A Journey (13 page)

I returned from Paris exhilarated, and again, with this curious sensation of power, of anticipation, of prescience.

Then John did die. As I began the first of my conversations with Gordon, I was mentally prepared. I felt I had been disingenuous with him, which in the light of later events was a mistake. Occasionally between April 1992 and May 1994, he would seek reassurance and I would give it. Why not? I knew enough of him to know that had I withdrawn that assurance, we would have been doing battle. And what the hell. Probably it was just a dumb presentiment. Probably it would never happen. Probably John would go on and be prime minister and then who knows what the future would bring.

‘We have to talk,’ I said on that May morning in Aberdeen sitting in the party office, watching people walk by on the street outside, knowing their lives would go on as before and mine was about to change forever.

I had steeled myself. I knew he would press; probably bully; maybe even threaten. But I had crossed over.

‘OK, let’s talk when you’re back down,’ he said, a slight shift in the timbre of his voice already clear.

I did a brief visit in Aberdeen as planned, to some science and technology company I seem to remember. I gave a short statement to the press outside on John’s death, expressing our sense of shock and grief. I caught the plane back down to London as soon as I decently could. I may even have spoken to Gordon again. I can’t recall. As I stepped out on to the passenger tunnel at Heathrow, a cameraman was waiting to photograph me. It gave me a jolt. So this is what it’s like, I thought.

I went into Parliament. Everyone was in a state of turmoil, genuinely shocked, genuinely sad, but of course the political wheels were turning. I bumped into Mo Mowlam who, as unsentimental as ever (or appearing to be), came straight out with it: ‘It’s got to be you. Do not on any account succumb.’ Cherie, who had driven me into London from Heathrow, had given me the same message, in even stronger terms. They hadn’t needed to tell me. My mind was made up.

As I wandered through the lobby at the side of the House of Commons Chamber, I came across Peter Mandelson. We had spoken briefly on the phone, but in very guarded terms.

‘Ah, I was hoping to see you,’ he said. ‘Now, let’s not run away with all this. Gordon is still the front-runner, still the person with the claim.’

As ever with Peter in a situation like this, you could never be quite sure what he was saying; but I was sure what I wanted to say.

‘Peter,’ I said, ‘you know I love you, but this is mine. I am sure of it. And you must help me to do it.’

‘I wouldn’t be too sure about that,’ he said. For once, there was no playfulness; and for a moment we stood, looking at each other by the green leather-topped table at the north side of the Aye Lobby.

‘Peter,’ I said, putting a hand on each shoulder, ‘don’t cross me over this. This is mine. I know it and I will take it.’

‘You can’t be certain of that,’ he replied.

‘I understand.’ I spoke gently this time, the friendship fully back in my voice. ‘But just remember what I said.’

Someone entered the lobby. As if by telepathy, we moved apart and went in different directions.

THREE

NEW LABOUR

L
ater that night, the nation still shuddering at the loss of John Smith, Mo insisted I come to a meeting where she had assembled what she called ‘the hard eggs’ who would organise for me. They were a varied group of MPs, with some familiar and some surprising faces there – natural supporters but also unnatural ones. They were all from the non-intellectual part of the PLP who had learned politics the hard way, and they were tough, fearless and disciplined. ‘These are people who are going to work for you,’ she said. ‘This is to show you that you have the breadth and depth necessary to win.’

I can’t even remember the exact time and place of the first meeting with Gordon. It may even be that I broached the critical conversation with him by phone. It was such a whirl of talking, thinking, speculating, and not so much plotting as just trying to figure it all out.

After the meeting, I went back to Richmond Crescent. There was a stack of photographers outside the house. From then on they stayed, in small or large number, ten feet or so from our bedroom window. It was a strange sensation. Even with the heavy curtains pulled, there was a sudden, disconcerting, but also – at that time – somewhat exciting feeling of being on show.

I kept a strong grip on myself, but the anxiety showed. For weeks after John died – and this is the only time it ever happened to me – I would wake in the morning with the hair on the back of my head damp with sweat. What I could control when awake was overpowering in sleep.

Cherie was an incredible strength during those months. She knew her own life was about to change and for her it was equally frightening, in some ways even more so. She, the intellectually gifted barrister and north London woman, was about to collide with the world of the tabloid paper and the unremitting glare of the spotlight. Her working-class background meant that she was well up to mixing and getting on with anyone, but her only previous experience of that type of publicity had been with her father and it had not been happy.

However, that night she cradled me in her arms and soothed me; told me what I needed to be told; strengthened me; made me feel that what I was about to do was right. I had no doubt that I had to go for it, but I needed the reassurance and, above all, the emotional ballast.

In many ways, I am very emotionally self-sufficient; in some ways, too much so. I make emotional commitment because it comes naturally to me. But I fear it also; fear the loss of control and the fact that the consequences of caring can be painful; fear the dependence; perhaps fear learning the lesson, from love that goes wrong, that human nature is frail and unreliable after all.

On that night of 12 May 1994, I needed that love Cherie gave me, selfishly. I devoured it to give me strength, I was an animal following my instinct, knowing I would need every ounce of emotional power and resilience to cope with what lay ahead. I was exhilarated, afraid and determined, in roughly equal quantities.

The fear, however, had a consequence that to this day I cannot be sure was benign or malevolent. I didn’t want to fight Gordon in a leadership contest. There was a rational explanation to this: such a fight required us to differentiate, and inevitably he would pitch to the left of me. Indeed, in the next two days, a story duly appeared in
The Times –
possibly put there by Peter, who was still not committing to me but trying to manage the situation between the two of us – which previewed a speech Gordon was going to make to the Welsh Labour Conference in Swansea. It was presented as a checking of the Blair bandwagon, and was also clearly designed to rally union support. A breach between the two main modernisers – and him the Shadow Chancellor to boot – was not a good thing. I would win; but what would be the cost?

If I’m honest, there was another reason I did not want a head-to-head contest: I was scared of the unpleasantness, the possible brutality of it, the sadness, actually, of two friends becoming foes. I can’t tell which feeling was predominant – the political calculation or the emotional fear – but the combination made me determined to try to cajole him out, not confront him.

Many times afterwards, and many rounds of pointless speculation later, I still am not sure if it was the right decision. To have defeated him would have been to have mastered him, at least temporarily, but it would not have removed him – in any event we needed him – and it would have soured and weakened the concept of New Labour which was already formed in my mind. However much we would have tried to keep the contest pretty, it would have been ugly. Anyway, my desire was to get him to leave the field voluntarily. Don’t get me wrong, I was prepared to fight; but it wasn’t my preference.

Of course, Gordon was not the only potential challenger. I tried in my first conversation with John Prescott to get him to see that he too should vacate the contest and simply stand for deputy. It was a friendly talk, but John was adamant he would stand. He perceived rightly that by standing for both, he enhanced his chances of the deputy leadership. By contrast, Margaret Beckett would have been wiser merely opting for deputy. Then, in recognition of the time immediately after John’s death when she became leader until the leadership contest took place, she would have been given the consolation of the deputy position. I suppose pride made her unable to accept it, though I have to say that afterwards she was perfectly good towards me. John’s willingness to have a contest, and also his wise remark to me that a coronation was a bad idea, put some more fight into me. I then realised I wouldn’t and shouldn’t just walk into it; I had to go out and win it.

Gordon participating was another thing entirely, and so began a somewhat tortuous series of parlays, in a variety of secret locations, away from the House of Commons and prying eyes. We met at my sister-in-law’s round the corner from Richmond Crescent; we met at my friend Nick Ryden’s house in Edinburgh; and in the flat owned by the parents of my old girlfriend and first love, Amanda Mackenzie Stuart. It was right that such a dialogue was confidential for obvious reasons, while the outside world was rampant with speculation. It was only a contest to be Leader of the Opposition, of course, but there was a strong sentiment that Labour had good prospects in the next election. There was a genuine buzz of anticipation; ‘something in the air’, in the words of the song. It was a moment in time; a change in generation; a presentiment, maybe, that the outcome would alter not just the party but the country, and not simply via a change of government, but also with a change in the zeitgeist.

It was strung out over several weeks, since there had been an agreement brokered by the National Executive Committee (NEC) that there would be no campaigning for the leadership until the European elections, scheduled for mid-June, were out of the way. There was another reason to be clandestine. Our respective supporters were anxious about what we might agree: his that he would agree to stand down, many of them urging him to fight; mine that I would concede something to him. Every time we met, there was a ripple of anxiety that spread out among the camp followers (already self-identifying fairly robustly) at what concessions either of us may have made. For that reason Anji and Sue Nye, Gordon’s close aide, kept the arrangements to themselves. Also by then, paparazzi were in more or less constant pursuit of me. The venues were chosen with care, but I guess it was indicative that they were my friends’ homes we were meeting in. I was making the running.

Cherie’s sister Lyndsey and her husband Chris were completely safe and solid. Nick was one of my oldest friends, from Fettes; and just a completely reliable, smart and discreet person. And I loved the romance of meeting at Amanda’s. You know the first person you ever fall in love with; you know that incredible outpouring of desire, the overwhelming sense of something unique, inexpressible, inexplicable and even at points incomprehensible, but so thrilling, uplifting, your heart pumping and soaring? I was eighteen, in my last year at Fettes. She was the only girl at the school – the first, the experiment, and so chosen because she was the daughter of the chairman of the governors. They were an amazing family. He was Britain’s judge at the European Court of Justice, her mother was a charming and delightful diplomat – not professionally, but naturally.

They had four daughters, of whom Amanda was the oldest. I was utterly love-struck. They had a beautiful eighteenth-century stone house in New Town, whose terraces and crescents are architectural masterpieces. Edinburgh is perhaps as beautiful as any city in the world. I knew and adored every street around New Town. I walked it all, then and for years afterwards, finding security, comfort and repose in the familiarity of it, the sense of certainty and self-sufficiency of its design that seemed also to imbue the middle- and upper-class folk of Edinburgh. I wasn’t afraid there, and somehow in some slightly odd way, in Amanda’s home, surrounded by evidence of her presence, I felt a confidence about the task in hand.

I consciously exerted every last impulse of charm and affection, not just persuading but wooing. Gordon and I had been well-nigh inseparable for over ten years. We were as close as two people ever are in politics. It was not simply a professional relationship, it was a friendship. Later, when things became difficult, then fraught, and finally dangerous, the wrench was all the harder because the intimacy had been so real. It was a political partnership, of course, but it was buttressed, possibly even grounded, in a genuine and sincere liking for each other. Neither of us had met anyone like that before. I found him odd at points, to be sure: the introspection, the intensity, finding him in his flat in Edinburgh on a Saturday morning in his suit trousers and white shirt, surrounded by a veritable avalanche of papers, but certainly, back then, it seemed an endearing eccentricity. He could be kind, generous, concerned, and often not just funny but with a rapier wit as well as intellect. The discussion wasn’t just political – there were exchanges of deep, personal confidences, laughter, debates about philosophy, religion, art and the day-to-day trivia that interests and excites us as human beings.

Likewise, I was a new type of person altogether for him. I was very non-political in my view of politics. There was more instinct than analysis; or perhaps more accurately, since I did analyse and reanalyse politics, the starting point was instinct. At first, he taught me things all the time: how to read the games within the Labour Party; the lines not to cross with the unions; how to make a speech; when to shut up as well as when to speak up in an internal party discussion. With just a phrase, he taught me the business of politics in roughly the same way Derry had taught me the business of the Bar.