Just think of how the decisions that will bear down most immediately on an incoming Labour government will be less about changing Britain than responding to an external and fast-moving set of circumstances over which they have only limited control, with which any party in power would have to deal, and of which no potential Labour cabinet member has any ministerial experience: the hand-over of Hong Kong; a European agenda dramatised by the imminence of the Amsterdam summit, the pace of monetary union, and the 1998 British presidency of the EU; and, perhaps sharpest of all, Northern Ireland. Mo Mowlam’s observation, in a BBC Radio Ulster interview at the weekend, that there would be a “high possibility” of Sinn Fein joining inter-party talks when they resume on 3 June if they called a ceasefire now, is already being used by her critics as evidence that Tony Blair’s Northern Ireland spokeswoman doesn’t understand this simple truth – and thinks that by waving a wand she can wish peace on Northern Ireland It really demonstrates quite the opposite. For all the gibes from Unionists and the political right about her “naivety”, Dr Mowlam’s remarks don’t wash She didn’t make new policy. Nor did she modify a key condition that she and Blair have already made clear: for a post-ceasefire Sinn Fein to enter talks, there would have to be evidence that the IRA had ceased for a significant period surveillance and targeting operations. And once a decision had been taken to admit them, the republicans would have to sign up unequivocally to the Mitchell principles, which include renunciation of violence as a means of achieving their ends and a progressive hand-over of arms during the talks. Instead, Dr Mowlam’s remarks remind the republicans first that Labour, like the present government, would ideally like to see Sinn Fein in talks, and second, that if they are to have any chance of joining them early the IRA would do well to start its ceasefire now.

Indeed, she was explicit in saying that a ceasefire in – say – mid-May would not be early enough to justify Sinn Fein’s inclusion in the talks by 3 June. She didn’t consult Tony Blair before her interview, because she didn’t have to; strikingly, moreover, Downing Street and the Northern Ireland Office did not, after a period of silent hesitation, join in the denunciation. In other words, Dr Mowlam knew exactly what she was saying.
This is more typical than her detractors allow. There has been speculation both outside – and more covertly within – her own party over whether Dr Mowlam would in fact be Blair’s first Northern Ireland Secretary. Her invariably male critics like to point to a mildly gaffe-sprinkled past before she took the job.

A Blair loyalist from the very first, they like to mutter, but is she quite up to it? A good deal of such speculation is based on a kind of subliminal sexism: Northern Ireland is boys’ stuff, it seems to say. How could a woman, especially in as un-PC a society as Northern Ireland, be installed at Hillsborough as a real live Secretary of State? But she has dropped few, if any, clangers in Northern Ireland; given the extreme sensitivity of every political statement there, that alone is quite an achievement. And she has also impressed by her energy, her seriousness, her detailed understanding of the brief’s mind-bending complexities and the frequency of her trips to the province. It’s now pretty well certain that Blair would indeed appoint her, and probably give her the unflashy but skilful Welshman Paul Murphy as her political minister of state.So far, so good. But the fact that Dr Mowlam is indeed well up to the job doesn’t mean, as she knows better than anyone, that an incoming Labour government has a magic solution. It suits Martin McGuiness, as he did yesterday, to imply that Tony Blair will be a much easier touch than John Major. But that underestimates not just Blair and Dr Mowlam but also their understanding of the formidable obstacles in the way of even of a brand new government trying to make a fresh start.