Power Trip

by McBride, Damian

  By comparison, my thirty-first was a cracker: it was a beautiful sunny day and I took myself off at lunchtime to the Jubilee Tavern, a much-missed gay bar in Waterloo. I filled the jukebox with several hours’ worth of my favourite songs and got steadily pissed.

  Around 4.30 p.m., as my first friends and work colleagues were beginning to drift in, I started getting calls from journalists coming out of that afternoon’s No. 10 lobby briefing. They said there appeared to be a significant hardening of Blair’s position against the EU proposals and, knowing that Gordon and Tony had met that morning, they wondered if the two things were connected.

  I wasn’t going to kill that story, especially after several drinks, so – reasonably straight – I advised anyone who called that: Yes, they discussed it; Gordon’s views on this issue are well known; and if Tony’s position has shifted as a result, then that is entirely welcome from our point of view. That was all just about acceptable, until The Sun’s Trevor Kavanagh asked me whether it would be fair to say that ‘Gordon had put a bit of lead in Tony’s pencil’.

  If not for the several preceding pints, I might have sensed danger in that but, at the time, it sounded good to me, and I gave Trevor the verbal nod. A few minutes later, I got my second call of the afternoon from Phil Webster, the legendary political editor of The Times and a good friend of Trevor’s, with a nose for a line like Maradona’s. ‘Hi there,’ he said with a chuckle. ‘Now I just heard a good line from a colleague which I’d quite like to use … something about Gordon putting a bit of lead in Tony’s pencil.’ Another chuckle. ‘Yeah, OK, go for it,’ I said.

  Another couple of political editors got in touch to stand up the same line, and all of them used it prominently in their coverage the next day, attributed to a Treasury source. Tony was incandescent, asking Gordon to stay behind after the Cabinet, throwing the papers down on the table, and demanding an explanation. ‘It’s that bloody guy McBride,’ said Blair, ‘I told you about him.’

  It wasn’t often they had a one-way slanging match when it was Tony doing all the slanging, and Gordon was both embarrassed and furious at me. I was none the wiser, having got home in the early hours, not seen any papers, and fallen asleep on my sofa with my phone upstairs in the bathroom. When I woke up near midday, I had twenty-six missed calls on my mobile, a number from Gordon saying: ‘This. Is. Gordon. Call. Me. Immediately’, and the rest from the various members of staff who were getting it in the ear because I couldn’t be tracked down.

  When I got in touch, they told me they’d tried to do the customary line when I couldn’t be found: ‘He’s out and about with journalists’, but this time, Gordon retorted: ‘I’m not stupid. I know what “out and about” means – it means he’s asleep or in the fucking pub.’

  When I did finally speak to Gordon, he went ballistic, reporting what Blair had said and asking what he was meant to tell him. There was no real defence. I just apologised and said it had all got out of hand after the initial chat with Trevor. Interestingly, Gordon then explained that – apart from anything else – he couldn’t be seen as guiding Blair’s hand on EU matters. ‘It’s alright today when they’re taking this tough line, but then he’ll cave in like he always does on Europe, and Kavanagh will say Brown’s to blame as well.’

  He was dead right on that, as was proved later that year when Blair did cave in on the UK rebate. And if there’s one thing Gordon could never comprehend, it was how anyone could lose an argument in Europe. For all his flaws when it came to dealing with other people, and all his loathing of Brussels, he was by far the greatest diplomat it has seen in modern times.

  Not in the corrupted sense of the word – he was the opposite of the smooth-talking, well-connected, multilingual caricatures who make up Britain’s diplomatic corps – but in terms of someone relentlessly committed to promoting his country’s interests and invariably successful at persuading, or occasionally obliging, others to go along with him, ably supported over the years by his key advisers on Europe, Jon Cunliffe and Ivan Rogers.

  At one meeting in Ireland – the day Manchester United played Arsenal in the 2004 FA Cup semi-final – the EU finance ministers were due to discuss who to nominate to be the new managing director of the IMF, with technocratic French banker Jean Lemierre the strong favourite. Gordon’s preferred candidate was Spanish politician Rodrigo Rato, a strong ally of his in IMF meetings on debt relief for Africa and other development issues.

  Gordon came running out at the end of the meeting. ‘What’s the score?’ ‘United won.’ ‘Ah, I’m sorry!’ he said gleefully. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘They’ve agreed to say Rato’s a candidate and it’s evenly split between him and Lemierre. But I’ve written Charlie [McCreevy, the Irish finance minister] a note to read out if anyone asks him what attributes we’re looking for. So get one of our guys to ask about attributes in the press conference.’

  One of ‘our guys’ did, Charlie read out the note as advised, explaining that the EU was looking for someone with good links to emerging markets and developing nations, and with the political skills required to handle difficult negotiations. Sure enough, every paper wrote the next day that Rato was now the clear favourite and Lemierre’s candidacy had suffered a mortal blow.

  When the UK held the presidency of the EU, Gordon’s style of chairing meetings was extraordinary. He would instruct that all country position papers on different issues were distributed in advance, and then would conduct the obligatory tours de table by saying to each finance minister: ‘We have read your paper. Do you have anything to add?’ If they did what everyone does at EU meetings and began officially stating their position, he’d cut off their microphone, and say: ‘Thank you, that was all made clear in your paper. We will move on.’

  Meetings scheduled to last all day would be over by lunch and with agreement on every issue he cared about along the lines he’d proposed. If he didn’t care about an issue, he’d invite two opposing parties to speak first, then say: ‘It’s obvious we will not make progress today. We will move on.’

  He was a force of nature: no tact; no niceties; no indulgence of debate; but always focused on getting results. That didn’t always work in his international dealings, and on occasion it was counter-productive, but it was more than a decade of practice for the world financial crisis, when none of the silky diplomatic skills were required, but just a man to bang desks, bash heads and get the job done.

  21

  GORDON AND THE EDS

  In 2008, there was an excellent young broadcast specialist recruited to work for Gordon, named Nicola Burdett. After her first meeting with him, she said: ‘God, he’s lovely! People are so wrong about him.’ A couple of months later, she went to a meeting where he exploded about some NHS issue, and she came out shuddering. Veteran that I was by then, I told her: ‘Don’t worry, when he can have a good rant in front of you, that means you’ve made it with him.’

  But seeing Gordon lose his temper, and indeed seeing him really let his hair down, was only one of the initiation rites of getting to know him on a personal level. Talking to him about family was another – both the influence of his mother, father and brothers, and the relationship he had with Sarah and his boys.

  But, family aside, if you wanted to see what Gordon was really like with the people who knew him best, you had to watch him spend time with the two Eds.

  People will often describe the Eds as ‘Sons of Brown’, which – even without the insufficient age gap – is a lazy misunderstanding of their relationship. I always saw him much more as a college professor simultaneously mentoring but also learning from his brilliant young PhD students; his default setting with the pair was asking them questions and taking notes.

  And the quality of those debates could be downright intimidating. Because so many of the decisions they took together required an understanding of complex social and economic theory alongside an instinct for political realities and public opinion, all three possessed the rare ability to operate on both planes simultaneously.
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  Of all the people who worked with them over the years, I would say only Michael Ellam and Jon Cunliffe were capable of holding their own in both aspects of those discussions, while the rest of us tended to specialise in either the ‘economics’ or the ‘politics’.

  It also meant both Gordon and the Eds were equally capable of dismissing some colleagues and opponents as being either ‘off in the clouds’ and ‘not in the real world’, or alternatively dismissing others as being ‘lightweight’ or ‘superficial’. That wasn’t always endearing if you were on the receiving end.

  At the other end of the spectrum, when it came to Gordon genuinely relaxing and enjoying himself – on overseas trips or private dinners and parties in the Downing Street flat – the presence of the Eds was key, simply because he enjoyed their company and their humour so much.

  The Christmas parties Gordon and Sarah threw for close colleagues each year were always hugely jolly affairs. We’d eat Sarah’s traditional lasagne, and do the usual ritual of exchanging Secret Santa presents, plus receiving a book from Gordon and a tie or socks from Sue Nye. Ed Balls and young political adviser Jonathan Ashworth would lead the singing: ‘The Red Flag’, ‘Bandiera Rossa’ and ‘The Fields of Athenry’; some Elvis; and at least three full-throated ‘Jerusalem’s.

  But the highlight of those evenings was always Gordon’s comedy routine. It was never so much the content of the jokes and anecdotes he told that was so entertaining, but his gradual inability to speak because he was laughing so much under the constant heckling from the Eds.

  Anyone who remembers Brian Johnston’s hysterics on Test Match Special in 1991 will know the kind of high-pitched squeal Gordon used when pleading: ‘Come on, you guys, stop it!’ Tears streaming down his face, he would finally make it to the punchline of a story about Donald Dewar or union leader Jimmy Reid, and would always, always botch it, the cue for everyone to fall about laughing.

  The converse of Gordon revelling in the Eds’ company on happy days was that they were always invaluable in turning round his mood and getting him to re-focus on those occasions when he was in the dumps, or when necessary quelling his temper if something had set him off.

  There was an interesting difference between them though. If Ed Balls was walking down the corridor and heard raised voices or swearing coming from Gordon’s office, he made it his business to find out what the problem was and, having determined that Gordon was over-reacting to whatever it was, would march in to him and say incredulously: ‘What’s all this racket? What on earth is wrong?’

  That almost always succeeded in getting Gordon to calm down and talk the problem through rationally or – more often than not – just drop it entirely. Ed Miliband was different. If he heard some explosion going off as he walked in to raise an issue with Gordon, he’d usually just roll his eyes, ask the office: ‘Can you call me when he’s finished?’, and walk back the way he’d come. Never one to have tantrums himself, he simply couldn’t be bothered putting up with what he would see as irrational behaviour.

  If the two Eds were sitting with Gordon when some bad news came through and he hit the roof, you’d see the same split reaction: Balls would sit there with a faint smile and say sarcastically: ‘Erm, is this going to help?’, and if Gordon reacted angrily to that, he’d say: ‘No, fine – you go ahead – just wanted to understand your thinking.’ Meanwhile, Ed Miliband would roll his eyes, sigh and eventually shout with exasperation: ‘For goodness’ sake, can we get on with things please?’

  If they were ‘Sons of Brown’, I wish I’d been able to control my own dad’s moods the same way. But if there genuinely was any paternal aspect to their relationship, it was most visible when the Eds decided to strike out and seek their own front-line political careers before the 2005 election.

  On the night Ed Balls was selected for Normanton, Gordon asked me excitedly how his post-selection interview had gone with Newsnight. He looked upset and defensive when I said it hadn’t been great and, given I didn’t know about Ed’s stammer then, it must have made it worse to hear me say blithely: ‘He might have been a bit nervous, or maybe it was a bit cold – he just seemed very jittery.’

  You could see that same defensiveness when Ed was appointed to Gordon’s ministerial team and faced his first sessions of Treasury questions in the House of Commons. The Tories weren’t to know why Ed spoke so hesitantly, so they barracked him pitilessly – a constant barrage of ‘Errrrrrrs’ every time he got up to speak, and every time he had a ‘block’.

  Gordon would sit there in a barely disguised rage, glowering at the Tory benches, and I’m convinced that the brutal battering that he used to give George Osborne in those sessions – so bad that George stopped asking him questions for months on end – was fuelled by his anger at Ed’s treatment.

  Ed Miliband waited until much later – February 2005 – to stand as a candidate, and his selection was far less assured, going up against Michael Dugher, Geoff Hoon’s former special adviser, in a Doncaster North seat where Michael had built strong ties. I rarely saw Gordon so agitated as on the March night when the selection meeting was taking place. We were late returning from Brussels and, while usually a stickler for protocol, especially when using the Royal Flight, Gordon had his phone switched on looking for a signal as soon as we started to descend.

  Ed’s call came through just as we were touching down and, hearing the news that he had won, Gordon let out a great scream of joy and vigorously punched his fist in the air. As a rule, you should never punch in any direction when travelling in a small plane, but upwards is probably the worst move. The collective noise of Gordon yelping and crashing his fist into the roof as the plane touched down brought the RAF steward scurrying back in alarm, and we had to reassure him all was OK.

  Gordon being Gordon, the celebration lasted five seconds before he told Ed he should seek out Michael and tell him that Gordon would sort him out a job and an alternative seat. It may have taken a few years, but Gordon was true to his word, giving him a job in Downing Street in 2008, and – not that he needed it – helping him to become an MP at the 2010 election.

  I’m sure Doncaster North made the right choice, although – staunch football fan that he is – Dugher would never have made the rookie mistake that Miliband made in December that year, as he sat in the Doncaster Working Men’s Club watching Donny Rovers in the final seconds of what was set to be a famous victory in the League Cup over Arsenal.

  I took the last step of a desperate Arsenal fan and sent Ed a text saying: ‘Very well done, your boys have been magnificent, a fully deserved win.’ Most fans in the world would have waited until the final whistle rather than jinx the outcome, but – in his excitement – Ed replied: ‘Thanks, we were genuinely the better team.’ Cue a last-second equaliser from Arsenal.

  Both Eds ascended to Secretary of State level in Gordon’s first Cabinet in 2007, and, looking back, it’s clear to me now that he envisaged one of them becoming his successor if he could win an election in his own right and step down shortly before the next.

  At the crucial party conference that year, when we needed something to stop the void of activity being filled with endless election speculation, I sat in Gordon’s hotel suite and he instructed me:

  ‘Build up the young guys. Turn it into a beauty contest about who’ll take over from me. Don’t for God’s sake say I won’t serve a full term, but say “Brown doesn’t want to go on forever. Brown will start putting the next generation into all the senior posts and one of them will become leader.” Then Cameron can’t use youth against me. We’ll say: “They’ve got one young guy in charge, and that guy Osborne, but Labour’s got all the best young talent coming through.”’

  I asked him who he wanted me to mention to the media as potential leaders. He thought about it, then reeled off surnames like a football manager naming his line-up: ‘Purnell. Miliband. Kelly. Burnham. Cooper. Balls. Miliband.’ I replied: ‘You’ve already said Miliband.’ ‘Both of them,’ he said. I was a bit incredulous:
‘Really? You want me to say Ed Miliband?’ He looked equally surprised: ‘You need to watch Ed Miliband, he’s the one to watch.’

  I could understand Ed Balls being in the list, because the only thing he lacked was confidence in speaking from platforms, in the House of Commons, and doing TV interviews, which – while it was clearly a very big deal – was something he could improve as he gained more experience of what worked and what didn’t.

  By contrast, for all his academic and emotional intelligence, his confidence and good humour, I’d never seen Ed Miliband as a potential leader until Gordon mentioned him that evening; first, because I’d never seen the drive and ambition he clearly possessed, and second because he’d have to get past his brother, the guy who used to send him curt emails from No. 10 telling him: ‘Get this sorted.’

  But when I thought about it, more than once when the deliberations were going on about a snap election in 2007, and what that would mean for the timing of the next one, I’d heard Ed Miliband say: ‘I’d fancy a post-Olympics election in 2012.’ Whether that was ‘I’ speaking for the Labour Party, or for himself, or indeed for both, was never quite clear.

  So it wasn’t too incongruous to hear Gordon talking up Ed Miliband’s chances in that hotel suite in Bournemouth. Then, with Sarah listening intently, he said to me: ‘You know you’ll have to choose between them one day. Who will you back?’ ‘I’m closer to Ed Miliband,’ I said, which was undoubtedly true at the time – I didn’t send Ed Balls text messages about football matches or gossip to him about which Treasury civil servants might have the hots for each other.