His party was 20 per cent in the lead in the opinion polls. (He signed the Charter after he stepped down from the leadership.) I myself used to believe in the mysteries of the British Constitution. Ward spontaneously suggested Charter 88, and recalls thinking that Smith would reject this as too bold. Tom Watson was absent for the vote on the referendum bill itself, but he voted with his party to trigger Article 50 in the full knowledge that Theresa May’s government would be tasked with producing a withdrawal deal. Nor, unlike Gordon Brown, did he allow himself to be put into a position where he needed to discuss the problems of codification and thus the transformation of the constitutional system as a whole, which Smith by contrast welcomed. I myself used to believe in the mysteries of the British Constitution.
He also quoted from the Charter 88 lecture, where Smith said, “I want to see a fundamental shift in the balance of power between the citizen and the state – a shift away from an overpowering state to a citizen’s democracy where people have rights and powers and where they are served by accountable and responsive government”.There was considerable Labour opposition to Charter 88, headed by Labour’s Deputy Leader Roy Hattersley. He was not convinced of the need for PR.
So I suspect Watson is playing a far more subtle game than simply winning brownie points from the People’s Vote campaign. Having been responsible for the legislation for Scottish and Welsh parliaments he was well aware of the key issues long before most of us.After Labour lost the April 1992 election, Hattersley was so irritated he blamed Charter 88. A brave European, he would have gone on to confront the modernisation that mattered most of all – not the adoption of the Euro (that Blair sought), but irreversible membership of the EU. He was scathing about the government’s secrecy and insisted on the need for a right to know and a Freedom of Information Act. Kinnock had encouraged in voters a last minute uncertainty about what he really stood for that proved fatal.Had he lived, the UK would certainly not have gone to war in Iraq and in all likelihood would now have a written constitution, thanks to the democratic reform process Smith had kick-started.
Far more interesting for me was participating in some of the drafting meetings that preceded the speech.
But there was an alternative, another road that could have been taken. He would undoubtedly have become Prime Minister had he lived. He also demanded an independent statistics office to end government deception along with equivalent laws against corporate cover-up to ensure that “the cobwebs of unnecessary secrecy around the British boardroom are blown away”.When we lost John Smith, we lost a leader who would have taken Labour and Britain down the path of radical and necessary reform of our constitution and political culture.This was the moment, they told me afterwards, that Liberal Democrats in the audience, such as Trevor Smith, then Chair of the Joseph Rowntree reform Trust, and Richard Holmes, the close advisor to the then Lib Dem leader Paddy Ashdown, felt that the Labour leader really meant it and they could work with him.
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