A JOURNEY

by Blair, Tony

  As I wandered through the lobby at the side of the House of Commons Chamber, I came across Peter Mandelson. We had spoken briefly on the phone, but in very guarded terms.

  ‘Ah, I was hoping to see you,’ he said. ‘Now, let’s not run away with all this. Gordon is still the front-runner, still the person with the claim.’

  As ever with Peter in a situation like this, you could never be quite sure what he was saying; but I was sure what I wanted to say.

  ‘Peter,’ I said, ‘you know I love you, but this is mine. I am sure of it. And you must help me to do it.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be too sure about that,’ he said. For once, there was no playfulness; and for a moment we stood, looking at each other by the green leather-topped table at the north side of the Aye Lobby.

  ‘Peter,’ I said, putting a hand on each shoulder, ‘don’t cross me over this. This is mine. I know it and I will take it.’

  ‘You can’t be certain of that,’ he replied.

  ‘I understand.’ I spoke gently this time, the friendship fully back in my voice. ‘But just remember what I said.’

  Someone entered the lobby. As if by telepathy, we moved apart and went in different directions.

  THREE

  NEW LABOUR

  Later that night, the nation still shuddering at the loss of John Smith, Mo insisted I come to a meeting where she had assembled what she called ‘the hard eggs’ who would organise for me. They were a varied group of MPs, with some familiar and some surprising faces there – natural supporters but also unnatural ones. They were all from the non-intellectual part of the PLP who had learned politics the hard way, and they were tough, fearless and disciplined. ‘These are people who are going to work for you,’ she said. ‘This is to show you that you have the breadth and depth necessary to win.’

  I can’t even remember the exact time and place of the first meeting with Gordon. It may even be that I broached the critical conversation with him by phone. It was such a whirl of talking, thinking, speculating, and not so much plotting as just trying to figure it all out.

  After the meeting, I went back to Richmond Crescent. There was a stack of photographers outside the house. From then on they stayed, in small or large number, ten feet or so from our bedroom window. It was a strange sensation. Even with the heavy curtains pulled, there was a sudden, disconcerting, but also – at that time – somewhat exciting feeling of being on show.

  I kept a strong grip on myself, but the anxiety showed. For weeks after John died – and this is the only time it ever happened to me – I would wake in the morning with the hair on the back of my head damp with sweat. What I could control when awake was overpowering in sleep.

  Cherie was an incredible strength during those months. She knew her own life was about to change and for her it was equally frightening, in some ways even more so. She, the intellectually gifted barrister and north London woman, was about to collide with the world of the tabloid paper and the unremitting glare of the spotlight. Her working-class background meant that she was well up to mixing and getting on with anyone, but her only previous experience of that type of publicity had been with her father and it had not been happy.

  However, that night she cradled me in her arms and soothed me; told me what I needed to be told; strengthened me; made me feel that what I was about to do was right. I had no doubt that I had to go for it, but I needed the reassurance and, above all, the emotional ballast.

  In many ways, I am very emotionally self-sufficient; in some ways, too much so. I make emotional commitment because it comes naturally to me. But I fear it also; fear the loss of control and the fact that the consequences of caring can be painful; fear the dependence; perhaps fear learning the lesson, from love that goes wrong, that human nature is frail and unreliable after all.

  On that night of 12 May 1994, I needed that love Cherie gave me, selfishly. I devoured it to give me strength, I was an animal following my instinct, knowing I would need every ounce of emotional power and resilience to cope with what lay ahead. I was exhilarated, afraid and determined, in roughly equal quantities.

  The fear, however, had a consequence that to this day I cannot be sure was benign or malevolent. I didn’t want to fight Gordon in a leadership contest. There was a rational explanation to this: such a fight required us to differentiate, and inevitably he would pitch to the left of me. Indeed, in the next two days, a story duly appeared in The Times – possibly put there by Peter, who was still not committing to me but trying to manage the situation between the two of us – which previewed a speech Gordon was going to make to the Welsh Labour Conference in Swansea. It was presented as a checking of the Blair bandwagon, and was also clearly designed to rally union support. A breach between the two main modernisers – and him the Shadow Chancellor to boot – was not a good thing. I would win; but what would be the cost?

  If I’m honest, there was another reason I did not want a head-to-head contest: I was scared of the unpleasantness, the possible brutality of it, the sadness, actually, of two friends becoming foes. I can’t tell which feeling was predominant – the political calculation or the emotional fear – but the combination made me determined to try to cajole him out, not confront him.

  Many times afterwards, and many rounds of pointless speculation later, I still am not sure if it was the right decision. To have defeated him would have been to have mastered him, at least temporarily, but it would not have removed him – in any event we needed him – and it would have soured and weakened the concept of New Labour which was already formed in my mind. However much we would have tried to keep the contest pretty, it would have been ugly. Anyway, my desire was to get him to leave the field voluntarily. Don’t get me wrong, I was prepared to fight; but it wasn’t my preference.

  Of course, Gordon was not the only potential challenger. I tried in my first conversation with John Prescott to get him to see that he too should vacate the contest and simply stand for deputy. It was a friendly talk, but John was adamant he would stand. He perceived rightly that by standing for both, he enhanced his chances of the deputy leadership. By contrast, Margaret Beckett would have been wiser merely opting for deputy. Then, in recognition of the time immediately after John’s death when she became leader until the leadership contest took place, she would have been given the consolation of the deputy position. I suppose pride made her unable to accept it, though I have to say that afterwards she was perfectly good towards me. John’s willingness to have a contest, and also his wise remark to me that a coronation was a bad idea, put some more fight into me. I then realised I wouldn’t and shouldn’t just walk into it; I had to go out and win it.

  Gordon participating was another thing entirely, and so began a somewhat tortuous series of parlays, in a variety of secret locations, away from the House of Commons and prying eyes. We met at my sister-in-law’s round the corner from Richmond Crescent; we met at my friend Nick Ryden’s house in Edinburgh; and in the flat owned by the parents of my old girlfriend and first love, Amanda Mackenzie Stuart. It was right that such a dialogue was confidential for obvious reasons, while the outside world was rampant with speculation. It was only a contest to be Leader of the Opposition, of course, but there was a strong sentiment that Labour had good prospects in the next election. There was a genuine buzz of anticipation; ‘something in the air’, in the words of the song. It was a moment in time; a change in generation; a presentiment, maybe, that the outcome would alter not just the party but the country, and not simply via a change of government, but also with a change in the zeitgeist.

  It was strung out over several weeks, since there had been an agreement brokered by the National Executive Committee (NEC) that there would be no campaigning for the leadership until the European elections, scheduled for mid-June, were out of the way. There was another reason to be clandestine. Our respective supporters were anxious about what we might agree: his that he would agree to stand down, many of them urging him to fight; mine that I would concede something to him. Ever
y time we met, there was a ripple of anxiety that spread out among the camp followers (already self-identifying fairly robustly) at what concessions either of us may have made. For that reason Anji and Sue Nye, Gordon’s close aide, kept the arrangements to themselves. Also by then, paparazzi were in more or less constant pursuit of me. The venues were chosen with care, but I guess it was indicative that they were my friends’ homes we were meeting in. I was making the running.

  Cherie’s sister Lyndsey and her husband Chris were completely safe and solid. Nick was one of my oldest friends, from Fettes; and just a completely reliable, smart and discreet person. And I loved the romance of meeting at Amanda’s. You know the first person you ever fall in love with; you know that incredible outpouring of desire, the overwhelming sense of something unique, inexpressible, inexplicable and even at points incomprehensible, but so thrilling, uplifting, your heart pumping and soaring? I was eighteen, in my last year at Fettes. She was the only girl at the school – the first, the experiment, and so chosen because she was the daughter of the chairman of the governors. They were an amazing family. He was Britain’s judge at the European Court of Justice, her mother was a charming and delightful diplomat – not professionally, but naturally.

  They had four daughters, of whom Amanda was the oldest. I was utterly love-struck. They had a beautiful eighteenth-century stone house in New Town, whose terraces and crescents are architectural masterpieces. Edinburgh is perhaps as beautiful as any city in the world. I knew and adored every street around New Town. I walked it all, then and for years afterwards, finding security, comfort and repose in the familiarity of it, the sense of certainty and self-sufficiency of its design that seemed also to imbue the middle- and upper-class folk of Edinburgh. I wasn’t afraid there, and somehow in some slightly odd way, in Amanda’s home, surrounded by evidence of her presence, I felt a confidence about the task in hand.

  I consciously exerted every last impulse of charm and affection, not just persuading but wooing. Gordon and I had been well-nigh inseparable for over ten years. We were as close as two people ever are in politics. It was not simply a professional relationship, it was a friendship. Later, when things became difficult, then fraught, and finally dangerous, the wrench was all the harder because the intimacy had been so real. It was a political partnership, of course, but it was buttressed, possibly even grounded, in a genuine and sincere liking for each other. Neither of us had met anyone like that before. I found him odd at points, to be sure: the introspection, the intensity, finding him in his flat in Edinburgh on a Saturday morning in his suit trousers and white shirt, surrounded by a veritable avalanche of papers, but certainly, back then, it seemed an endearing eccentricity. He could be kind, generous, concerned, and often not just funny but with a rapier wit as well as intellect. The discussion wasn’t just political – there were exchanges of deep, personal confidences, laughter, debates about philosophy, religion, art and the day-to-day trivia that interests and excites us as human beings.

  Likewise, I was a new type of person altogether for him. I was very non-political in my view of politics. There was more instinct than analysis; or perhaps more accurately, since I did analyse and reanalyse politics, the starting point was instinct. At first, he taught me things all the time: how to read the games within the Labour Party; the lines not to cross with the unions; how to make a speech; when to shut up as well as when to speak up in an internal party discussion. With just a phrase, he taught me the business of politics in roughly the same way Derry had taught me the business of the Bar.

  Over time, he derived from me a different perspective, a normal person’s view of politics. The single hardest thing for a practising politician to understand is that most people, most of the time, don’t give politics a first thought all day long. Or if they do, it is with a sigh or a harrumph or a raising of the eyebrows, before they go back to worrying about the kids, the parents, the mortgage, the boss, their friends, their weight, their health, sex and rock ’n’ roll.

  David Blunkett, who was a remarkable example of someone who spent a lifetime in politics but could think like a human being, once told me that even at the height of his fame as Home Secretary, people would approach him and say, ‘Seen you on telly, what do you do?’, or more bizarrely would see him with his guide dog and would know who he was, but would say, ‘I never knew you were blind.’

  At points people switch on. Then they – or at least a goodly proportion of them – are focused and listening. These are defining moments. The trick is to spot them. Missing them is very bad news. To the professional politician, every waking moment is, in part or whole, defining. To them, the landscape of politics is perpetually illuminated, and a light which is often harsh shines on a terrain that bristles with highs and lows of ambition, risk and fulfilment. They are in a constant fret about what may befall them as they navigate it. For most normal people, politics is a distant, occasionally irritating fog. Failure to comprehend this is a fatal flaw in most politicians. It leads them to focus on the small not the big picture. It means they get things out of proportion, it breeds paranoia and it stops them from understanding what really moves and matters.

  Our friendship was real and complemented by a political sum that was much more than its individual parts, and it worked; but it meant when the time came and only one of us could go forward, it was always going to be a whole lot more troubling.

  Essentially my argument was this: I was the one who could best succeed with the country (the initial polls on the weekend after John’s death had shown I was far ahead of every other contender, and in fact John Prescott was ahead of Gordon), but we shared the same agenda, we would work together, and in time he would be an obvious person, if not the obvious person, to take over. There was a proviso, however, which later became the subject of much debate and acrimony: just as I would help him to succeed, so he would work properly with me, accepting that while leader, I would lead, so to speak. At that point, it didn’t seem much to ask or hard to give, either way. Though there was never a deal in the sense that his standing down was contingent on my agreeing to help him come after me, nonetheless there was an understanding of mutual interest. Had you asked me then what I would do and what might happen, I would have said I would do two terms and then hand over. It seemed right and fair for party and country, not just the two of us. He was then head and shoulders above the others in ability, in weight, in skill.

  But, once again, looking back, I was too eager to persuade and too ready to placate. The truth is I couldn’t guarantee it; and it was irresponsible to suggest or imply I could. Most of all, it ignored the fact that it is only in government that the character to lead is clear or not. Opposition is a completely different matter. You don’t know that at the time, but it is. It’s not that there is no requirement to lead in Opposition, but the need is magnified a hundredfold in government. Foibles in Opposition become disabilities in government; weaknesses become terminal; things that can be glossed over remain like irremovable stains. Similarly, the impact of strengths is multiplied; decisions resonate not just across a party but through the country and even, on occasions, the world; leadership character, if it is there, stands up and stands out.

  Neither of us should have tried to predict the future. I was anxious to sort him out and get on with it; he was anxious to extract the maximum at the maximum point of leverage. Anyway, not sensible really all ways round; understandable, but not sensible, with consequences down the line, though I am not sure to this day how much difference doing it another way would have made. The truth is I got the leadership and he wanted it. It was true then, and remained true. Probably it was always fated to be as it was, unless either of us had pressed the nuclear button and decided to wage all-out war to destroy the other. It was always an option for both of us – me sacking him, him resigning and standing against me – but the enormity of the damage of such a course always drew us back from the brink.

  The first occasion he actually broached acceptance that he would stand aside a
nd support me was at Amanda’s. Up to then, he maintained the fiction that he would fight me for it. I knew he wouldn’t, but I knew, too, that protracted discussion was a prerequisite to steer him successfully to the correct conclusion. My worry was not his reason, but his pride.

  There was also an interesting and again telling sidebar to the conversation, one that caused much speculation afterwards. He wanted a free rein on economic policy. At one point Peter – who was by then trying to broker things in my favour – even submitted a paper to me that effectively ceded control of economic policy. The paper unfortunately survived; my response, which was for me unusually brusque, didn’t. Close interaction, yes. Partnership, yes. Dual leadership, absolutely not. It gave rise to the myth that I was uninterested in economic policy. On the contrary, I was very interested; and though it was always a tug of war and in time a fairly gruelling one, I always kept, at least up to the third term, a very tight grip on it, ready to pull back sharply if I needed to.

  The conversations were of their nature difficult, but they were not hostile, bitter or even unfriendly. We were like a couple who loved each other, arguing whose career should come first. While there was a lot at stake, there was also a lot underpinning our relationship. There is no doubt, though, that he felt a sense of shock and betrayal. He never expected me to put myself forward. He thought he was the superior politician. He wasn’t, by the way, self-conscious of intellectual superiority. Funnily enough, in the years of permanent debate that characterised our friendship up to that point, I was probably more like an analytical lawyer or professor trying to arrange the logic and reason of our positions on policy. He was the master politician. I don’t mean he wasn’t intellectually more able – he was and is, in the sense of who would have got the best degree – but in framing the intellectual case for what we were doing, I tended to have the idea and he tended then to translate it into practical politics. He was also a brilliant sounding board. He could instantly see the force of a point, give you six new angles on it and occasionally make you see something in a wholly different light. I often compare him to Derry in that way. I would always learn from a discussion and come away mentally refreshed, stimulated and enthusiastic. The conversations were long, but there were very few wasted moments. Our minds moved fast and at that point in sync. When others were present, we felt the pace and power diminish, until, a bit like lovers desperate to get to lovemaking but disturbed by old friends dropping round, we would try to bustle them out, steering them doorwards with a hearty slap on the back. Our friendship was not a sealed box exactly, but the sense of self-containment was strong, sometimes overpowering. Under the pressure of leadership it was not easy, therefore, to open it up to the influences – good, bad or indifferent – of the outside world. But of course this was what was happening.