A Journey_ My Political Life Part 1

A Journey_ My Political Life.

by Tony Blair.

INTRODUCTION.

I wanted this book to be different from the traditional political memoir. Most such memoirs are, I have found, rather easy to put down. So what you will read here is not a conventional description of who I met or what I did. There is a range of events, dates, other politicians absent from it, not because they don't matter, but because my aim was to write not as a historian, but rather as a leader. There have been plenty of accounts and no doubt will be more of the history of my ten years as prime minister, and many people could write them. There is only one person who can write an account of what it is like to be the human being at the centre of that history, and that's me. wanted this book to be different from the traditional political memoir. Most such memoirs are, I have found, rather easy to put down. So what you will read here is not a conventional description of who I met or what I did. There is a range of events, dates, other politicians absent from it, not because they don't matter, but because my aim was to write not as a historian, but rather as a leader. There have been plenty of accounts and no doubt will be more of the history of my ten years as prime minister, and many people could write them. There is only one person who can write an account of what it is like to be the human being at the centre of that history, and that's me.

So this is a personal account; a description of a journey through a certain period of history in which my political, and maybe to a certain degree my personal character evolves and changes. I begin as one type of leader; I end as another. That's why I call it a journey. I describe, of course, the major events of my time, but I do so through the eyes of the person taking the decisions in relation to them. It is not an objective account; it doesn't pretend to be, though I hope it is fair.

I have also written it thematically, rather than following a precise chronology. It is true that my themes essentially start in 1997 and end in 2007; but within that framework I deal with individual subjects: for example, the coming to power; or Northern Ireland; or Princess Diana; or 9/11; or Iraq; or reform in public services; or the Olympics; or July 2005. You can, as a reader, take a subject and pretty much view it in isolation if you wish to, though of course there are a mult.i.tude of cross-references. Some things, like my relations.h.i.+p with Gordon Brown and with American presidents, flow through it all.

Because I have read autobiographies or memoirs that begin enthusiastically and then tail off in desperation and haste as the publisher's deadline approaches, I also took the unusual step of writing the chapters out of sequence, tackling some of the hardest first, and the easiest last. I wanted to keep the same pace and energy throughout. I took three years to write it.

This book is above all, however, not simply retrospective. Naturally, since it deals with past events, it examines those events as they were at the time. But I'm not really a retrospective person. I look forward. I still have much to do and a great amount of purpose in my life. I'm working as hard as I have ever worked. I am still learning.

So as well as using the past to illuminate issues that are still present, A Journey A Journey often projects into the future. Particularly in respect of foreign affairs after 9/11, and the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also in respect of major reforms to health, education, welfare, and law and order which preoccupy current governments, I seek to set out a view of the world both as it is and as it may become, not simply as I found it while in office. The last chapter deals specifically with 200710 and, since it disagrees with much conventional wisdom about the financial crisis and continuing challenges of security, it is very much engaged with today's debate about today's issues. often projects into the future. Particularly in respect of foreign affairs after 9/11, and the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also in respect of major reforms to health, education, welfare, and law and order which preoccupy current governments, I seek to set out a view of the world both as it is and as it may become, not simply as I found it while in office. The last chapter deals specifically with 200710 and, since it disagrees with much conventional wisdom about the financial crisis and continuing challenges of security, it is very much engaged with today's debate about today's issues.

Finally, the book is something of a letter (extended!) to the country I love. I won three general elections. Up to then, Labour had never even won two successive full terms. The longest Labour government had lasted six years. This lasted thirteen. It could have, as I say in the final chapter, gone on longer, had it not abandoned New Labour.

Those victories came about because there was a group of people who felt the same as I do about Britain. That it is a great country. That the British people are, at their best, brave, determined and adventurous. But that we need a vision, a concept, a sense of our place in the world today and in our future, as well as a strong regard for our past. That is why I was and remain first and foremost not so much a politician of traditional left or right, but a moderniser. I wanted to modernise the Labour Party so it was capable, not intermittently but continuously, of offering a progressive alternative to Conservative rule. I wanted to modernise Britain so that, while retaining pride in having worn the mantle of the world's most powerful nation as the twentieth century began, it didn't feel bereft and in decline as the twenty-first century arrived, because that mantle would no longer fit. I wanted us to be a nation proud of being today a land of many cultures and faiths, breaking new ground against prejudice of any sort, paying more attention to merit than to cla.s.s, and being at ease with an open society and global economy. I wanted us to realise a new set of ambitions at home and abroad. We would reform our public services and welfare state so as to make them consonant with the world of 2005, not 1945. We would use our members.h.i.+p of Europe and our alliance with the United States to influence the decisions of the world, even as our power relative to the emerging nations diminished. We would play a new role in continents such as Africa, as partners in development. We would forge a new politics, in which successful enterprise and ambition lived comfortably alongside a society of equal opportunity and compa.s.sion.

The book sets out the attempts to achieve such a vision in parts successful, in parts not, and therefore what it describes is a work in progress. It gives my opinion as to why powerful forces, left and right, disagree with such a vision and tried hard to inhibit it, but why I still believe it is the only hope for Britain's future.

Though my politics consciously and deliberately reached beyond traditional left or right, it shouldn't be thought from this that I was or am disdainful of party politics. In particular, as I always used to say, I owe the Labour Party, its members, supporters and activists, a huge debt of grat.i.tude. I put them through a lot! They took it, most of the time, with quite extraordinary dignity and loyalty. It is true that my head can sometimes think conservatively especially on economics and security; but my heart always beats progressive, and my soul is and always will be that of a rebel.

ONE.

HIGH EXPECTATIONS.

On 2 May 1997, I walked into Downing Street as prime minister for the first time. I had never held office, not even as the most junior of junior ministers. It was my first and only job in government.

The election night of 1 May had pa.s.sed in a riot of celebration, exhilaration and expectation. History was not so much being made as jumping up and down and dancing. Eighteen years of Conservative government had ended. Labour New Labour had won by a landslide. It felt as if a fresh era was beginning. As I walked through the iron gates into Downing Street, and as the crowd carefully a.s.sembled, carefully managed pressed forward in enthusiasm, despite the setting, the managing and the fatigue of being up all night, I could feel the emotion like a charge. It ran not just through the crowd but through the country. It affected everyone, lifting them up, giving them hope, making them believe all things were possible, that by the very act of election and the spirit surrounding it, the world could be changed.

Everyone except for me, that is. My predominant feeling was fear, and of a sort unlike anything I had felt before, deeper even than the fear I had felt the day I knew I was going to take over the leaders.h.i.+p of the Labour Party. Until election night, this fear had been kept in check by the routine, rigour and sheer physical and mental exertion of the campaign. Also, campaigning was familiar emotional as well as political territory. I had a strategy for guiding us from Opposition into government; I adhered to it, and I knew if I did so, I wouldn't fail. I had redefined the Labour Party as New Labour, a changed progressive force in British politics; I had set out an outline programme of sufficient substance to be credible but lacking in the details that would have allowed our opponents to d.a.m.n it; and I had fas.h.i.+oned a strong but believable attack on the government, and a.s.sembled a ferociously effective election-fighting machine.

In order to instil discipline, into the party and even my close team, I was the eternal warrior against complacency. I regularly spoke about how big opinion-poll leads could be lost, how the Tories should never be underestimated, how we had this problem and that challenge. Since we had lost four elections in a row and had never won two consecutive full terms, I was cultivating fairly fertile ground. The party had almost come to believe that it couldn't win, that for some divine or satanic reason, Labour wasn't allowed an election victory no matter what it did. For some, it was like the old football adage: a game played with a round ball, two teams of eleven players, forty-five minutes in each half and the Germans always win.

I thought that was complete baloney. We had lost because we were out of touch with the modern voter in the modern world. The first rule in politics is that there are no rules, at least not in the sense of inevitable defeats or inevitable victories. If you have the right policy and the right strategy, you always have a chance of winning. Without them, you can lose no matter how certain the victory seems.

Pretending that it was all really on a knife-edge helped motivate, galvanise and keep us in line. Though underneath I was very confident, you never know. What's more, I believed the current prime minister John Major was much better than most others thought. He had real appeal as a person. Fortunately, his party had gone off the rails, to a heavy, hard-right position, and over the seemingly interminable time I had spent as Leader of the Opposition almost three years I had learned how to play him and his party off against each other.

Major had decided on a long campaign of three months. It was tough, of course, but it wasn't an uncharted landscape and it fitted a pattern. The hope was that we would trip up, I would suddenly lose my head, by some trick of fate or fortune the mood of the public would switch. It was never really going to happen.

Instead, and rather more predictably, the Tories fell apart. Every time Major tried to get them on the front foot, someone in his ranks resigned, said something stupid, got caught in a scandal and frequently all three at once and occasionally the same person. It was like watching a slow-motion suicide or an escape artist who ties concrete blocks to his legs, puts on handcuffs, gets in a lead box, has it sealed and jumps into deep water. You think, How's he going to get out of that? and then you realise he isn't. Amazing how a political party can go like that, though it is possible to tempt them to it if their opponents are smart enough; and by occupying the centre ground, make them foolishly go off to the side.

So the election campaign was long, enervating as they always are full of phoney ups and downs, shock polls and startling happenings, but in the end the result was obvious. The scale of the victory, however, was not clear. I had an inkling. If I had had to bet on it, I would have bet big. On the night of 1 May it became clear just how big. And that was when the fear started to set in.

The actual day of the election had pa.s.sed uneventfully, as they do. Campaigning stops. You go to vote. I walked out of our const.i.tuency home in Trimdon Colliery, an old mining village near Sedgefield in County Durham where I had been MP for fourteen years. The mine had been a casualty of the closure policy of the 1960s. I strode to the polling station with Cherie and the children, the ideal family picture, while a horde of snappers took our photograph. Smile, but not exuberantly. Talk, but not with too much animation. Look natural, as if you would naturally walk hand in hand with your wife, in suit trousers, s.h.i.+rt and tie, with your children in tow, to vote in a makes.h.i.+ft wooden polling booth and claim your place in history.

Then back home. I had waited on election day three times before in 1983, 1987 and 1992 for the defeat I thought would come. I had wondered what it would mean for me, how I would position myself for the next bout of Opposition, how and whether I would ever get the chance to help steer us from the path of defeat. This time, all eyes were focused on me as I travelled the last steps of the path to victory. Anxiety displaces all other emotions. You can't settle. I tried to concentrate on choosing a Cabinet, and phoned Gordon Brown and Peter Mandelson, who was in charge of strategy. John Prescott came up from Hull to talk through the Cabinet. I spoke incessantly to Philip Gould, our chief pollster, and party staff about the prospects of the majority, but all really to pa.s.s the time. Even then, the enormity of what was about to happen didn't really sink in.

By the time we got to the count, however, held in the cavernous indoor sports centre at Newton Aycliffe, it did. The exit polls had shown big leads. They might be out a fraction, but there was no way they were going to be that wrong. We were going to win. I was going to be prime minister. During the course of the evening, my psyche s.h.i.+fted as the results came in. Of course the journey's end had always been changing the country, but in the intense struggle to get to the point where that could be achieved, every waking moment had been bent to eliminating the challenges, making sure the vehicle was fit for the voyage, the engine sparking, the pa.s.sengers either on board or shouting impatiently from behind us, not barring the way ahead. To be sure, we conducted genuine and in-depth discussions to map out how we would navigate the new terrain of government once past the post; but living in the moment, it was the business of Opposition which we were adept at and had been practising these long years in the wilderness that dominated our thinking. Our intellectual and rational attention was drawn to the processes of government as the day came nearer, but our emotional core was still directed at getting there.

It was the only business we knew. One or two of the older hands like Jack Cunningham and Margaret Beckett had been very junior ministers in the Callaghan government of 19769, but the rest of us were going to come to power as utter novices. Even those older hands knew only a Labour government in its death throes, and the time, temper and spirit of 1997 were as far removed from that of the 1970s as Mars from Earth.

On our side, we had the mood. We had the momentum to sustain it. We had the self-belief that the start of a new adventure often bestows on the ignorant. We had the confidence that in reaching this stage we had swept all before us, conquered with ease, strode out with abandon. Hadn't we fought a great campaign? Hadn't we impaled our enemies on our bayonet, like ripe fruit? Hadn't our strategies, like something derived from destiny, scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts? Wasn't government just another point on the same journey, a new point maybe, further in its distance, uncertain and unpredictable for us here and now; but could it really be that different? Surely by being bold and acting with confidence, by retaining the same spirit of possibility, the team that had done so brilliantly to get to that point wouldn't forfeit those qualities in the march ahead?

I could see those around me thinking all this. At times I thought the same. On that night, as the probability of being prime minister turned to certainty, I was no longer seeing through the gla.s.s darkly, but face to face with the light. And I was scared.

I was afraid because I knew this was not just another stage on the same journey. Now we would enter a new and foreign land. I was afraid because I felt instinctively that its obstacles and challenges were of an altogether different order of complexity and difficulty. I was afraid because, intent as I was on destroying the government, I could see over time that, even when it was in the right, once public opinion had gone sour it didn't seem to matter whether what it did was right or wrong; and that once the mood had turned from the government and embraced us, the mood was merciless in its pursuit, indifferent to anything other than satisfying itself. I was afraid because, at that instant, suddenly I thought of myself no longer as the up-and-coming, the challenger, the prophet, but as the owner of the responsibility, the person not explaining why things were wrong but taking the decisions to put them right. Deep down but fighting its way to the surface I realised I knew nothing about how tough it really was, nothing about how government really works, most of all nothing about how I personally would react when the mood turned against me, as I knew it would.

Down in London in the HQ at Millbank (the building from which Labour ran its campaign, and a byword for electoral ruthlessness) the partying had begun. In the hall in my County Durham const.i.tuency where the votes were being counted, the air was of almost manic excitement. The Labour people naturally were suffused with it, but even the Tories, Lib Dems and a.s.sorted others had a sense of history.

There is a strange consequence of the parliamentary system whereby the prime minister is an MP with a const.i.tuency in which they stand for election like any other candidate. It is at one level very humbling, for at that moment you are just the const.i.tuency candidate, you stand on a platform along with the other candidates as the returning officer reads out the result. Odd, but very democratic and rather good. But of course, since there is so much coverage given to high-profile battles, the const.i.tuencies of the prime minister and Leader of the Opposition do not have only the mainstream parties standing, but also countless other candidates seeking publicity for causes (or sometimes just seeking publicity). They had such weird and wonderful names, such as Screwy Driver (Rock 'n' Roll Party), Boney Maronie Steniforth (Monster Raving Loony Party), Jonathan c.o.c.kburn (Blair Must Go Party) and Cherri Blairout-Gilham (the Pensioners' Party)! Each party has the right to send some of its people to the count, and there in the hall they were all mingling as I watched the national race on TV upstairs.

Pretty soon, the scale of the victory became clear. This was not a win. It was a landslide. After about two hours, for a time I actually became worried. The moving line at the bottom of the TV screen was showing over a hundred Labour seats. The Tories had just six. I began to think I had done something unconst.i.tutional. I had meant to defeat the Tories and do so handsomely; but what if we had wiped them out? Fortunately, a little later their tally began to mount, but the majority was clearly still going to be historic. People started to relax and have a drink. I remained completely sober. I had work to do. There would be speeches to make; messages to give; tones to get right; comportment to maintain that needed to be consistent with the magnitude of the win.

It was at this point that my emotions began to diverge from those of virtually everyone else around me. As they became more and more buoyed up with the vastness of the victory, I became more and more weighed down by the burden of responsibility that was about to fall on me. I know this sounds completely bizarre but I even became slightly irritated with it all. Couldn't they see what a great big job it was? Did they really think a manifesto written essentially to capture a mood, and whose details were deliberately and necessarily limited, was going to be enough to govern a country?

Someone lurched up to me the first of many that night and said, 'Isn't it incredible? You are going to be a great prime minister, Tony, you really are,' to which I'm afraid I said, 'Oh, b.u.g.g.e.r off.' How could he know? How could I I know? know?

Around midnight we called David Hill, a very sane and solid individual who was the party press officer down at Millbank, and started to bark at him that the party staff were going over the top in their celebrations, that it looked complacent and they should all calm down. 'We are about to win the biggest victory in our history and end eighteen consecutive years of Tory government,' he said. 'I think it's going to be a little hard to tell them all to look sombre.'

I turned my attention to what I was going to say. There would be three speeches: at the count when confirmed as an MP; at the local party meeting in the Labour Club in Trimdon Village, just up the road from my const.i.tuency home; and at the Royal Festival Hall in London at around 5 or 6 a.m., where a big event had been planned for the party faithful and the media.

I discussed the content with Alastair Campbell, in charge of communications. He had been like a rock throughout the previous three years. In my experience there are two types of crazy people: those who are just crazy, and who are therefore dangerous; and those whose craziness lends them creativity, strength, ingenuity and verve. Alastair was of the latter sort. The problem with them is that they can be mercurial, difficult and on occasions erupt with damaging consequences. Above all, you must realise you can't tame them; you can reason with them, but the thing that makes them different and brilliant is the same thing that means they don't conform to normal, predictable modes of behaviour. And they are always on the edge. In the later stages, before he left at the end of 2003, Alastair had probably gone over the edge. Like all creative people, he can snap, but for most of the time especially in those years of Opposition and the first part of government he was indispensable, irreplaceable, almost an alter ego. Along with Gordon and Peter Mandelson, he carried out with near genius the political concepts of New Labour and was able to give them media expression in a media age. Funnily enough, on policy he was really much more Old Labour. In mood, that night, he reflected mine: he too felt flat, almost anticlimactic. We went over what I would say, and as I withdrew from the euphoria around me we focused on what each of the speeches needed to emphasise: first speech, family; second, party; third, country.

My only real emotion came when I spoke about my dad. As I gave my speech at the count, I saw him there with tears of pride in his eyes. I thought back on his life: a foster-child in Glasgow; his foster-father a rigger in Govan s.h.i.+pyard; his foster-mother a strange mixture of fanatical parent she refused to give him back to his real mother and militant socialist; in his youth, secretary of the Glasgow Young Communists; then to the war as a private, ending it as an acting major and Tory, when virtually everyone else made the opposite political journey.

He became an academic, a practising barrister and then an active Conservative. The one safe Tory seat in the north of England was Hexham and for the 1964 election he was a racing certainty to be the candidate. He even had his own slot on local TV. He was bright, charming and ambitious to an unnatural degree. He fitted the mould the Tories were looking for in a changing world: no one could argue cla.s.s with him. He knew it, had lived it and had learned to escape it.

Then one night that year, after his usual round of meetings, social events and hard work, he suffered a serious stroke and was near to death. He survived, but for three painful years he had to learn to speak again. I remember how my mother helped him, day after day, word after word, agonising sentence after agonising sentence. I remember, too, how our income dropped overnight, some of his friends fell away, and the crus.h.i.+ng recognition came that since his speech would never return to normal, his political career was over.

My dad had been formative in my politics. Not because he taught me a vast amount about politics in the sense of instruction in its business (and him being on the opposite side of the political fence to me had given rise to some fairly heated debate, though much less frequently than might have been the case), but as a child I used to listen to his discussions with friends and absorb some of the arguments, hear the pa.s.sion in their voices, and I obtained a little understanding of politics' intricacies.

I recall the very first time I met any politicians. Bizarrely, I think they were Michael Spicer, later a Tory MP, and even but my memory may play me false Patrick Jenkin, who went on to serve in Mrs Thatcher's Cabinet. They came to dinner at our house in High s.h.i.+ncliffe in Durham, the reason, I dimly recall, because Michael a young Tory prospect at the time wanted to fight a hopeless seat to cut his teeth, and Dad had influence in the Durham seats.

But none of that defined the princ.i.p.al impact on my political development. What Dad taught me above all else, and did so utterly unconsciously, was why people like him became Tories. He had been poor. He was working cla.s.s. He aspired to be middle cla.s.s. He worked hard, made it on his merits, and wanted his children to do even better than him. He thought as did many others of his generation that the logical outcome of this striving, born of this att.i.tude, was to be a Tory. Indeed, it was part of the package. You made it; you were a Tory: two sides of the same coin. It became my political ambition to break that connection, and replace it with a different currency. You are compa.s.sionate; you care about those less fortunate than yourself; you believe in society as well as the individual. You can be Labour. You can be successful and care; ambitious and compa.s.sionate; a meritocrat and a progressive. Moreover, these are not alien sentiments in uneasy coexistence. They are entirely compatible ways of making sure progress happens; and they answer the realistic, not utopian, claims of human nature.

So he affected me deeply, as in another way did my mum. She was as different from my dad as it is possible for two people living together to be. Dad was more like me: motivated, determined, with a hard-focused ambition that, I fear, translates fairly easily into selfishness for both of us. Mum, by contrast, was a decent, lovely, almost saintly woman. She was shy, even a little withdrawn in company. She supported Dad politically as his wife and companion, but, as she used to confide in me occasionally, she was not really a Tory. For some reason maybe to do with her Irish background she felt somehow excluded; and she thought that some of the more Tory friends had fallen away when Dad took ill.

She died when I had just turned twenty-two. She had been ill with cancer of the thyroid. Looking back, it was clear she couldn't survive, clear indeed that it was a minor miracle that she survived for the five years after she was first diagnosed.

But the shock of it. There is nothing like losing a parent. I don't mean it's worse than losing a child. It isn't. I don't think anything can be. I mean that it affects you in a unique way, at least if it happens when you're young. Mum's death was shocking because I couldn't contemplate it. As she deteriorated and I was in my last months at Oxford, working hard for the final exams, Dad and my brother Bill kept from me the truth of her condition. I came home at the end of June and Dad picked me up from the station. 'Your mother's really very ill,' he said.

'I know, but she's not dying, is she?' I said, stating the worst so that he would rea.s.sure me, as I stupidly expected.

'Yes, I am afraid she is,' he replied. My world turned upside down. I could not imagine it. The person who had brought me up, looked after me, was always there to help and cherish me; the person who loved me without a consideration of my ent.i.tlement, without an a.s.sessment of my character, without wanting anything from me; the person who simply loved me: she would be gone.

Life was never the same after that. That was when the urgency took hold, the ambition hardened, the recognition grasped that life was finite and had to be lived in that knowledge. I miss her each day of my life.

With all the euphoria and celebration of election night rolling around me like a tidal wave, even with all I had to think of and to do at that momentous time, which was the fulfilment of my ambition, I thought of her and knew that though she would have been unutterably proud, it would not have altered one fraction of her love for me. It was already complete, entire unto itself. And, of course, more real than the transient adulation of 1 May 1997.

Now I saw my dad there in Trimdon, looking at me, realising that all his hopes could be fulfilled in me. As our eyes met, I knew also that we were thinking the same thought: Mum should have been there to see it.

I wrenched my mind away and got back to the business in hand. There were crowds everywhere. The Labour Club in Trimdon was ecstatic. We got a plane down from Teesside airport, and the results were paged in to Alastair as we flew. Big Tory Cabinet members were losing their seats, such as the Defence Secretary Michael Portillo and the Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind. It was a political earthquake. I sat with Cherie, collecting my thoughts for the Festival Hall. She knew what I was thinking and, as ever at times like these, could speak to me in a way no one else could. She told me that she knew it would be very hard, that bad times as well as good lay ahead, that politics begins like this but never ends the same way, that it was a privilege to do it, we had something genuine to offer and we would do it together.

In one of these ridiculous mishaps that happen, we lost our way to the Festival Hall and kept being announced by our campaign theme song 'Things Can Only Get Better' to the waiting crowd but, like the von Trapps, never actually appeared onstage. Finally we got there. My mental discipline was total. It was going to be a huge victory, therefore be even more aware of the responsibility. Don't for a moment look as if the whole thing has gone to the party's head. Look like a prime minister, not the guy who's just scored the winning goal at Wembley.

It was not easy. I have come to the conclusion that one of life's more annoying experiences is to be the only sober person at a party. Nothing can alter the fact that you are without drink and they are full of it. They are shouting, weeping and laughing, and you say, 'Yes, thank you, it is a very special moment.' There are cameras trained on you all the time; snappers snapping; scribblers scribbling. You smile, but you must not enter into the spirit; you embrace, but with a pat on the back; you thank, but with your effusion measured. There were familiar faces from the campaign, friends I knew from years back, people I had never seen before. For them, each greeting was a moment to savour; for me, a moment that had to be treated as a duty before pa.s.sing on.

I saw Neil Kinnock, the Labour leader who had taught me so much, and the greeting was genuine, the warmth natural and irrepressible. But even with him, I was aware of the nervous gaze of Alastair directing me to the podium, aware that while others could relax, we were still onstage and the audience had to be pleased.

As Opposition leader, you carry great responsibility; to campaign for the top job in any country is onerous. You are the standard-bearer for your politics, your party and the beliefs both hold dear. Anyone who has ever run a campaign to win an election knows how big a task it is. There are a million decisions of organisation, communication, personnel and policy which have to be taken quickly and effectively. If you can do it well, it is good preparation and a real indication of leaders.h.i.+p, but it isn't the same in its impact on you as a person. From the moment the mantle is on your shoulders as prime minister, you understand that the scale, importance and complexity are completely different. They are not at the end of the same spectrum of leaders.h.i.+p. You inhabit a new dimension altogether. There is something more: running for the job, you have a team and it feels like a team. Yes, you're the leader, but your collaboration is so close, your intimacy so refined by experience, your interaction so governed by familiarity of an almost telepathic nature, that you feel like a family or a cabal of like-minded conspirators.

As I took the steps up to the podium and tried to push my mind and energy reserves on to the words I was going to say, I finally defined the root of the fear that had been growing all day: I was alone. There would be no more team, no more friendly clique, no more shared emotions among a band of intimates. There would be them; and there would be me. At a certain profound point, they would not be able to touch my life, or me theirs.

I stood on the podium and scanned the crowd. People were stacked up on Waterloo Bridge, ma.s.sed not just outside the Festival Hall but around the Embankment by the River Thames, cheering, gesturing, waves of emotion reverberating through them. I felt the same impatience that I had felt all day, anxious to get the d.a.m.n celebrating over with and get down to work; most of all, to see what it was really like to govern. But I put on my best face.

Just as I began to speak, the sun made its first appearance and the dawn started to come through with that rather beautiful orange, blue-grey light that heralds a good day. I couldn't resist saying it, though as soon as I did I regretted it: 'A new dawn has broken, has it not?' This gave those already stratospheric expectations another and higher orbit. I swiftly tried to take them back to earth, emphasising that we were elected as New Labour and would govern as New Labour. Probably it wouldn't have mattered what I said, but I was already obsessed with the notion that the country might take fright at the mandate it had given us, and believe that we may revert to the Labour Party of old, not the New Labour that we had promised to deliver. I sought to soothe and to settle, conscious that anything that smacked of hubris or arrogance, however faintly, would quickly return to haunt us.

Eventually at about 7 a.m. I went back with Cherie to our home in Islington in north London, now surrounded by people, to grab an hour's sleep before going to the Palace to see the Queen and take the reins of government. It was strange to be back home with everything just as we had left it, knowing that we would sleep here for one or perhaps two nights more, and then leave forever.

The hour's sleep revived me more than I expected. The results were now all in. Our majority of 179 over all the other parties combined was seismic, the largest in British history. Seats we had never won before, like Hove (which we kept even in 2005), had fallen to us. Some had returned to us for the first time since Attlee's landslide of 1945. Places we a.s.sumed were true blue and unchangeable were now red: Hastings, Crawley, Worcester, Basildon and Harrow. And by the way, all stayed red through the following two elections.

Shortly after the polls had closed the night before and the exit polls had shown victory, John Major had called me to concede. He had been gracious, but it can't have been easy. He had many strengths, but his weakness was he took personally the fact that I tried so hard to dislodge him.

It's a strange thing about politics, but leaders and parties can be absolutely and genuinely outraged at what they perceive to be unfair attacks made on them (I dare say I suffer from this too, though I always fought the feeling), and yet seem completely oblivious to the fairness or otherwise of attacks they make on their opponents. When I look back on how we conducted ourselves as an Opposition, I admire enormously the professionalism but some of the tactics were too opportunistic and too facile. More than that, they sowed seeds that sprouted in ways we did not foresee and with consequences that imperilled us.

My attack on Major had always been political weak leader, divided party whereas the Tory attack on me was then, and continued to be, highly personal liar, cheat, fraud, etc. So it was hard for Major to make the call, but he did and I paid fulsome tribute to him the next day (though I'm not sure that didn't rub salt in the wound).

The other call I had taken was from Bill Clinton. That was great he was really warm, plainly delighted to have a fellow third-way progressive in power though I could tell that, as ever, he knew what I was thinking, knew the pitfalls ahead and was gently but clearly getting me ready for the change about to come.

The journey from Richmond Crescent in Islington to Buckingham Palace was extraordinary. People came out of their houses, thronging the route, waving, cheering. There were helicopters whirring overhead filming it live, and as they did so, people knew where we were and came out to greet us. It seemed as if the country had taken the day off. There is a strange unification at moments of great political change. People vote for many reasons. Some people vote for the same party regardless. (I voted Labour in 1983. I didn't really think a Labour victory was the best thing for the country, and I was a Labour candidate!) Hordes of people vote from allegiance or tradition, and when the result is in and it really is the best thing for a nation that needs change, even those who vote against you join in the celebration. It is as if they had two votes: one they cast in the booth, the other they cast in their mind.

As we drove through the gates of Buckingham Palace there were more crowds, frantic to get a sight of the new prime minister. I could tell Cherie was very excited. As ever, I just wanted to get on with it. By now, I was straining at the leash of the convention, tradition and ceremony that delayed the doing.

I was shown into a little antechamber, outside the room where the Queen was. I suddenly became nervous. I knew the basic protocol, but only very vaguely. It is called 'kissing hands', the laying on of the Queen's authority to govern. She was head of state. I was her her prime minister. A tall official with a stick stood by me. 'I should tell you one thing, Mr Blair,' he began (note 'Mr Blair' until I had been appointed), 'you don't actually kiss the Queen's hands in the ceremony of kissing hands. You brush them gently with your lips.' prime minister. A tall official with a stick stood by me. 'I should tell you one thing, Mr Blair,' he began (note 'Mr Blair' until I had been appointed), 'you don't actually kiss the Queen's hands in the ceremony of kissing hands. You brush them gently with your lips.'

I confess that floored me. What on earth did he mean? Brush them as in a pair of shoes, or touch them lightly? While I was still temporarily disconcerted, the door opened and I was ushered in, unfortunately tripping a little on a piece of carpet so that I practically fell upon the Queen's hands, not so much brus.h.i.+ng as enveloping them. I recovered sufficiently to find myself sitting opposite her. I had met her before, of course, but this was different. It was my first audience. There is much to say about the Queen. At this encounter, I noticed two things: she was quite shy, strangely so for someone of her experience and position; and at the same time, direct. I don't mean rude or insensitive, just direct. 'You are my tenth prime minister. The first was Winston. That was before you were born.' We talked for a time, not exactly small talk but general guff about the government programme, the conversation somewhat stilted. Then Cherie was brought in to pay her respects, and the Queen relaxed more as they chatted. (Contrary to popular belief, Cherie always got on well with her.) Cherie was explaining very practical things we would need to do with the children and how strange it would be for them to live in Downing Street, and the Queen was generally clucking sympathetically. I fear I sat there looking a trifle manic, unsure how or when to end the conversation, focusing on what I would say on the steps of Downing Street and feeling, through lack of sleep, more than a little s.p.a.ced out. The Queen understood it all, of course, and kept the conversation going for just the right length of time; then, by an ever so slight gesture, she ended it and saw us out.

'This way, Prime Minister,' said the tall chap with the stick as he ushered us down the stairs to the waiting car.

And so to Downing Street. After working the crowd, I got to the stand-alone pedestal that would serve me on so many occasions over the coming years. What I said reflected my incessant, gnawing desire to get away from the congratulatory euphoria which I knew would mean little in terms of how we governed and get down to business. I spoke of plans and programmes and policies not a long speech, but clearly focused on what we would do when I stepped inside that door for the first time.

But, in truth, it no longer mattered what I said. The mood was the mood, and I might as well try to thwart it as try to stop an oncoming truck. The pent-up expectations of a generation were vested in me. They wanted things to be different, to look, feel, have the attributes of a new era, and I was the leader of this sentiment. We were like a movement, connected by a single converging interest: to chuck out the old and usher in the new. They weren't troubled by the dilemmas of policymaking or the savage nature of decision-making. They were raised up on stilts far above the ugly street on which the real, live business of politics is conducted, and from that height could only see the possibility, the opportunity, the distant but surely attainable horizon of future dreams.

When Barack Obama fought and won his extraordinary campaign for the presidency in 2008, I could tell exactly what he would have been thinking. At one level, the excitement and energy created by such hope vested in the candidate has the effect of buoying you up, driving you on, giving all that you touch something akin to magic. The country is on a high and you are up there with them.

At another deeper level, however, you quickly realise that though you are the repository of that hope and have in part been the author of it, it now has a life of its own, a spirit of its own and that spirit is soaring far beyond your control. You want to capture it, tame it and harness it, because its very independence is, you know, leading the public to an impossible sense of expectation.

Expectations of this nature cannot be met. That's what you want to tell people. Often you do tell them. But the spirit can't be too constrained. And when finally it departs, leaving your followers with reality a reality you have never denied and which you have even sought to bring to their attention the danger is of disillusion, more painful because of what preceded it.

Anyway, so I felt.

It seemed unreal because it was was unreal. It was understandable the people should feel like that; understandable that I should want to lead it; understandable that together we became an unstoppable force. But it was, in a profound way, a deception on both our parts not a deception knowingly organised or originating from bad faith or bad motives, but one born of the hope that achievement and hard choices could somehow be decoupled. A delusion perhaps describes it better; but as the policeman stood aside and the door of 10 Downing Street opened, my election as prime minister felt like a release, the birth of something better than what had been before. unreal. It was understandable the people should feel like that; understandable that I should want to lead it; understandable that together we became an unstoppable force. But it was, in a profound way, a deception on both our parts not a deception knowingly organised or originating from bad faith or bad motives, but one born of the hope that achievement and hard choices could somehow be decoupled. A delusion perhaps describes it better; but as the policeman stood aside and the door of 10 Downing Street opened, my election as prime minister felt like a release, the birth of something better than what had been before.

For the poor old staff of Number 10, it was something of a shock, however. As per convention, John Major had walked out only moments before I had come in. There is a tradition that when the new prime minister enters, the staff line up in the corridor that leads to the Cabinet Room and applaud. A couple of the staff vaguely remembered the last Labour government, but they had been young things back then. The vast majority had now just said goodbye to eighteen years of one-party rule.

As I walked down the row of faces, all unfamiliar to me people who would be companions in the events to come, and many of them friends some were a little upset at the departure of the old guard, and a few of the women were sniffling or weeping. By the time I reached the end of the line, I was beginning to feel a right heel about the whole thing, coming in and creating all this distress. Needless to say, I got over it.

Then I entered the Cabinet Room. I had never seen it before. It is immediately impressive, both in itself and because of the history made within it. I stopped for a moment and looked around, suddenly struck by the sanct.i.ty of it, a thousand images fluttering through my mind, like one of those moving picture-card displays, of Gladstone, Disraeli, Asquith, Lloyd George, Churchill, Attlee, of historic occasions of war and peace, of the Irish and Michael Collins, of representatives of numerous colonies coming through its doors and negotiating independence. This room had seen one of the greatest empires of all time developed, sustained and let go. I thought of the crises and catastrophes, decisions and deliberations, the meetings to discuss the mundane and the fundamental business of governing a nation. All of it had run through this smallish room looking out over the Downing Street garden, with two false pillars marking the end of the table. The table itself is the product of a decision by Macmillan to have it shaped oval so that the prime minister sitting in the centre could see the faces and body language of all the Cabinet, and in particular any little signal of loyalty or dissent. There was the prime minister's chair, the only one with arms to it, either because it should be more grand, or perhaps because the prime minister, above all others, needs more support.

Sitting in the chair next to it, in the otherwise empty room, was the Cabinet Secretary Sir Robin Butler, famous in his own right and immensely experienced, who had worked closely with both Margaret Thatcher and John Major. He indicated to me the prime minister's chair, which I sat down in, relieved to get the weight off my feet after the tumult of the last twenty-four hours.

'So,' he said, 'now what?' It was a good question. 'We have studied the manifesto,' he went on, something which rather irrationally disturbed me, 'and we are ready to get to work on it for you.'

In the light of what later became quite a vigorous disagreement about the nature of decision-making in my government and the so-called 'sofa' style of it, I should say that right at the outset I found Robin thoroughly professional, courteous and supportive. He didn't like some of the innovations, but he did his level best to make them work. He was impartial in the best traditions of the British Civil Service, intelligent and deeply committed to the country.

But he was a traditionalist with all the strengths and weaknesses that reverence for tradition implies; and in this, he was thoroughly representative of a large part of the senior Civil Service. Very early on, I could tell that he didn't really approve of the positions of Jonathan Powell as chief of staff, Alastair and, though less so, my old friend and general factotum Anji Hunter. Even though Jonathan had been in the Civil Service, they were all 'special advisers', political appointments brought in by the new government. The British system is essentially run by the career Civil Service right up to the most senior levels. Special advisers are few and far between, unlike in the American system, for example, which has thousands. When after a few years in government I acc.u.mulated seventy of them, it was considered by some to be a bit of a const.i.tutional outrage.

They are, however, a vital part of modern government. They bring political commitment, which is not necessarily a bad thing (I always used to think such commitment was more frowned upon when originating from the left, but maybe that's paranoia!); they can bring expertise; and properly deployed they interact with and are strengthened by the professional career civil servants, who likewise are improved by interaction with them. In the light of what I am going to say, I should emphasise that many of the civil servants not merely worked well with the special advisers, but enjoyed doing so and genuine friends.h.i.+ps were often made.

There was a discussion between Robin and Jonathan about whether Alastair or Jonathan could give instructions to civil servants, which eventually we compromised over. (And incidentally, neither ever had a single complaint made against them from civil servants all the time they were in Downing Street.) I could not believe, and still don't, that my predecessors did not have a de facto chief of staff, but Jonathan was the first openly acknowledged and nominated one. Robin didn't much like all this, and in his mind it became conflated with another issue: how decisions were taken. Here, he had a more solid point. Truthfully, for the first year or so, as we found our feet and grappled with the challenges of governing, we did tend to operate as a pretty tight unit, from which some of the senior civil servants felt excluded.

From our perspective, we were working flat out to deliver an enormous series of commitments to change. We were very quickly appreciating the daunting revelation of the gap between saying and doing. In Opposition, the gap is nothing because 'saying' is all you can do; in government, where 'doing' is what it's all about, the gap is suddenly revealed as a chasm of bureaucracy, frustration and disappointment. So we tended to work in the first months of government rather as we had when campaigning for office and changing the Labour Party.

However, Robin was only with us for eight months. In time, we broadened out, we learned, we adjusted. Ministers, sympathetic to the changes we were making, came to the fore. The modus operandi s.h.i.+fted. Cabinet and Cabinet committees flourished, and there was a better balance between special advisers and civil servant input.

The allegations of 'sofa government' were always, therefore, ludicrously overblown. For a start, leaders have always had inner circles of advisers. What's more, although Robin used to make much of the fact that my predecessors had been sticklers for Cabinet government, I found this a trifle inconsistent with my recollection, admittedly from the outside, of Mrs Thatcher and her Cabinet relations.

There was a more serious point, at the root of which was a disagreement which touches on the way modern government functions. As I shall come to later, the skill set required for making the modern state work effectively is different from that needed in the mid-twentieth century: it is far less to do with conventional policy advice, and far more to do with delivery and project management. The skills are actually quite a.n.a.logous to those of the private sector. This is true of civil servants. It is also true of politicians. The skills that bring you to the top of the greasy pole in Parliament are not necessarily those that equip you to run a department with a workforce numbered in thousands and a budget numbered in billions.

Moreover, the pace of modern politics and the intrusion of media scrutiny rightly or wrongly of an entirely different order today than even fifteen or twenty years ago mean that decisions have to be made, positions taken, strategies worked out and communicated with a speed that is the speed of light compared to the speed of sound.

Of course, none of the above means that decisions should be taken without proper a.n.a.lysis, but it does mean that the old infrastructure of policy papers submitted by civil servants to Cabinet, who then debate and decide with the prime minister as benevolent chairman, is not suitable in responding to the demands of a fast-changing world or an even faster-changing political landscape. Into this infrastructure, the import of special advisers is not a breach in the walls of propriety; it is a perfectly sensible way of enlarging the scope of advice and making government move. As I discovered early on, the problem with the traditional Civil Service was not obstruction, but inertia.