A JOURNEY

by Blair, Tony

  I was obsessed by the thought that this Labour government had to be different; had to be able to govern for a lengthy term, as Tory governments seemed habitually capable of doing. In order to achieve this, there was no room for compromise on essentials. That is emphatically not to say we didn’t compromise. We did. In 1995, I came out for a publicly owned railway system. I never had much faith in this particular privatisation of the Tories and felt it would lead to a hugely complex and possibly uncompetitive system; but on the other hand, I wasn’t going to waste money renationalising it. On the NHS and schools we also compromised, sometimes more than I liked. However, when it came to those issues fundamental to New Labour – to its rationale, its heart, its political soul, if you will – there was no compromise at all. Often this was posed less in terms of what we would do than in what we wouldn’t. But that was natural for Opposition; and in any event, it created the right political space for those things I was determined to move forward on, if and when prime minister.

  So: no return to the old union laws; no renationalisation of the privatised utilities; no raising of the top rate of tax; no unilateralism; no abolition of grammar schools. And there were certain clear pointers to future policy: a tough line on antisocial behaviour; investment and reform in public services; pro-Europe and pro-US; opportunity and responsibility together in welfare; encouragement for small- and medium-sized enterprises and even-handedness between business and labour (employees might have additional individual rights, but not collective ones).

  At every stage of this (and the decisions came pretty fast and furious), I was reconciled to fighting, and to leaving if I lost. The party had to know I was not bluffing. If they didn’t want New Labour, they could get someone else. The country had to know that if I was going to be their prime minister, I would be ‘of the party’ but also removed from it.

  At times – and this was a muted criticism from GB also – it seemed as if I was deliberately provoking the party. Genuinely I wasn’t; but I was not going to defer. I was going to speak the same language to party and country. In so doing, I was going to encourage the sensible and modernising people in the party to step up and step out. Party leaders have a symbiotic impact on their activists. There is a subtle cloning process that goes on which, in turn, gives more strength to the leader.

  Speeches I gave back then were different in content to the speeches in the early part of the twenty-first century, to be sure, but in tone they remained the same. Our understanding of what it meant to modernise changed with the experience of governing, but the will and determination to modernise never wavered. Of course, the other point to underline is that this will was born of belief. My settled conviction was that twentieth-century politics was coming to an end not only in time but also in substance. The old left/right distinctions remained, but needed amendment, confinement and definition.

  So there it was: a basic belief – recovering Labour values from outdated tradition and dogma and reconnecting the party to the modern world; a set of intellectual policy orientations coming from those values reapplied in the light of modernity; and finally a set of policy positions or decisions that reflected those earlier orientations and that basic belief. The commitment remained. The means of implementing it radically altered. The state and social action were a means of advancing the individual, not subsuming them. The objective was for the individual to fulfil their potential and ambition; our role was as the enabler of this, not the controller of it, aiming not to limit that ambition or those goals but to open up their possibility to all. ‘For the many not the few’, as the new Clause IV put it.

  Every step, every declaration, every interview was dedicated to that coherent framework. The coherence itself is an essential component. Take the Tory Party of today. They wanted a modernising message. To an extent, they followed the New Labour handbook. They changed their position on gays, on investment in public services, on the importance of society. They put away some of the old Thatcherite rhetoric, but the seed didn’t take root. So when they thought it was in the bag, they relaxed. Suddenly the Eurosceptics were let out of the cage and indulged, and the Tories did less well in the 2010 election than expected. Now, of course, as a result of the coalition the Eurosceptics are conveniently, for the Tory leadership, back behind bars. Why is Euroscepticism a mistake for a Tory Party trying to modernise? At first blush you may think: No, that’s fine – after all, the polls show that’s where the British people are. But it is a mistake because it immediately breaks the coherence of the modernising message. To a 25–45-year-old audience, Europe is a fact. Live with it. (Whether you like it or not is another matter.) Let slightly wild-eyed anti-Europeans start talking about it with a passion that people instinctively distrust, and in a flash, the question mark over the party and its leader returns in bold print. Add into that any wavering on the economy, and the incoherence starts to worry the very voters you need to reassure. So, in a sense the final move towards modernisation was less a decision that could have ended with a conclusive election victory, and more the product of an election whose result was inconclusive. Having said that, they now have the chance to make it work, and to do in government what they did not do fully in Opposition.

  Between 1995 and 1997, even after Clause IV, I was in a perpetual motion of reassurance. The more the poll lead went up, the more I did it. Members of the Shadow Cabinet would frequently say: Come on, enough, we are miles ahead. Each time they said it, I would get hyper-anxious, determined not for a single instant to stop the modernising drive. If I seemed obsessive, it was because I was. Reconnection was great and policy change was essential, but above all, people needed to know that when I was tested, I would stay true to that modernising appeal. Our opponents would say: it’s all clever spin and PR. Day in and day out, with the party’s reactionary elements as my foil, I would prove them wrong with a raft of modernising moves.

  In June 1995 we had further outraged sensibilities by accepting an invitation, conveyed through the then editor of The Times, Peter Stothard, to address Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation conference on Hayman Island in Australia the next month. Again, now, it seems obvious: the country’s most powerful newspaper proprietor, whose publications have hitherto been rancorous in their opposition to the Labour Party, invites us into the lion’s den. You go, don’t you?

  We kept the invitation and my desire to go very quiet indeed. Poor Bruce Grocott was aghast. He was and is a wonderful guy – really sincere, decent and absolutely Labour to the innermost part of his being. In fact, the best of traditional Labour. He had been Mo Mowlam’s inspired suggestion for my PPS. It was a great choice. (Bruce was succeeded by two equally great choices, David Hanson and Keith Hill. David was a great networker, respected even by those who disagreed passionately with me; and also a very tuned-in politician in his own right. Keith was a witty, lovable and really tough operator who hid his toughness beneath the wit; but the toughness was there when you needed it. Keith’s great joke, which I found more amusing after I had left office, was to come and get me for PMQs at 11.57 precisely, throwing the door open and saying like a town crier: ‘Prime Minister, a grateful nation now awaits.’) One enormous benefit was that I always knew what the party was thinking by reference to what Bruce thought. All the numerous volte-faces were pretty shocking to his system. He used to sit there as I explained my latest change to the party’s theology and ritual, and his eyes would wander and he would shake his head or occasionally laugh and say: No, come on, this time you really are joking.

  On this one, if I had told him I had a friend called Faust and he had cut this really great deal with some bloke called Satan, it couldn’t have gone down worse. I also knew Neil Kinnock would hate it and feel, understandably, betrayed. The Sun had been vicious beyond vicious to him, and as a result really had achieved demon status for party activists. People would be horrified. On the other hand, as I said to Alastair, not to go was to say carry on and do your worst, and we knew their worst was very bad indeed. No, you sat down to sup;
or not. So we did.

  The long journey allowed me to craft the speech carefully. It had to be a speech that didn’t pander. It had its pro-European part and commitments on poverty and the environment, but was also a clear articulation of New Labour from the point of principle not simply electability. Paul Keating, then Australian prime minister, went with us and as ever he was great company and a huge source of sensible advice delivered in the inimitable Keating manner. (‘Don’t ever put up income tax, mate,’ he used to say to me. ‘Take it off them anyhow you please, but do that and they’ll rip your f***ing guts out.’) He thought Rupert a bastard, but one you could deal with.

  I thought Rupert an enigma, and the more I got to know him, the more I thought so. In the end – and I am aware of the shrieks of disbelief as I write this – I came to have a grudging respect and even liking for him. He was hard, no doubt. He was right wing. I did not share or like his attitudes on Europe, social policy or on issues such as gay rights, but there were two points of connection: he was an outsider, and he had balls. The ‘outsider’ thing was crucial to understanding him. He remained both immensely powerful and, at certain quite elemental points, anti-Establishment. He would admire Mrs Thatcher, but not necessarily the Tory Party with all its baggage, airs and graces. That gave me something to work with.

  We had flown to Sydney after PMQs on the Thursday, and stayed overnight at Kirribilli House, the prime minister’s place down by the harbour. We then flew up with Paul to Hayman Island on the Sunday, gave the speech the following day, and left an hour later to fly all the way back. We got to London in time to make a speech with Chris Smith, the Shadow Heritage Secretary, on the technology revolution on the Tuesday morning, and then did PMQs that afternoon.

  The speech on Hayman Island went down well. I could see the executives were in awe (and a little fearful) of Rupert. Once he had introduced me in glowing terms (having given me credit, privately I think, for having the brass nerve to come), they all rallied and I could feel we were in with a chance of winning the Sun’s support.

  The party were half appalled and half excited by the sheer vim of it all. Indeed, back then we were moving at such a pace that they hardly had the chance to recover from one shock to the system before another came in its wake. It took their breath away, and though some of the criticism was strong, the mainstream of the party loved the fact we were wrong-footing, disorientating and generally outfoxing the Tories. After years of feeling like a whipped underdog, they rather liked the idea of a bit of the swagger of a top dog.

  At around that time in mid-1995, I set out a template for the Labour Party approach to policy in a series of articles. Looking back, what is interesting is that although the actual policies shifted significantly with the experience of government, the basic philosophical positions remained. In June, I wrote in an article in The Times that:

  The truth is that the electorate now sees Labour as the sensible mainstream party. We have changed. We admit the changes. But far from simply ditching our past, we are proclaiming a positive message for the future. The new Clause IV is the most visible symbol of that change but it is not the only one. We have changed, too, the way we make policy. The education policy launched last week was not devised to please the National Union of Teachers. It was devised to meet the concerns of parents. The health policy we launched yesterday drew on the expertise of professional bodies and other experts in the NHS. But uppermost in our minds, all the time, was the patient.

  We were constantly operating on two levels. One concerned the campaigning genius of Alastair, Peter and the political team. They were, of course, putting over the New Labour case, but they were also whacking the Tories very hard, exploiting their divisions, underscoring their weaknesses, using a devastating mixture of critique, ridicule and bombast. It was fun, effective and professionally delivered. It carried us through the by-elections which we were now regularly winning from the Tories, even in the most unlikely places. As a machine, it was close to unbeatable, like Manchester United at their best: exciting to watch, unnerving for opponents and pretty much unstoppable. This was complemented by the rigorous attention to the need for policy positions that were centrist, credible and coherent, so that differences with the Tories didn’t lead to vulnerability and so that the key message – Labour has genuinely changed, and not out of electoral calculation – would be reinforced.

  Most of the articles about our position were written personally, crafted out of detailed policy discussion with David Miliband, Michael Barber, Jonathan and others. In what caused much jarring and tutting within the party, I even decided to own up to supporting changes Margaret Thatcher had made. I knew the credibility of the whole New Labour project rested on accepting that much of what she wanted to do in the 1980s was inevitable, a consequence not of ideology but of social and economic change. The way she did it was often very ideological, sometimes unnecessarily so, but that didn’t alter the basic fact: Britain needed the industrial and economic reforms of the Thatcher period. Saying this immediately opened the ears of many who had supported the Tories in that period – not because they were instinctively or emotionally Conservative, but because Labour had seemed so old-fashioned and out of touch with individual aspiration. Our economic policy had appeared hopelessly collectivist; our social policy born of political correctness.

  In another article for The Times in July 1995, I explained why Labour should be the party of social order and security at home, and internationalism and free trade abroad:

  The only way to rebuild social order and stability is through strong values, socially shared, inculcated through individuals and families. This is not some lurch into authoritarianism or an attempt to impose a regressive personal morality. It is, in fact, about justice and fairness. The strong and powerful can protect themselves. Those who lose most through the absence of rules are the weak and the vulnerable. The first casualties of social breakdown are often the poor and disadvantaged. That is why the left should treat it seriously . . .

  The left of centre should be the meritocrats of the twenty-first century. The Conservatives are in danger of becoming narrowly and insularly nationalistic. There is no future for that in a world of change. I am not saying it does not have popular appeal. It does. But it is not serious politics . . .

  The Labour government I hope to lead will be outward-looking, internationalist and committed to free and open trade, not an outdated and misguided narrow nationalism.

  It is a rejuvenated and revitalised left of centre that is placed to respond to and shape this new world of change. If it can escape the constraints of its past, learning from history not living in it, it is best equipped intellectually and philosophically for the new century. It is precisely to do this that New Labour will continue to change.

  My main worry was that the Tories would regain some political sense, change leader and rejuvenate. It wasn’t that John Major was bad. However, he was plainly trying to keep together a party viscerally divided over Europe, stretching the skin as tight as it would go to conceal the break, rather than conduct surgery and mend it. In a move that could have worked, in 1995 he suddenly decided to hold a leadership election and force his opponents out in the open. It was a rather brilliant tactic and had me worried. John Redwood stepped forward, with the support of the Eurosceptic Tory press. ‘Redwood vs Deadwood’, as the Mail put it.

  But then, fortunately for me, Major made the same error as Labour had in the 1980s: he appealed for unity rather than a mandate. So the bold tactic was not accompanied by a bold strategy. Redwood was defeated; but not for a cause. Michael Heseltine, who could have led the Tories, remained marginalised.

  It’s a strange thing, the power of the appeal to loyalty in respect of a leader. You have to be very wary of it. In particular, you have to define what it is and what it isn’t, or rather what it should be and what it shouldn’t. When prime minister, and in the darker days when I was under fairly much routine attack by Gordon’s people, my close supporters would sometimes complain
that his supporters were disloyal. I would always respond that they were perfectly entitled to challenge me, to put forward an alternative, and to say I should go. What they shouldn’t do is undermine me. In other words – and obviously not trivially or serially – if you come to the conclusion the leader is not up to it or is taking the party fundamentally in the wrong direction, there is nothing disloyal in being open and mounting a challenge. If the criticism is right, the challenge comes out of loyalty to the bigger cause: the party itself and its purpose. That is why I never had a problem with Gordon’s people wanting me out, provided it was for a purpose other than simply that of Gordon doing the job rather than me. And for some of them, hostile to New Labour, it was. What is always unacceptable is to chip away, to refuse the open challenge, to corrode. That is disloyal because it weakens the party; it doesn’t change it or redirect it.

  So I used to say: I don’t mind the so-called disloyalty, I mind the fact that they want Labour to go back to election-losing ways. Major could have used the contest to assert leadership. Instead, the fight was messy and served to underline the fact that the Tories were unresolved in their essential direction.

  In January 1996, we published the ‘Party into Power’ document, a seemingly innocuous exercise in party management, but ultimately a very important change in the way the party developed policy. When I had read up on previous Labour governments, I had noticed that a destabilising factor was the relationship between party and government. When the party was called upon to exercise real power, there immediately came about a dangerous tension between activists and ministers in which the two always ended up divided from each other. The party wanted true ‘socialism’ beloved of the activists; the government was focused on the people. They moved with remarkable speed into inhabiting separate political cultures. The result was an increasing disillusionment with the government from the party, which quickly communicated itself to the public.