A JOURNEY

by Blair, Tony

  No one can say the problems of the Balkans are now solved. Sierra Leone remains poor, as does too much of Africa. But the Balkans, which for a century or more was a byword for instability, today has at least the prospect of a better future. Croatia has opened accession negotiations with the EU, and Slovenia is a full member. Sierra Leone is a democracy. Its government has changed without bloodshed. Next door, Liberia is on the same agonising, difficult journey into the future, and its former leader who supported the RUF is awaiting trial.

  When revolution comes through intervention, and when that intervention is based on a desire to bring freedom and democracy, the struggle will still be arduous; the setbacks will be legion; those who exclaim that it would all have been better if left well alone will have their day, and regularly; but I doubt history will make the same judgement. Even if brought about by the pain of war, at least the grip of oppression is broken after such a revolution. A proper evolution, however fraught, can begin.

  This is a fascinating debate. At the special meeting of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council in New York in September 2000, it led to the adoption of the Brahimi Report, which laid out the plan to create a standing UN force for peacekeeping in Africa, a direct effect of the success of the Sierra Leone intervention. It also led to the UN adopting in 2005 the principle of the ‘Responsibility to Protect’, the idea that states have a duty to safeguard their citizens from mass atrocities, and that the international community has a duty to intervene if a state fails in this responsibility.

  But however much it fascinated me (and some others), it didn’t cut much ice with the British public.

  Throughout 1999 and particularly around Kosovo, we were aware the government was losing support. Its focus – my focus – seemed to be on a faraway place; and there was plenty to do at home, not least in health, education and crime. And, indeed, we were trying to do it; but not unnaturally, the headlines were full of tanks, bombs and airplanes.

  It was not all bad. We won the first Scottish Parliament elections, the first time in the twentieth century that the government polled ahead in the local elections. Not that I should call them ‘local’ – the entire thing was itself a revolution of sorts.

  Attempts to devolve power to Scotland, Ireland and Wales had been made ever since the United Kingdom was formed, and time after time they failed. It was the same commitment to devolution, very roughly, that had engulfed and nearly destroyed the Liberal Party of the late nineteenth century, and in the 1970s it was on devolution (among other things) that the last Labour government had come unstuck, when the so-called West Lothian Question had dominated debate and defeated the devolution legislation.

  The West Lothian Question was named after the Labour MP Tam Dalyell’s constituency, since he was the person raising it. The question itself was very simple: if by devolution you reserve certain issues such as health or education to a Scottish Parliament so that English MPs no longer have a say in them, how can it be right or logical that Scottish MPs can still vote on issues of English health or education? It was a perfectly sensible question, and an interesting example of a problem in politics to which there is no logical answer.

  However, my answer to it was that, though not logical, a devolution arrangement was not as unfair as it seemed. The truth is English MPs dominate the Westminster Parliament, which passes the Budget and makes the laws. In deciding the Budget allocation to the Scots, for example, English MPs could always outvote them. And, of course, constitutionally, in theory whatever powers Westminster bestowed, it could usurp. So though the West Lothian Question was valid, the arrangement that gave rise to it was, in the context of balance and weight between England and Scotland within the Union, justified (or at least justifiable). Anyway, in so far as there was an answer, that was it!

  I was never a passionate devolutionist. It is a dangerous game to play. You can never be sure where nationalist sentiment ends and separatist sentiment begins. I supported the UK, distrusted nationalism as a concept, and looked at the history books and worried whether we could get it through. However, though not passionate about it, I thought it inevitable. Just as the nation state was having to combine with others in pushing power upwards in multinational organisations to meet global challenges, so there would be inexorable pressure to devolve power downwards to where people felt greater connection.

  We didn’t want Scotland to feel the choice was status quo or separation. And it was a central part of our programme for Scotland. The Scots were notoriously prickly about the whole business.

  I always thought it extraordinary: I was born in Scotland, my parents were raised there, we had lived there, I had been to school there, yet somehow – and this is the problem with nationalist sentiment unleashed – they (notice the ‘they’) contrived to make me feel alien.

  Language had to be used carefully. They were incredibly sensitive to the fear that the Scottish Parliament would turn out to be a local council (which it never was). The Scottish media were a PhD dissertation about chippiness all unto themselves. They could spot a slight that to the naked eye was invisible (because it was non-existent). Once I gave an interview on why the Parliament should have tax-raising powers, in which I said: ‘If even a parish council can, why shouldn’t the Scottish Parliament?’ – which led to the headline ‘BLAIR COMPARES PARLIAMENT TO PARISH COUNCIL’, which even by their standards was quite some misinterpretation. Funnily enough, I quite liked them. They were hard to deal with, but it was sort of fun at the same time.

  The best example of their chronic obsession with an English plot (or domination by ‘London’, as it became) was over the 1997 manifesto proposal to have a referendum on whether there should be a Scottish Parliament. As the legislation to devolve trundled through Westminster, I knew the only way we could avoid the trap that previous governments had fallen into was to negate the possibility of the legislation being sabotaged by the House of Lords. Their Lordships weren’t in a great mood with us either, since they too were being subjected to reform in the shape of the removal of the hereditary peers. At that time, the Lords was essentially controlled by small ‘c’ and large ‘C’ Conservatives who by and large didn’t like devolution since it represented constitutional change. I knew they would seize any opportunity to derail the measure unless it could be made somehow constitutionally or politically improper for them to do so. And of course the West Lothian Question gave them, as it had in the 1960s and 70s, legitimate grounds on which to camp.

  While Leader of the Opposition, and despite heavy misgivings from George Robertson, then Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland, I devised the gambit of offering a referendum not after the legislation, but before it, so that people could take a decision on the principle first. The strategy was clear: to devolve after a hundred years of waiting. The tactic was obvious: get the people to say yes, then the Lords could not say no.

  It produced the most contorted cries of outrage from assorted nationalists and hacks, convinced it was designed to scupper the whole thing. It was even called undemocratic. I had the most contrary conversations and interviews where I would be asked: Isn’t having a referendum vote just a way of denying Scotland its due and proper Parliament? I would say: Er, but the Scots are the ones voting. Ah, they would say, but suppose they vote no? Well, I would say, in that case I assume they don’t want one. And so on. Amazing.

  In the event they voted yes; the House of Lords could only cavil at the periphery of the legislation, not attack its core; and devolution came about. I think it was the right thing to do. I hope it was.

  In early December 1999, the Tory MP Shaun Woodward came to see me. He had been the star of the 1992 Tory campaign. He was clever, articulate, plainly someone who had joined the Tories because Labour were so crazy in the 1980s, was economically and socially liberal, abhorred the Tory prejudices around gay rights particularly, was also out of sorts with them over Europe – in fact over their whole attitude to the modern world – and wanted to defect.

  He approache
d Cherie first, and then he and I talked. I thought he was genuine. Naturally it would be a great coup, but I also thought he would make a great addition to our team. Getting him a seat would be tough (though in the end we did). Defecting can be an act of opportunism. It can also be an act of courage. In his case, I thought it was courage. Alastair handled it brilliantly, as ever, and it was announced just before Christmas.

  It solidified our grip on the centre ground, and expressed, in a way speeches couldn’t, the open-door policy we had towards people who thought the country had to move on from Thatcherism but not go back to Old Labour. These were the people who were successful, or wanted to be, who were in favour of a competitive market economy and who were socially liberal and compassionate. It was a strain of thought that had little purchase on the media mind, which thought in very traditional left/right terms, but it had its constituency in the country.

  However, I was well aware that while such people applauded the vision, the words and the direction, they would need to know the path was being followed with the necessary vitesse, and that the destination could be reached. For that ever to happen, we were going to have to be a lot more radical in our approach. We were successful politically, incredibly so; but politics is for a purpose, and the frustration both within me and around me was beginning to mount.

  NINE

  FORCES OF CONSERVATISM

  The ‘forces of conservatism’ speech at the party conference in September 1999 had marked a sharpening of the analysis and a hardening of the soul. Pushing to get out of me was the desire to be a leader who led and challenged all the way. To the outside world, not much had changed. Inside, I knew I was changing.

  As we began to try to drive change in the public services, in welfare, in law and order, it became obvious that there were major small ‘c’ conservative interests within the services that were hostile to change, essentially vast vested interests that were pretty unscrupulous about defending themselves on the spurious grounds of defending the public interest.

  I began to reflect on change and progress, and how it occurred. I saw a pattern in which conventional thinking had a grip which, when loosened, unleashed a fairly serious backlash; and how then once change occurs and takes root, it in turn becomes the conventional wisdom. I applied it not just to reform but to progress in human rights, in women’s rights, in defeating racism and apartheid, to left as well as right. It was a good argument and a radical one, but it had a slight Year Zero feel to it, as though I was saying that there was nothing of merit prior to New Labour. So while the argument was right, the tone was a fraction misjudged – and in politics, fractions multiply fast.

  Of all the things that were completely obvious about the difference between Opposition and government, one thing came on us to my great and entirely unjustified surprise: the gap between the commitment and the execution. We would take a decision, announce it; feel that soon the consequences would be manifest, even if it took time for their fullest impact to be felt.

  The two years of spending controls inherited from the Tories had ended. In the Budget of 1999 we had started to relax things. In the public borrowing requirement of November 1999 we had announced major money, but it was like turning on a tap and seeing only a trickle come out. We had proclaimed 1999 as the ‘year of delivery’ – a phrase that somewhat came back to haunt us. Truthfully there had been progress, but it was very incremental, not only because the money had not really started to flow, but also because, as the ‘forces of conservatism’ speech had indicated, there was a structural problem that money alone couldn’t solve. Across the piece – in schools, universities, the NHS, law and order and criminal justice – we were still only tinkering, not transforming. The speech was actually self-critical as well as system-critical. As 1999 wore on and the year 2000 turned, I began to look at how we could propel the whole question of reform further and faster.

  First, however, we had the occasion of the millennium itself. I will remember the entry into the twenty-first century chiefly for two things: the Dome and the millennium bug. One should never have been, and was; the other should have been, and wasn’t.

  When I think back on the time, effort and panic preparations for the ‘Y2K’, or whatever it was called in the jargon, I can’t think of more time wasted to less effect. The only comfort was that the whole world was convinced about it. Basically, if you recall, computers were not supposed to be able to handle the numerical transfer to the year 2000. People cursed the hubris that had led mankind to think a computer would be an infallible object of progress. Predictions were made of catastrophe, crisis meetings were held, and around the planet we braced ourselves for the calamity that never came. Margaret Beckett and I would have meetings about it, at the end of which we would both agree we hadn’t the foggiest idea what the experts were talking about. David Miliband tried to explain it once, and I honestly didn’t have a clue what he was talking about and didn’t ask him to explain it again.

  David had never quite recovered from a meeting I had had as Leader of the Opposition with Bill Gates, then in his heyday as the computer maestro transforming our times. David was smart and modern on technology. I was non compos mentis on the subject, being a genuine technophobe. He tried to tutor me before the meeting, alarmed that I would behave in a way inconsistent with the New Labour ‘we are at the cutting edge of the technological revolution’ mantra.

  I didn’t disappoint his expectations. I got all my terminology muddled up and, to the horror of David and the young ‘beautiful people’ in the office, asked Bill how his mainframe was or something like that, a question that produced consternation mixed with giggling from the staff and a curious gulping sound from Bill. I had heard the term ‘mainframe’ somewhere or other and thought I would astonish my audience by showing off my knowledge. I merely astonished them.

  Anyway, the Y2K crisis came and went with no one in the end really noticing. The only good thing was that I had never agreed to spend much money on it. That’s the funny thing about decisions as prime minister: some are about doing things, but equally important are those about not doing things. They all come thick and fast, and sometimes you don’t recognise them as decisions. They tend to be the things you say ‘no’ to.

  Unfortunately, one thing we had said ‘yes’ to was continuing with the Dome. I think as bad decisions go, it wasn’t a frightful one. Part of the problem – and I really don’t mean this as an excuse – is that we inherited the decision, and by the time we took office around £100 million had been committed, so cancellation costs would have been significant.

  Actually, the original idea wasn’t bad either. Michael Heseltine had had it, and like a lot of his ideas it was big and bold and brassy. The concept was similar to that of the Crystal Palace Exhibition of Prince Albert, and the London Exhibition – which John Prescott remembered – of the Coronation year. We would put on a great British exhibition and situate it on the reclaimed swampland around the Greenwich gasworks. The trouble was that it was never wholly clear what would go in the exhibition, and the futuristic theme we wanted was fine at the broad-brush level, but elusive in the detail. So it sort of fell between multiple stools: future, technology, play, science, entertainment. It was a kind of jack of all trades and master of none.

  That said, it wasn’t dreadful. It just wasn’t brilliant. The Dome team – headed by Jenni Page – worked like crazy and the whole thing was, in a sense, a miracle, given the scale of ambition. Six million people came to it, and many of them enjoyed it. We all became increasingly defensive about it, until we got to the stage – me, Peter Mandelson and Charlie Falconer especially – where if it had consisted of a man slapping everyone around the face with a wet fish, we would have stoutly held it to be a work of genius.

  The simple points were that in this day and age, it wasn’t really a suitable project for government, and it never quite struck a note sufficiently attuned to the millennium. If we hadn’t inherited it, we would probably never have embarked on it. As David Yelland, the t
hen editor of the Sun told us, a brilliant new hospital would have been a better government priority.

  To be fair, Gordon was always against it, but I thought the pain of cancelling too great, and in any event, considered it worth a go. At the Cabinet which gave the green light, opinion was pretty evenly divided. John Prescott swung the day. I had had to leave early. He came into the chair and in a swashbuckling JP sort of way, rammed it through, mostly because he knew I wanted it and a little because he thought the idea had flair. Which it did. It just lacked sense.

  The Dome itself was superb, designed by Richard Rogers, and of course we look at it now as a city landmark, instantly recognisable and giving the whole of south-east London a lift. In addition, of course, we reclaimed the land, built thousands of homes, a health centre and a school. It is also now the best entertainment venue for rock and pop in the country, possibly in Europe.

  While it was in retrospect a mistake, the hysterical trashing of the whole project was never justifiable. However, it was explicable. The night of 31 December 1999 I shall never forget. I have always been awful about ‘great’ days and anniversaries – I shouldn’t be like this but I am. I never ‘got’ birthdays except for the giving and receiving of presents. Christmas Day was and is always a wonderful family time, but somehow I’m always relieved when it’s over.