My Life, Our Times

by Gordon Brown

  If anyone says that to fight doesn’t get you anywhere, that politics can’t make a difference, that all parties are the same, then look what we’ve achieved together since 1997: the winter fuel allowance, the shortest waiting times in history, crime down by a third, the creation of Sure Start, the Cancer Guarantee, record results in schools, more students than ever, the Disability Discrimination Act, devolution, civil partnerships, peace in Northern Ireland, the social chapter, half a million children out of poverty, maternity pay, paternity leave, child benefit at record levels, the minimum wage, the ban on cluster bombs, the cancelling of debt, the trebling of aid, the first ever Climate Change Act; that’s the Britain we’ve been building together, that’s the change we choose.

  At the start of 2010, only three months before the declaration of the general election, almost all my waking hours had been taken up not with campaign planning but with another Northern Ireland crisis: deadlock around the same contentious issues was again threatening to bring down the Assembly, force the reinstatement of direct rule from London and herald a return to sectarian violence. We tried everything to find a resolution of the key issue: who was to be justice minister. Despite interventions from me, Taoiseach Brian Cowen as well as Bill and Hillary Clinton, by the end of January there seemed no alternative but for Brian and me to decamp to Belfast in the hope that each of the many blockages to a deal could be removed.

  After two days and nights of constant talks, both sides were as far apart as ever. Brian and I then took the decision to leave – risking a complete breakdown but hoping that this would make the parties realise they could not hold out indefinitely. This worked. Ten days later, Brian and I flew to Stormont and sealed a comprehensive arrangement. Ten years on from the Good Friday Agreement, we had now completed the devolution process. Paying tribute to Tony Blair, the Irish government and the people of Northern Ireland, I spoke of a ‘momentous journey, from division to dialogue, from conflict to cooperation … after decades of violence, years of talks, weeks of stalemate, this is the day we have secured the future’.

  I was then, and still am, clear how we finally got a deal. When trouble flares up in Northern Ireland, I always remind myself of two basic preconditions that we forget at our peril if we are to maintain the peace: the UK as an honest broker, and having the Irish government as a partner. When the 2010 election came around, however, a new fuse had been lit which eventually undermined hopes of continued power-sharing between Northern Ireland’s opposed factions. The Conservatives and Ulster Unionists entered a pact to stand in Northern Irish seats as ‘the Ulster Conservatives and Unionists – New Force’, at a stroke ending the long-standing neutrality that ensured both the main UK parties could be honest brokers in Northern Ireland disputes. If Theresa May was later to mortgage that neutrality in a deal with the Democratic Unionist Party, David Cameron had already breached it with this pact.

  Should I have handed over power in the months before the election to a new leader? I did think of this, in particular over Christmas 2009, and I would have stepped down had it not been that I had set myself a clear target of building a better post-recession economy. I felt that the work I had started was not yet done. Given what we had been through to bring the economy back to life, I felt it would be a dereliction of duty not to complete the job.

  But that is not how the press saw it. We know now from the private correspondence of Aidan Barclay, the chairman of the Telegraph Media Group, that David Cameron was offered the opportunity to speak to the Daily Telegraph editor every day of the campaign, to make sure the paper’s headlines helped him. The Express was as anti-Labour as it always had been. Paul Dacre made no secret of the fact that he ran the Mail as a Tory paper. But it was the Murdoch media, in alliance with the Conservatives, that sought to damage me most. In 2007 the Sun agreed to help David Cameron by pulling away from their petition for a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. They ran campaigns on crime and Afghanistan that could not have been better written by Conservative Central Office. Not that the Murdoch empire got nothing in return. The Conservatives now promised Murdoch new broadcasting laws to neuter the regulator, Ofcom, to undermine the BBC – its licence fee, its Internet presence, its commercial activities, its stake in sporting events – and even hinted they would advantage Sky by breaking up British Telecom. Now during election year – as Leveson would reveal – they were in day-to-day communication. Later I could only laugh as I read of the constant texts exchanged by David Cameron and Rebekah Brooks; but no one should be in any doubt that the Sun and the Conservative Party were on a joint enterprise in the year to May 2010.

  While my predecessors suffered from this, in one way at least I was in a more disadvantageous position. The Tory-supporting papers – The Times, the Mail, the Sun, the Telegraph, the Express – represented 70 per cent of newspaper readers. Adding in the Independent which wanted a Liberal–Labour coalition and the Guardian, who declared for the Lib Dems, newspapers which accounted for 90 per cent of all readers opposed Labour. That would matter more in the 2010 election than in 2017. Not, in fact, because the Guardian and Independent editorial line swayed their own readers, as a bigger share of their readership voted Labour in 2010 than in 2005, but because of the right-wing press. Half the Sun’s readers had voted Labour in 1997 and 2001. Now, in 2010, just over a quarter – 28 per cent – did. Seven years later the Sun’s sales had halved – and with Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and social media, new and pervasive sources of information were available. A relentless drumbeat of criticism, distortion and falsehood unfairly directed against Jeremy Corbyn had far less impact than the press barons counted on. There is a dark side to this, in that social-media sites can spread a contagion of falsehood within a matter of minutes. But they do provide a platform for leaders to communicate directly with the public and for supporters to organise and interact with each other. I do not think the influence the tabloids had in 2010 is ever likely to be as significant again.

  Up against all of this, some in Labour felt a spell in opposition might be beneficial. You could not say that of Peter Mandelson and Douglas Alexander, who were coordinating our election strategy and working all hours running our day-to-day campaign. But many Labour MPs, fearing they would lose, stood down and gave their Conservative challengers, many of whom had been in the field for some years, a clear run against a hitherto unknown Labour candidate. Not only did we lose the benefit of incumbency in many marginal seats, we undoubtedly lost seats in London because of our principled stand in favour of the expansion of Heathrow airport. The Conservatives exploited local resistance to a project that I believed was in the national interest. As a result, the eventual Heathrow expansion would be delayed for at least ten years.

  For months we had been working flat out to handle the financial crisis. The election campaign ratcheted up the pace even further: I was now moving from place to place, staying in a succession of hotels, unable to operate to a fixed routine. This was compounded by the novelty of three televised leaders’ debates that demanded time for preparation – time that I did not really have when constantly touring the country and still running the government, including making difficult decisions on Afghanistan.

  Time was not the only resource we sorely lacked. The party’s debt, which was being reduced at the rate of £3 million a year, still stood at £20 million. So even after securing a higher level of donations than in 2005 we could afford to spend only £33.8 million in 2010 compared with £49.8 million in 2005. In fact our direct campaign expenditure in 2010 was only £8 million, down from almost £18 million in 2005. In 2010 the Tories outspent us two to one.

  While it is no excuse for losing – at all times I have taken personal responsibility for the defeat – this meant we could not afford the posters, billboards and newspaper adverts that the Tories were spending millions on. Money did make a real difference: while we were forced to reduce our advertising spend to a few hundred thousand pounds, the Tories spent almost £8 million on that alone. Moreover, at a time when it was bec
oming increasingly important, we could not afford the social-media campaign we needed. Douglas Alexander and David Muir were being asked to do more with less. We were not so much out-campaigned by the Tories as outspent.

  This made the televised debates more appealing. I agreed to them because I thought it right that the country hear the arguments debated through TV questioning. And, of course, without them our underspend on advertising would have been even more exposed. The debates created a more level playing field that disguised how limited our resources were, offering us free advertising at a time when we could not afford paid advertising. But, weighed down in the autumn and early spring by responding to the recession, I had not given enough attention to the downsides of TV debates. They tend to favour opposition leaders, untainted by any record in office, as President Obama discovered in his first 2012 presidential debate against Mitt Romney. In Britain in 2010, they also gave the third party the same platform as the two main leaders. Both factors helped Nick Clegg, who did very well and was able to give the impression of offering a fresh start as a new kid on the block.

  What’s more, the once-a-week debates did suck the oxygen out of the campaign on the ground. In the weeks that the debates took place, on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday there was understandable media speculation about what would happen in the debate on Thursday, while on Friday, Saturday and Sunday the issue was the fallout. Speeches were drowned out. I remember the preparations for the second debate, which would be about foreign affairs, being especially rigorous as we anticipated a difficult time over Iraq and Afghanistan. As for the final debate, I went very hard on David Cameron over the threat to tax credits. Working women in particular feared their loss under a Conservative government – and from that point we put the Tories’ proposals under much more scrutiny.

  Only when the debates were over did any of my speeches gain traction. Even so, I am still in favour of TV debates, though it is important they are staged in such a way that they do not wholly overshadow what happens on the doorstep, at rallies and in visits meeting people on the ground. I cannot see how leaders hoping to govern the country can justify avoiding a direct encounter with each other – and the electorate – on the most visible of platforms.

  Not all face-to-face encounters end well. On the day before the last leaders’ debate at Birmingham University, as I was being driven from one stop to another, I blurted out a private remark in an unguarded moment about Gillian Duffy, a voter whom I had met in Rochdale. I was in the north-west to focus on the increased police numbers that were helping us tackle crime. Mrs Duffy, however, wanted to talk about something else – immigration. And as a media scrum built up around us, I signalled to the staff who were with me that it was time to migrate to the next stop.

  Normally as I got into the car, someone travelling with me would remove the mic from my lapel. And, of course, usually the broadcaster who had pinned it would have turned the feed off from their studio. The previous week Sarah had been with me and always removed it. But on this occasion, with the microphone still on and my words being transmitted to Sky TV, I made the mistake of describing Mrs Duffy as a ‘sort of bigoted woman’. It was a remark born of frustration that the next day’s media coverage would not be about our policing policies but immigration. Now instead it would be about my insulting a voter, which no amount of apologising could prevent.

  To make matters worse, when I entered a BBC studio for a radio interview with Jeremy Vine an hour later, I did not even know that the remark had been overheard and was now becoming public property. Without warning, they played my own words back to me. And when I put my head in my hands, I had no idea that the interview was also being filmed. One mistake had led to two more.

  Even on air it seemed obvious to me what I had to do: my instinctive response was to say, ‘I apologise if I have said anything like that. What I think she was raising with me was an issue of immigration and saying that there were too many people from eastern Europe in the country. I do apologise if I have said anything that has been hurtful, and I will apologise to her personally.’ And when asked who I blamed, I replied: ‘I’m blaming myself. I blame myself for what is done.’

  I went to the home of Mrs Duffy to apologise in person. She kindly allowed me to explain to her what had happened. I tried to limit the damage with a statement saying: ‘I’m mortified by what’s happened. I’ve given her my sincere apologies. I misunderstood what she said, and she has accepted there was a misunderstanding … If you like, I’m a penitent sinner.’ But it was to no avail; the damage had been done.

  I did not relax my campaigning efforts, though. On the Saturday before the vote I travelled to Newcastle and Sunderland and made speeches in both cities before visiting Tynemouth. On the Sunday, I did a full tour round London seats – starting with Eltham, Peckham and then Streatham for a service at the Church of the New Testament, then touring Dulwich, Tooting, Hammersmith and Harrow before finishing off with a visit to campaign in Hampstead with Glenda Jackson.

  On the Monday, I visited a number of south-east seats and then Lowestoft and Great Yarmouth on the coast of Suffolk and Norfolk, before the Citizens UK Rally in London. On Tuesday and Wednesday, I took in the Midlands and Yorkshire, staying in Leeds overnight and speaking in Bradford. And then in the final hours I travelled to Liverpool and the north-west before driving north to Carlisle, where I met staff at the haulage company Eddie Stobart, doing a live interview from there for the BBC Six O’Clock News. There was no let-up as our car then drove across the border to Dumfries and Galloway to visit this marginal Scottish seat. In the car, my special adviser Kirsty McNeill and I were furiously writing my last major speech, a plea to Labour voters to ‘come home’. I spoke at 9 p.m. and was back in my bed in Fife by midnight.

  By the time the polls opened on election day, I had slept only a few hours. I went with Sarah to cast our votes around 11 a.m. I spent the rest of election day preparing for every possible eventuality. The Conservatives clearly expected an overall majority. The Liberal Democrats were anticipating they would move into second place. I thought both were wrong.

  When the results began to come in, it was clear that Labour were going to lose seats, but it was equally obvious that the Tories would not make the gains they needed for a majority. Sunderland Central, a new seat far more marginal than its predecessor, revealed a nominal swing to the Conservatives far below the 5 per cent required. Labour held Gedling, Telford and then Tooting in London, all seats the Tories had targeted. In fact, with the exception of the constituencies affected by Heathrow’s expansion, we mostly held our own in London. It was also clear we were doing well in Scotland and Wales. One of our impressive young ministers, Gareth Thomas, narrowly held on to Harrow West despite a swing to the Conservative challenger. And then across the country we won in areas where we were expected to lose, such as Birmingham Edgbaston, Plymouth Moor View and Exeter. They had one thing in common: good candidates who had stayed the course.

  On Friday morning, our flight left Scotland at 3 a.m., touched down in Stansted at 4 a.m., and I arrived at Labour Party HQ in Victoria Street around 5 a.m. After thanking the loyal but weary staff I returned to Downing Street. It was a strange No. 10. The offices had already been reconfigured. We could not log onto the No. 10 computer system. Email accounts had been deleted. Clearly someone had expected us never to return. Somehow, though, we plugged in a laptop and some printers. When I went up to our flat, I was pleased to see that at least the beds were still there. Having enjoyed another short bout of sleep – around three hours – I went to work at 10 a.m. I had my energy back.

  By this time, with 615 constituency results declared, a hung parliament was a certainty. The senior civil servants at the Cabinet Office, primed for this situation and armed with their Cabinet Manual, now moved into action to host what they knew would follow – inter-party negotiations. This was something I had anticipated before the election, and now authorised.

  When I heard Nick Clegg’s statement half an hour later that he woul
d first talk to the Tories – and that David Cameron would soon issue a statement of his own – I decided we could not sit still but had to act quickly.

  I had already conferred with the then Transport Secretary, Andrew Adonis, our best go-between with the Liberal Democrats, on the morning of polling day. I was conscious of what had happened in Scotland in 2007 when the SNP had not won a majority but seized victory by claiming it. The Labour–Liberal Democrat coalition in Scotland could have made a compelling case for staying in power, but the SNP leader Alex Salmond simply went to the Scottish Parliament and announced he would form a government – a gesture which destroyed any residual self-confidence the Scottish Lib Dems had about renewing a coalition with us. My moves on the Friday morning were designed to avoid any Salmond-style declaration by David Cameron.

  We reminded the media of the constitutional position – that the incumbent government stays until someone else can produce a majority. I talked to Cabinet members, senior party figures and trade union leaders, telling them that we were considering talks with the Liberal Democrats. I was never one to exaggerate the likelihood of securing a deal, but the numbers showed we could construct a governing coalition. Taken together, Labour and Lib Dem seats amounted to 315, outnumbering the Tories’ 306; both of us were short of an outright majority. But we needed only eleven more votes – or even fewer as Sinn Féin never voted – for a majority in the House of Commons. Because the nationalist parties in Wales and Scotland had to consider their own elections in 2011, I knew that they would not dare to bring down a progressive coalition for fear of alienating the progressive vote in both countries. While the Ulster Unionist Party and the Conservatives had stood under the same banner in Northern Ireland, neither had gained any seats in Northern Ireland. I believed that if we remained neutral towards all the Northern Irish parties they would not vote us out. The figures showed clearly that with Lib Dem support we could govern.