If we could have avoided ever doing these rounds, I would’ve done, but it went with the job. Once Gordon had set foot in the room, I took up two key positions: standing in front of him when he was having his make-up adjusted so the cameras couldn’t film him being powdered and coiffed; and then standing in a fixed position just behind the camera where he could look at me in case I needed to mime the smoothing of his hair or give him a thumbs-up after particular answers.
On a bad day, when each political editor had finished, Gordon would by and large have the same instinct as at the end of those radio interviews – wanting to scream a string of foul-mouthed abuse, this time in their faces – so when he looked at me, I’d purse my lips and jerk up an admonishing finger like a particularly stern librarian, and say calmly: ‘Gordon, can I grab you for a moment before the next one – I just need you to sign something’, then take him into whatever ante-room we had set up.
As soon as I did, he’d draw his breath to begin a tirade, but I’d shush him again and whisper: ‘It was fine, it was good, you dealt with it well, it’s all OK. And, I know, he’s a bastard, he’s a Tory, he can fuck off the next time he asks us for a favour, but let’s just do the next one and get through it.’ The same routine, every single interview, every single time. I was gone by the time of the 2009 party conference when he let his fury show on camera after an interview with Adam Boulton, but I did think about the other 300 times where that nearly happened.
Actual car-crashes in broadcast interviews were fairly rare with Gordon, although the one that’s lodged in my memory was during a morning round of interviews at Millbank in 2008, when the first question Nicky Campbell on 5 Live asked him was the apparently innocuous: ‘What was the first thing on your mind when you woke up this morning?’
Gordon could’ve told the truth, which is that his radio alarm went off every morning at 5.30 a.m. tuned into Wake Up to Money on 5 Live, so he would have been thinking about whatever they were talking about. One of the biggest irritations of my job was Gordon calling at 5.30 a.m. to say, for example: ‘ALL they’re talking about on the radio is Equitable Life! Why haven’t we got anyone up?’
I’d politely explain that was because he was listening to a programme designed for bankers, and I could in theory ring Ruth Kelly and tell her to get on the phone to the studio, but it might not go down too well. It could have been worse – I dread to think what calls I’d have got if he woke up listening to Farming Today.
If Gordon wasn’t going to tell the truth to Nicky Campbell about what he woke up thinking about, he could at least have said some other bland nonsense, like what to fix the kids for breakfast, or whether the Boston Red Sox had won overnight.
Anything, but not – oh please God, no – ‘Well, to be honest, I woke up thinking about people’s household bills, and mortgage payments, and what we can do to help people at this time.’ Nicky couldn’t believe his luck and took the piss for about five minutes. It was the worst combination of Gordon coming across like he didn’t live in the real world, but also as a bit instinctively duplicitous. He knew he’d screwed up and he couldn’t focus for the rest of the interview knowing it.
When he came out, he was furious at himself – and obviously at Nicky Campbell and all the Tories who run the BBC – and we had to find a quiet corner of Millbank just so he could punch his palm, sound off a bit and gradually calm down.
But if that was bad, nothing I saw would ever compare to his interview right at the end of his visit to the 2008 Beijing Olympics with the two Sunday journalists who had paid to accompany us on the trip, and thereby subsidised our own flights – Simon Walters from the Mail on Sunday and Jamie Lyons from the News of the World.
Gordon was in a grumpy mood about having to do the interview (‘Jeez, haven’t I done enough now?’), and he was upset and distracted by his youngest boy Fraser struggling with a bad cough. But I told him we had to do it because these guys needed to file something for the weekend, and I’d drafted him a nice, easy briefing about how he’d been thrilled by the medal-winning achievements of the British team and he would take that spirit back to his own battles in Britain.
It was innocuous stuff, but perfect for a pair of Sunday papers wanting to throw forward to the conference season and report that Brown was feeling relaxed, upbeat and inspired. Gordon just handed it back to me as we were going in and said: ‘I’m not doing this shit. I’m not doing domestic stuff.’ Right or wrong, it was no way to go into an interview.
Gordon proceeded to give a performance veering from surly and arrogant to aggressive and offensive, with the redoubtable Simon responding: ‘Mr Brown, I’ve interviewed four prime ministers in my career and this is the rudest behaviour I’ve ever seen.’ There were a few points when I felt compelled to step in, but part of me knew that Simon and Jamie would already be planning to write up the way Gordon had behaved, so any intervention from me would just become part of that story.
The low point was when Gordon looked at the two reporters and said: ‘I’ve given you my time – that’s special time – I’ve been very good to you. You’re very fortunate to have this kind of time with me.’ I’d never heard Gordon say anything like that to anyone. There wasn’t a single strand of arrogance in him – no sense at all of his status – so I was astonished.
When we walked out of the room, Gordon exploded at me for making him do the interviews, and for once I wasn’t faking it when I immediately went more berserk than him: ‘Oh fuck off!’ I shouted back. ‘That was ridiculous. There was absolutely no need for it. What the fuck were you thinking? Now I’ve got to go back in there and try and fix that to stop YOU getting shafted.’
What made me genuinely angry was that – to be frank – I was feeling knackered too, I’d worked my arse off that entire trip, we were nearly at the end, and all I’d asked of him was to be professional, finish the last media job for the trip and do it well. But not only could he not be bothered to do that; he’d caused a massive problem in the process.
When I went back into Simon and Jamie, I think it was the only time when I worked for Gordon that I was actively disloyal to him. They told me they’d have to report his behaviour. In response, I could have promised them every single story I had in reserve for special occasions, delving not into my back pocket but into my black book, but I didn’t even bother trying. I just thought: it serves him right.
17
DIRTY HANDS
There are a series of notable firsts when you work as a spin-doctor: the first time you screw up; the first time you deliberately get a front-page splash; your first miracle save to stop a shit story coming out; and, unless you’re a very pure soul, the first time you get your hands dirty doing a story you probably shouldn’t.
And I’d make a distinction here between dirty and dodgy. Dodgy stories just came with the job. For example, occasionally a very senior figure from HM Revenue and Customs would saunter up to my desk, and say that they’d find it helpful if the FT or one of the other broadsheets were to run a story about their intention to close a new tax avoidance scheme which a particular phone company or supermarket was using, just to deter other companies from following suit.
They’d tell me how the scheme worked, and how much revenue was at risk, but then always say: ‘Obviously I can’t tell you the name of the company because that would breach taxpayer confidentiality.’ There would be a pause, then an afterthought: ‘Oh by the way, what make of phone is that you’re using?’ or ‘Where do you shop yourself?’ I’d say four or five preferences for each, after one of which they’d say: ‘Oh they’re very good; very efficient, those chaps.’ So I’d have the name of the company without them actually telling me, and I’d usually do the same routine when calling a journalist with the story.
Dodgy but not dirty. When I did my first proper dirty story, I could tell the difference. And I didn’t just get a bit of mud under the fingernails, I went elbow deep in the drain.
John Major’s former press adviser Howell James had been brought bac
k to Downing Street in the role of Director of Government Communications in summer 2004 to try and restore some sense of ‘doing things the right way’ in the wake of Alastair Campbell’s departure and the Hutton Inquiry.
One of his early acts that September was to convene a two-day meeting of departmental heads of communication at the civil service training college in Sunningdale. The first morning and afternoon were impossibly dull, and I spent most of them planning how to escape the following day, giving my PA back at the Treasury, Dawn Goring, a series of messages to send the organisers overnight which would require me to return to London.
However, in the evening, Howell ill-advisedly opened the floor for a frank exchange of views on where the government was going wrong with its communications efforts, and how No. 10 needed to change. Within thirty seconds, it was clear this was going to be dynamite, as one speaker after another laid into the No. 10 operation.
I started surreptitiously taking an aide-memoire: who was speaking and any killer quotes. At the end of the hour, I knew I had a huge story on my hands. I’d like to say that I then wrestled with my conscience and thought about the breach of colleagues’ trust, the careers I was going to affect and the damage I was going to do to the government as a whole. But, I didn’t think any of that. I just thought this was a story one of the Sunday newspapers would kill for, and it would be the making of my relationship with them.
The next morning, the ‘urgent’ messages from the Treasury recalling me to London were passed on, I said my goodbyes and made my way straight to Ascot, where I’d arranged to meet some mates for a day’s races. After a few drinks, I cold-called David ‘Crackers’ Cracknell, political editor of the Sunday Times, and asked him if he wanted a story. He couldn’t believe his luck.
That weekend, the Sunday of Labour Party Conference, the paper’s splash was ‘Blair spin gurus savage No. 10’, ‘leaked minutes’ from the meeting revealing that it was the PM’s closest Cabinet colleagues whose heads of communication had been the most critical. And sure enough, that one story – the first Crackers and I had done together – led to a long and productive working arrangement between us, exactly what I’d been after.
At no stage did I consult anyone else about what I was up to, or really think through what the implications would be. Given there were so many people at the Sunningdale meeting, I naively thought it was unlikely I’d be a suspect and, even if I was, I reasoned that – if the only other person who knew I was responsible was Crackers – no one would be able to prove anything. That was soon put to the test, as the Cabinet Office launched an urgent leak inquiry, not the kind of formality led by civil servants, but a proper investigation led by retired Special Branch officers.
I soon discovered that everyone in government believed I was responsible. Not only was I a suspect, I was the only suspect. Gordon said nothing to me about it, but Ian Austin made clear that I was on my own, saying: ‘Mate, if you’ve done this, and they can prove you’ve done it, then there’s nothing we can do for you.’ All I kept thinking was: remember the fire at Peterhouse – avoidance, obfuscation, diversion – you can get through this.
I ended up having three interview sessions, each lasting more than three hours, with the ex-Special Branch officers: two older gents who made clear that they’d done this kind of thing hundreds of times with proper hardened criminals, and they always got to the truth in the end.
I put on a big nervous act in the first session, eventually saying that I had to come clean and hoped I wouldn’t be in too much trouble, but … I’d actually gone to Ascot races on the second day, not back to London. They already knew that, having traced my phone records, but it still seemed to throw them that having my illicit jolly discovered was my main concern.
I also volunteered that I’d spoken to Crackers before they could confront me with the fact, saying I spoke to all the Sunday political editors routinely every Friday. And I kept returning to my ‘theory’ that it was odd that the Head of Communications from the Department for Work and Pensions, who’d been very outspoken in the meeting, was not one of those quoted in the story. That was largely because he’d been very outspoken slagging off Gordon Brown, but the coppers weren’t to know that.
Over the course of the nine hours, going over and over the same questions, they waited for a slip or a contradiction, but I gave them nothing. Eventually, right at the end, one of them said: ‘What would you say if I was to tell you that I don’t believe you, and I think you’ve been telling us lies?’ ‘If you said that,’ I responded with bewilderment, ‘I’d be outraged, because I’d think: “Why have I wasted all this time trying to help these officers if that’s the attitude they’re going to take?”’
And that was it. There was no formal report published, but I was told the conclusion passed to Gus O’Donnell and the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Andrew Turnbull, was that I was almost certainly guilty, but they couldn’t prove it.
Gordon only spoke to me about the whole affair once, gruffly asking: ‘Is all that business over with?’, then giving me a long, baleful look, not the only time I saw that particular expression, his equivalent of saying: ‘Don’t push your luck.’ But he added an unnerving rider on this occasion: ‘They’re out for you now. Blair keeps going on about you. They’re into your phone records, so watch who you’re talking to.’
Some people will undoubtedly wonder why – if Gordon knew I was guilty of misbehaviour on that and future occasions – he never either formally reined me in or had me moved on. And my answer to that is simply that there was something unspoken between us. Not what people imagine, that he would mutter under his breath about turbulent priests and hope that I would do his bidding, but the opposite.
The unspoken word was from me to him, and said: ‘Don’t question my methods.’ I offered him the best press he could hope for, unrivalled intelligence about what was going on in the media and access to parts of the right-wing press that no other Labour politician could reach. And my attack operations against his Labour rivals and Tory enemies were usually both effective and feared, with me willingly taking all the potential risk and blame.
What I expected in return was simply to have the freedom to take the necessary steps to cultivate those media relationships, whatever that entailed: whether it was forcing Gordon to do the occasional interview he didn’t want to, or disappearing to the pub with contacts for half the week, or – on occasion – leaking a good story from another department, not one that would cause them a problem, but just not released at a time of their choosing.
The closest Gordon and I ever came to having this out was in 2007 when John Reid, then Home Secretary – who’d announced he would stand down when Tony Blair left office – was furious that a plan to import Northern Irish-style anti-terror laws onto the UK mainland had been leaked prematurely to the Sunday Times. Blair was also angry and they were openly blaming me, not least because my old friend Crackers had written the splash.
Gordon came off the phone after a dressing-down from Tony and John, and said to me, exasperated: ‘Why do you do this stuff? Reid’s leaving. What’s the bloody point?’ I just shrugged my shoulders, as I always did, but I was furious at the inquisition and stormed out of the room, thinking: ‘Do you know what the Sunday Times splash would’ve been this weekend if they hadn’t had that instead? No? Well don’t tell me what I need to do and what I don’t.’
But if there was another reason Gordon didn’t remove me from my position or put me on a shorter leash, it’s that – as I showed week after week – I knew how to splash papers and get our briefing to the top of the Today programme.
And for perhaps the two dozen memorable occasions when I did that through a black ops manoeuvre or by busting another department’s announcement, there were literally hundreds of other occasions when I did it just by getting a mainstream, positive story about the government and about Gordon to the top of the news list; and conversely, hundreds of occasions when I stopped negative stories about the government and Gordon getting in the pa
pers.
Gordon almost certainly looks back and wishes he’d dealt with me earlier, or before it was too late, but at what point, in what week, was he ever supposed to have given up everything else I offered him for the sake of quelling the occasional problems I caused him? That’s why he never did.
As for me, with the benefit of hindsight and some greater experience, I never would have done the ‘spin summit’ story. Not only was it incredibly reckless, but it was a downright shitty thing to do to a few colleagues who’d done nothing more than speak their minds honestly and openly, and – even if it was a bad story for the Blair mob – it didn’t do Gordon any favours either, once people worked out who was responsible.
Knowing everything I know now, if I was back in that room in Sunningdale again today, I wouldn’t be the one taking notes; I’d be the one intervening at the outset – as someone more experienced should surely have done back in 2004 – to say: ‘Do you know what, everyone? I think this is a really bad idea. I don’t think we know each other well enough for this level of honesty.’
18
SECURITY
I almost became a spy. Seriously.
After I was accepted onto the Fast Stream, I received a letter a couple of weeks later – with no heading, address or signatory – inviting me to attend a further assessment and selection process, this time at a country retreat, for specialist work within the government, in advance of which I was told to complete and return a twenty-page questionnaire with details of my family and financial history. The letter ended by instructing me not to discuss this invitation with anyone else.
I checked with a friend at the Foreign Office, who confirmed that this sounded like it was from the secret services, and – given the Canary Wharf bomb had recently gone off – he concluded that ‘it’s probably ’cos they need more Paddies’, but then admonished me that if the letter said I shouldn’t discuss it with anyone, that included him.
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