by Blair, Tony
Yet I could sense the rhythm, feel its relentless and ever so slightly louder drumbeat, sense its effect on the country around me.
We were already starting to take the decisions that chip away at the stock of goodwill. It was amazing how even the most anodyne or seemingly consensual changes could result in a fierceness of response out of all proportion to the measure. Even David Blunkett’s introduction of the literacy and numeracy tests – necessary to raise the low levels of eleven-year-old attainment from the roughly 50 per cent pass rate we inherited – caused shrieks of protest. I wasn’t startled by it. But there was a slightly dangerous mood among the back benches that indicated they were profoundly unprepared for the travails of government. Having enjoyed the serenity of Opposition life, where everyone could imbibe some of the Lib Dem liqueur and just nod along, they were now having to grow accustomed to returning to their constituencies and getting an earful; not a really painful one, but nonetheless the change was a shock. At one of my regular PLP briefings, when the whole of the Parliamentary Labour Party would be invited to the Large Committee Room of the House of Commons to hear the leader’s words of wisdom, I joked that when we were in Opposition, life was easy: MPs just went back home and blamed it all on the government; the trouble is, some of them still do. It’s extraordinary how anyone who opposes the government is principled while anyone who is loyal is just a sycophant, when the support is usually far harder than the opposition, unless you are aiming for preferment.
I was learning that the very discipline I thought necessary in Opposition was every bit as critical, if not more so, in government; and that meant a constant interaction with the political troops. In turn, this was so much more difficult because suddenly the schedule was dominated by major meetings and functions.
Another lesson was therefore being learned. Foreign leaders had to be seen, those you needed or wanted to see and those you didn’t. There was ceremony and protocol, much of which was unavoidable. There were summits, NATO, Europe, the G8. The summits were tiring and only occasionally productive. There was also the handing back of Hong Kong to China.
I travel fairly easily, but the Hong Kong trip, done in a day and a half, was exhausting. It was also my first real experience of China’s leadership. It was an odd occasion. I was very attached to Hong Kong. I had visited reasonably often since my sister-in-law Katy was Hong Kong Chinese. She was very instructive on the subject of the return of the colony. Obviously she was Anglophile. Brought up a Catholic. Had lived a long time in the UK. But when I asked her if she felt sad at the return, she said immediately: ‘No, I’m Chinese, it’s natural to be part of China.’ Occasionally the British fail to see the fact that although we are often regarded in many parts of the world by the indigenous people as having been good colonialists, those people no longer want us as colonialists. In the end, however benign we were, they prefer to run themselves and make their own mistakes.
But at the handover ceremony I still felt a tug, not of regret but of nostalgia for the old British Empire. Later that night, I crossed the harbour to the Kowloon side in a tugboat, in the torrential rain, to meet China’s leaders. The lights fused at the landing place and the hotel quayside was lit by Chinese lanterns that swayed and jangled in the wind and the choppy water. I went upstairs feeling I must have looked about thirty (I aged quickly in the job as you can see), to greet Jiang Zemin and the assembled Chinese top brass. He completely threw me by talking with greater knowledge about Shakespeare than I could have possibly mustered and joking away as if it was the most natural thing in the world. He then explained to me that this was a new start in UK/China relations and from now on, the past could be put behind us. I had, at that time, only a fairly dim and sketchy understanding of what that past was. I thought it was all just politeness in any case. But actually, he meant it. They meant it. And relations with China did indeed make substantial progress from that day.
Equally, as part of the rhythm of government, came the inevitable personal scandals. I say inevitable, because there is no doubt that in any government, they will come. We made a very big mistake in allowing the impression to be gained that we were going to be better than the Tories; not just better at governing, but more moral, more upright. As a matter of record, I never said we were going to be purer than pure; I said we were going to be expected to be purer than pure, and I did so to stress the dangers. I came to regret the whole characterisation around the issue of so-called ‘sleaze’. It was a media game, and in Opposition we played it. The goals were easy but the long-term consequences were disastrous. I was aware we were playing with Faust’s companion, but with him onside, it was just too easy to score. And to be fair, I couldn’t see us doing some of the things the Tories had done.
What I failed to realise is that we would also have our skeletons rattling around the cupboard, and while they might be different, they would be just as repulsive. Moreover, I did not at that time see the full implications of the massive increase in transparency we were planning as part of our reforms to ‘clean up politics’. For the first time, details of donors and the amounts given to political parties were going to be published. I completely missed the fact that though in Opposition millionaire donors were to be welcomed as a sign of respectability, in government they would very quickly be seen as buying influence. The Freedom of Information Act was then being debated in Cabinet Committee. It represented a quite extraordinary offer by a government to open itself and Parliament to scrutiny. Its consequences would be revolutionary; the power it handed to the tender mercy of the media was gigantic. We did it with care, but without foresight. Politicians are people and scandals will happen. There never was going to be a happy ending to that story, and sure enough there wasn’t. The irony was that far from improving our reputation, we sullied it. The latter months of 1997 saw two such ‘scandals’, one personal, one financial.
On 1 August, just before I went on holiday, Alastair told me that the News of the World had a story about Robin Cook and Gaynor, his long-time assistant. In times gone by it was not exceptional for politicians to have mistresses, lovers and affairs, but because it was strictly against the mores of the times it was not considered proper to write about it. The irony is that while sex is written about more today, and people talk openly about sex and even have affairs openly, politicians are nonetheless expected to conform to traditional mores, but in a context where transgressions are far more likely to be publicly discussed. Leaders in the past – Kennedy, Lloyd George, and no doubt many others – led lives that would be completely unthinkable now, despite us living in more promiscuous times. While I tended to look upon such things with a fairly worldly eye (and assiduously avoided exploiting any Tory sex scandal before we came to office), I was nevertheless conscious of the fact that the rest of the world viewed it differently.
When the story about Robin broke, I was initially relatively insouciant about it, but Alastair thought it could be a real problem. We had to have a line; and that’s where it got difficult. Robin was married to Margaret; he was having an affair with Gaynor. In the old days, this situation might have quietly carried on, but the question asked today is: who will he choose? Sitting in my little office on a Friday morning, on the day I was due to go on holiday, Alastair, Robin Butler and myself had to decide what to do.
Alastair phoned Robin Cook at the airport where he was about to go off with Margaret on holiday. An awkward conversation, as you can imagine. What to do? When I eventually talked to Robin I said: You will have to decide. If there is no decision, the danger is the thing runs away from us, creates a huge scandal and I don’t in any event see how you can openly maintain both relationships.
Maybe I was wrong and maybe you think I was interfering unreasonably, but I couldn’t see an answer to the basic problem: now we know about the affair, does it continue or does it stop?
And there’s a Sunday deadline. And it’s in the News of the World. All this is happening to some poor sod’s private life and we have to sit there and try to give t
he best advice in the interests of not only Robin, but also the wider government. ‘Foreign Secretary leaves wife for another woman’; mildly interesting, but it soon passes. ‘Foreign Secretary in love fight – who will win?’; that could run for weeks.
Although it felt ugly, we had to be clear with Robin. You must speak to Margaret. You must choose. And I’m afraid you must do so before the Sunday-edition deadline of tomorrow lunchtime.
I know Margaret was very sore afterwards and felt Alastair and I pushed Robin to leave her, but it really wasn’t so. The truth is he loved Gaynor and she was devoted to him. He made a choice. Next day he announced it. Because of the way Alastair handled it, it was treated reasonably sympathetically and the spotlight moved on with surprising speed.
As prime minister I was the recipient of numerous confidences and, via the whips, of numerous revelations. Here’s the shocking or not so shocking thing: politicians really are like everyone else. Some are in marriages of love; some are in marriages of convenience; some are having affairs; some are straight; some are gay.
Up to a point, and a fairly distant point, the public tolerates sexual misdemeanour. The issue is not the fornication, but the complication. The trouble usually arises when the media are able to discover, dredge up or invent a ‘public interest’ abuse in the course of the scandal: it was a security lapse; government information was compromised; he lied about it; he used government resources to pursue it. Then it can turn very awkward, but a plain and simple sex scandal – if there is such a thing – they will just about tolerate.
Financial scandal is different. Money is far more potent and dangerous than sex. Before the end of our first year we went through that as well, and in the course of it I learned a big lesson.
Before the election Bernie Ecclestone, the Formula One boss, had donated £1 million to the Labour Party. He had previously given money to the Tories, at which time the legislation requiring disclosure was not yet on the statute books. He came to see us on an industry matter relating to Formula One. Europe was looking to ban tobacco advertising in sport, and because Formula One was so heavily dependent on it, Bernie wanted time to have it phased in.
To be fair to him, he made no link whatsoever between the gift and the policy, and behaved entirely properly throughout. We already had the gift before the meeting, though there was, of course, always the possibility of further donations. I would have seen such a major figure anyway, given that the businesses associated with Formula One employ tens of thousands of people; and I would have taken the same policy decision to phase implementation of the ban over time.
However, it was a really stupid lapse of judgement on my part not to have immediately put a big Civil Service structure in place to ensure propriety was not only observed, but also seen to be observed. We didn’t, and were duly, and in this instance fairly, whacked for it. (Though rather unfairly so was Bernie, since he had genuinely never made a linkage, not even implicitly.)
I was taught then and there that once in government, the rules on anything touching money were going to be applied very differently. Rightly so, you will say; but the essential problem – which grew over the years – was that parties need financing. There was a limit to how much could be raised from ordinary members, and high-value donors – as they were called – were absolutely crucial. Even in 1997, we were outspent by the Tories. In 1992, they had outspent us by a ratio of five to one, when 90 per cent of our money came from the unions who were, in my experience, the only funders who explicitly and insistently linked money to policy. I was determined to free us from that dependence; but once in government, no one believed a big donation could be made from the goodness of the heart.
Of course, in one sense the motives will always be varied or mixed. People give to charity for varied or mixed reasons, of which – don’t get me wrong – desire to do good may be uppermost; but donating to political parties, at least in the UK, is not regarded as prima facie supporting politics, but as prima facie buying influence. So it all gets very sticky indeed. It was a sharp and telling portent of things to come.
It also taught me a lesson which, even after I learned it, I found difficult to apply. Part of the problem with scandal is that it steals up on you and takes you unawares. It then draws a vast media resource into spinning it out and developing it. Meanwhile, you are trying to find the facts, work out the line, think of what ground you can legitimately camp on. People’s careers, their lives, depend on decisions taken in an instant, frequently imperfectly informed. When the storm is raging, your senses and decision-making capacity are upended, tossed about on the waves of some fresh ‘revelation’, until you fear that you will never get to calmer waters and spot dry land.
Scandal is an absolute nightmare in politics. Take my word for it. The public may conclude that politicians today are lesser people than those of days of yore. That’s cobblers. The difference is that the scrutiny is greater, and the transparency expected is of an utterly different nature; the hysteria with which the issue is publicly debated is many multiples of decibels louder; and the speed with which it moves is like the speed of a jet plane compared to the speed of a tractor. The people are the same; the context is a planet away from that of even twenty years ago.
And so the first months in government came to a close. Much to be proud of; huge changes set in train, not only in policy but also in culture. We had embarked on an ambitious legislative programme with landmark changes to the constitution, the proposal for a minimum wage and Bank of England independence marking a major shift in the way the nation would be governed.
Though at this point as small as a child’s hand, the clouds of the future were also gathering. We had lost our virginity on scandal. There were the first harbingers of future power struggles. But, all in all, it had been a good beginning. A new and untested government; yet we had not fallen flat on our faces. We had stood upright and were governing. We were satisfied. So was the country.
FIVE
PRINCESS DIANA
I returned from the summer holiday refreshed and alert. The first months since entering Number 10 had gone well. That was to be expected. The next would be tougher. That was also to be expected. There had been plenty of false starts, missed opportunities and imperfect decision-making, but the mood was so benign it seemed like a government blessed. Public moods are strange affairs. When they embrace you, the experience suggests they are deep, with firm roots. You wonder how they can change. Of course you know they do and will, but during them, if they are pronounced, they can float you along effortlessly or mercilessly push you back, as if the feeling, good or ill, will last forever.
The power of the media in shaping them is critical. When the mood is benign, it is truly benign: errors are charming eccentricities, gaffes are amusing, agonised processes of decision-making are simply a reflection of a profound sense of responsibility to get it right. When the mood is harsh, it is like running against a relentless headwind: each faux pas is magnified, previous transgressions are recalled and reiterated with renewed vigour, agonised decision-making is just incompetence. You are doing the same, and in the same way; but the manner in which it is assessed is completely different.
New Labour, New Britain did not seem like hubris. On the contrary, it chimed with something real in the mood of the country. Of course, in reality we were only scratching the surface on whole swathes of policy, on public services, welfare and pensions; but it didn’t seem like that in those first few months.
The Conservative government had been controversial for all sorts of policy reasons, but that, in a sense, is normal politics. A new laissez-faire approach to industry, battles with the unions, foreign crises – each had taken its toll, though in many ways the agenda by which the Tories had governed was becoming reasonably common lore worldwide. However, they were also conservative with a small ‘c’, and that was becoming outdated. They panned the Labour left in London for being pro-gay rights, for example. In the 1980s, it worked; in the late 1990s, it worked against them.
Their stuffiness, their pomp, their worship of tradition were of a metal stamped with the hallmark of a bygone age. John Major was in many ways different from all that and was quite capable of leading them out of it, but his problem was he was never in charge.
The moment Labour started to throw off the chains of its past and behave in a modern way in respect of the economy, and with common sense on issues like defence and crime, then the reasons to stick with the Tories fell away. The zeitgeist was free to turn less deferential, more liberal on social issues, less class-bound, more meritocratic. It didn’t matter that I was the public-school boy and John Major the state pupil. I led a party in one mindset; he was shackled by a party in another.
This change of sentiment spread deep into the recesses of public life. Naturally that included the monarchy, which had its own personification of it: Princess Diana. She was an icon, possibly the most famous and most photographed person in the world. She captured the essence of an era and held it in the palm of her hand. She defined it.
This was gravely disconcerting for the monarchy as an institution, or a business, if you like. She so outshone the others in terms of charisma, ability to connect with the public, courage in embracing the new, that she was a rebuke rather than a support. That is not to say that she did not fully agree with the monarchy and all its hereditary tradition – she did – but her way of translating that into the modern idiom was so adventurous it throbbed with nonconformity; and thus danger. As she strode into hitherto forbidden places, vaulted carefully erected hurdles of propriety and demolished vast swathes of the norms of royal behaviour with an abandon that was total folly at one level and utter genius at another, the royal family watched with what I am sure was a mixture of helplessness and horror. Of course she was much too smart to give her support to any political party, but in temperament and time, in the mood she engendered and which we represented, there was a perfect fit. Whatever New Labour had in part, she had in whole.