For Want Of A Paragraph

By Tom Black

In July 2008, Britain's Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, wrote an article in the Guardian that many perceived to be a veiled attack on Gordon Brown, then Prime Minister and Labour Party leader. In the days and weeks that followed, Whitehall was awash with rumours that Miliband was testing the water for a leadership challenge. It never materialised.

What if it had?

In this romp through the heart of the collapsing Labour government in 2008, Tom Black presents familiar faces – the Miliband brothers, Gordon Brown, David Cameron, Alistair Darling and more – in unfamiliar scenarios. Can David pull off his coup? Will he have to co-ordinate the whole thing from a train to Manchester? And does Gordon have a secret weapon up his sleeve?

With a little poetic license taken in the name of an interesting story, this tale of Whitehall skulduggery will delight political geeks and amuse fans of House of Cards, The Thick Of It, and A Very British Coup.

Also includes an afterword exploring the real world backdrop of the story, and an examination of why the events of the book did not come to pass.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sea Lion Press
• Release date: Oct 15, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386310433

Book preview

For Want of a Paragraph

Tom Black

This is a work of fiction. While a sense of realism has been sought, all characterisations were developed with the primary aim of telling a compelling story.

All rights reserved.

Primrose Hill Monday 28 July 2008

With a series of soft clicks, David Miliband stopped writing. Then, with a single, harder click, he deleted the sentence he’d just finished. Another dud.

He rubbed his eyes and drained the last of his coffee, making a face as a couple of grounds got stuck in his teeth. Louise had made it for him just before she went to bed, and judging by its temperature, that must have been more than an hour ago. A glance at the bottom of the computer screen told him it was half past midnight.

The Guardian needed the article by 4:30am at the latest, apparently. Well, he was on track for that, at least. The piece had theoretically been finished for two hours. He just wasn’t anywhere near happy with it. Why? With a sigh, David highlighted the last sentence.

So let’s stop feeling sorry for ourselves, enjoy a break, and then find the confidence to make our case afresh.

Weedy, mealy-mouthed bollocks. The whole piece was an expertly crafted assassination attempt. The tribute to Labour history was an expert display of shinning over a perimeter fence. The tactical acknowledgment of New Labour’s missteps was a flawless pair of karate chops to the necks of unsuspecting bodyguards. The lengthy condemnation of Cameron kept all eyes on the distraction in the courtyard while Miliband clambered up a drainpipe - and entered a second floor window with a casual reference to reforming the NHS. The bold rhetoric on the ‘task of government’ - and of modernising Labour - was the final few steps towards the bedroom of his target, neatly snapping the neck of a sleeping guard dog on the way.

But now, pistol raised, target acquired and all other threats eliminated, those final, lily-livered words were the equivalent of dropping the gun, giving Gordon a cheery wave, and saying ‘well, see you next week.’

It wasn’t good enough. There was so much more to convey - and it could be done explicitly. Couldn’t it? A dagger had traditionally been wielded from more auspicious places than Comment Is Free, admittedly. The green benches, the Tea Rooms, even the Admiralty. All were more appropriate backdrops for a bloodless coup. Aside from giving Alan Rusbridger a hard-on (and Polly Toynbee an aneurysm), was this really the right way to do it?

He knew roughly what he’d say instead of that awful conclusion. He even had some turns of phrase ready. But all evening he’d been telling himself he’d get round to writing it, but his fingers just wouldn’t do it.

Is this a laptop I see before me? he muttered.

His Shakespearean musings were interrupted by the pulsing of his BlackBerry. It started turning in circles on the desk, and the screen lit up. Reaching for it, David realised who it was from.

‘R we on?’ James Purnell had written.

Short and to the point, but with a hint of excitement. Typical James. Purnell had always given David the impression of a man in politics out of a desire to re-enact scenes from The West Wing - even before the programme had aired, David mused, recalling their mid-90s heyday as SpAds.

Picking up the phone, David pondered how exactly to respond. He, James and the others had ‘gamed out’ the various paths that could be taken. The most broadly favoured was the one his article currently trod - write a rhetorically strong, barnburning ‘speech in column form’, but make no reference to Gordon, or his leadership. Then hit the sofas, make lots of noises about change, and hope the groundswell of support was enough to push the Caledonian Mafia onto their collective swords at conference in September.

Except, as James had passionately argued, that wouldn’t work. The Broons had waited ten years for power - four of them in a state of bitterness unseen since Ted Heath died - and the idea that some fighting words in an Islington fishwrapper would frighten them into submission was pure poppycock. James had used stronger words than that, and David himself had needed to step in and calm the conversation down. Patricia’s dining room was not to be treated as the floor of the Commons. With James fuming but silent, his proposed path - a mass-resignation kicked off by an explicitly critical column - was talked out of play by the rest of the team. It was too risky, too bold, and wouldn’t play well with a Westminster village already on its collective way to the summer holidays.

The BlackBerry stared back at Miliband, his reply to Purnell still pointedly blank. Not for the first time, David wished he could call Tony. His guidance - along with Alistair’s - could be gold dust at this point. But Tony was ‘strictly off-limits’ these days, that had been agreed. Aside from the probability that he didn’t give a shit about Westminster now that he was zipping back and forth between D.C. and the Middle East, there was still - incredibly - a tiny risk that he would not look kindly on their little scheme. Not out of any great love for Gordon - goodness, no. But Tony was a man forged in the fires of the great schisms of Labour. He had seen what division did to the party, and what that, in turn, did for its opponents. His was a leadership defined by fanatical