As I knew this would be my last Budget, I wanted to give Gladstone’s ancient red box its last outing. It was deteriorating and the National Archives, who kept it in the old Cabinet war rooms, did not want it taken out again; but they relented for what they said was the last time, although subsequently they appeared to relent just once more for the new Tory Chancellor in his first Budget. The box has finally been retired, but will, I hope, remain on permanent public display.
There was one poignant coda for me. After I had delivered the Budget in the House, Margaret had friends and family in for afternoon tea, and I called in to say hello. Margaret took me aside to tell me that my uncle, my father’s brother, had died. It was a shock. He had been a constant pillar in my life. She had been telephoned as we were preparing to leave the No. 11 front door to face the world’s press gathered in Downing Street. I had known there was something up then, from the way she looked, but I had put it down to the occasion. She did the right thing by delaying the news. I was very fond of my uncle and spent most of my childhood holidays with him on his farm. It was probably better that I didn’t know as I delivered what is one of the most difficult speeches anyone has to deliver in the House of Commons.
The Budget over, the general election campaign was shortly to get under way. First, though, a novelty for me: the first televised UK election debate. For much of the previous year, there had been a campaign to get the party leaders to agree to take part in a series of televised debates to be run during the general election campaign. From a sitting Prime Minister’s point of view, there is no advantage in this whatsoever, provided he is ahead in the polls. He is well known, can be on television whenever he wants, and all he will be doing is giving an equal platform to the leaders of the main opposition parties. For that very reason, Tony had refused to take part when debates had been suggested in previous elections, despite the fact that he would certainly have come out on top.
Now things were different, and Gordon concluded that it would be seen as weakness on his part if he declined to debate with his opponents. He is a good debater in the Commons chamber, although television demands different skills. Demeanour and appearance dwarf the need to be acquainted with the facts. It was agreed, then, that ITV, Sky and the BBC would each screen a debate over the three weeks before polling day. Channel 4 lost out and therefore asked whether there could be a Chancellors’ debate. Neither George Osborne nor I was especially keen. Neither of us knew what Vince Cable thought, but we kept in touch through our special advisers; each agreeing not to do anything without consulting the other. It was one of those occasions when the fear was that you could only lose. If you do well, no one remembers; put a foot wrong and it is a disaster. However, we eventually decided to take part. Our staff set stringent rules on timing and conduct down to the point where the possibility of spontaneity was entirely eliminated. At this point I realized that I couldn’t just turn up on the night. Instead, I had to put in some hours practising at the podium, under the tutelage of an American who had been brought across to advise Gordon on his debate preparations.
On my first practice run, Alastair Campbell acted the part of George Osborne, a role he relished. I forget who played Vince Cable. I was pleased that Alastair had agreed to come back to help us with the campaign. Although demonized by large sections of the media by the time he left No. 10 eight years earlier, he was an extremely effective operator. In fact, the more ferocious the attacks from his right-wing critics became, the more it was evident how effective he was. He has many strengths. He understands the British media in a way that few others do. And, like me, he enjoys gallows humour.
On the night, looking at my two colleagues, I could see that we had all been to the same acting class. I’d been thoroughly schooled on what to do, to lean into the podium, not back, to be seen to make the occasional note, as if paying careful attention to what my opponent was saying. Critically, none of us was going to take a chance. We almost played for a draw, and that is more or less what the audience thought. We did another one for the BBC for a daytime audience, halfway through the campaign. It was much better, not least because Vince Cable’s inconsistencies were exposed in a pincer movement. He was caught flip-flopping on the issue of whether running a deficit during the recession was a good thing or not. His lofty dismissal of his opponents’ ‘schoolboy economics’ was at odds with his nervous failure to explain his own complex tax redistribution plans. Even George Osborne’s ill-guided opposition to nearly all of our economic recovery plans sounded logical by comparison. He was further trounced when reminded by the host that he had compared Britain to Zimbabwe when when we introduced Quantitive Easing, only to back the plan now that it was working.
Sadly, few people watched it. Those who did were mostly viewers sitting in the parties’ headquarters. In the event, I enjoyed the debates. In the days that followed I was struck by how much people commented on the style and demeanour of the three candidates. When I would gently ask what they thought of what we had said, very little had got through. That, I think, was a big problem with the leaders’ debates too.
Those debates dominated the entire election campaign, to the exclusion of just about everything else, including close scrutiny of policies. As Douglas Alexander had accurately foreseen, the first week was spent looking forward to the first debate. The second week, or at least the first part of it, was spent discussing how the candidates had fared. This was especially so because Nick Clegg for the Liberals had done surprisingly well. I very much hope he savoured the moment. Speculation then moved on to who would win the second debate, after which opinion was more evenly divided. Then discussion moved on to the final debate. Having three people in the debates made it very difficult to have the sort of spontaneous exchanges that have from time to time proved so devastating in US presidential debates.
The focus on the leadership debates meant that all three parties got by without ever having to spell out in any detail what they would do in government. The gladiatorial style masked the essential policy questions. Given that whoever was going to be elected would have to take some of the most difficult decisions faced by any post-war government, this was a pity. Traditionally, parties will devote a day to their economic policy, then a day to education or transport. In that way, issues are explored and details drawn out. Very little of that happened during the general election campaign of 2010. Next time around we will need to think long and hard about what we do. There’s no closing the door, there will be televised debates now – although just how a coalition is to be represented against a single opposition party remains to be seen. But in a democracy there needs to be some scrutiny of what the parties promise, it can’t all be wrapped up in the dazzle of television.
This campaign, for me, was different from the previous three general elections. In 1997 I spent six weeks in our headquarters in Millbank Tower, making sure that we made no unfunded promises, scrutinizing every item we put out, and doing numerous interviews to feed the 24-hour news channels. I got out occasionally to campaign in my own seat in Edinburgh, and it was a welcome relief to meet normal people. In 2001 I performed a similar role for the first part of the campaign, but as it was clear that we were going to win by another landslide I spent the second half visiting marginal constituencies, something I enjoyed.
In 2005, as I was Secretary of State for Scotland as well as transport secretary, I ran the Scottish campaign. I enjoyed that, especially as I was fighting a slightly different constituency in Edinburgh. My old Edinburgh Central seat had disappeared as a result of boundary changes and I was now seeking to represent Edinburgh South West. It was a new seat which took in a great deal of the old Pentland constituency which Sir Malcolm Rifkind, a former Tory foreign secretary, had held on to through thick and thin until he finally succumbed in the landslide of 1997. So it suited me to be in Scotland. I made one trip to London that election, to arrive in the midst of yet another spat between the Brown and Blair camps. I was happy to leave to return north.
In 2010 my rol
e was less clear. Unlike the previous campaigns, which had largely been run with military precision, this one was not. The problem was that Gordon was increasingly absorbed with preparation for the televised debates. That meant he was out of London for days at a time, which resulted in his being detached from the day-to-day campaign. We had good people running it: Peter, Alastair and Douglas all knew their stuff. And, as ever, we had many dedicated staff and volunteers who were happy to work around the clock, doing all that was asked of them and more.
In previous campaigns, the day would begin with a news conference to set out the themes we would be campaigning on, as well as to attack or respond to the opposition parties. There is a sort of rhythm, and it does mean that many more issues are covered. This time there were many fewer such news conferences. The whole campaign was overshadowed by the leaders’ debates. However, the early days were dominated, all too predictably, by our plans to raise National Insurance – the so-called ‘tax on jobs’. Day after day, the Tories plugged the story, with a succession of business people coming out to support them. I remember being asked by a naive soul at party headquarters to get some business support for the National Insurance rise. Maybe they are still looking.
Of course, I defended our position, and made the point in an interview with George Osborne that if he wasn’t going to put up National Insurance he would have to put up VAT. He said he didn’t have to. Yet I know that that is precisely what they always planned to do. This focus on National Insurance was bad for us. First, it reminded the voters that they would be paying more; secondly, for the first time in years, we had lost the support of the business constituency; and thirdly, there was no appetite on the part of commentators to ask the Tories how they were going to find the money they would lose by cancelling the increase. It was obvious to me, and I said so, that they would have to put up VAT; but they got away with it. Although I attended many strategy meetings, somehow we just had no clear sense of momentum. I was happy, then, to spend an increasing amount of time on the road. There was one final spat before I set off. Ed Balls and Gordon wanted to make a virtue of us not increasing VAT by ruling it out for the whole of the next parliament. They then wanted to challenge the Tories to do the same. Nice electoral politics, but economic madness, was my view. No Chancellor can tie his hands on tax.
Leaving special advisers Sam White and Torsten Henricson-Bell to look after my interests at party headquarters, Catherine MacLeod and I set out on the road or, more precisely, on a train. We visited every part of the country during the campaign. We even managed to get the last flight to Plymouth before most of Europe’s air transport was grounded by the cloud of volcanic ash blowing in from Iceland. To get to my next stop, Edinburgh, I had a ten-hour rail journey through England’s highways and byways. Iceland finally got its revenge on me.
We visited marginal seats in the south-east, where the reports were not good; in South Wales, where the picture was worryingly mixed; and in the north-west, where it was bad. Only in London and in Scotland were things better than expected. In Hammersmith, in west London, a real bellwether seat which the Tories had to win to get a majority, I was pleasantly surprised at the warm reception we received on a walkabout in the high street. In my own constituency, I thought my majority would be down but I was fairly sure we would hold on.
I did not see much of Gordon during the campaign, although we did have one stage-managed joint visit to the East Midlands and Yorkshire. I was told that Gordon wanted to discuss things with me and for us to be seen together. The discussion on the train journey north turned out to be a list of instructions, but the visits were illuminating. These were precisely the areas in Derby and south Nottinghamshire where we should have been able to capitalize on what we had done, but time and again I met people who felt that, while others had done all right, they hadn’t. It was the same story everywhere. People had worked hard, struggled at times to bring up their families, their sons and daughters had been the first generation to go to university, and yet they felt badly done by.
In the middle of this visit, Gordon and I attended a coffee morning with our candidate. This format is imported from the US – where else? – and is meant to show politicians listening to the people. The people, as far as I could see, were either related to, or friends of, our candidate. Not surprisingly, they were all enthusiastic – as the media invited to view the spectacle soon clocked. I escaped early. I was to talk to the press entourage, who were being taken by coach to the next stop. As I left the scene of the coffee morning, in a cul-de-sac with well-tended gardens, I passed a crowd of weary hacks waiting for Gordon to come out of the house. Up and down the street were many people who had come to their gates to see what was going on. Halfway along, I saw a lady emerge from her house with an all-too-purposeful stride.
The lady accosted me and demanded to know what Labour had ever done for people like her. She was angry and felt let down. Behind her were three teenage children, crimson-faced, staring at the ground with oh-no-mum expressions on their faces. Seasoned campaigners know that you have to decide early on in an encounter like this whether or not you will make any headway by having a discussion, or whether the whole thing will escalate out of control. If that is to happen, it’s better to break it off. A row in public can be very damaging; but appearing to run away can look worse. As these thoughts crossed my mind, Catherine drew my attention to the hacks, who had sprung to life and, sensing prey, were running up the street, cameras and microphones at the ready.
So I decided to stay, and said to her, ‘You must have lived around here when this area was devastated after the miners’ strike in the 1980s.’ She agreed that those had been tough times for her generation. I asked what she hoped for for her children. She was hugely ambitious for them, as you would expect. By the time the press corps had caught up with us we were chatting away amiably, and the journalists trudged away in search of better quarry. I knew, though, when I parted company with the lady, from the expressions on the faces and the brief conversations I had had on the way up the street, that we would lose this marginal seat – and, as it turned out, seats like that, right across areas of England that should have provided our bedrock support. We had failed the ‘Tesco test’.
A reception in Sheffield, on the other hand, was warm indeed. Parting company with Gordon, we headed off to visit one of the many Morrison’s supermarkets I was to visit in every corner of the land. They were most accommodating, I think, to all parties. I can tell you where exactly to find the fish, how the meat is displayed and the bread cooked, in any branch of the chain. It was the same in every store we visited. This one, just outside Leeds, again confirmed my fears: this was a marginal seat and we were not going to win it.
There was one vignette which, although comical, illustrates the problems we had. I think it was next to the bread and cake aisle that a lady came up to me with the familiar I’m-never-going-to-vote-Labour-again look. She said, ‘You have let all these foreigners take over our country. You should keep them out.’ There was no point in an argument amidst the biscuits at a busy teatime. Seeking to terminate the discussion, I asked her if she lived locally. ‘Oh no, I’m just visiting my mum. I live in France,’ she said. She saw no irony. But what she said illustrated another weakness for us: immigration is an issue, and for too long we refused to talk about it.
I did make one speech on the economy, which was a repeat of the themes I had covered in the Budget, as well as an attack on the Tories. It was fairly strong, I thought, delivered on the top floor of an Edinburgh hotel, with splendid views across the city’s dramatic skyline to the River Forth. Just as I began to take questions, disaster struck. Catherine took me aside to tell me that she had only the sketchiest of details, but that something had gone very wrong on a walkabout in Rochdale on which Gordon had apparently fallen out with a voter, Gillian Duffy. Happily, the press contingent 300 miles further north hadn’t heard this yet. We got good television coverage, for about twenty-five minutes. From then on it was clear that my message
on the economy was sunk.
We stood grouped around the television. It was as bad as it could be. I could see exactly what had happened, having been in similar situations myself. Someone will come up to you, mount a robust attack, then it becomes apparent that they are actually on your side and feel entitled to have their say. Gordon dealt with the confrontation itself quite well. The damage was done by the failure to remove his lapel microphone when he got back into his car. The effect of his comments about Mrs Duffy, his blaming of his closest aides, and above all his evident discomfiture on television in the aftermath, was devastating. Amazingly, we held the seat.
Throughout the campaign I managed to get back to Edinburgh more than I had expected. The reception was polite, even warm. One thing was clear: even in this traditionally conservative city, they did not want the Tories. Many former Labour voters who had voted Liberal Democrat in protest at the Iraq war came back to us. I thought we would hold the seat, although with a reduced majority. I met up with Gordon in the last few days of the campaign, when the Cabinet assembled for an eve-of-poll photo-call in Birmingham. It became, literally, a car crash. We were arranged in a semicircle, where Gordon, Harriet and myself were to say a few well-chosen words before dispersing to different parts of the country. Facing us was a bank of journalists and party workers. As Gordon was saying his piece, I caught sight of a council refuse lorry driving past with its crew leaning out of the windows, shouting at us.
‘That lorry’s going to crash,’ I thought, with a sinking feeling. Sure enough, it did. It appeared to hit a passing car with an almighty crash. Naturally, many of the party workers, with photographers close behind, ran off to see if anyone had been hurt. Our photo-call continued.
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