, he said, remember how damaging internal battles could be. “The infighting will reflect in the polls soon. I went through the 1970s and 1980s when half the Cabinet were [so young that they were] getting their milk tokens and we had the culture of betrayal.”
He thinks that the events now are more like the late 1960s, “when we had a very unpopular government, they were expected to lose and they lost within a whisker. This time I hope the whisker is the other way.” A Labour victory is in his view still possible: “It can’t be like this all the way through. People will get bored eventually of Brown being everything bad and Cameron being everything good.”
Mr Johnson is not afraid to criticise his boss. He admits that Mr Brown has made two big mistakes: “There was the election that never was and the 10p tax rate.” Mr Brown had also failed to communicate his vision. “We wouldn’t be this far behind in the polls if there was not an issue about how we get our message across.”
There is the charisma question too. “John Prescott always says if you get on a plane you don’t need to know whether the pilot has a nice smile. Anyway, I think Gordon has a nice smile. He worked on it as well – he paid quite a lot of money for that smile.”
Is the Prime Minister collegiate? “Gordon is not perfect. There is no leader who is perfect in every single sense. He would say himself that he has to work at the bits that don’t rock his boat, the shaking hands with people. The razzmatazz is not something he takes to naturally.”
In the 24-hour television age, he conceded, leaders needed a bit of showbiz. “These are problems that Churchill, Attlee and Gladstone would not have had.” Is Mr Brown too old-fashioned in that way? “I think there is a chance of that but the last thing Gordon wants to do is to try and be something he is not.”
The Cabinet, he admitted, was not exactly happy. “There is a general feeling that being this far behind in the polls is not a nice place to be. There are a lot of people round the table who have not been in that position before. It would be self-defeating if they decided it is all to do with Gordon.”
This week’s political Cabinet meeting had been “not very jolly”: “People were very honest about the situation but it was in a really constructive mode.” Mr Brown’s critics “have to move away from the fact that a new leader can change everything and focus on the battle of ideas. Every week we lose of the 20 months to the next general election is a waste. We don’t have time for a leadership bid.”
No 10, he said, had to stop the feuding too. “If there are people briefing different ways from No 10, that needs to be tackled and Gordon needs to rein them in . . . That has got to stop. The Brownites versus the Blairites is just so boring, it is so last century.”
David Miliband was the most prominent victim of the No 10 machine – one of Mr Brown’s aides accused him of self-serving disloyalty when he published an article setting out his strategy – but Mr Johnson thinks that the Foreign Secretary had every right to air his ideas. “No one was entitled to disparage David Miliband,” he said. “He is a huge talent in the party. His article was a well-reasoned, brilliant exposition of where the party needs to be and about getting our confidence up.”
The Downing Street dogs should, he said, hold back. “I don’t know what these people are doing but anyone looking at David Miliband sees a very, very good, competent politician who is part of our solution to these problems not part of the problems themselves.”
H e hoped that his younger colleague would go to the top. “Gordon Brown has said that if elected he would serve for one term and when Gordon Brown has decided his one term is over or when he has decided to step down then we will have a discussion. I think David has got a great future in the party.”
He does not think that Mr Miliband is too much of a nerd. “David has the common touch. He has suffered from the callow-youth stuff, but Blair had a bit of that. He was Bambi but that didn’t last very long. One of the things about David is, given his intellectual power and his background, he is very down to earth and very modest.”
Would he join him on a dream ticket? “David is a real talent in the team,” Mr Johnson said. “Where he goes in the future is for the future and I hope he goes a long way because I am a big fan of his.”
Labour must, he said, beware of veering back to its left-wing comfort zone. “There are all kinds of dangers [if we lose] and that is one of them. We have to hold the centre ground.”Labour could be out for years if it were to lose the next election. “There are not a lot of occasions when the Tories have just had one term. The public likes to give people another chance.”
The Tories should, he thinks, be easy to beat. “Cameron’s job is a PR make-over. He wants to go from a party of proud Etonians and closet gays to a party of proud homosexuals and closet Etonians. They have become cocky and overconfdent. Cameron is slipping back into Flashman mode. He blames the poor for being poor and the fat for being fat. It’s ‘get on your bike’ fed through a PR machine – Chingford meets Notting Hill.”
Mr Johnson seems more relaxed than his Cabinet colleagues. It is perhaps because before politics he had a harder life. He said that he could never forget how lucky he was. “When I was a postman I worked from 5am to 8pm six days a week and sometimes on Sundays too. I have much more time to see my family now.”
Life and times
Born May 17, 1950
Education Left Sloane Grammar School at 15 to stack shelves in Tesco
Career After being a postman, he became general secretary of the Communication Workers’ Union in 1992. In May, 1997, he was elected MP for Kingston upon Hull West & Hessle. He was a minister in the Department of Trade and Industry and Department for Education then joined the Cabinet as Work and Pensions Secretary in 2004. He has served as Trade and Industry Secretary and Education Secretary before becoming Health Secretary last year. In 2007 he stood, unsuccessfully, in the Labour deputy leadership contest
Family By the age of 20 he was married with three children. In 1991 he married for the second time. He and his wife, Laura, have an eight-year-old son
Quick fire
Mods or rockers? Original and always Mods
Suits or jeans? Suits. Mods don’t wear jeans
The Clash or the Cure? The Cure
Raybans or Reeboks? Raybans
Indiana Jones or James Bond? James Bond
Working-class or middle-class? Working-class
Thunderbirds or In the Night Garden? In the Night Garden, it’s fabulous.
Pop star or prime minister? Pop star
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/p ... 791039.ece
Alice Thomson and Rachel Sylvester
Alan Johnson could be the perfect Labour leader. Orphaned at the age of 12, he grew up on a council estate in Notting Hill, around the corner from where David Cameron now lives. A former postman, he has the man-of-the-people touch and a natural smile that makes him as comfortable on the daytime TV sofa as in the Cabinet room. A former union boss, he also has the party contacts that could help him to the top job. Although he still describes himself as working-class he is not a class warrior: “The little orphan Alan bit wears a bit thin,” he said. “I’m 58 – it was a long time ago.”
Some MPs think his calm, unchippy demeanour and optimism could be the ideal antidote to Gordon Brown but the Health Secretary told us that he has no desire to lead his party. “We have been through all that,” he said. “I couldn’t even get deputy leader. That finished the little bit of ambition I had inside me. I’m not interested.”
Although he admits that his childhood is the perfect foil to the Tory leader’s upbringing, he insisted: “Cameron’s as powerless about where he was born and the family he was born into as I am, so I don’t buy that ‘back story’ stuff. The ‘back story’ would last two seconds. What you need is someone who can tackle the [economic] problems. I haven’t got any false modesty but I don’t aspire to that job.”
When we asked him whether he would prefer to be a pop star or the prime minister, he replied, without hesitation: “Pop star.”
Mr Johnson is, however, quickly becoming Labour’s kingmaker. For weeks the courtiers at the Palace of Westminster have been waiting to hear him pronounce on the party’s predicament. With the world in economic crisis, he believes that the crown should stay with Gordon Brown, for now. “I have never been a great Brown cheerleader but when I see Gordon at the centre of these events, dealing with this maelstrom, I think he is the best person at the moment.” The rebels who are calling for the Labour leader to go are, in his view, wrong. “They are not nutty but I disagree with them,” he said. “This is a time when we have to focus absolutely on the public, not examining our navels.”
He did not think that Mr Brown should challenge his “bastards” to “put up or shut up”. He said: “I would phrase it more politely. I would just say shut up. I don’t want a John Major situation. I don’t want someone put up. It’s a diversion, we should be much more confident about our record.”
The public would see it as self-indulgence if the party had a leadership contest during such turbulent times. Neither Mr Brown’s conference speech nor the Glenrothes by-election should be held up as deadlines, he said. “In my view we can’t spend our time thinking we can just change leader every five minutes. We need to stick with the leader we’ve got.”
When we asked whether Labour would have to call a general election if it swapped leaders, he replied: “I don’t think we should do it and that might be one of the reasons why we shouldn’t do it.” Labour should, he said, remember how damaging internal battles could be. “The infighting will reflect in the polls soon. I went through the 1970s and 1980s when half the Cabinet were [so young that they were] getting their milk tokens and we had the culture of betrayal.”
He thinks that the events now are more like the late 1960s, “when we had a very unpopular government, they were expected to lose and they lost within a whisker. This time I hope the whisker is the other way.” A Labour victory is in his view still possible: “It can’t be like this all the way through. People will get bored eventually of Brown being everything bad and Cameron being everything good.”
Mr Johnson is not afraid to criticise his boss. He admits that Mr Brown has made two big mistakes: “There was the election that never was and the 10p tax rate.” Mr Brown had also failed to communicate his vision. “We wouldn’t be this far behind in the polls if there was not an issue about how we get our message across.”
There is the charisma question too. “John Prescott always says if you get on a plane you don’t need to know whether the pilot has a nice smile. Anyway, I think Gordon has a nice smile. He worked on it as well – he paid quite a lot of money for that smile.”
Is the Prime Minister collegiate? “Gordon is not perfect. There is no leader who is perfect in every single sense. He would say himself that he has to work at the bits that don’t rock his boat, the shaking hands with people. The razzmatazz is not something he takes to naturally.”
In the 24-hour television age, he conceded, leaders needed a bit of showbiz. “These are problems that Churchill, Attlee and Gladstone would not have had.” Is Mr Brown too old-fashioned in that way? “I think there is a chance of that but the last thing Gordon wants to do is to try and be something he is not.”
The Cabinet, he admitted, was not exactly happy. “There is a general feeling that being this far behind in the polls is not a nice place to be. There are a lot of people round the table who have not been in that position before. It would be self-defeating if they decided it is all to do with Gordon.”
This week’s political Cabinet meeting had been “not very jolly”: “People were very honest about the situation but it was in a really constructive mode.” Mr Brown’s critics “have to move away from the fact that a new leader can change everything and focus on the battle of ideas. Every week we lose of the 20 months to the next general election is a waste. We don’t have time for a leadership bid.”
No 10, he said, had to stop the feuding too. “If there are people briefing different ways from No 10, that needs to be tackled and Gordon needs to rein them in . . . That has got to stop. The Brownites versus the Blairites is just so boring, it is so last century.”
David Miliband was the most prominent victim of the No 10 machine – one of Mr Brown’s aides accused him of self-serving disloyalty when he published an article setting out his strategy – but Mr Johnson thinks that the Foreign Secretary had every right to air his ideas. “No one was entitled to disparage David Miliband,” he said. “He is a huge talent in the party. His article was a well-reasoned, brilliant exposition of where the party needs to be and about getting our confidence up.”
The Downing Street dogs should, he said, hold back. “I don’t know what these people are doing but anyone looking at David Miliband sees a very, very good, competent politician who is part of our solution to these problems not part of the problems themselves.”
H e hoped that his younger colleague would go to the top. “Gordon Brown has said that if elected he would serve for one term and when Gordon Brown has decided his one term is over or when he has decided to step down then we will have a discussion. I think David has got a great future in the party.”
He does not think that Mr Miliband is too much of a nerd. “David has the common touch. He has suffered from the callow-youth stuff, but Blair had a bit of that. He was Bambi but that didn’t last very long. One of the things about David is, given his intellectual power and his background, he is very down to earth and very modest.”
Would he join him on a dream ticket? “David is a real talent in the team,” Mr Johnson said. “Where he goes in the future is for the future and I hope he goes a long way because I am a big fan of his.”
Labour must, he said, beware of veering back to its left-wing comfort zone. “There are all kinds of dangers [if we lose] and that is one of them. We have to hold the centre ground.”Labour could be out for years if it were to lose the next election. “There are not a lot of occasions when the Tories have just had one term. The public likes to give people another chance.”
The Tories should, he thinks, be easy to beat. “Cameron’s job is a PR make-over. He wants to go from a party of proud Etonians and closet gays to a party of proud homosexuals and closet Etonians. They have become cocky and overconfdent. Cameron is slipping back into Flashman mode. He blames the poor for being poor and the fat for being fat. It’s ‘get on your bike’ fed through a PR machine – Chingford meets Notting Hill.”
Mr Johnson seems more relaxed than his Cabinet colleagues. It is perhaps because before politics he had a harder life. He said that he could never forget how lucky he was. “When I was a postman I worked from 5am to 8pm six days a week and sometimes on Sundays too. I have much more time to see my family now.”
Life and times
Born May 17, 1950
Education Left Sloane Grammar School at 15 to stack shelves in Tesco
Career After being a postman, he became general secretary of the Communication Workers’ Union in 1992. In May, 1997, he was elected MP for Kingston upon Hull West & Hessle. He was a minister in the Department of Trade and Industry and Department for Education then joined the Cabinet as Work and Pensions Secretary in 2004. He has served as Trade and Industry Secretary and Education Secretary before becoming Health Secretary last year. In 2007 he stood, unsuccessfully, in the Labour deputy leadership contest
Family By the age of 20 he was married with three children. In 1991 he married for the second time. He and his wife, Laura, have an eight-year-old son
Quick fire
Mods or rockers? Original and always Mods
Suits or jeans? Suits. Mods don’t wear jeans
The Clash or the Cure? The Cure
Raybans or Reeboks? Raybans
Indiana Jones or James Bond? James Bond
Working-class or middle-class? Working-class
Thunderbirds or In the Night Garden? In the Night Garden, it’s fabulous.
Pop star or prime minister? Pop star
All post by me in Green are Admin Posts.
Any post in any other colour is my own responsibility.
If you like a news story I posted please click the link to show support Any news stories you can't post - PM me with a link
My sharing of news articles should not be interpreted as an endorsement or condemnation of any particular viewpoint or the issues presented. I share them solely for informational purposes.
Any post in any other colour is my own responsibility.
If you like a news story I posted please click the link to show support Any news stories you can't post - PM me with a link
My sharing of news articles should not be interpreted as an endorsement or condemnation of any particular viewpoint or the issues presented. I share them solely for informational purposes.
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Stormproof
- Posts: 6116
- Joined: 07 Jul 2007, 21:03
- Gender: Female
Alan Johnson: the man who could be the ideal Labour frontman
A Mod! makes me want to sell my scooter and get a big dirty motorbike!TrueBlueTerrier wrote:
Mods or rockers? Original and always Mods
So keep on moving, moving, moving your feet
Keep on shuf-shuf-shuffling to this ghost dance beat
Just keep on walking down never ending streets
Illegitimi non carborundum
Keep on shuf-shuf-shuffling to this ghost dance beat
Just keep on walking down never ending streets
Illegitimi non carborundum
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norbert
- Posts: 3027
- Joined: 15 Jan 2008, 01:46
Alan Johnson: the man who could be the ideal Labour frontman
more soft soap and spin again from the comedian ? have to get the Bonnie - the road drill on wheels ordered - plenty of sawdust on the ground for all the oil it'll leakk66yla wrote:A Mod! makes me want to sell my scooter and get a big dirty motorbike!TrueBlueTerrier wrote:
Mods or rockers? Original and always Mods
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