A Journey (53 page)

I asked Jim Callaghan to come out and support us, and he gave a statement to the
Today
programme backing the government and me personally (though he declined an interview for them on the basis that he would be asked about the comparisons with the stoppages of the 1970s). The Confederation of British Industry finally woke up and weighed in on the side of sense.

From 13 to 16 September, the situation continued to be bad, but was improving daily. We set up a committee with the oil companies to lay plans for averting such a protest in future. By 17 September, more than 60 per cent of petrol stations were open again. Panic buying had stopped.

It was over; but the damage to the government had been considerable. You really have to hand it to the media – once the thing collapsed, we were roundly taken to task for not acting soon enough and not doing more to prevent the protests spreading. It was extraordinary, comic even. Without a blush they were castigating us for not stamping on a fire they were actively helping light under us. I think, after that, I realised two things. The first was that there is no point getting steamed up about them; they are what they are, and to get angry is just to waste energy (this is a very good precept, but as time showed, rather hard to adhere to). The second thing was that life will always be different for a Labour leader compared to a Tory leader. Provided you know that, it’s OK; but it is different, and you have to know it.

The fallout from the fuel protests meant we went into party conference at the end of September in slightly chastened mood. A poll showed us eight points behind the Tories.

Polls are an absolute nightmare. All leaders will tell you they don’t pay attention to them, but all leaders do. The problem is they can be an instant snapshot of public opinion (i.e. real, but superficial and therefore potentially transient) or they can indicate a trend (i.e. potentially of lasting significance). You never know which it is.

But they matter because quite apart from anything else, your supporters and the media dwell on them. They help create a mood, which itself often then reinforces the polling. You watch any US election and it’s amazing the degree to which the polls create the weather. In part the media, and indeed all of us to a degree, distrust our own instinct – we may think ‘X’, but then a poll shows ‘Y’, so we think, Well, maybe ‘Y’ is right after all.

The result of this can be not merely confusing; it can reduce the disposition to argue a case. One of the weaknesses of polls, as I learned, is that they don’t measure the degree to which people are open to persuasion. So the snapshot may well say ‘Y’, but actually the public could be brought to think ‘X’.

Over time, I became less concerned with the polling (which may have coincided with the fact it became less amicable!), but I would still always cast a nervous eye at it. Then there was Philip Gould and his focus groups. Philip was a fantastic support, at times as crucial as a morale enthuser as he was as a political strategist, but I used to laugh at how extraordinary the confluence was between his own thoughts and what the groups seemed to say. Also, so much depended on the individual people. Though pollsters always swore blind these groups were selected on a very ‘scientific’ basis, the truth about any group of people chosen like this is that they are utterly in thrall to their own mood on the day, any recent experience, what they think they should think, and above all to the voice in the group which speaks most definitively and so influences the dynamics that will occur within any collection of strangers sitting in a room together for the first time. I always wanted to attend one secretly and then at the end jump out and confront them with all the vicious calumnies they had just been uttering against me!

But so frenzied is the political desire to sniff the prevailing winds accurately that huge emphasis and sanctity is placed upon polls. You begin to realise how the ancient temple priests must have felt in pagan days, trying to read the entrails. I bet they were much like Philip and one of his groups, and the conclusion they arrived at was not greatly different from where they thought things were moving anyway. So they, and polls, should be treated with the utmost caution. But they never are.

In this instance, the eight-point Tory lead did seem genuinely transient, but it was an indication we had taken a hit. I decided we had to answer what I thought was a basic underlying problem. People thought we were an all-powerful government, the Tories were rubbish and there was no real Opposition. Now, of course, to us sitting there dealing with the daily grind, it wasn’t like that at all – we felt under unbelievable pressure
tout le temps –
but the public, egged on by the media, could see signs of hubris and arrogance. That was part of the reason why they took the side of the protesters so readily: they didn’t really want us to lose the fight, but a bit of a kicking might serve us right.

We had also just had an unfortunate run-in with Britain’s pensioners. One of the greatest myths of human existence is that as people get older, they get more benign, more long-suffering, more relaxed and more phlegmatic in how the world treats them. Not in my experience.

Your average Rottweiler on speed can be a lot more amiable than a pensioner wronged, or, to put it more accurately, believing they are wronged. Around this time, I remember distinctly visiting a housing estate to open a new nursery, going down the path shaking hands with a few well-wishers. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of an old-age pensioner, a woman no less, with a placard that read: ‘Blair, you are a c***’. I couldn’t believe it. I was really shocked. She looked like your typical sweet granny. I almost stopped to remonstrate, but then wisely thought better of it.

My mother-in-law – by the way, a wonderful mother to Cherie and an inestimable support to the family – used to keep me informed of the views of pensioners, and as lobbyists go she was up there with the best of them. I used to reflect on how much money was spent on expensive Westminster lobby firms all paying a fortune to get the ear of some junior minister, and here right at the centre of Downing Street was one woman giving a rolling masterclass in the art of targeted persuasion. However, it was a mono-theme: the government’s scandalous treatment of pensioners.

What was fascinating, and more than a little unnerving, was that there seemed to be little or no correlation between the largesse bestowed on them and the volume of complaint. When, some years into government, we were hurling the money at them, somehow or other there would be one age group or tier of pensioner that we would miss, and then the rest would take great pride in their solidarity with those who had been so callously forgotten.

I exaggerate to make a point. There were those who were genuinely grateful for the measures we introduced, which did amount to the biggest ever boost to the earnings of the oldest, least well-off and most vulnerable pensioners. Those measures on their own were always a riposte to the absurd notion in parts of the left that we had betrayed our ‘traditional’ vote. We did things no Tory government would have contemplated, never mind done. And we did it for good motives, though as I say the gratitude was not always commensurate with the generosity.

But in the summer of 1999 we had messed up. We had applied the usual rules for uprating the basic state pension in line with inflation, which was low. The result? A 75p rise. We were still in our two-year period of keeping to tight spending limits. Those were the rules. We applied them.

The pensioners, unsurprisingly, were not impressed. Though my mother-in-law put the case a little too graphically, it was clear we had a serious problem. We rectified it in the Budget by increasing the amount, but, again, damage was done.

I decided at the 2000 party conference to apologise and eat a portion of humble pie. We had some blowback from Gordon and Alistair Darling who felt it dangerous to admit we were wrong; but I felt it was worth it. Anyway, we were wrong!

The rest of the speech was concerned with uplifting the party by installing some pride in what we had done; energising them by laying out what we had still to do; and giving them some battle lines on how much we could lose under the Tories.

The speech went well. I learned one other lesson in the course of it. I really work out during a big speech. It’s a physical not just a mental or rhetorical act. And I sweat. Before the speech we were in the hotel suite trying to work out what to wear. I had chosen a very good shirt/tie combination. Unfortunately the shirt was blue, and by the end of my speech it was very visibly wet through. Naturally, the headlines were about ‘
BLAIR SWEATING UNDER PRESSURE
’ etc. From then on, I always wore a white shirt for a big speech!

After the conference season, the atmosphere continued to be difficult. There was nothing particularly wrong; but nothing particularly right either. The media environment was tricky. Alastair was talking about moving on, as was Anji. This was deeply unsettling.

Part of the problem with New Labour was that, in the beginning, it had been the creation of a very tightly knit group. It was only really towards the end that a new generation of talented young people came on board properly who were able to take positions of leadership and broaden our base. The senior politicians around me were good and strong players; but JP was obviously not inclined to New Labour; with Gordon it was difficult to tell. At one level, he was; but the tensions in the desire to push ahead more radically with reform were starting to surface; and in any event his preoccupation was the succession and he always worried that anything difficult would undermine the inheritance. David Blunkett, of course, was fully behind the push, but others like John Reid and Charles Clarke were still on the way up. Robin Cook went along with it – partly because of the appalling relations between him and Gordon at that time – but you wouldn’t rely on him if it turned sour. Jack Straw was supportive but not a force pushing at the frontier.

So I was acutely conscious that it rested on my shoulders, that I had to drive and keep driving; and I hadn’t yet properly matured or hardened. That may seem an odd thing to say, but I felt that I had a lot to learn and a lot of inner strength still to develop. I didn’t feel courageous much of the time. I knew if push came to shove I would be, but there was much more nervous anxiety lingering near the surface of my psyche than showed – maybe that’s always true of people in this position – and at one level I felt needy.

Cherie was a great support, of course, but she wasn’t there during the working day, so naturally the people I worked with really mattered. They were an outstandingly talented team, and I felt a bit like a football manager might when he realises he has a dream team that is perfectly balanced, with elements of genius and masses of commitment. Needless to say, he doesn’t want to lose any stars.

In time I learned to escape this bind – and it is a bind; there are other great players out there. Change is refreshing, it challenges old ways; but I was still developing and I thought I couldn’t manage without the old team.

Only later did I realise the strain Alastair was under; and only later did I, in a sense, move to a place that required different skills to the many that he has. At that stage, communication was still paramount. Of course communication is always important, but in those early days it was at the crux. Later, I put policy there, and then communication assumed a lesser, though still critical, role.

Alastair was getting exhausted and ratty, and he was getting set upon by the media, whom he was coming to loathe and was therefore not handling quite right. Both he and Anji were also people to whom I selfishly and needily transferred much of the pain and the strain. They lightened the load, but in doing so, they burdened themselves. And it was a heavy burden to bear.

In those late months of 2000, I was trying to persuade both to stay, trying more than I should have and more than was wise. But there it is: you live and learn.

We were still pressing away on getting the policy fundamentals in place for the reform agenda. I was working flat out devising the direction of structural reform for schools, the NHS, criminal justice, welfare and the Civil Service. I was intensely frustrated by my lack of detailed knowledge in each discipline and was constantly trying to expand it. Of course, it is impossible for any prime minister to be at the centre of all disciplines or to be the complete master of any, except in bursts of activity usually associated with a crisis, but nonetheless I was meeting groups of front-line professionals who understood the case for change and wanted to lead it. They improved my understanding as I got to grips with the tangle of complexities that lie in the navigation of any process of change. I was sure now that we could set sail, confident of a really radical second term. In every area I had a fairly firm compass. I was growing in confidence about the arguments, increasingly sure that we were heading in the right direction. The only problem was, I wasn’t clear about how much support I had getting there.

Meanwhile, events were colliding with my programme, pulling it this way and that. We had severe flooding in many parts of the country, a natural disaster but one which necessitated vast amounts of time and focus. I went on several visits to lift spirits and make sure that everything that should be done was being done. The damage floods can do is extraordinary, unbelievable, billions of pounds’ worth with remarkable speed and ease. When I visited the flooding in York everyone was very stoic, but it was obvious it would be months before things returned to normal. With the risk of flooding increasing due to climate change, insurers, government and businesses – and entire towns and villages – were having to rethink policy. In the end, we committed to a billion-pound investment in flood defences.