A Journey (85 page)

The saga on tuition fees came to a head around the vote for the second reading, which was scheduled for the end of January 2004. It was truly knife-edge stuff. It seems strange to relate that now, but it really was.

Michael Howard had just become leader of the Tories, and had made his first mistake. He had inherited opposition to tuition fees from Iain Duncan Smith. Of course, the Tories knew perfectly well that they should support the measure, and the reason why they didn’t do so is an interesting reflection on the art of good Opposition.

Leave aside principle for the moment – i.e. the rights or wrongs of the policy – and let us focus on the naked politics. The conventional view of Opposition is: pick up votes where you can. All the polls say tuition fees are unpopular. There is a public bandwagon of opposition. Clamber on board.

In many cases, that is the right thing politically. Take the rows over MPs’ expenses. The truth is MPs are underpaid and the expenses were used to top up income; but you can’t say that. The public is whipped into outrage. The bandwagon rolls. It is completely unreasonable to expect the Opposition to resist it. Not wise long term, by the way; I frequently rued such moves made in Opposition which boomeranged in government. But fair enough. It’s what happens, and the Opposition, eager for votes, benefits in the short term.

But such bandwagons are dangerous if they are heading in a direction with which serious, elite cross-party opinion disagrees. Then it’s a mistake, and never worth it, because even though that opinion is elite and held by only a few, its quality is high and it marks you down sharply.

Every key Tory who had been in government and who had wished they had made such a reform was onside with us. Elite opinion was clear: the change was necessary and right. By allying himself with the opposition – unions, the left, etc. – Michael Howard didn’t win many votes and lost a lot of credibility. It tied in with his attempt to exploit the Hutton Inquiry when he had been vigorously in favour of Iraq, and it all contributed to our development of a telling counter-attack on him, namely that he was opportunist and therefore unreliable.

The charge of being an opportunist may seem a bit of a low-key attack. And in that also lies a lesson. With each successive Tory leader, I would develop a line of attack, but I only did so after a lot of thought. Usually I did it based on close observation at PMQs. I never made it overly harsh. I always tried to make it telling. The aim was to get the non-politician nodding. I would wonder not what appealed to a Labour Party Conference in full throttle, but what would appeal to my old mates at the Bar, who wanted a reasonable case to be made; and who, if it were made, would rally.

So I defined Major as weak; Hague as better at jokes than judgement; Howard as an opportunist; Cameron as a flip-flop, not knowing where he wanted to go. (The Tories did my work for me in undermining Iain Duncan Smith.) Expressed like that, these attacks seem flat, rather mundane almost, and not exactly inspiring – but that’s their appeal. Any one of those charges, if it comes to be believed, is actually fatal. Yes, it’s not like calling your opponent a liar, or a fraud, or a villain or a hypocrite, but the middle-ground floating voter kind of shrugs their shoulders at those claims. They don’t chime. They’re too over the top, too heavy, and they represent an insult, not an argument. Whereas the lesser charge, because it’s more accurate and precisely because it’s more low-key, can stick. And if it does, that’s that. Because in each case, it means they’re not a good leader. So game over.

In fact, if Michael had backed me over tuition fees, it would have done me real damage with my own side; done him a power of good with sensible, informed opinion; and not changed the result. But he didn’t. And that helped me.

The rebellion on my side was not small, however. And it was led by Nick Brown and George Mudie, both close to Gordon and both supremely good organisers. I had my political team working overtime. Sally Morgan was at her best, performing to the highest level. She was New Labour but had the benefit of the 1980s student union training, and could reach the women in the PLP in a way others couldn’t. Some women, by the way, are the last people best placed to canvass other women. Others do it superbly. Sally was not one of the ‘wimmin’; but she could reach outside of that New Labour circle, could talk more than one political language and was relentlessly realistic about the challenge. Charles and I were a bit of the ‘let’s just go and do this damn thing’ school, which was fine, but doing the damn thing did also entail getting the damn votes. And we were way short. Sally and Hilary Armstrong – who was a great chief whip and also skilled in the highways and byways of PLP politics – told me in no uncertain terms that the vote hung in the balance.

At a meeting before Christmas, we sat in Downing Street: me, Charles, Sally and Andrew, together with David Hill who had become press secretary after Alastair’s departure. Much to my delight, David had agreed to come back and serve after some years in the private sector, having been the Labour Party’s chief press officer for the 1997 election.

‘I feel very confident,’ Charles said in typical Charles fashion.

‘I really don’t see why,’ Sally remarked a little sourly. ‘Is it a calculation of the votes that leads you to think that, or just your natural good spirits? Because I’m looking at the votes and you don’t yet have them.’

It was an ugly period. We were to have the second-reading vote on 27 January 2004, and the Hutton Inquiry reporting the next day. January was going to be uncomfortable. A bad result in either could mean curtains.

I always used to think, though, that if you go out on a point of principle, well, there are worse ways of exiting. As I have stated many times, I wasn’t obsessed with staying. I explained this to Sally as we sat having a cup of coffee after the others had departed. ‘Well, that’s very big of you, I’m sure,’ she said tartly with a smile, ‘but if you don’t mind, I think we should concentrate on winning the vote.’

‘How do we win then?’ I asked.

‘You can’t win,’ she replied, ‘without your Chancellor fully and unequivocally on board.’

And that was the nub of it.

Early in the new year I restarted my conversation with Gordon about leaving. This was probably unwise in all aspects, but I was feeling genuinely worn down. At every major passing point in every major path of policy, there were barriers being thrown across the road ahead.

The first foundation hospitals would shortly be coming into being. Carefully chosen from those already getting the highest ranking, these hospitals were to have greater freedom, power and discretion. They were the first big step to creating self-governing entities capable of making the changes in medical care in the way they wanted, in order to meet the changing challenge of modern health care.

The problem with the NHS was quintessentially that of the monolithic, outdated public health service: it was rigid, and had no incentives to innovate. Bad practice and good were equally rewarded. Powerful professional interests, with widespread but ultimately ill-informed public support, held sway. Foundation hospitals were the breach in the wall of the monolith. In time they were to be followed by choice, by the introduction of the private sector and by far-reaching changes to the working practices of staff.

We had begun, with Alan Milburn, the task of introducing them in January 2002. They had provoked a furious row with the Treasury, however. Gordon felt Alan was hostile to him. As ever, he met the argument not head-on but by a Treasury-related argument: by having the power to borrow against their assets, foundation hospitals were a threat to the public finances. The debate was endless, rancorous and destabilising. By the time we finally got the legislation agreed – again with a major rebellion, and again with many taking their cue from apparent Treasury disagreement with the policy – Alan had left the government.

In May 2003, a month before the vote, he had come to see me. He knew it would be a bad blow, but he had had enough. I was very sorry to lose him. He was a quite exceptional minister. I don’t blame his fight with Gordon for his departure; there were many reasons for his standing down. One of them is something that British politics really needs to watch.

Being at the top now in British politics is like taking your political life in your hands each day. OK, politics is a hard business, not for the faint-hearted – that has always been so – but in today’s politics, the pressures are so intense, the criticism so brutal and the targeting so arbitrary, that we are in serious danger of creating a situation where ‘normal’ people feel inclined to walk away, leaving the manically ambitious and the weird in their stead. Of course, people don’t always walk away, but there is an inclination to do so that is directly attributable to the sheer force of the storm that is in an almost perpetual swirl of scandal and intrigue, breaking around their heads. Someone with a life, a family, interests beyond politics, the ability to do other things, can feel deeply inclined to do them and leave the storm to itself.

Alan was the first person (though maybe Estelle fitted the same mould somewhat) who, in my time, just left because they wanted to. He was relatively young, under fifty, at the height of his talent; but he chose to leave. Needless to say the Westminster rumour mill refused to believe someone could make such a rational decision and tried hard to invent all sorts of ‘real’ reasons why he left, but he left for the reason he gave: he no longer enjoyed it and wanted out.

John Reid was asked to pick up the baton. At first he was reluctant. He was a Scot, and under devolution, authority for the NHS in Scotland had been passed to the Scottish Executive. I think he may have felt it also a poisoned chalice since it was going to be so hot politically; and of course he had followed the Alan/Gordon row. He had also been moved several times and probably wanted to stay in one place for a while, but I was sure he was right for it. For once, the judgement was undoubtedly correct: he completely understood the rationale for the reforms; understood their politics; understood how to make the case both in the party and to the public; and was determined to take it all further. He was a perfect fit, and was also absolutely capable of standing up to Gordon – and what’s more, enjoying it. John believed – I have no idea whether rightly – that Gordon had tried to ignite a scandal under him some time back; and John was not a character to forget such an assault. He would work with him, but not buckle.

At the same time, David Blunkett was motoring on the law and order agenda and to great effect. The 2002 Queen’s Speech had had antisocial behaviour legislation at its heart. We had also published the first consultation paper on identity cards. Both measures were right in themselves but also played to an important political game plan.

For many communities, especially those in poorer parts of town and city, antisocial behaviour and low-level crime and disorder was the number-one concern. The graffiti, petty drug dealing, violence and abuse could turn a nice neighbourhood into a nasty one within months. In terms of quality of life, there was no bigger issue. Live in such a place and you will know exactly what I mean. The Americans had come up with a ‘zero tolerance’ idea to tackle it, and our antisocial behaviour laws were based on the same notion. The concept is this: if you tolerate the low-level stuff, you pretty soon find the lawbreakers graduate to the high-level stuff. So cut it out at source; tolerate nothing, not even painting a street wall or dropping litter. It fitted completely with my belief in cohesive communities based on a combination of improved opportunity and greater responsibility. We were investing billions in inner-city renewal, but it would count for nothing if life on the street degenerated as a result of lawlessness and disorder.

The reason for special laws to deal with antisocial behaviour was simple: the individual crimes were sufficiently small in themselves not to warrant either major police effort or serious punishment. As a result of their being treated conventionally as specific criminal offences, no one did much. The purpose of the new laws was to get them put under a rubric of antisocial behaviour, simplify the procedures and impose real restrictions on the offenders.

Naturally the laws aroused deep opposition – and in some ways reasonably so, since they did involve short-cutting traditional procedures – though never, it may be said, in the communities in which they operated, which loved them and only wanted more of them. The Tories got confused. They felt they should oppose because their lawyer friends rather despised or disagreed with the whole notion. Their constituents, however, agreed with the measures; and after all they were supposed to be the party of law and order. So they faced both ways, with much discomfort.

Identity cards were another thing altogether. In this case, there was a substantial body of opinion opposed, including many on practical grounds. I was convinced that they were necessary for two reasons: firstly, I could see no other alternative to dealing with illegal immigration. I was worried about immigration both in itself and because I thought, unless tackled, it had the capacity greatly to undermine good race relations. Secondly, I thought that over time ID cards would help simplify transactions in both the public and the private sectors, which are nowadays the warp and woof of ordinary living. Mortgage transactions, bank withdrawals, credit cards, underage drinking, dealing with a myriad of public services, welfare – all of these interactions frequently require some form of proof of identity.

I could see all the practical problems. I could envisage that it might take time. The civil liberties argument I thought a little absurd, I confess – many well-functioning democracies have identity cards, and the information stored is less than most supermarkets have. However, the clincher for me is and was a technical one. Due to new technology, it is now possible through fingerprint and iris scans to create a card that is extremely difficult to replicate, so the chance of fraud or identity abuse is therefore hugely diminished. It was the combination of changing ways of living and changing technology that convinced me that this was correct.