Power Trip

by McBride, Damian

  People think of his 1994 Granita restaurant summit with Tony Blair as a once-in-a-lifetime misunderstanding, where Gordon thought they’d reached a deal on a future handover date, and Tony thought nothing of the sort.

  The reality is that it was the same story at every meeting he ever had with an editor, business leader or foreign dignitary. Gordon would come away talking enthusiastically about the vows they’d just exchanged; his dining partner would walk away picking their teeth and trying to remember what Gordon had been banging on about. So, after each such occasion, I would call up my opposite number on the paper, do a post-mortem, and agree what had been agreed.

  Every newspaper editor I ever met at those events appeared to be driven primarily by the bottom line: was the paper making money?; how were sales, views and advertising revenue doing?; was the business model sustainable?; where could costs be cut? All of which obsessions you could understand in an industry more ruthless than Ancient Rome.

  Beyond that, many of the editors cared deeply about their prestige within the industry – winning awards and such like, getting big stories ahead of their rivals; and some – but by no means all – cared deeply about their access to and influence with individuals in power, not just in government, but in business, sport and showbiz, and about being able to publicly flaunt that influence.

  Of all those I met alongside Gordon, let’s just say there was a spectrum in how they behaved. At one end, you had the likes of Richard Desmond, one of the more hands-on proprietors, and Andy Coulson.

  Gordon was obliged by Tony Blair to go and meet Desmond at the Express headquarters in Blackfriars, near my old Customs building. Blair had told him he thought Desmond could be persuaded to endorse Labour, but the stumbling block was his dissatisfaction with the government’s tax policies. Gordon took Ed Balls and me with him.

  Gordon tried his usual opening patter with editors: ‘What are your big issues at the moment?’; ‘Any big campaigns?’; ‘How’s the circulation doing?’, all a perfect opportunity for Desmond to launch into a debate about their long-running campaign on inheritance tax. But he didn’t seem interested.

  Instead, he launched into a bitter tirade about the rules on sales of capital assets, which he said were preventing him making various planned property moves. Gordon tried to engage him on the detail, and Desmond immediately fetched the Express’s accountant to join the conversation.

  We were left with the slightly troubling sight of Desmond, the accountant and Gordon taking themselves off to one side to go over the details of the property transactions and work out why the capital gains tax charge was so prohibitive. The traditional cast-iron rule that ‘ministers cannot involve themselves in the affairs of individual taxpayers’ was becoming rather rusty before our eyes.

  Ed Balls tried to maintain some semblance of propriety by opening up a conversation with the rest of the table about marginal tax rates, employing his own favourite opening gambit: ‘What do you think average wages are in Britain?’ (Answer: a lot lower than you or Tony Blair think they are.) That debate was progressing reasonably enough when Desmond returned to the table and began a rant about the state of the NHS.

  Gordon tried to reply meaningfully, talking about what we were doing on hospital infections, but again, Desmond didn’t want to know. ‘Oi,’ he said to Peter Hill, the editor of the Daily Express: ‘Show Gordon your X-rays.’ He explained that Peter had been in hospital for a colonoscopy and before Gordon had quite absorbed what that meant, he was being passed some grainy images.

  ‘I don’t believe this,’ Desmond laughed to Peter. ‘Gordon Brown’s looking up your arsehole. The most powerful bloke in Britain and he’s looking up your arse!’ To his credit, Ed Balls leant over and said to Gordon: ‘Right, we’re leaving. Right now.’ Gordon was more polite and explained he had an urgent meeting at the Treasury, and we left, more swearing ringing in our ears as we went. We went down the lift and walked out in silence, before Gordon and Ed turned the air blue themselves around the theme of ‘Fucking Blair.’

  If that was bad, an even more excruciating meeting was Gordon’s breakfast with Andy Coulson in No. 11 in 2004, when Andy was editor of the News of the World. At least Desmond was interested in some issues of public policy, if only to the extent they affected his tax bills or Peter Hill’s arse, but Andy simply wasn’t.

  While it was de rigueur for Gordon and Tony to meet the editors of all the national newspapers, Andy appeared completely baffled as to why he’d been invited in, even though he edited the one with the biggest circulation. He explained that the paper was driven by sport, celebs and scoops, and sat blankly as Gordon tried to interest him in various things the Treasury was doing. Even Gordon didn’t think anything had been agreed after that meeting.

  At the other end of the spectrum, you had the likes of Paul Dacre.

  Dacre and Gordon clearly had a very strong relationship, although – because all their meetings took place behind closed doors – no one was ever quite sure how they interacted with each other in private, or how open, warm or personal they were with each other. It was a little like Gordon’s relationship with Tony Blair, bar all the shouting.

  But one thing was always clear: no Mail reporter, columnist or leader-writer ever told me they’d been instructed to go soft on Gordon as a result of their dealings; and Gordon never told me that we were to put any particular scoops in the Mail’s direction. The business of running the newspaper was entirely separate to whatever personal relationship they had.

  On one occasion, the two men agreed it would be a good idea if Gordon set out his emerging thinking on the issue of ‘Britishness’ and how it could best be celebrated to a group of Dacre’s editorial staff. So Gordon, Ed and I trooped over to the Daily Mail HQ in Kensington for lunch.

  It was a tough old crowd: columnists Simon Heffer, Melanie Phillips and Stephen Glover; and City editor Alex Brummer. Dacre gave Gordon the floor, and he hadn’t got much more than ten minutes in before Heffer started chuntering that he’d never heard so much rubbish in his life. Gordon ploughed on, but Heffer became steadily angrier, eventually intervening.

  ‘This is just utter nonsense. You’re going on about these great British institutions: the monarchy; the church; the NHS; the Army. These are English institutions, not British.’ ‘Tell that to the Highlanders at Alamein’, shot in Ed Balls, at which point Heffer threw down his napkin, said he had far better things to do than listen to any more of this nonsense, and walked out.

  It didn’t get a whole lot better after that: Melanie Phillips said the whole crisis of Britishness was entirely Labour’s doing thanks to its obsession with multiculturalism; Stephen Glover politely doubted whether this agenda would solve Gordon’s problem with Middle England; and Alex Brummer explained people were rather more interested in the value of their house.

  Even if it was a bit of a waste of time, I couldn’t help but admire the way that Paul Dacre rocked back in his chair and let the whole scene unfold, a gentle smile on his face, as if thinking: ‘You want intellectual debate; here it is. You want to know what the Daily Mail thinks; we’re going to tell you.’ It was the definition of speaking truth to power.

  Much as I admired Dacre, he also effectively scuppered one of my greatest plans. Traditionally, the thirty-year rule dictated that the government’s official papers, minutes and internal documents would be published by the National Archives three decades later; usually by that time all the politicians mentioned in them were long gone.

  I sat in the pub one night shortly after the ‘election that never was’ in 2007, and worked out that if we reduced the limit to fifteen years, and started issuing quarterly publications from 2008 in order to catch up, Labour could go into what would now likely be the 2010 election holding out the prospect that, if we won, we would be the only government ever to publish the secrets of our own time in office while still in power. I proposed it to the team working on Gordon’s constitutional review package, and they loved it: transparency; liberty; freedom of inf
ormation; it ticked every box.

  Obviously I didn’t give a cobblers about any of that, but I did have a very clear vision: first that, at a time when relations with the press were at a low point, Gordon would be giving them an extra three major events in the news calendar for the next five years, in addition to the one current annual release of papers; and second, that this meant – if we got the timing right – we’d go into the 2010 election having seen all sorts of secrets revealed from the years of Thatcher’s government, from 1979 until perhaps 1987.

  However, Gordon was nervous about leaping into it and instead asked Paul Dacre to lead a review, which meant both a delay and a total lack of control over the outcome. When his recommendations emerged in 2009, the plan was broadly similar to what I’d proposed but on a much slower timetable, and with the royal family exempted, which defeated some of the long-term news value.

  There were others I would put in the same ‘engaged but impossible to influence’ category as Paul Dacre, editors who were not only totally unimpressed with the power of the politician in front of them, but happy to challenge them both in private and in their papers on why they weren’t doing the right things with it: the Sunday Times’ John Witherow and the Telegraph’s Tony Gallagher to name two.

  For all the talk about the overly cosy relationship that existed in the past between editors of News International titles and senior Labour ministers, the likes of John Witherow prove it was certainly no corporate policy. But did News International titles have more control and influence than other papers over New Labour? Over Tony Blair’s operation, I would definitely say yes. You only have to look at the standard triumvirate for any major Alastair Campbell briefing – Phil Webster at The Times, Trevor Kavanagh at The Sun, and Catherine MacLeod at The Herald – to work out where their priorities lay.

  And we were sometimes the same. We kicked off Gordon’s first party conference as leader in 2007 with a typically under-stated splash in the News of the World (Brown: ‘I’ll scrub the wards clean’) based on an article I’d written in his name about tackling hospital superbugs. It was a great hit, but as Vincent Moss, the laconic political editor of the Sunday Mirror, said to me that evening: ‘Keep riding that tiger – see how far it takes you.’

  In general though, we tried to spread the exclusives around and to ensure that News International titles had no more influence than the other main newspaper groups. However, you could argue that was because, whereas Tony and Alastair were largely in thrall to the Murdoch empire, we were obsessed with keeping every paper on board, and getting every proprietor and editor onside. I would plead fair cop to that.

  As a final thought, you may have noticed something about some of the anecdotes above: the absence of Ed Miliband. As Ed himself might say, let me tell you something. He was the only person who routinely rolled his eyes in boredom if I asked him to be part of Gordon’s entourage for a breakfast or dinner with a newspaper editor. He never instinctively thought the media were that important; he didn’t obsess about them or pretend to understand all their ins and outs.

  That revealed itself, for example, at his first meeting with Rebekah Brooks (Wade until 2009) in 2010, back when he was a candidate for the Labour leadership, and she was still – below proprietor level – the most powerful person in the British media. Now, most politicians with a decent knowledge of the press would have known about Rebekah’s long-standing desire to have children, happily now fulfilled.

  In 2010 though, it was a sensitive subject, which made it all the more surprising that Ed should launch into a cheery ‘How are the kids?’ gambit at the end of their meeting. She tried to let Ed off the hook with the response: ‘My god-children? Oh, they’re great. Thanks for asking.’ ‘No,’ Ed persevered. ‘I meant, how are yours?’, finally receiving the terse response that she didn’t have any.

  I was told that story by someone present as an illustration of Ed’s failings, but – once I looked past the awkwardness of the moment – I thought how refreshing it was to have a leader of a political party who hadn’t memorised every detail of the personal lives of his media counterparts, and who, by extension, wouldn’t spend any longer than necessary worrying about what they wrote about him in their papers. It’s certainly worth a try.

  30

  POLITICAL FOOTBALLS

  Personally, I can’t stand watching football. I hate every single second of it unless Arsenal and Celtic are 3–0 up in added time, or Spurs and Rangers are losing by the same scoreline, and as soon as that brief moment of euphoria is over, I go back to worrying about the next game.

  Years of experiencing only the fear of losing or of seeing enemies win has stripped me of any enjoyment of the game in general. I would rather sit through a Kieslowski retrospective than watch any football match not involving those four teams, and I hate talking about football in general.

  This put me in a strange position of siding with those who rolled their eyes at the obligatory obsession with football that pervaded Labour politics, and Gordon’s Treasury in particular.

  And to be clear, this was no confection, unlike David Cameron’s supposed love of Aston Villa or Tony Blair’s for Newcastle. Gordon had a simply encyclopaedic knowledge of football and a ravenous appetite for any game he could watch.

  Just because he could, he once threw a reception in Downing Street for all the sports editors of the daily and Sunday papers, and that great football writer, Paddy Barclay, decided to grill him on ancient Scottish football results to test how deep the passion went. After five minutes, he conceded defeat, saying to me: ‘That guy knows his bloody stuff.’

  If there were footballers or managers at an external event or on the invite list for a Downing Street reception, Gordon could not be prised away. And they all came away impressed by him and his knowledge. When I had the ultimate honour of stopping Arsène Wenger at a charity reception, so Gordon could say hello, Arsène couldn’t have looked less interested in the prospect, but came away twenty minutes later beaming at the conversation they’d just had about economics.

  When he met Roy Hodgson, the current England boss, at a Downing Street reception, Roy was so taken with their chat and with the nice letter Gordon sent him afterwards congratulating him on keeping Fulham up, that he replied ‘as a long and faithful Labour supporter’, saying: ‘I was so impressed that you were so knowledgeable about so many current football matters. I hope that is not presumptuous of me to wish you every success in this difficult political climate and that your stay as Prime Minister will be a long and fruitful one.’

  What spare time Gordon had up in Scotland he poured into not just supporting Raith Rovers, but pulling strings behind the scenes at the club, sometimes becoming a bit too involved. I rang him in October 2006 and said I’d had a call from a Scottish journalist who’d heard the bizarre rumour that Gordon was seen in a pub car park in Kirkcaldy after midnight apparently negotiating contract terms with Trinidad international Marvin Andrews. Gordon was silent, then said: ‘Have they got photos?’

  Raith was Gordon’s only Scottish team, and – as someone sensitive to such issues – I can confirm it is a myth that he is a secret Glasgow Rangers fan. As much pleasure as he always took in Celtic being beaten, I never saw him take any interest in what the other lot did.

  He kept his English affiliations much closer to his chest. He’d grown up following Spurs’ push-and-run side of the 1960s because of their large contingent of Scottish players, but that had clearly waned over the years, and – even if just out of loyalty to his great friend Sir Alex Ferguson – Manchester United’s result was always the second one he wanted to hear after Raith’s.

  In May 2004, to Gordon’s extreme annoyance, he was told we’d be flying back from America during the Man United– Millwall FA Cup Final. He got Sarah to record the game, and put us all under strict instructions not to say a word to him about the result when we landed. As we touched down at Heathrow, I went to remind the travelling journalists not to say anything, at which point the pilot came over
the intercom and announced that Man United had won 4–0. Even back in economy class, you could hear Gordon’s anguished scream from the front of the plane.

  Nevertheless, even if he was something of a closet Man United fan, Gordon was too canny ever to confirm it or even put himself in a situation where he’d be seen in public watching them. Instead, he saved all his clumsiness about football for the oldest rivalry of the lot: England versus Scotland.

  Two facts are absolutely clear. First, Gordon is as fervent a Scotland fan as you could ever wish to meet, following them to the 1982 World Cup as part of the Tartan Army even before he became an MP, and feeling so ill from drowning his sorrows after their exit that he gave up his thirty-a-day cigarette habit immediately and never smoked again, although he replaced the habit with an addiction to Kit-Kats; not quite thirty a day, but not far off.

  Second, and steeped in his long-standing resistance of Scottish nationalism, Gordon has absolutely no time for Scottish people, or Welsh and Irish come to that, who define themselves by their loathing of England. The first time he shouted abuse at me directly was not over any screw-up but because I said I was supporting Turkey against England in a crucial Euro 2004 qualifier.

  Those two facts should not be mutually contradictory. But by God, we managed to tie ourselves in knots over them. The first time was entirely my fault and a rare occasion when my confidence in just writing things in Gordon’s name without referring them to him was ill placed.

  I was asked by a Sunday Telegraph reporter – ahead of the 2006 World Cup – for Gordon to name the best England game he’d attended. The answer I gave was totally reasonable: that, for the atmosphere rather than the result, it had to be the England vs Scotland game in Euro ’96, when Gary McAllister missed a chance to equalise for Scotland from the penalty and Gazza soon afterwards scored a ‘great goal’ at the other end.