A JOURNEY

by Blair, Tony

  ‘He’s right,’ said John, ‘but in future, learn to say it better.’ I did.

  Hannah was a remarkable woman in many ways. As well as bringing up her own children she had foster-parented others, and was as Labour as Labour could be, but she represented a different facet of what was called, patronisingly, ‘the working class’.

  Part of Labour’s problem was that such a term was a generic description that obscured as much as it illuminated. I concluded that two different strains of thinking brushed up against each other in that phrase which said something important about contemporary Britain. Probably they were always present, but the very social progress Labour had helped bring about had thrust the tension to the surface.

  The genus fitted as a description of income, of type of job, and often, though not always by any means, of voting behaviour; but it didn’t fit as a description of attitude. One strain dominated the activists of union and party. They held many of the same leftist views as the intellectual wing, but tended to be even more hard line on areas to do with economic policy.

  The other strain was represented by people like George and Hannah, who were out and about far more in the non-political world of most ordinary people. They understood aspiration and applauded rather than resented it. They were tough, eye-wateringly so, on law and order. They believed social conditions had to be changed, but they never accepted them as an excuse for criminal behaviour.

  Shortly after I became MP and still a little unused to Sedgefield’s ways, I spoke at a branch meeting in a village called Tudhoe where Hannah was a branch member. The issue of the death penalty came up. Someone asked me if I supported it in the case of murder. Now, I was used to the politics of Islington, not County Durham. In Islington, such a question was simple. You gave the stock answer; heads nodded; the meeting moved on. Actually, it was one of the few questions to which I could give a generally left-wing answer and so I rather liked being asked it. And I had, so I thought, a rather neat way of putting the answer.

  ‘No, I don’t,’ I responded confidently, ‘and I will tell you why. If I am not prepared to hang that person myself, I should not ask the state to do it for me.’ I sat down rather pleased with myself.

  ‘Well, I’d hang them,’ Hannah piped up.

  ‘Aye, and I’d draw and quarter them too,’ said another equally benign-looking elderly woman; and she drew much support.

  Nowadays, that sentiment on this issue would be much more rare. But the point is: the ‘working class’ were not as homogeneous a group as many politicians assumed, or based their reasoning upon. Labour was largely losing the strain that Hannah represented. So even back then in 1983, though often imperfectly formed, my drift, politically and intellectually, was clear: Labour had to be radically reformed, and not by an adjustment or a shift of a few degrees, but in a manner that changed profoundly its modus operandi, its thinking, its programme and above all its attitudes. How to do it, how fast to do it, which issues to tackle first, which to leave until later – that was all a matter of tactics, but it was obvious society was undergoing a paradigm shift and Labour was not merely failing to heed it, but hiding from it.

  By the 1992 election, I had been in the vanguard of the party’s steady but slow move to modernisation. I was often out in front – as City spokesman, energy spokesman, in changing fundamental positions on the unions when holding the employment brief – but never so far in front that I was out of sight. I was the most forward, but took some care to remain with the pack and not to become so isolated that I could be picked off. I learned Dennis’s lesson well; there is no point in being right about an organisation’s failings if you have lost the ability to persuade it of them. You have to speak the language in order to change the terms of the debate conducted in that language, otherwise you may be a fine example of a person who is right, but irrelevant.

  I had come to the conclusion that there were two major problems with the change in the Labour Party: the direction was right but the pace was too slow; more seriously, however, and despite my admiration for him, I was uneasy at the way Neil Kinnock was justifying the change.

  Although Neil was seminal in bringing Labour to power – he gave strong leadership over eradicating Militant and taking on the Scargill wing of the union movement, and this leadership allowed John Smith, then me, to make the changes necessary to win – the unspoken argument was this: look, guys, we’ve lost elections, the electorate won’t wear our policies, so I’m sorry, but we’re going to have to change them. The message – obviously one more palatable to party members – was: the party needs power, we’re just going to have to compromise with the electorate. Now this was better than the famous dictum of the far left – ‘No compromise with the electorate’– which was printed on their banners as we tried to reform. But it seemed the party and the voters were in two different places, and so the party had to shift against its will. My own feeling, however, was: the voters are right and we should change not because we have to, but because we want to. It may sound a subtle difference, but it is fundamental.

  In my view, we needed a complete, top-to-bottom reorientation of our programme and policies. In particular, we needed to separate conceptually a commitment to our values (timeless) from their application (time-bound). So, of course, we should and always would fight for social justice; but in today’s world that didn’t mean more state control. And on issues like defence and law and order, being tough was not striking a pose but a sensible reaction to the threats of the modern world, whether globally or on our street corners.

  I had also tried to raise with John Smith the issue of asking Neil to step aside. Neil had led the Labour Party with enormous courage, saved it from political extinction and created a foundation for government; but he had to fight the 1987 election on a manifesto that wasn’t sellable, and for whatever reason, I was convinced the British people were never going to elect him prime minister. The late-twentieth-century political spirit was changing. Parties were still important, but as party loyalties declined in intensity, much more came to rest on the person of the leader. Political analysts and practising politicians love to speculate on this or that voting trend – and very often there is much truth in it – but there is always a tendency to underplay the importance of the leader. To an extent, this is understandable – surely it’s the policies that matter, the social movements that dictate outcomes, the events that shape destiny – but past a certain point, people regard left/right distinctions as less emphatic today, they think policies are open to amendment and know that programmes and manifestos can’t set out how someone will react to events. Unless policies are defined to a very clear degree and are way off-centre, the character, likeability and personality of the leader are of paramount importance. They can determine the election, and this is now always a major, if not the major factor. Simple as that. So if the people didn’t take to Neil, and they didn’t, and had rejected him already in 1987, they weren’t going to elect him in 1992, unless their view of him had changed significantly. It hadn’t.

  The election in 1992 was John’s. We might have won had he been leader, rather than the Shadow Chancellor. But when I hinted to him in 1991 that he should go to Neil and ask him to step aside and said that myself, Gordon and others would back him up, John dismissed the idea. ‘I will be leader afterwards,’ he said. And that was that. The trouble was, partly I fear because John knew that afterwards he might be contesting the leadership, his proposed tax rises for those earning £30,000 and above were great for the party faithful but plainly problematic for the public. John was popular and respected, but this tax hike was, as the Tories cleverly exposed, a real ticking bomb underneath Labour’s campaign. Once we were beaten, somehow I felt that the next election would not be John’s.

  In the run-up to the 1992 election I began a conversation with Gordon that was to have far-reaching consequences. I believed we had held back too much after the 1987 defeat, being too timid. It was true that we were now the undisputed leaders of the new generation. When Gor
don had been John’s substitute, he had shone in taking on Nigel Lawson. We were getting a medium level of media interest, which was rising in regularity and usually pretty positive; we had definitely logged on with the elite class interested in politics. But it wasn’t yet our generation in charge. We were still on our way up; we weren’t in a position to dictate terms. In the core economic team for the 1992 election – John as Shadow Chancellor, Margaret as Shadow Industry Secretary, Gordon as Shadow Chief Secretary and me in Employment – we were the junior partners and I was the junior of the two of us. So though frustrated and anxious, I again held back.

  Besides, I was still learning, thinking, trying to position myself on issues, beating out the basic elements of future political definition. Gordon and I would spend endless hours, days even, in political debate and discussion, iterating and reiterating, defining and refining, until eventually some sort of clarity appeared. The focus was not so much on the nitty-gritty of policy – or at least not always – but on setting the compass, getting the bearings and marshalling the arguments for the direction the party would or should take. We spent months trying to construct a framework for party reform. He had the idea of achieving mass membership by converting trade union levy-payers into full party members. I concentrated more on what would be the right way to broaden the party base, take power out of the hands of unrepresentative activists, and put the union influence within tight constraints.

  I had also broached with Gordon the notion that should the defeat be as I thought, he would run for leader and if necessary challenge John. I liked John a great deal but I felt instinctively and very deeply that another defeat, especially one that indicated we never really came close, meant we had to go for radical change. John was a great politician, a thoroughly good man, but he wasn’t a radical reformer, neither in style nor in substance.

  By 1992 I was almost forty. I had been in Opposition for a decade. The thought of another five years of merely incremental steps towards change in the party that was so obviously needed, filled me with dismay. If the steps were too incremental, we might fail again and I would be fifty before even getting sight of government; and what was the point of politics if not to win power, govern and put into practice the policies you believe in? There was, in addition, a strand of opinion crossing left and right which saw the party becoming increasingly fatalistic about our chances, fearing that the only answer was to change the voting system or, even worse, accept our fate as the perpetual Opposition.

  I was convinced that the assumption that John would become leader following a defeat could and should be challenged. Gordon, to be fair, was non-committal. It would be a big ask, and John would feel it a betrayal. Plus Gordon was unmarried, and I told him, frankly, that I thought that was a problem. But I also thought the party would be ready to be excited and uplifted and that an injection of youth and energy would itself reap huge dividends. I saw myself as Shadow Chancellor in such a scenario. John would have been a perfect Foreign Secretary. And he was a big enough man to take it.

  I thought it not wrong or disloyal to be prepared to do this. Others may disagree. I felt that the position of leader had to be taken with some elan, not necessarily at the ‘due’ moment, but seized almost, if you will. Buggins’ turn was an awful system of choosing the leader and actually at odds with every concept of what leadership should be about. Had John moved to replace Neil, it would have been bloody, but in my view he would have succeeded and history would have been very different. That he wouldn’t contemplate it told me what his leadership would be like: steady, serious and predictable. It wasn’t what the dire nature of our predicament demanded. Anyway, that’s how I felt, right or wrong.

  When the results were coming through on the night of 9 April 1992, it looked as if a quirk of the constituency system might yield a hung Parliament, and for a brief while I thought my predictions of defeat were wrong; but as the night wore on, it became all too clear. I spoke to Gordon and Peter, just becoming the new MP for Hartlepool. I said, we have to go for it. Unsurprisingly, Peter was a trifle distracted. Gordon was again non-committal.

  As the morning of another defeat dawned, the party was in despair. I wasn’t. I felt energised. What can we say? party HQ wailed. Plenty, I thought. The next morning there were bids from all the media outlets for interviews, and when no one wanted them, I took virtually the lot. I explained with the clarity of a man released from political and intellectual prison that the party had lost because we had failed to modernise sufficiently and we now had to do so, not by shades but by bursts of vivid colour. This time it had to be fundamental, clear and unmistakably geared to reuniting us with the people we sought to serve. I dodged the leadership issue easily enough – Neil hadn’t yet declared he was standing down – and planted my banner firmly on the terrain of radical change in the party’s organisation, programme and policies. Though I didn’t know it and it was not why I did it, the thought of me as leader stemmed from that morning. Years afterwards, party members recalled that it was the time they thought: Hmm, maybe he’s what we’re looking for.

  I returned from the studios. I had told Gordon to come to Sedgefield with Nick Brown, who was an MP in nearby Newcastle. He had always been our campaign manager for the Shadow Cabinet elections, and was a kind of informal chief whip to me and Gordon (and indeed later took the role formally in government in 1997).

  First, naturally, I pressed on Gordon the idea of him standing for leader. I rehearsed the arguments. He remained non-committal, however. Meanwhile, John had been phoning round just making sure of support. He phoned my home, Myrobella, in Trimdon Colliery in the heart of the constituency. I had offered to speak to John and explain why it should not be John who was leader, but I was nervous. It was a dilemma. If I indicated lack of support for John and Gordon didn’t stand, it would destroy my relationship with John as leader. On the other hand, as I picked up the phone in my office at Myrobella to take his call, I still thought I had a chance to persuade Gordon.

  At first I hedged. John, who was nothing if not canny, picked up the hesitation. ‘I should speak to Gordon,’ I said.

  ‘I’ve spoken to him,’ John said. ‘He’s fully on board.’

  At that point I dared hesitate no further but came on board too. Some months later John told me, innocently, that he and Gordon had come to an agreement well in advance of the election: John would be leader, with Gordon as Shadow Chancellor. Gordon would not stand. I knew in my bones it was a mistake.

  There was still the matter of the deputy leader to be decided. This was an elected position but one usually held by a senior Shadow Cabinet member. Roy Hattersley, the then deputy (and Shadow Chancellor up to 1987), had been with Neil throughout the nine years of Neil’s leadership. They weren’t exactly bosom buddies, but it worked after a fashion. However, in the aftermath of defeat, he would plainly stand down too. In the course of the call with John, he asked me about the deputy leader role. It makes sense with me as leader, he said, to have one of the younger ones as deputy, either you or Gordon. Decide between you, he said. Clearly, he went on, the problem with Gordon would be two Scots. The alternative was Margaret Beckett, a highly capable woman and, all in all, a sound enough choice, despite being of the same generation as John.

  After the call I went back into the sitting room to see Gordon and Nick. ‘John says you’re backing him,’ I said to Gordon.

  ‘It’s difficult to say otherwise,’ he said, reasonably enough, but I felt a little let down.

  ‘He wants to know if either of us should be deputy,’ I said. I then explained that though Gordon was senior to me, two Scots would be a problem, especially as it was precisely in the south of England that our support was thinnest. Nick said that there was a strong case for either of us, but that the crucial thing was to see who had most support in the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP). He agreed to take soundings.

  Discussion took place over the next day or so. We met again. Nick said, ‘The pretty strong consensus in the PLP is that of the two of
you, it should be Gordon.’

  I knew this was not true. It couldn’t be. Not even the PLP at its daftest was that daft. The media was full of how Labour was blocked in its traditional heartlands of the North, Wales and Scotland, of how it was doomed if it couldn’t break out and win the middle class and the South. In those circumstances, to have a Scot as leader was a risk, although if there were an English deputy, it was a risk that could be taken; but to then add another Scot as deputy? An all-Scottish ticket? With our devolution commitment? It just wouldn’t wash. It was nuts.

  So, in those two or three days, I learned two things: one was that Gordon had not seized the moment; the second was that he and Nick were working together and their first loyalty was to each other. From that moment, I think I detached a little bit from Gordon; just a fraction, imperceptible to the eye of the observer, unaccompanied by any expressions of distance, or even by any diminishing of affection. It was a detachment small in space, but definitive in consequence. The seed was sown of my future insistence that I should be leader, not him.

  John duly became leader. Gordon took the Shadow Chancellor position. John asked me what I wanted. He was surprised at my choice, but I had thought about it long and hard: I chose to be Shadow Home Secretary. It was usually considered a graveyard position for Tory and Labour politicians alike. Tories could never be hard line enough. Sincere, decent (privately liberal) types would go to Tory Party Conference, try to ham it up, curdle the blood, etc., but they always got found out. The Labour problem was the opposite. Their audience expected something more liberal and yet the Labour Home Secretary or Shadow Home Secretary knew the watching public disliked all the liberal stuff. There’s one thing I learned in politics: those of extreme views, right or left, can always spot whether someone is a fellow true believer or not. Occasionally, when forced to pander – throw a bit of left-wing meat out (not on anything too important!) – I would give it my best; but you know something? They always spotted that my heart wasn’t in it. It’s something in the tone, the body language, which the true enthusiast has and the actor lacks.