A Journey_ My Political Life Part 5

Alastair was convinced she would sell her story. She never did. Whatever indignity was visited on her, she remained dignified. Contrary to the image a.s.siduously and malignly created for her, she was kind, decent, hard-working and, above all, brilliant at what she did. The relations.h.i.+p with Foster was a big mistake, but it wasn't venal or badly motivated. It was rather the product of her almost obsessive refusal to compromise with people's opinions of other people. In this case, they were right and she was wrong, but that refusal to follow the crowd was what also made her innovative and creative in her work, a good friend and a reliable confidante for Cherie.

In retrospect, when the Sun Sun broke the story of Carole's involvement with Cherie in 1994, it would have been better to have acknowledged her, been open and been supportive. Instead, entirely understandably given our nervousness about our position and how she was bound to provoke controversy, we hid her away in a safe house. But, of course, it only increased the fascination with her. broke the story of Carole's involvement with Cherie in 1994, it would have been better to have acknowledged her, been open and been supportive. Instead, entirely understandably given our nervousness about our position and how she was bound to provoke controversy, we hid her away in a safe house. But, of course, it only increased the fascination with her.

The problem, as I used to say to people who became close, is that knowing me is like catching a disease. My friends swiftly became targets. If a hostile part of the media couldn't get me, they tended to try to pick off people close to me. The truth is there is no one you cannot make out to be in some way odd, or a figure of ridicule, if you pry and probe into their life with sufficient ruthlessness.

But much of that came later. In those years before the election victory, we were working hard, but with the wind at our back. Within the constraints and limitations of Opposition, we were as prepared as we could be. However, I have come to the firm conclusion that those constraints and limitations are a considerable disadvantage. You are woefully short on what is required to step into government and govern effectively, especially if you come into power after such a long period of Opposition. This is not about understanding the machinery of government; above all, it is about knowing the complexity of policymaking, financial management and prioritising. Knowing the committee structure and departmental highways and byways is no doubt important; but it is far more important to know how to focus on the essential details of preparation for implementing a policy which may seem easy enough stated in a manifes...o...b..t, when looked at in the hard light of day, can be horrendously difficult to do. And parties tend to be really under-informed about the nature of how different commitments interact with public finances.

So, in policy direction we were pretty firm and clear. In the details, we were lacking. Nonetheless, as an election-fighting machine, we were exceptional. This we knew how to do. When John Major called the election we were ready and waiting. We were ignorant of what lay ahead after we pa.s.sed the winning post, but we had built up near-irreversible momentum towards it.

FOUR.

HONEYMOON.

The disadvantage of a new government is lack of experience in governing. It is also the advantage. Its very innocence, its immaturity, the absence of the cynicism that comes from perpetual immersion in government's plague-infested waters, gives it an extraordinary sense of possibility. From start to finish I never lost my optimism, self-belief or objective belief in what could be done, but you can never quite recapture that amazing release of energy and boundless 'derring-do' that comes with the election of a fresh team especially when it comes after eighteen years of one party's rule.

When I think of what we did in those first halcyon days, it was indeed quite remarkable. It wasn't born of arrogance; whatever people said, I never lost the impulse to guard against complacency, or the recognition that the ultimate boss was 'the people'. It came out of an unrestrained and genuine wish to drive the nation forward. We thought the unthinkable; did the undoable; the conventional became a constraint to be unshackled; what was traditional became old-fas.h.i.+oned.

One very early decision concerned me quite a bit, but I thought, To h.e.l.l with it, I'm going to do it. At that time PMQs was scheduled twice a week, at 3.15 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays for fifteen minutes. Even if another event was scheduled for earlier in the day, the morning would pa.s.s fitfully as my mind grappled with the manoeuvres, opportunities and bear traps of the forthcoming encounter. After it ended at 3.30 p.m. it reverberated in the mind: how it had gone, who had got the upper hand, what it had said about the mood of the backbenchers. My rational self told me it was all over and was usually forgotten within forty-eight hours; but there is no 'rational' in the whole PMQs business. It is the emotional, intellectual and political repository of all that is irrational. Even as the Opposition leader when I only had to ask the d.a.m.ned questions it dominated my thoughts; I could only imagine what it would be like as prime minister.

One thing was obvious, though it may seem mundane: one of the keys to doing the job of a prime minister or president is to manage your time. Its importance is cardinal. Show me an ineffective leader and I will show you a badly managed schedule. This has nothing to do with the number of hours worked I came across leaders who worked the most ridiculous hours, eighteen hours a day for frequent stretches of time but whether time is used properly.

The schedule has to be based around the decisions that define the government, for which time must be made. In so far as it is possible to do so, the necessary formal routines have to be limited only to those that are vital. One of the first things Anji did for me on arriving in Number 10 was to uproot official dinners. I probably did no more than thirty, including the compulsory state banquets, during my whole time in Downing Street. Official dinners are almost always unnecessary. The host regards them as a ch.o.r.e, and here's the news: so do the guests. You eat late (the food is either rich or rubbish), and there is no greater political torture than the after-dinner speech. If it's business you're after, do it in a forty-five-minute meeting before dinner. Then you can go off with your family, and the guests can go off with their friends or close a.s.sociates, let their hair down, and everyone is happy. Except protocol. And a happy protocol is almost invariably a sign of a badly run government.

Creating time for a leader is a near-sacred task. The person in charge of it is one of the most important in the team, and they have to be completely ruthless in saying no. The leader has always got to be the good guy. You b.u.mp into someone; they ask for a meeting; you agree, of course. What can you say? 'You're too tedious, too unimportant and have nothing of any interest to say'? Of course not. You have to say yes. It's the job of the scheduler to say no. 'But he agreed to see me.' No. 'But he said he wanted to see me.' No. 'But he said he had been meaning to call me himself to fix a meeting.' No. 'But ...' No.

We used to have a phrase in the office called, in mock severity, 'SO', which stood for 'sackable offence'. It applied to scheduling a meeting with people who were never to cross the threshold. It applied even if I had agreed to the meeting. It applied I am a little ashamed to say even if I had expressed to the individual concerned my deep frustration with my own office for defying my wishes and not scheduling the meeting.

There was a particular old Labour grandee who used to n.o.bble me in order to give me 'sound advice'. He was a lovely man, but really. I naturally expressed my intense interest in seeing him. Kate, my PA, who was a hugely efficient naysayer, went AWOL for some reason or other. Someone else was temporarily manning the gate, and he got in to see me. After about thirty minutes of 'sound advice', I was just about boss-eyed with boredom when the temporary gatekeeper put her head round the door and said, 'Time's up.'

'Oh, really,' I said, 'what a shame. I was really enjoying this.'

'Well, in that case,' she said, 'I could leave you another half-hour because your diary has changed.'

Prime Minister's Questions is of course of great gravity and import, but I could see from watching John Major that the physical and mental effort of each of the twice-weekly fifteen-minute slots absorbed the whole day: the morning and early afternoon were spent in preparation; meetings, if held at all, did not receive full concentration; the late afternoon and early evening were spent reflecting on what had happened. Two PMQs equalled two days. That's a lot of time.

I had hatched a plot before the election somewhat disingenuously describing it in the manifesto as 'making PMQs more efficient' to change the two slots to a single one of thirty minutes. Not a big change, you may think; but I tell you, it was a revolution in saving time. Fortunately Paddy Ashdown, leader of the Liberal Democrats, had indicated that he was in favour of reform, so I just took a deep breath and announced it, and it went through very quickly. If there had been any debate, it would most likely never have happened, but I was lucky we were a new government and the Tories were still reeling.

Later, when Robin Cook was Leader of the Commons, the half-hour slot moved to noon on Wednesday. Preparation would take place the night before and Wednesday morning would be clear, so while there was a period of complete absorption, it was limited in duration. By 12.30 p.m. the nightmare was over. Unless it had gone in a ghastly way, by mid-afternoon the mind had been released, and Thursday was free from its anxieties. It may have seemed a small reform, but for the personal well-being of the prime minister, it was vital.

It had its drawbacks: fifteen minutes may seem a very short time, but it's not when you're standing facing the howling mob gathered opposite the dispatch box believe me, time pa.s.ses very slowly indeed so half an hour could be an ordeal, especially if the wicket was sticky and there was an 'issue of the day' around which the questioning could coalesce.

PMQs was the most nerve-racking, dis...o...b..bulating, nail-biting, bowel-moving, terror-inspiring, courage-draining experience in my prime ministerial life, without question. You know that scene in Marathon Man Marathon Man where the evil n.a.z.i doctor played by Laurence Olivier drills through Dustin Hoffman's teeth? At around 11.45 on Wednesday mornings, I would have swapped thirty minutes of PMQs for thirty minutes of that. where the evil n.a.z.i doctor played by Laurence Olivier drills through Dustin Hoffman's teeth? At around 11.45 on Wednesday mornings, I would have swapped thirty minutes of PMQs for thirty minutes of that.

Let us deal with some of the myths. When I describe the experience to Americans, who, along with the j.a.panese, seem to like watching it for some bizarre reason, they will sometimes say: 'Oh, but you always seemed to enjoy it so much.' If I did seem to be enjoying it, then it was a supreme instance of acting. I hated it. Others would say at the time: 'You looked very relaxed at PMQs today.' I never relaxed for a moment, and never had anything less than a full adrenalin surge.

I'm afraid it's also rather a myth that it's a great way of holding the prime minister to account. This thesis a.s.sumes that those asking the questions are interested to know the answers. In truth, the whole thing is a giant joust, a sort of modern, non-physical duel. The weapons are words, but my G.o.d they can hurt, and to devastating effect. For those thirty minutes, the prime minister is essentially on the 'at risk' register. It is the unpredictability that is so frightening. Sure, your own back benches, if they are loyal, let you know the question, but to everyone else it's a blood sport and the prime minister is the quarry. If it goes well, you feel buoyed; if it goes badly, you feel not simply wretched but humiliated. There's no place like a full House of Commons for making someone seem a complete dolt.

And you can never tell. At times I would go in thinking: It's obvious what the subject of the day is, I have the answers at my fingertips, it should be a reasonable afternoon. Minutes later I would be tottering, having made some verbal faux pas or tactical blunder that had the place screaming in anger or, worse, derision. At moments like these, in a hole, there is an almost irresistible desire to keep digging. Your answers get longer and more convoluted; your tone becomes more shrill; your face gets redder as the paucity of your argument becomes plainer. You glance sideways, imploring your own benches to give some sign of support, and see the look of embarra.s.sment on their faces. As you sit down, a few diehard loyalists give cheers which dissolve away in an apologetic murmur. Across the aisle, two sword-lengths away from the days when Members carried swords the gloating Opposition faces are contorted with glee and grat.i.tude.

Over time I got better at it, and by the end was more often OK than rubbish, but the fear never abated for an instant. Even today, wherever I am in the world, I feel a cold chill at 11.57 a.m. on Wednesdays, a sort of p.r.i.c.kle on the back of my neck, the thump of the heart. That was the moment I used to be taken from the prime minister's room in the House of Commons through to the Chamber itself. I used to call it the walk from the cell to the place of execution.

I would have got to the House of Commons around 11.30 a.m., having spent all morning in my office in Downing Street going through the papers, deciding tactics and strategy. In that last half-hour final decisions would be made, answers slipped through the door, hurried last-minute consultations held about some unfolding event. The worst thing was stories breaking at 10 or even 11 a.m., usually around bad statistics of one sort or another, or something idiotic a member of the government had said. A line would have to be taken, facts would have to be given, though the full facts might not be known. A mistake by the prime minister in that bear pit is not a mistake: it is a deliberate deception, and all h.e.l.l breaks loose around it.

By the end, I had much better karma in doing it. I got braver. I realised that in the end I had to confront the demons. It was no use praying more the night before, wearing the right shoes (I wore the same pair of Church's brogues every PMQs for ten years) or just hoping I would get by. I decided to a.n.a.lyse it, and try to work out how to do it to the best of my ability.

I remember as a schoolboy doing boxing, which was compulsory. I loathed it; I could never see the point of it nor understand its appeal. In the first fights, I was scared. I didn't want to hit my opponent. I didn't want him to hit me. I just wanted the thing over with. After a time, though, I chose to box properly, to stand my ground and fight. I did it with fear, but also with determination. Either do it properly or refuse to do it at all that's also fine but don't do it like a wuss. I didn't like boxing any better, but I respected myself more.

Gradually, I evolved a pattern of working for PMQs. It all started with a determination to be braver, to stand my ground and fight, consciously. Fear as a stimulus, in proper proportion, can keep you on your toes. Fear that tumbles into panic is all bad. In the early days, I wouldn't sleep well the night before or eat at all in the morning. The first thing I realised was the importance of being in the right physical as well as mental condition, so I changed my routine. I took a melatonin pill the night before so I got at least six hours' sleep. I made sure I had a proper breakfast, and just before the ordeal began, I would eat a banana to give myself energy. It seems daft, but I was finding that my energy levels, and thus my mental agility, were dropping after ten minutes. It really made a difference. At 12.28 I was still alive to the risks and up to repelling the a.s.sault.

Secondly, I faced up to what the fear was. The fear was being made to look a fool, or simply being outwitted. The way to prevent it was not so much mastering the facts, but mastering the strategy of debate. The right facts, properly researched, are utterly essential, of course. By the time I was into my stride I had a team of great talent, headed at first by the ultra-efficient Clare Sumner, then by Kate Gross, superb organiser and mistress of ceremonies. The key special adviser was Catherine Rimmer, brilliant head of research and with an extraordinary ability to master detail (also invaluable during the Hutton Inquiry). The team was topped off by Nicholas Howard, the wonderful master of the PMQs folder. Together, they gave me confidence that the factual basis of the answer was correct. However, the final component in winning was not the facts themselves but how they were deployed. The facts were the horse, the armour and the lance; the skill was in using them to best effect, which meant guessing the line of attack, working out how to parry and then laying out the counter-attack.

On a bad day with a no-win subject and there were quite a few of those the best that could be done was to fight it to a draw, but on a good or average day you had to go for a win. Winning gives your side confidence, it lifts them, it makes them think of the future as bright. Your own standing is enhanced. Losing is not only undignified, it hurts morale. A run of really bad PMQs can put the leader in jeopardy.

The night before I would go through the folder which held all the potential answers to all the potential questions, and the really complex factual areas were studied without the frantic pressure of Wednesday morning upon us. By 8 a.m. I would have whittled down the most likely areas of interrogation and then I would sit with a pad and work out the debating lines. Sometimes the best phrases came during PMQs, but this was rare in my experience. No one speaks quite so eloquently as they do when their eloquence has been honed, toned, constructed, deconstructed and reconstructed in the privacy of the antechamber.

By this method, I learned over time how to break out of defence and go on the offensive. It would also allow me to a.n.a.lyse the argument I was making with the facts was it sustainable and persuasive, how would it play with their backbenchers as well as mine?

I discovered the force of humour, of light and shade. John Smith had been the first person I saw use humour to brilliant effect in the House, as in his demolition of John Major over the ERM debacle. Gordon, too, in his early days had been exceptional in using wit to demolish the Tory economic front bench when he had stood in for John in the late 1980s. Some of the lines he used against Nigel Lawson and the Tory Treasury team would have our side roaring their approval. We might be, usually were, weak on the argument; but it's amazing how much the weakness can be concealed by well-timed ridicule and well-judged wit. I tended to be more earnest, more like a lawyer with a case, but I have a sense of humour and I just needed the confidence to use it.

I learned how to disarm an opponent as well as blast them. They get angry; you get mild. They go over the top; you become a soothing voice of reason. They insult you; you look at them not with resentment, but with pity. Under attack, you have to look directly at them, study their faces, your eyes fixed on theirs rather than rolling with anxiety.

Finally I realised that if you foul up, you move on. Easy to say; hard to do. When I had had a bad PMQs, the walk back to the room from the Chamber was almost as bad as the walk to it. We would always have a few minutes afterwards to deal with any consequential issues. For the poor old team, it was always tough when I messed up. The disappointment would be written large on their faces, even as they struggled to contain it. Jonathan Powell was usually the only one to voice the truth. 'Thank G.o.d there's no more of that for a week,' he'd say cheerfully as others would mutter about it being 'a score draw, really', or some such bull****.

Anyway, in those early days of May 1997, the twice-weekly PMQs was transformed into one. I never regretted that decision and subsequent prime ministers will thank me for it!

The next decision was of an altogether different and more fundamental nature. Some months before the election, Gordon and I formed the desire to give monetary policy i.e. setting of interest rates over to the Bank of England. The so-called 'independence' of the Bank had been a keen academic, economic and political debate going back decades.

I had no doubt it was right. I had been convinced long ago that for politicians to set interest rates was to confuse economics and politics, the long term with the short term, the expedient with the sensible. I had watched the game played out as governments carefully calibrated the interest rate movements with the electoral cycle. Everyone knew it was happening and why. The result was the country effectively paid a political premium on the interest rate. The contrast with the independent central banks of Europe, especially that of Germany, and with the US Federal Reserve, was instructive and telling.

The issue, as I liked to say to doubting backbenchers and the serious experts who opposed the move, was not whether the Governor of the Bank was a more intelligent person than the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He might or might not be of superior intellect. But the decision-making process at the Bank was definitely of superior objectivity. I had talked about it often with Roy Jenkins. Gavyn Davies at that time with Goldman Sachs, and someone I often turned to for economic advice had been immensely persuasive on the merits. I knew Nigel Lawson a Chancellor I really admired had wanted to do it. It was also the perfect riposte to those worried about the economic credentials of an incoming Labour government, so although the rationale was ultimately to put long-term economics above short-term politics, there were very good political reasons for doing so.

Gordon had come to the same conclusion, and so when I suggested it, he readily agreed. There was some debate about when it should be announced. I favoured doing it before the election to solidify our business credibility; he felt that it was sufficiently important to the way the markets would move that we should do it straight after the election, a proposition to which I eventually consented.

Gordon announced it on 6 May. It went well. Business and the markets liked it. The Tories opposed it but weren't really in the mood to create a major storm, and were unable to do so even if they had wanted to. For me, it was a very important moment. It defined not simply our approach to economic policy, but an approach to governing: it was not born from traditional left/right ideology; it drew people to the intelligent, radical centre ground; it spoke of our determination from the outset to protect and enhance our economic opportunity as a nation.

I allowed Gordon to make the statement and indeed gave him every paean of praise and status in becoming the major economic figure of the government. I did so firstly because I thought he deserved it, secondly because it was good for the whole thing not to look like a one-man show, and thirdly not doing so would have created considerable tension.

But it had an unfortunate and long-lasting consequence. I have many faults, but one virtue I have is that I don't mind big people around me. In my own office, I liked Alastair, Jonathan, Anji, Sally, Peter, David Miliband and others precisely because I knew they would tell me what they thought. That is not to say they were disrespectful (though the familiarity bred in Opposition wasn't always appropriate transferred into the more formal settings of government), but they spoke their mind. I welcomed it, and drew valuable advice and even confidence from it.

So when I consciously and deliberately allowed Gordon to be out there as a big beast, as the acknowledged second most powerful figure in the government, I did so without any fear of being eclipsed or outmanoeuvred. Indeed, the concept of manoeuvring seemed irrelevant. The office were less sanguine. Alastair in particular worried that a picture was being drawn that I was 'the chairman' or 'president', and Gordon was 'the chief executive' or 'prime minister', which, as he pointed out with vigour, easily translated into the person who simply does the glad-handing, and the hard-working serious guy who runs the country. So relaxed was I in my own sense of who I was and what I was doing that it didn't trouble me and I shrugged the warnings off.

In truth, too, as with the Bank of England independence, the broad framework on the economy, never mind anything else, was set by me. My notes to the office during those initial months were peppered with references to economic policy: getting the Comprehensive Spending Review aligned with the government's priorities, explaining what we wanted to do to create a more compet.i.tive economy, and jerking back hard on the rein if I thought there was a deviation from the essential pro-business, pro-aspiration line (stamping on the idea of taxing professionals more, or on taxing second homes, for example). Frequently, and at quite a micro level, a salvo would be fired off to keep the Treasury in check. Nevertheless, the perception which later became damaging and undermining was that I kept out of the economic policy s.p.a.ce. The reality was that the train, the tracks and the destination were constructed in close interaction with Gordon, and on lines I shaped or was comfortable with. The driver was then given considerable freedom to manage the service. Not until very late on did I ever really yield control of economic policy.

We had had enough run-ins during the three years when I was leader for me to understand that there was a significant difference in our approaches. Only in the latter years did that difference start to become not just marked but fundamental. I was in no doubt that we came at politics from essentially divergent positions which of course converged, but did so as much for reasons of politics as for reasons of conviction. In the end, we were two very different people in terms of economic att.i.tudes, with two very different backgrounds. Perhaps a better way of putting it is that we had different economic, financial and business instincts.

Basically, I understood aspiration. I like people who want to succeed, and admire people who do. When I was at the Bar and the seven years I spent as a full-time barrister were immensely formative for me in many ways I did a lot of commercial and industrial work and got on well with the risk-takers, those who didn't mope around, who had 'get-up-and-go'. I hate cla.s.s; but I love aspiration. It's why I like America. I adore that notion of coming from nothing and making something of yourself.

This att.i.tude had its downside. While the stories of my being dazzled by the wealthy are always ludicrously exaggerated (most of my close friends are not at all of that ilk), nonetheless I sometimes underestimated the ruthlessness and amorality that can go with moneymaking. Don't misunderstand me: many business people can be creative people for whom money is the consequence of their success, rather than the motivation. But others don't give a d.a.m.n. And I tended on occasions not to comprehend fully the difference.

However, I didn't resent success, and on the whole that was a good thing for a progressive politician. I identified with it personally too. Did I want a nice home? Yes. Did I prefer a five-star hotel to a two-star? Yes. Did I appreciate that there was more to life than this? Yes. I never thought that enjoying life's good things led to indifference to the plight of those who couldn't. For me the opposite was true: what I wanted for myself, I also wanted for others. But I didn't feel it wrong to want it nonetheless.

When I was with a group of entrepreneurs, I felt at home. Gordon was completely different. He could a.n.a.lyse what a good business was and discuss the intricacies of this policy over that in order to promote it; but he never felt felt it. I was a public service guy who, if I had chosen a different path, would have liked running a business and making money. A bit of me thought: Wouldn't that be great? Now if I had really wanted that, I would have done it. I am, all said and done, a public service guy at heart. Gordon was a public service guy who, if he had chosen a different path, would have been a bigger public service guy. That's not to say he couldn't have made it in business with his brain and determination he could have made it doing anything but it would never have motivated him or possibly even interested him. it. I was a public service guy who, if I had chosen a different path, would have liked running a business and making money. A bit of me thought: Wouldn't that be great? Now if I had really wanted that, I would have done it. I am, all said and done, a public service guy at heart. Gordon was a public service guy who, if he had chosen a different path, would have been a bigger public service guy. That's not to say he couldn't have made it in business with his brain and determination he could have made it doing anything but it would never have motivated him or possibly even interested him.

So, for me, top-rate tax was not about top-rate tax. Of course you can make a perfectly good case for wealthy people paying more, and around the edges National Insurance and so on I was content that they did, but I wanted to preserve, in terms of compet.i.tive tax rates, the essential Thatcher/Howe/Lawson legacy. I wanted wealthy people to feel at home and welcomed in the UK so that they could bring more business, create jobs and spread some of that wealth about. They weren't my priority; by which I mean that it wasn't a priority to run after after them, and nor was it a priority to run them, and nor was it a priority to run at at them. I was happy to leave well alone. them. I was happy to leave well alone.

I knew if we put up the top rate of tax it would be seen as a signal, a declaration of instinct, an indicator whose impact would far outweigh its intrinsic weight. When Gordon suggested it prior to the election and I was given the usual opinion-poll guff showing 7080 per cent in favour of it, I put in a complete nolle prosequi nolle prosequi. For me, it was a total red line. After time, Gordon backed off.

To be fair, he took a more radical view on capital gains tax, which in turn helped the private equity industry enormously. He cut the rate down to as little as 15 per cent for those who held shares for a fixed minimum period, so those investing in companies, sorting them out and then selling them on, were paying far less than the income tax rate. Nevertheless, I felt it was done more as a political sign to those he thought were designating him anti-business, and a product of those who were advising him, rather than an act born of great conviction.

No matter; in that first statement on the Bank of England and his first Budget, he was pretty clearly New Labour. However, his seeming endors.e.m.e.nt of the notion that I had vacated the economic sphere sowed seeds of distortion whose harvest was damaging. Of course, it is in the nature of politics that all the elements that ultimately bring about the downfall are there from the outset, albeit in mild form. Time merely enlarges and strengthens them. Even in those early days of power, indeed even from the moment of the phone call after John's death when I didn't immediately accede, there was a battle unresolved. Whether it was ever resolvable is another question.

Despite all this, the presence of such a big figure, the mere appearance on the landscape of someone who plainly was up to it as well as up for it, whose energy, intellect and political weight were undeniable, was a ma.s.sive plus for the government. If there was a clash, it was at least a clash of the t.i.tans. If there were tensions, they could also have their creative side. In my Cavalier embrace of the middle cla.s.s and his Roundhead identification with Labour tradition, there was surely a coalition of sorts that could be built and could function. So it seemed in those months following 1 May 1997, and so it was.

I have a somewhat weirdly optimistic view of the power of reason, of the ability to persuade if an argument is persuasive. It sometimes led me to believe that if a political goal is right, then it could therefore be attained. Evidently, politics does not work like that: there are goals that are absolutely desirable and entirely worthy, but utterly beyond reach.

My experience with the Liberal Democrats in those initial days of power was a case in point. From the off, I wanted to have them in the big tent. I regarded Roy Jenkins as a mentor. I grew to love him, actually, and thought him a decent, courageous and vastly rational and intelligent man. I also liked and respected Paddy Ashdown, and thought they had younger folk who were basically New Labour. I understood why the SDP was formed, why it failed, and why its failure was not one of ideas but of organisation and politics.

The Liberals were regarded as a motley crew of the vaguely serious, the not so serious and completely unserious. I had all the usual prejudices about blokes with beards in sandals and hideously coloured s.h.i.+rts whose greatest ambition was to be a really good campaigning local councillor, and women in baggy dresses who looked odd and talked about the importance of s.e.x education.

After the amalgamation of the Liberal Party with the SDP, the new Liberal Democrats did rather resemble in their political contours the shape of two objects jammed together on the basis that they fitted when actually they didn't. They were a bit like the right and left wings of most parties, only more so, to paraphrase what Rick said of Louis in Casablanca. Casablanca.

It meant their activists tended to oddness. Now, I am an activist myself, and certainly in younger days a very active activist so I should be careful here. But political activism always has that tinge of the oddball in it. I know that's a shocking admission of bigotry and preconception, but anyone who has ever swum in the waters of a political party and its members.h.i.+p knows what a peculiar habitat it is.

The Lib Dems could also be p.r.o.ne to gross opportunism. Now all politicians have to be opportunistic from time to time seizing the opportunity is often what it's about but in some of their local campaigns the Lib Dems had perfected this and taken it to the level of a science or art form. In particular, despite their official (and for the most part genuine) protestations of belief in racial and s.e.xual equality, they were well up to fighting pretty dirty campaigns targeting the personal characteristics of their opponents.

Although they were a jumble, their leaders.h.i.+p was sound, there were some outstanding people in their ranks and they were more or less aligned with New Labour politically. We had taken the Labour Party to the point which recognised that much of what the old SDP had been saying was correct; some of their prominent members had defected and joined or rejoined Labour; and truthfully, I was closer in political outlook to some of them than to parts of the old left of my own party. It made sense to try to draw them in. Could we go a step further and bring them into government? The traditional part of the Labour Party and John Prescott especially would go nuts at the thought; but this was a moment in time and it might never come again. I was certainly willing to give it a try. Paddy, his wife Jane, Cherie and I dined together regularly before the election. We liked each other and trusted each other. Paddy had real leaders.h.i.+p quality and, like me, was unafraid of taking on his party.

In my party conference speech later that year, and greatly to Alastair's and Bruce's alarm, I specifically went out of my way to pay tribute in my own political heritage to Lloyd George, Keynes and Beveridge as well as Attlee, Bevin and Keir Hardie. I had a belief in part intuitive, in part reinforced by Roy Jenkins that the twentieth century had been a Tory century precisely because good and talented people who should have been together were instead in separate parties fighting each other.

Reuniting these two wings of progressive social democracy appealed to my sense of history. It also derived from my general approach to politics. I had long before come to the conclusion that the party system, though necessary, was at one level irrational and counterproductive. It meant differences had to be either exaggerated or invented; it stopped sensible people cooperating to achieve sensible ends; complex problems that required thoughtful solutions were reduced to battles about slogans.

Hearing some of the Tory speakers during debates in the House of Commons in the 1980s, I concluded that were I an objective observer, what they were saying would have made a lot of sense. From a long time back, I would sit, converse and exchange views with Tories. None of this made me a Tory or diminished my commitment to my own political tribe, but it did ill.u.s.trate the foolishness and even the futility of opposing for opposition's sake.

Above all, I realised that the battle for political supremacy between government and business, the state and the market, was essentially a twentieth-century hangover. A proper functioning state was obviously necessary to do what only government could do, as was a thriving and compet.i.tive private sector to generate the nation's wealth. Together, each in their proper sphere, they determined prosperity. I therefore concluded that while values and ends might differ and diverge and in that lay real politics and ideology the question of what means should be used to achieve those ends was plainly a practical one: what counts is what works. In terms of values and ends, it was hard, certainly so far as the Lib Dems were concerned at that time, to see where the great point of fundamental difference lay. Hence the decision to try to co-opt them.

In the frantic hours following the election, I spoke to Paddy. We agreed it would be premature to put them in the Cabinet (despite our cavalier att.i.tude to our parties, we were both nervous about their respective reactions so soon after election), and unlike in 2010 I had won a huge majority. But we agreed we would begin a process of cooperation with an official committee that would try to draw up an agreed programme of const.i.tutional reform.

Paddy was reluctant to do this, at least until after the const.i.tutional committee had deliberated. I feared this would mean it wouldn't happen.

My fear, amply borne out by events when the Lib Dems ended up opposing our public service reforms on what were basically Old Labour grounds however they tried to dress it up was that while we could agree on the easy stuff or, if not easy, the stuff that didn't touch voters' immediate lives they would shy away from the painful but thoroughly necessary changes in schools, hospitals, pensions and welfare, which most directly touched voters' lives. In other words, for me the question was: is this cooperation for real? In the end, I'm afraid, it wasn't, not through a lack of good intentions or good faith on Paddy's part he was totally straight about it throughout but because of what I thought was their lack of the necessary fibre to govern. In the ultimate a.n.a.lysis, the Lib Dems seemed to be happier as the 'honest' critics, prodding and probing and pus.h.i.+ng, but unwilling to take on the mantle of responsibility for the hard choices and endure the rough pa.s.sages. It will be fascinating to see whether the coalition conceived after the 2010 election holds. It may, since the Lib Dem desire for electoral reform is so intrinsic to them. But if that doesn't come about, I doubt the coalition will last long. However, I may be wrong ...

Back in 1997, when a coalition would have been an entirely voluntary act between consenting parties, I thought that the opportunity for them to criticise, and thus take the easy way out, was just too tempting. The trouble is they get used to sitting on panels or TV shows and people nodding along with them because they are saying what people want to hear which never really changes anything, I fear, and can lead them to opportunism that can be breathtaking.

I recall vividly when I was Shadow Home Secretary in 1993. Ken Clarke was Home Secretary. I like Ken, he's a proper stand-up politician. The Tories were foolish never to make him leader, though I was very grateful for that. He had proposed a set of wide-ranging reforms to the police. Some were smart (like changing pension requirements), others not so smart (as with their disciplinary code). Most were justifiable, but my G.o.d did the police hate them. The Police Federation by far the most well-drilled union I ever came across held a rally against the reforms at Wembley Arena, which was remarkable for two things. The first was the collective discipline of the coppers. The Fed's committee sat on the stage, with the audience in front of them. There must have been 10,000 police there, which was and is a really scary prospect. The ma.s.sed ranks took their cue completely from the committee. When the committee applauded, so did the ma.s.ses; when they sat on their hands, not a single person clapped. It was awesome.

The second remarkable thing was the performance of the Lib Dem speaker, Robert Maclennan, who was then their law and order spokesman. This story reveals the problem with them. Now the Lib Dems' official position was as weak-kneed and liberal, with the smallest of 'l's, as you can imagine. They basically took civil liberties to the point where the worst punishment was a jolly good talking-to and the most important thing was to crack down hard on police brutality, all of which was a million miles from the heart and mind of your average British bobby.

I got up and spoke. Truth to tell I was a bit shamefaced, since I thought some of the reforms seemed entirely sensible, but I made a reasonable fist of sounding angry at the injustice of it all and was duly applauded.

Then it was Robert's turn. Now just a word about him. John Smith used to call his speeches in the Commons the work of a one-man crowd-dispersal unit. To describe Bob as a dull speaker was to fail completely to convey the full nature of the experience. If you had to follow him in the House as the next speaker and so had to listen to him, you could miss your opening just because he had reduced you to a catatonic state. By the way, he was also intelligent and decent and obviously so, and that didn't endear him much either.

So it was with the antic.i.p.ation of considerable amus.e.m.e.nt that I saw Bob rise to address 10,000 coppers who I guessed would not appreciate being bored near to death by a Liberal. I can only describe his speech as one of the most electrifying I've ever heard. He knew what they wanted to hear. He had read their handouts describing the unparalleled iniquity of the proposed reforms. He gazed on their 10,000 expectant, upturned faces as he laid into the government not just with abandon, but with what appeared to be genuine, sustained and unstoppable outrage. By the time he had finished painting a picture of a country whose poor police were shackled and downtrodden while laughing criminals ransacked the nation, and all as part of a deliberate and heinous Home Office plot, the Fed committee, the 10,000 coppers, even the sound and lighting people were on their feet, stomping, roaring, baying for more from Bob the policeman's best friend.

However, it did all ill.u.s.trate the problems with the Lib Dems. When it came right down to it, they were happier as critics than as actors. As time went on and I became more convinced we needed radical solutions to welfare and public services, not to say law and order issues, they gravitated naturally and contentedly towards an opposing position. The dream of getting them to reunite social democracy faded. Paddy was a leader really committed to the idea of uniting the progressive forces. Charles Kennedy was a very decent guy, but not of the same commitment. Iraq was such a ma.s.sive point of disagreement, and became such a huge recruiting and campaigning bonus to the Lib Dems, that after it our relations soured completely. It was a pity, but probably inevitable. To begin with, I thought that the sheer force of a reasonable position, reasonably argued, would win the day. Over time you learn that this is not so; change brings opposition, and opposition is much easier to advocate than change.

Another early reminder of this came with the changes to housing benefit we introduced in the summer of 1997. They were entirely justified in order to stop abuse of the system, but suddenly and for the first time we knocked up against the need for a difficult decision as a government. The backbench revolt was immediate and large (with Lib Dems joining in). The size of the majority could take care of it, but there were ugly moments. When we then proposed further radical cuts to the welfare bill through reforming incapacity benefit, similar scenes were played out. We wanted to cut the welfare bill radically as the costs had risen sharply and now ran into billions. We were still handling the fallout from the recession of the early 1990s in terms of public finances. We had given a commitment a very tough one, which Gordon stuck to, tenaciously and rightly to keep to the previous government's spending totals for our first two years, but nonetheless wanted to get more money into health and education, and so were looking for every way we could to trim the welfare costs. In any event, it was clearly unhealthy for people to be subsidised on a life of benefit; and when they could work, then in their own interests, they should.

As with housing benefit, incapacity benefit had also become open to systematic abuse. In the 1980s, as long-term unemployment rose it suited the government quietly to allow large numbers of people, particularly in the old mining industries, to be transferred on to the incapacity register. They would thus count as sick, not unemployed, and the unemployment figures were reduced. All of us knew people in our const.i.tuencies who had spent years on benefit when their incapacity seemed, let us say, more than a trifle exaggerated.

The proposed changes had people chaining themselves to the railings of Downing Street in protest. They were usually chosen as protesters by virtue of being in wheelchairs, as if everyone on incapacity benefit was confined to a wheelchair, or all those in wheelchairs were unable to work both of which positions I thought highly dubious. But that wasn't the point. Naturally, they elicited much sympathy.

Then at the end of July, as the summer recess approached, David Blunkett announced the introduction of means-tested tuition fees, and so began the long and often slow march towards university reform. Again cries of outrage and betrayal ensued.

It was all manageable, of course, but it was a portent.

We were a popular government, I still retained high approval ratings, but even back then, the signs were clear of storms and troubles to come.

I was learning, on the job, the trade of prime minister, the trade of decision-maker and responsibility-taker and, as I occasionally stepped back and surveyed it all, I could see where it was going. I could see the end even as I lived the beginning. I could see the rhythm of it all. The difference between beginning and end is not major crises like wars excepted simply in the nature of the events themselves. In other words, an event let's say a scandal can occur at the start, and because everyone is still in the throes of excitement at the new government it can be overcome reasonably easily. If it occurs later, it can be terminal. It depends less on the nature of the events than on their place in the cycle. The adversity, the intensity of the criticism, the fullness of the attack grow not in proportion to the decisions of leaders.h.i.+p, but rather to the chipping away over time of its freshness, its appeal, its novelty and thus its persuasive power.

At first, in those early months and perhaps in much of that initial term of office, I had political capital that I tended to h.o.a.rd. I was risking it but within strict limits and looking to recoup it as swiftly as possible. Over Kosovo, the first real life-and-death decision, I spent freely. But in domestic terms, I tried to reform with the grain of opinion, not against it.

If things went calm for a time, I wasn't in any great mood to disturb them. We were making changes. Devolution was one and that was historic. But much of the fruit was low-hanging. Some of it was even popular, like the minimum wage.

In public services, we had all the right language and all the right intentions, but the method tended to be one of driving change from the centre. The origins of later, far more radical change were discernible in those starting months, yet the policy prescriptions were too tame; the belief in the power of government itself to make the change on the ground was too trusting; and perhaps also we had an a.n.a.lysis that underestimated the gravity of the problems and therefore the requirement for reform of a nature that was fundamental and structural.

The instincts were by and large spot on. The knowledge, the experience, the in-depth understanding that grappling over time induces these qualities were missing. There was a political confidence, even swagger about us; but it was born of our popularity with the country, not our fitness to change it as it needed.

That rhythm, too, was intruding and I was aware of it, for the first time. Of course I knew from the moment I became leader of the Labour Party that you never end as you begin. I understood completely that the business of politics was rough, the public could be fickle, the cracks and creva.s.ses would appear soon enough, even in a carefully constructed edifice of political advancement; and our edifice had been constructed with immense care. But to contemplate it is one thing; to experience it is another. And feeling it first-hand both disconcerted me and sobered me.

No one ever believes a politician when he or she says this, but I was never desperate to be prime minister or to stay as prime minister. That's the honest truth. I don't mean I lacked ambition I had plenty of that but I did lack courage. I knew it would be brutal and ugly, and could end in tears.

In my moments of reflection on holiday in 1997, down in the south of France in the lovely old twelfth-century house we used to stay at in the Ariege a beautiful and understated part of the country I would think of the future. I would think of being released, of escaping with reputation and soul intact having served two terms, handing over to Gordon let him have the d.a.m.n thing and being free again, free of all the anxiety, the responsibility, the living on a perpetual knife-edge where any slip could cut you to pieces. I thought of how good it would be to go, still young, just past fifty, still popular, still a friendly face in a friendly country. I would lead, of course, to the best of my ability. I wouldn't s.h.i.+rk the tough decisions. But I prayed they would not be those that could lose it all, could end in failure and humiliation. Get out before they stop listening, stop liking, and start loathing. That was my hope.

Yet I could sense the rhythm, feel its relentless and ever so slightly louder drumbeat, sense its effect on the country around me.

We were already starting to take the decisions that chip away at the stock of goodwill. It was amazing how even the most anodyne or seemingly consensual changes could result in a fierceness of response out of all proportion to the measure. Even David Blunkett's introduction of the literacy and numeracy tests necessary to raise the low levels of eleven-year-old attainment from the roughly 50 per cent pa.s.s rate we inherited caused shrieks of protest. I wasn't startled by it. But there was a slightly dangerous mood among the back benches that indicated they were profoundly unprepared for the travails of government. Having enjoyed the serenity of Opposition life, where everyone could imbibe some of the Lib Dem liqueur and just nod along, they were now having to grow accustomed to returning to their const.i.tuencies and getting an earful; not a really painful one, but nonetheless the change was a shock. At one of my regular PLP briefings, when the whole of the Parliamentary Labour Party would be invited to the Large Committee Room of the House of Commons to hear the leader's words of wisdom, I joked that when we were in Opposition, life was easy: MPs just went back home and blamed it all on the government; the trouble is, some of them still do. It's extraordinary how anyone who opposes the government is principled while anyone who is loyal is just a sycophant, when the support is usually far harder than the opposition, unless you are aiming for preferment.

I was learning that the very discipline I thought necessary in Opposition was every bit as critical, if not more so, in government; and that meant a constant interaction with the political troops. In turn, this was so much more difficult because suddenly the schedule was dominated by major meetings and functions.

Another lesson was therefore being learned. Foreign leaders had to be seen, those you needed or wanted to see and those you didn't. There was ceremony and protocol, much of which was unavoidable. There were summits, NATO, Europe, the G8. The summits were tiring and only occasionally productive. There was also the handing back of Hong Kong to China.