Barbara Castle should have been Labour's – and Britain's – first female prime minister. What a role model she would have been: passionate, fiery and absolutely committed to social justice. She was a brilliant orator. In her diaries, she writes about "playing" with the audience – teasing them, driving them to anger, to laughter and back again. And there was no one better at getting Labour conference on her side. In an age of tub-thumping, political rhetoric, before television put a premium on conversational styles, Barbara found a way of speaking that was strong, commanding but never macho.
This is an interesting little tributary of the Labour leadership debate: Patricia Hewitt doesn't say so explicitly in her piece at Comment is Free, but I suspect she agrees with me that what's needed now is for Gordon Brown
to put on a big red wig and become Barbara Castle for the next eighteen months: not everyone would like it, but then by trying hard to be liked by everyone so far Brown has brought himself and his government to the brink. A stiff dose of passion and purpose would be risky, but risk-taking is what's now needed.
She's clearly trying to persuade people to the left of her that holding apparently "unthinkable" attitudes and being opposed to union demands does not mean you're not committed to progress. I think it's interesting, though, how in the post-Blair/Brown world, the lines that used to divide the centre and soft left from the old hard right and the modernisers are all getting a bit blurred.
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