A Journey (88 page)

We had put in an offer on the house. It had been accepted. My feeling at that point was to announce around conference time that I would go, and be out by Christmas. That would leave a good six-month run-in for the election for Gordon.

However, the work on the five-year plans was now running into serious difficulties. The trouble is that once you declare an intention that you are going to go, even if only to yourself in your own mind, it seeps out as if by osmosis.

Also, one stipulation I had made with John Prescott and Gordon was that neither should mention my departure, not even to their closest staff. In particular, I had said to Gordon he must not on any account discuss this with the two Eds, Balls and Miliband. I permitted him to tell Sue Nye and I told Anji (who was of course no longer working for me), but that was it. In spite of this, he had actually told his inner circle as a whole.

This was a real problem. I had set up the possibility of my going by saying to the
Guardian
that if I felt I was a liability to the Labour Party then I would leave. That was as far as I wanted to go – if my leaving became current and imminent, then self-evidently all authority would evaporate. But articles were now appearing discussing the possibility of my departure, with some even saying it was all agreed.

I resented this, but in the end I suppose it was inevitable he would talk to his people, and he would say he needed to plan. Actually, the reason for my change of mind was not to do with that.

The reason I started to draw back was to do with the ongoing discussions with the Treasury. Matthew Taylor and Jeremy Heywood, who were conducting them on behalf of Number 10, were saying in effect that it was completely clear there was no way that Ed Balls, in particular, was supportive of this programme. Other Treasury officials were talking of me and describing how – as one put it – ‘It’s all a bit pointless anyway as he’s not going to be there.’

This had been filtering back to me in dribs and drabs, and then one day in May, Matthew had a quiet word with me. ‘You do know there is not the slightest possibility of them running with these five-year plans, don’t you?’ He also told me they were contemplating significant alterations to the tuition-fees reforms.

I decided to have it out with Gordon, and we met later that month. I told him that we were having serious worries that this agenda wasn’t in line with his thinking. It was then that he miscalculated.

I’m sure I never quite handled him right in tense situations. Maybe we knew each other too well, and like some quarrelling, married couple we let emotion run out on the pitch before thinking. But on this occasion he made a grievous error: he should have reassured me, and instead he tried to bully me. He snarled when he should have charmed.

In effect, he said: you’ve promised to go and that’s that. That was completely the wrong tactic, and I became very tough in response. He then altered and said of course we agreed the agenda, refuting that Ed Balls was anything other than one hundred per cent in favour of it, and also denying that he had told Ed anything about my going. I knew both things were wrong.

The meeting ended badly. But worse, the hostility started up again almost immediately. They had decided to force the issue. It was the stupidest thing – it forced me to confront or yield. And if I yielded, what word could I utter when I looked in the mirror except ‘coward’?

At the end of June I went to a NATO meeting in Istanbul, where I recall getting the first headlines from the British papers from David Hill. Normally, and mercifully, David showed me little of the media. As he put it, ‘I show you this stuff on a “need to know” basis.’ He was a consummate operator with really excellent political judgement, calm, assured and as good a suffocator of a febrile story as there was. And there were plenty to suffocate, as you can imagine. The papers were full of what was obviously, and almost openly, a GB press operation arising out of critical comments which Derek Scott, my former economic adviser, had made about Gordon. Derek had by then left Downing Street. Although a really good and freethinking adviser, he had been ‘independent’ (i.e. uncontrollable) enough when he worked in Number 10; outside it, there was no hope of keeping him ‘on message’. Anyone knew that. Gordon knew that. But Derek’s comments were hyped and presented as an attack on Gordon as if authorised by me, which was absurd. It saw the start of a ‘Gordon as victim’ line which ran pretty constantly from then until I left.

‘What do we do?’ said David.

‘Nothing,’ I replied, ‘except make it clear we are fully supportive of Gordon and don’t share Derek’s views.’

I left Istanbul, went on to the Special EU Council, and came back to London on 30 June to make a statement on both the NATO and the EU meetings. It had been an incredibly busy month. The week before we had had the ordinary EU Council. The week before that, we had had the G8 summit at Sea Island in Georgia. I had been more or less continually on the go, with barely time to think on Gordon. But I could feel the pressure building and getting uglier by the day.

I did the usual Thursday Cabinet, held various other meetings and then went to Chequers on the Friday. I used to entertain there sporadically, and had leaders there when it was unavoidable, or when discretion and secrecy were paramount (as in some of the Irish talks); but on the whole Chequers was a place for relaxation and reflection. I’ve always found the two go together.

In the summer I could sit out on the terrace, ploughing through the box papers, stopping every so often for a mug of tea or to take a call. I used to have a light lunch with nothing to drink, watch
Football Focus
if it was a Saturday and pretend I was a pundit, or a live game if it was on at midday, work a little more and then go to the gym. In the early days I might go off to RAF Halton and play tennis.

On this weekend, I sat and thought long and hard. I came to one inescapable conclusion, and then another. The first was that I didn’t really believe Gordon would carry on the agenda. The truth is: if he believed in it, he would have supported it. And you can tell a lot from the people around someone; those around Gordon didn’t agree with it. OK, they might be cajoled into it, even pressed into it, but once I was gone there was no earthly hope of the fledgling programme being pursued.

The second conclusion was that the only reason I wanted to go was cowardice, pure and simple. I could try to dress it up in grand gestures of selflessness, pretend that I would be going for the good of the party or country, or even family; but it wouldn’t wash. That motive was not selfless but selfish. I would be going because I couldn’t take it any more, the abuse, the pressure, the hounding, the misrepresentation of my motives, the denigration. The kitchen temperature had become too high; I was sweating.

Also, I now knew what would be coming after me. It would not exactly be Old Labour, but it wouldn’t be authentic New Labour either. Very soon we would be back to conventional Labour versus conventional Tory. And there would be only one winner from that.

A couple of weeks before, in a rare break from the helter-skelter, John Reid had come to see me. John is a very wise man. Once he broke the grip the demon drink had on him, he flourished into one of the most shrewd and profound politicians in any party. Had he come through earlier, he could have played a huge part in keeping Labour as New Labour.

We had sat out on the wicker chairs in the Downing Street garden. As was his wont, he was very direct.

‘You must not go,’ he said. I began to protest but he waved me silent. ‘I know you’re thinking about it. It would be the most terrible mistake not only for you but for the party and the country. You must not do it. You know as well as I do what Gordon will be like. He may become leader some day, he may not; but to hand over now would be irresponsible. What is more, you need to fight the election even after Iraq, even with its burden, and you need to win it. And if you don’t, however you may present it, you are running away.’

As I sat in the gentle July sunshine at Chequers in 2004, I realised not that John had persuaded me – Tessa Jowell, Alan Milburn, Peter Mandelson and others had made the same argument – but rather that he had brought my own thoughts out from under the cover of my fantasy and illuminated them. It would be tough to stay, even at points horrible; but it would be a failure of simple, basic courage to go.

The British people, whom I genuinely adored and with whom the political relationship, at least on my part, was on occasions almost like a love affair, had ceased loving and were not going to start again. Support remained, but many were sullen, even resentful. The enjoyment that remained was the joy of doing what I believed in wholeheartedly, winning a third term, forcing the Tories therefore to change, and seeing through a programme of domestic reform that I was sure was right. Iraq would be a severe headwind; but I was again sure that whatever the wisdom of doing it, the folly of retreat was unthinkable and precipitate withdrawal a disaster. I looked as dispassionately as I could at our programme, and at that of the Tories under Michael Howard, and I didn’t really have any doubt as to what was sensible for Britain. But our winning depended vitally on us remaining clearly and unashamedly New Labour. If we shifted from it, even deviated from it at the margins, I knew we would be finished.

My mind was made up. I could not hand over to Gordon, at least not at this time and quite possibly never. The following week I informed him. You can guess the reaction. I took back the management of the five-year plans. We just worked with departments, and worked round and despite the Treasury. We got the plans in proper radical shape, and they became the basis of the third-term manifesto. After a good two weeks’ holiday, I came back fully refreshed.

In my conference address, I set out our stall for the third term. Previously, Alastair and Peter Hyman would supply a draft speech, something they excelled at. I would then amend and re-amend, usually over ten or fifteen drafts. They would tend to pull one way ideologically, Anji and Jonathan the other. Over time, starting with the 2001 speech, I would do the draft myself. Peter and Alastair would write certain key passages or be commissioned to give the speech colour. The others would give a view. Meanwhile, David Hill would point out pitfalls or unintended headlines. Matthew Taylor and Andrew Adonis would look after policy. Sally Morgan would comment.

I made the case for what we had done, and what we still had to do. As always, I tried to unite traditional values with an analysis of the future world in which they had to be applied. I also attempted to settle the party with their new status, not as the underdog allowed to govern only occasionally, but as a party able to govern for a substantial period.

At the end of the conference I had another situation to handle. The previous year I had suffered arrhythmia for the first time, a heart condition that means that the top part of the heart can start to beat out of sync with the bottom part. It then causes an irregular heartbeat, breathlessness and a feeling of being tired. If untreated, it can cause a stroke (yes a stroke, strangely enough, rather than a heart attack). It had been treated by a process which essentially jump-starts the heart back into rhythm.

In the summer of 2004 I had noticed that the arrhythmia had come back. The recurrence had left me short of breath (it was most apparent in the gym and I realised something was wrong). This time the doctors said I should have a surgical procedure known as an ablation, which effectively burns off the bit of the heart that is short-circuiting. Anyway, don’t ask me to debate the medical details; I just asked for the advice, got it and took it. The date for the operation was set for straight after party conference.

Gordon was still in a highly dangerous mood. In his conference speech he had gone out of his way to extol the merits of ‘Real Labour’. It was, of course, a mistake, but it was also an ominous signal to the party. I felt I had to deal with the leadership issue.

Against much advice, I resolved to say I would fight the next election but not the one after. Many people thought it fatal ever to say when you may stand down. I pointed out that this was the view Margaret Thatcher took, and a fat lot of good it did her. Past a certain point, you’re damned either way. Say you are going, and they say: Why stay? Say you will carry on without limit, and they say: You intend to go on forever. There is no easy way.

I decided to throw so much at the media that they wouldn’t quite know what to make of it all, and I gave them three stories at once: I would fight the third election but not the fourth; I had bought a house; I was having a heart operation. It was the only way to do it and I was highly amused by the spluttering and reeling as they tried to work out the ‘true’ significance of the stories being released simultaneously, since of course it wouldn’t do simply to report the three things as they were. David Hill handled it brilliantly. I had my operation. The house was bought. And so was some time.

SEVENTEEN

2005: TB/GB

T
he 2005 election was ugly: fraught in its build-up; marred in its running by internal disputes; vicious in the nature of the campaign; and precarious in its aftermath. I didn’t look forward to it. I didn’t enjoy doing it. But we won. Looking back on a majority of more than sixty over all the other parties combined, it seems like a minor miracle. Which, in one sense, it was.

I had taken the country into an unpopular war with a very unpopular Republican American president. The war had finally allowed right and left opposition to find a point of unity. In terms of my personal political position, it gave the party a reason to think if we could only lose that albatross, we could renew with Gordon as leader.