A Journey (14 page)

Over time, he derived from me a different perspective, a normal person’s view of politics. The single hardest thing for a practising politician to understand is that most people, most of the time, don’t give politics a first thought all day long. Or if they do, it is with a sigh or a harrumph or a raising of the eyebrows, before they go back to worrying about the kids, the parents, the mortgage, the boss, their friends, their weight, their health, sex and rock ’n’ roll.

David Blunkett, who was a remarkable example of someone who spent a lifetime in politics but could think like a human being, once told me that even at the height of his fame as Home Secretary, people would approach him and say, ‘Seen you on telly, what do you do?’, or more bizarrely would see him with his guide dog and would know who he was, but would say, ‘I never knew you were blind.’

At points people switch on. Then they – or at least a goodly proportion of them – are focused and listening. These are defining moments. The trick is to spot them. Missing them is very bad news. To the professional politician, every waking moment is, in part or whole, defining. To them, the landscape of politics is perpetually illuminated, and a light which is often harsh shines on a terrain that bristles with highs and lows of ambition, risk and fulfilment. They are in a constant fret about what may befall them as they navigate it. For most normal people, politics is a distant, occasionally irritating fog. Failure to comprehend this is a fatal flaw in most politicians. It leads them to focus on the small not the big picture. It means they get things out of proportion, it breeds paranoia and it stops them from understanding what really moves and matters.

Our friendship was real and complemented by a political sum that was much more than its individual parts, and it worked; but it meant when the time came and only one of us could go forward, it was always going to be a whole lot more troubling.

Essentially my argument was this: I was the one who could best succeed with the country (the initial polls on the weekend after John’s death had shown I was far ahead of every other contender, and in fact John Prescott was ahead of Gordon), but we shared the same agenda, we would work together, and in time he would be an obvious person, if not
the
obvious person, to take over. There was a proviso, however, which later became the subject of much debate and acrimony: just as I would help him to succeed, so he would work properly with me, accepting that while leader, I would lead, so to speak. At that point, it didn’t seem much to ask or hard to give, either way. Though there was never a deal in the sense that his standing down was contingent on my agreeing to help him come after me, nonetheless there was an understanding of mutual interest. Had you asked me then what I would do and what might happen, I would have said I would do two terms and then hand over. It seemed right and fair for party and country, not just the two of us. He was then head and shoulders above the others in ability, in weight, in skill.

But, once again, looking back, I was too eager to persuade and too ready to placate. The truth is I couldn’t guarantee it; and it was irresponsible to suggest or imply I could. Most of all, it ignored the fact that it is only in government that the character to lead is clear or not. Opposition is a completely different matter. You don’t know that at the time, but it is. It’s not that there is no requirement to lead in Opposition, but the need is magnified a hundredfold in government. Foibles in Opposition become disabilities in government; weaknesses become terminal; things that can be glossed over remain like irremovable stains. Similarly, the impact of strengths is multiplied; decisions resonate not just across a party but through the country and even, on occasions, the world; leadership character, if it is there, stands up and stands out.

Neither of us should have tried to predict the future. I was anxious to sort him out and get on with it; he was anxious to extract the maximum at the maximum point of leverage. Anyway, not sensible really all ways round; understandable, but not sensible, with consequences down the line, though I am not sure to this day how much difference doing it another way would have made. The truth is I got the leadership and he wanted it. It was true then, and remained true. Probably it was always fated to be as it was, unless either of us had pressed the nuclear button and decided to wage all-out war to destroy the other. It was always an option for both of us – me sacking him, him resigning and standing against me – but the enormity of the damage of such a course always drew us back from the brink.

The first occasion he actually broached acceptance that he would stand aside and support me was at Amanda’s. Up to then, he maintained the fiction that he would fight me for it. I knew he wouldn’t, but I knew, too, that protracted discussion was a prerequisite to steer him successfully to the correct conclusion. My worry was not his reason, but his pride.

There was also an interesting and again telling sidebar to the conversation, one that caused much speculation afterwards. He wanted a free rein on economic policy. At one point Peter – who was by then trying to broker things in my favour – even submitted a paper to me that effectively ceded control of economic policy. The paper unfortunately survived; my response, which was for me unusually brusque, didn’t. Close interaction, yes. Partnership, yes. Dual leadership, absolutely not. It gave rise to the myth that I was uninterested in economic policy. On the contrary, I was very interested; and though it was always a tug of war and in time a fairly gruelling one, I always kept, at least up to the third term, a very tight grip on it, ready to pull back sharply if I needed to.

The conversations were of their nature difficult, but they were not hostile, bitter or even unfriendly. We were like a couple who loved each other, arguing whose career should come first. While there was a lot at stake, there was also a lot underpinning our relationship. There is no doubt, though, that he felt a sense of shock and betrayal. He never expected me to put myself forward. He thought he was the superior politician. He wasn’t, by the way, self-conscious of intellectual superiority. Funnily enough, in the years of permanent debate that characterised our friendship up to that point, I was probably more like an analytical lawyer or professor trying to arrange the logic and reason of our positions on policy. He was the master politician. I don’t mean he wasn’t intellectually more able – he was and is, in the sense of who would have got the best degree – but in framing the intellectual case for what we were doing, I tended to have the idea and he tended then to translate it into practical politics. He was also a brilliant sounding board. He could instantly see the force of a point, give you six new angles on it and occasionally make you see something in a wholly different light. I often compare him to Derry in that way. I would always learn from a discussion and come away mentally refreshed, stimulated and enthusiastic. The conversations were long, but there were very few wasted moments. Our minds moved fast and at that point in sync. When others were present, we felt the pace and power diminish, until, a bit like lovers desperate to get to lovemaking but disturbed by old friends dropping round, we would try to bustle them out, steering them doorwards with a hearty slap on the back. Our friendship was not a sealed box exactly, but the sense of self-containment was strong, sometimes overpowering. Under the pressure of leadership it was not easy, therefore, to open it up to the influences – good, bad or indifferent – of the outside world. But of course this was what was happening.

It was doubly difficult for him. He had an expectation which was now to be snuffed out, to be relit in time possibly, but when, how or in what circumstances, he couldn’t know or determine. For my part – and you can believe this or not, I really don’t mind – I had been a reluctant convert to leadership. I remember that weekend after John died and being told of the
Sunday Times
poll about to appear, waiting for it with a bit of me still thinking how much easier things would be if it showed Gordon leading, and I would have the excuse to say to friends and supporters, ‘Well, it’s not me after all.’ But it didn’t, and probably if it had, I was too far gone by then. The point is that in so far as it is ever possible to disentangle motives at such a juncture, I did genuinely believe it was best that I took up the leadership. We were, at that point, fifteen years in Opposition and effectively pinned back in our heartlands – the North, Scotland, Wales, the inner city. Though disillusioned with the Tories, Middle England was still anxious and distrustful of us. The situation was crying out for the party to take a revolutionary modernising leap, to break out of those heartlands, to show for the first time that it could win support anywhere, that it could cross the class and employment divides, that it could unite the nation. I was the moderniser, in personality, in language, in time, feel and temperament. Split it any way you like, the damn thing was obvious in the end.

After the conversation at Amanda’s parents’ home, where they had moved as the family grew up, we sat in the kitchen looking out over the gardens and scrubland in the small indentation under Dean Bridge, near to where years ago I had done a spell on a voluntary project for the down-and-out in lieu of school corps. We were then simply managing how he could withdraw gracefully.

Later, there was a moment at Nick Ryden’s which illustrated the tenor of it all. Nick had just moved into a big old house and was doing the place up. He kindly agreed to go out and leave us alone to talk. After an hour or so Gordon got up to go to the loo. I waited downstairs. Five minutes passed. Then ten. Then fifteen. I was getting a bit alarmed. Suddenly the phone went. As it wasn’t my house, I left it. The answerphone clicked in, and Nick’s voice asked the caller to leave a message. Suddenly, out of the machine boomed another voice: ‘Tony, it’s Gordon here.’ Wow, I was really freaked out. What the hell was going on? ‘I am upstairs in the toilet,’ he went on, ‘and I can’t get out.’

In the building works, the loo door had been replaced but had no handle on the inside yet. Gordon had spent a quarter of an hour on his mobile trying to track down Nick’s number. The soundproofing in the house meant that I never heard him. I went up to the loo. ‘Withdraw from the contest or I’m leaving you in there,’ I said.

Finally, with Peter’s guidance, we made the announcement that Gordon would support me, and did it walking rather self-consciously round Palace Garden underneath Big Ben. It worked well as a piece of media management. Very quickly, however, it worked less well as a relationship.

The root of the problem was that he thought I could be an empty vessel into which the liquid that was poured was manufactured and processed by him. I was never totally sure, and still am not, whether he really did buy the illusion that I was just a frontman, carefully tutored by Peter and then, in time, Alastair, but incapable on my own. It was of course nonsense; not because I am so good, but because it is utterly impossible for anyone in a position like that to be the product of someone else. It can’t happen. There are a thousand decisions, large and small, that only the leader can take. You can’t fake body language or manufacture it. No matter how good an actor you are, in the end it’s not an act.

It’s like when people say to me: ‘Oh, so-and-so, they don’t believe in anything, they’re just a good communicator.’ As a statement about politics, it’s close to being an oxymoron, certainly for the top person. At the top, the scrutiny is microscopic. It is soul-penetrating. People see you like they do a person they see every day at work. For a time, maybe, they can be fooled or blinded, but soon, very soon in fact, they form a real judgement. Regardless of whether they agree or disagree with what you are doing, they can tell whether or not you believe in it. If you don’t have core beliefs as a politician, real path-finding instincts groomed out of conviction, you will never be a good communicator because – and this may seem corny, but it’s true – the best communication comes from the heart. To me, Bill Clinton was a classic example of this. Regularly it would be written that although he was a wondrous communicator, he didn’t believe in anything much. It was complete nonsense. It was true he didn’t believe in being a traditional Democrat; but he didn’t articulate the policy of the traditional Democrat. He was a new Democrat and that’s how he spoke and sounded, because that is what he believed. That’s why he was so good at communicating it.

Maybe Gordon thought the glass could be filled as he wished, but it was never going to be that way, and inevitably the rancour started to appear. We fell out over whether John Prescott should be deputy or not. I could live with Margaret Beckett in the position but, on balance, thought John gave something to the ticket which she didn’t. We fell out over who should run my leadership campaign. I and my people (the distinction was already taking hold) thought it couldn’t be Gordon; it was all too incestuous. I had to prepare now for the time when, as leader, I couldn’t live in the sealed compartment. He could be the favoured, but not the only. On my side we thought Jack Straw a better fit since he was from neither camp and so broadened my appeal in the PLP, and I had to explain that to Gordon. He resented it deeply.

The leadership campaign itself passed off without incident. Very few union leaders supported me, but their members did, and we won a majority of party members and MPs. A preoccupation throughout was to minimise stray comments, hostages to fortune or concessions to the left. Slowly I got used to the feeling I was going to become leader.

The sun used to shine in those days. I remember campaigning around the country, the weather hot, occasionally oppressively so. The mood was buoyant. No great breakthroughs at that point, and no particular mishaps, but it was clear I was a very different type of Labour leader. That in itself was generating interest, excitement and support. The Tories were trying to pretend it was all a chimera but, underneath the bravado, they were really worried. They knew if I turned out to possess the genuine article, with the ability to wear it so that it fitted, they were sunk.