by Blair, Tony
As I walked down the row of faces, all unfamiliar to me – people who would be companions in the events to come, and many of them friends – some were a little upset at the departure of the old guard, and a few of the women were sniffling or weeping. By the time I reached the end of the line, I was beginning to feel a right heel about the whole thing, coming in and creating all this distress. Needless to say, I got over it.
Then I entered the Cabinet Room. I had never seen it before. It is immediately impressive, both in itself and because of the history made within it. I stopped for a moment and looked around, suddenly struck by the sanctity of it, a thousand images fluttering through my mind, like one of those moving picture-card displays, of Gladstone, Disraeli, Asquith, Lloyd George, Churchill, Attlee, of historic occasions of war and peace, of the Irish and Michael Collins, of representatives of numerous colonies coming through its doors and negotiating independence. This room had seen one of the greatest empires of all time developed, sustained and let go. I thought of the crises and catastrophes, decisions and deliberations, the meetings to discuss the mundane and the fundamental business of governing a nation. All of it had run through this smallish room looking out over the Downing Street garden, with two false pillars marking the end of the table. The table itself is the product of a decision by Macmillan to have it shaped oval so that the prime minister sitting in the centre could see the faces and body language of all the Cabinet, and in particular any little signal of loyalty or dissent. There was the prime minister’s chair, the only one with arms to it, either because it should be more grand, or perhaps because the prime minister, above all others, needs more support.
Sitting in the chair next to it, in the otherwise empty room, was the Cabinet Secretary Sir Robin Butler, famous in his own right and immensely experienced, who had worked closely with both Margaret Thatcher and John Major. He indicated to me the prime minister’s chair, which I sat down in, relieved to get the weight off my feet after the tumult of the last twenty-four hours.
‘So,’ he said, ‘now what?’ It was a good question. ‘We have studied the manifesto,’ he went on, something which rather irrationally disturbed me, ‘and we are ready to get to work on it for you.’
In the light of what later became quite a vigorous disagreement about the nature of decision-making in my government and the so-called ‘sofa’ style of it, I should say that right at the outset I found Robin thoroughly professional, courteous and supportive. He didn’t like some of the innovations, but he did his level best to make them work. He was impartial in the best traditions of the British Civil Service, intelligent and deeply committed to the country.
But he was a traditionalist with all the strengths and weaknesses that reverence for tradition implies; and in this, he was thoroughly representative of a large part of the senior Civil Service. Very early on, I could tell that he didn’t really approve of the positions of Jonathan Powell as chief of staff, Alastair and, though less so, my old friend and general factotum Anji Hunter. Even though Jonathan had been in the Civil Service, they were all ‘special advisers’, political appointments brought in by the new government. The British system is essentially run by the career Civil Service right up to the most senior levels. Special advisers are few and far between, unlike in the American system, for example, which has thousands. When after a few years in government I accumulated seventy of them, it was considered by some to be a bit of a constitutional outrage.
They are, however, a vital part of modern government. They bring political commitment, which is not necessarily a bad thing (I always used to think such commitment was more frowned upon when originating from the left, but maybe that’s paranoia!); they can bring expertise; and properly deployed they interact with and are strengthened by the professional career civil servants, who likewise are improved by interaction with them. In the light of what I am going to say, I should emphasise that many of the civil servants not merely worked well with the special advisers, but enjoyed doing so and genuine friendships were often made.
There was a discussion between Robin and Jonathan about whether Alastair or Jonathan could give instructions to civil servants, which eventually we compromised over. (And incidentally, neither ever had a single complaint made against them from civil servants all the time they were in Downing Street.) I could not believe, and still don’t, that my predecessors did not have a de facto chief of staff, but Jonathan was the first openly acknowledged and nominated one. Robin didn’t much like all this, and in his mind it became conflated with another issue: how decisions were taken. Here, he had a more solid point. Truthfully, for the first year or so, as we found our feet and grappled with the challenges of governing, we did tend to operate as a pretty tight unit, from which some of the senior civil servants felt excluded.
From our perspective, we were working flat out to deliver an enormous series of commitments to change. We were very quickly appreciating the daunting revelation of the gap between saying and doing. In Opposition, the gap is nothing because ‘saying’ is all you can do; in government, where ‘doing’ is what it’s all about, the gap is suddenly revealed as a chasm of bureaucracy, frustration and disappointment. So we tended to work in the first months of government rather as we had when campaigning for office and changing the Labour Party.
However, Robin was only with us for eight months. In time, we broadened out, we learned, we adjusted. Ministers, sympathetic to the changes we were making, came to the fore. The modus operandi shifted. Cabinet and Cabinet committees flourished, and there was a better balance between special advisers and civil servant input.
The allegations of ‘sofa government’ were always, therefore, ludicrously overblown. For a start, leaders have always had inner circles of advisers. What’s more, although Robin used to make much of the fact that my predecessors had been sticklers for Cabinet government, I found this a trifle inconsistent with my recollection, admittedly from the outside, of Mrs Thatcher and her Cabinet relations.
There was a more serious point, at the root of which was a disagreement which touches on the way modern government functions. As I shall come to later, the skill set required for making the modern state work effectively is different from that needed in the mid-twentieth century: it is far less to do with conventional policy advice, and far more to do with delivery and project management. The skills are actually quite analogous to those of the private sector. This is true of civil servants. It is also true of politicians. The skills that bring you to the top of the greasy pole in Parliament are not necessarily those that equip you to run a department with a workforce numbered in thousands and a budget numbered in billions.
Moreover, the pace of modern politics and the intrusion of media scrutiny – rightly or wrongly of an entirely different order today than even fifteen or twenty years ago – mean that decisions have to be made, positions taken, strategies worked out and communicated with a speed that is the speed of light compared to the speed of sound.
Of course, none of the above means that decisions should be taken without proper analysis, but it does mean that the old infrastructure of policy papers submitted by civil servants to Cabinet, who then debate and decide with the prime minister as benevolent chairman, is not suitable in responding to the demands of a fast-changing world or an even faster-changing political landscape. Into this infrastructure, the import of special advisers is not a breach in the walls of propriety; it is a perfectly sensible way of enlarging the scope of advice and making government move. As I discovered early on, the problem with the traditional Civil Service was not obstruction, but inertia.
However, all of that was in the future as I sat and contemplated giving this famed British system its instructions. The first command was in conjunction with the Treasury to work on Bank of England independence. The day passed in a bit of a daze, principally occupied with appointing Cabinet members and ministers. This was a moment of joy for some and anguish for others. The key positions were already allocated, but the Shadow Cabinet was larger tha
n the Cabinet could be. I had to tell three members that though they could be ministers, I could not put them in the Cabinet. Two agreed to take the ministerial positions, one preferred to go on the back benches. Hmm, welcome to the hot seat, I thought, knowing that in the years to come, the members of the ejected, dejected and rejected would only grow.
But in those first hours, days and weeks, the government led a charmed life, as you might expect. The first evening as prime minister I went back to Richmond Crescent to spend my last night there. A couple of days later we ate a Chinese takeaway in Downing Street and my dad came down to be with me, which was lovely for him and made me feel very proud.
I got my first red box, my first recommendations, my first letters to sign. The team were all finding their feet, making the transition from Opposition assault unit, scaling the walls of the citadel, to sitting in the ruler’s palace in charge of all we surveyed. My core staff were an extraordinary group of people, very different in character and outlook, but knitted together like a regiment, imbued with a common purpose and with a camaraderie that had a spirit of steel running through it. I have a few rules about people I work with really closely. Work comes first. No blame culture. Fun, in its proper place, is good. Disloyalty has no place. Look out for each other. Stick together. Respect each other. It helps if you also like each other.
By and large, they did. Jonathan had had initial difficulty settling in to the role of chief of staff in the Leader of the Opposition’s office, finding the change from career diplomat to politico tricky. Once settled in, though, he was brilliant. I describe his contribution to the Northern Ireland peace process later, but his main contributions to the office were a knowledge of the Civil Service system, an extraordinary work rate (he has a lightning ability to absorb information), and a politics that was completely and naturally New Labour. He and Anji were the non-party-political side of New Labour. They empathised with business, were indelibly middle class in outlook and could have worked in any apolitical outfit with ease; strong supporters of Labour, but not Labour people.
Sally Morgan, the political secretary and later director of political and government relations, was very much a Labour person and could reach the parts of the political firmament others couldn’t; but for all that was totally in favour of aspiration and high standards, and, though a formidable organiser, had no truck with Old Labour organisational politics. But she and Alastair, along with Bruce Grocott, my parliamentary private secretary since 1994, could always understand the party point of view. They didn’t necessarily agree with it, but they always got it, and therefore were invaluable in advising how to change it.
Right from the beginning I discovered one thing about Alastair: he had a great ability to instil loyalty. His communications team were a mixture of civil servants and special advisers, and within weeks they were welded together into an immensely effective operation. They adored him and he stood by them and inspired them with that odd combination of humour, forthrightness and bravado.
Kate Garvey was the gatekeeper, the custodian of the diary. There is a whole PhD thesis to be written by some smart political student about the importance of scheduling to a modern prime minister or president. To call it being ‘in charge of the diary’ is like calling Lennon and McCartney people who ‘wrote songs’: it is true, but it fails to convey the seminal importance of the product. How time is used is of the essence, and later I describe how it was done for me. Kate was charming and fun, which concealed a very tough streak. She ran the diary with a grip of iron and was quite prepared to squeeze the balls very hard indeed of anyone who interfered, but with a winning smile, of course.
There was Liz Lloyd, who had come to me fresh out of university as a researcher and who then worked her way up until she was deputy chief of staff. She looked like an English rose, was very intellectually able, could be blue stocking or red stocking according to the occasion, but most of all was so transparently honest and fair to everyone that she exerted a calming influence on the madhouse.
There was James Purnell, incredibly bright, invaluable on policy issues and all the time learning the trade of politics for the future career I was anxious for him to have.
There was David Miliband as head of policy, who did look about twelve at the time. David did a masterful job of putting the government programme together, keeping ministers happy even while guiding them, sometimes fairly forcefully, towards a direction other than the one they intended. He was perfect for the first term: really clever, plainly, and with good party politics. More in the same camp as Sally and Alastair, but New Labour nonetheless.
Pat McFadden did party organising, but it was obvious at a very early stage that he had outstanding political gifts and also the intellect to be a first-class minister.
There was Peter Hyman, who had a roving policy and communications brief, always bright, bubbling with new ideas, utterly unafraid to speak his mind and take issue with me or anyone else, but a lovely character who went off to be a teacher (and a very good one).
Tim Allan was an excellent foil for Alastair as his deputy in the press office, and obviously destined for great things (he should have been in politics, but he decided to start a successful business).
Sarah Hunter, the daughter of a friend of the Lord Chancellor Derry Irvine, and Jonathan Pearse both came with me young, from my time as Leader of the Opposition, to help in the office, and fortunately stayed with me until Sarah went off to have children. Both were hard-working and great people to be around. Hilary Coffman, who had served every Labour leader from Michael Foot onwards, was also part of the team and was incredibly experienced and calm; and since she often had to deal with the (frequent) personal issues in the media, she was the recipient of the most horrendous nonsense from all sides as she sought to sift the slender stalks of wheat from the vast accumulation of chaff.
The two who were in a category sui generis were Anji and Derry. Anji was my best friend. We had known each other since the age of sixteen when I had tried climbing inside her sleeping bag at a party in the north of Scotland (without success!). She had looked after me at university, turned up in my life again when I was an MP and had been with me ever since. She was sexy and exuberant and used both attributes to devastating effect, but you underestimated her at your peril. She had perhaps the most naturally intuitive political instinct of anyone I ever met, was very, very clever, and could be ruthless beyond any of us, if she felt it necessary to protect me or the project.
Derry, as with Peter Mandelson and Philip Gould, was outside the office but inside the core team. In those early days, the essential thing Derry brought was a rigorous analytical ability that was put at the disposal of anyone who had a problem that required it. As I used to say – because occasionally people would query my reverential and deferential tone with Derry – he has a brain the size of a melon. When he dies, they will put it in a museum. It’s the one Dr Frankenstein should have stolen. He could be politically blind, but intellectually he could see it all and with a clarity and focus that in the ambiguous and often sloppy world of politics was a precious quality, greatly to be prized. If anyone, whether an outsider or from the Civil Service, got intellectually uppity in those early days and became patronising, I would wheel Derry in and watch them quail as he worked on them like some finely tooled industrial moulding machine, stamping and beating down on them till they were bashed into shape and spat out the other end.
Peter Mandelson was my close friend and ally. He was clever, charming and fun, all of those things that make for someone who is wonderful company. He had two attributes that marked him out as an outstanding political consigliere. He could spot where things were going, not just where they were. As Gordon used to say, Peter could tell you not merely what people were thinking today, but what they would think tomorrow. For political strategy, that is pretty invaluable.
The other attribute was his nerve under fire. Where his own feelings were concerned, like all of us he could be deeply emotional; but put him in the front line, i
n the heat of the political battle, and he was like a Roman phalanx, calm, disciplined and extraordinarily effective. When the enemy was running amok, he would be imperturbable, rallying the troops and often the generals, looking for the point of counter-attack and all the while seeming rather to enjoy himself. Such a quality is very, very rare. And when you find it, you treasure it.
Philip Gould was the final part of the inner team. He was the one with the divining rod. His job was precisely to tell us what it was like in the instant. In that he was typical of a very good pollster. But over time, I noticed something else: he was actually a great synthesiser of the public mood. He would analyse it, explain it and predict its consequences with an insight that rose above the mundane expression of ‘they like this’ or ‘they hate that’. It would get to where the public might be brought, as well as to where they presently felt comfortable. In this, he became a strategist not a pollster.
He was also critical to the process of my big, set-piece, annual party conference speech. Every year, for thirteen years, this process produced agony, consternation, madness and creativity in roughly equal proportions amongst my staff and me. I would immerse myself in it for a week beforehand, and there would frequently be fifteen or twenty drafts. Each year I hoped it would be easier. Each year it was as hard as ever. And 2006 – the best speech of all in my opinion – was as hard as any.
In 1995, still in Opposition, I decided on the Monday before the Tuesday speech that it was all hopeless, the draft was useless, my brain had finally become scrambled and I would have to resign on grounds of incapacity. I had also agreed to do a photo-opportunity that morning at a school with Kevin Keegan, then manager of Newcastle United (my team). On arriving, I was in such despair that when Kevin said, let’s do a heading session in front of the kids (and mass media), to the complete horror of Alastair and my staff I said, ‘Sure, fine, whatever.’ By then I was beyond caring. It was, of course a monumental risk as it always is when a political leader plays sport in public. No one expects you to be brilliant, but you can’t afford to be absolutely rubbish, otherwise you are plainly not fit to run a nation. This wasn’t kicking the ball – quite difficult to mess up completely – but head to head. That’s a very easy way to make a total idiot of yourself.