by Blair, Tony
The second was that by the end, in 2006–7, John agitated strongly for me to go, partly because of his own problems with the media turning savage on him, and partly because he really didn’t think it mattered electorally if I was swapped for Gordon. By then, I had decided I would have to go anyway; but, unsure of whether I was sincere and also partaking of the general assumption that no one would ever voluntarily give up Number 10, he told me in the spring of 2007 that he would resign as deputy prime minister if I didn’t go. He didn’t mean it in a disloyal way, and funnily enough, I didn’t take it that way; he just genuinely believed that it was in the interests of the party that Gordon became leader.
That said, there were countless times over the years where I needed his support and where he gave it with great courage. He knew he was there, to an extent, as the brake on New Labour. He knew therefore that his own credibility rested on his ability to wring changes out of me. He knew that every time he went with me, he sacrificed some of that credibility. But he did so.
Over Clause IV, he moved from a position of doubt to a position of positive advocacy, because in the end he was convinced it was right. Once convinced, he became the staunchest proponent of change. After September 11 – indeed at any moment of crisis on foreign policy – he stuck by me one hundred per cent, giving crucial support at moments when any hint of a split between us would have been deeply corrosive.
So all in all, and given the gigantic stresses and strains imposed on any relationship at the top of the political tree, I have to say I was lucky to have had him as deputy.
As a minister, he could be at points too enthusiastic about the power of government, intervene too readily, mix too much bureaucracy into the policy pie; but he could also be innovative and imaginative. He brought the shipping industry back into the UK by getting the Treasury to change the rules on flags of convenience. He led the negotiations at Kyoto and helped the UK to become the only country in the world to meet its Kyoto target. He played a vital role in housing, chairing the housing policy committee to drive forward the White Paper proposals to improve the planning system. In his ten years, the government secured decent homes for two million more people. He also represented the UK internationally and headed the China Task Force, leading on cross-departmental accords on trade and investment and other areas. His civil servants, once they got used to his moods and saw beneath the rough exterior, liked him and respected him.
His foibles were usually on the endearing end of the spectrum – though some women I know strongly disagree with that assessment. He was definitely old-fashioned, not great at working with a certain type of middle-class woman, and though sound on the policy on gay rights was led more by his head than his heart, if you know what I mean. He was also completely paranoid about smart, young, well-spoken intellectual types. With these, he was like a pig with a truffle. He could smell out condescension, a slight, an air of superiority or a snub at a thousand paces; and once smelt, he would charge after it with quite shocking abandon. Whole swathes of younger advisers, used to the subterranean soil of collegiate debate and temperate exchange of views, would be pursued with manic fervour until forced from their hiding place and sliced into tiny bits. It was made all the more alarming for them by the fact that they would usually be entirely oblivious as to how they had caused such offence.
I confess I was highly amused by this, even though I shouldn’t have been really. Back in the late 1980s when I first came to prominence and got elevated to the Shadow Cabinet, John was just like that with me. Peter and I were part of what he called the ‘beautiful people set’, and that was as big an insult as he was capable of bestowing.
I suppose what made it all bearable, even acceptable, for me at least, was that it was all so transparent. Though John could be extremely cunning, to say he wore his heart on his sleeve would be a severe understatement. He put the whole body map there. At Cabinet, he would occasionally sit like a grumbling volcano ready to erupt at any moment. The proximate cause of the eruption would more often than not be one of the women intervening. Patricia Hewitt was certain to get him moving. She was, in fact, a really good minister and was excellent at the Department of Health, taking truly difficult decisions with immense determination, but at Cabinet, she would usually raise the women’s angle. John would make some slightly off-colour remark if he was in a sour mood. I would then bring her in again, just for the sheer entertainment of watching him finally explode. She would patronise him in the most wonderfully insensitive fashion: ‘Now, John, that’s a very, very good point you’ve just made, and it’s always so worth listening to you.’
He genuinely made me laugh. It was a bit like ‘How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?’ in The Sound of Music, though the similarity between John Prescott and Julie Andrews pretty much stops there. Laughing at him or with him was equally good. I always used to tell him that his confrontations with the English language were part of his appeal, but he worried about them, was embarrassed by them, and when it came to things like standing in for PMQs, he was put in genuine dread. Threatening to have a meeting abroad on a Wednesday was the only way I knew of terrorising him; he would palpitate with the horror of the approaching encounter, but he got up and he did it, with a kind of swaggering blunderbuss approach that the House quite liked. The only time it could be a real problem was when he was meeting foreigners and required interpretation, where his manner of speaking defied the talents of most interpreters, who generally needed extensive therapy and counselling after one of these sessions.
He also knew me very well, and knew especially when I was trying to hoodwink him into something or circumvent him or when I was retreating only with a plan to advance again. He was ultra-sensitive to his position not being taking seriously enough. A meeting would be convened and he would come in steaming and puffing to complain vigorously. I developed a specialism in how to handle such situations: the thing was to let him speak and not interrupt or hit back; but rather to absorb and let the anger naturally subside.
Perhaps his most alarming trait was his habit of starting a conversation in the middle – no beginning, no context, no explanation of what the problem was. I remember a time when it looked as if I was going to bring the Lib Dems into the Cabinet – the papers were full of it – and JP was horrified. Some days had passed since the issue was live, so it was not in my mind. But it was in his.
I was working at the Cabinet table, my head full of some policy conundrum or other. In storms John. ‘Where’s fookin’ Menzies?’ he begins. It wasn’t a promising start. He then began searching under the Cabinet table. ‘Come on, where is he?’ I had literally no idea what he was talking about. He raged about the room. I finally cottoned on: Menzies is of course the proper name of the senior Lib Dem person we all knew as Ming Campbell. John had been ruminating on the press reports of Lib Dems coming into the Cabinet, and by some process had decided it was Ming – and had for some reason not known he was called Ming, or maybe thought ‘Ming’ was some private-school nickname and was therefore suspect – and was going to put a stop to it.
I protested in vain that Ming was not joining the Cabinet, and neither was he lurking underneath the Cabinet table. After a few minutes of expletives, John went to leave. As he got to the door, he turned round and said: ‘So do I have your word he’s not coming in the Cabinet?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Well, just to let you know,’ he replied, ‘I’m not fookin’ havin’ it.’
He was deeply suspicious of the aristocracy of course, and therefore the royals, but he treated them with respect and decorum nonetheless. For their part, they were half nervous, half intrigued by him. He and Prince Charles corresponded regularly on issues, and as John had responsibility for some rural affairs, it was a relationship that was always a little tricky. John was a vigorous opponent of hunting and there was no persuading him out of that, period.
Shortly after their first meeting, I bumped into Prince Charles. ‘I had a meeting with Mr Prescott recently,’ he said.
‘Ah,’ I said, ‘how did it go?’
‘Fine, fine,’ Prince Charles replied with a somewhat distracted air, ‘except . . .’
‘Yes?’ I said encouragingly, knowing some Johnism was about to emerge.
‘Well,’ he said, looking round to see we were undisturbed, ‘does he ever do that thing with you?’
‘What thing?’ I said.
‘Er, well, when he’s sitting opposite you, he slides down the seat with his legs apart, his crotch pointing a little menacingly, and balances his teacup and saucer on his tummy. It’s very odd. I’ve never seen someone do that before. What do you think it means?’
‘I don’t think it means anything really,’ I said.
‘Hmm. You don’t think it’s a sort of gesture or sign of hostility or class enmity or something?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘he does that with me often.’
‘Yes,’ he replied, clearly unconvinced, ‘but—’
‘You mean,’ I interjected, ‘he’s making a working-class point against you, upper class, and me, middle class?’
‘Well, it could be,’ he said.
‘No, I think he just likes drinking his tea that way.’
‘Yes, you’re probably right,’ he said, plainly puzzled and unpersuaded, ‘it’s just I’ve never seen it done before.’
So there you have him. A one-off. Occasionally my bane. More often my support. But genuine, unvarnished and, in the ultimate analysis, true. And in my profession, you can’t say better than that.
The day after John and his punch, we just had to get on with it. I went up to Manchester. There was the usual round of visits to provide background pictures: not too few, so as to provide variety; not too many, so as not to provoke additional unnecessary risk.
After the events of the manifesto launch, it was not surprising that we wanted to keep a grip. But it was frustrating. The trouble was we were in a rhythm. The media wanted a story and the only story was a stumble. We wanted to focus on record and policy, where we thought we were strong and the Tories weak. The result was that the two campaigns never really met; they ran on parallel lines.
From time to time I would call Peter Mandelson and keep him informed of the campaign and get his advice. He was fighting up in Hartlepool, showing his steel and his fortitude in doing so. I thought it might be best for him to stand down, but he was determined not to and he was right. If they were going to pull him down, he wasn’t going without a fight. Later, I wondered about the difference between us. Of course, fighting to stay as prime minister and fighting to stay as an MP are a world apart from each other.
At that point in June 2001, I was fairly clear about myself: I was ready to go before the third election. I was less clear about my motives. I liked to think it was because I could walk away; I was not obsessed with being prime minister; I had a hinterland and another mission in my interest in religion. But I had a nagging doubt that part of it was just cowardice; part of it was wanting to be free of the burden, of the pain it brings, of the sometimes near-intolerable weight of responsibility. Did I want to go for unselfish reasons, or for reasons that were in fact utterly selfish? Was I kidding myself about my desire to keep power? Was I kidding myself about the desire to lay it down? Was I fearful of outstaying my usefulness or, in reality, fearful of the bitterness and rancour of the fight to stay?
Peter Mandelson could have taken the easy way out after his second resignation. He would have gone straight into the Lords and would still have been EU commissioner. But he chose to stand his ground, to make the point that he had nothing to be ashamed of and that his detractors, who liked to say how hated he was, would be proved wrong in his own patch.
The election was difficult for him. I told him to stay out of the national limelight and to focus on the local, make it a fight about Hartlepool’s right to choose their MP, not have the decision taken for them by a media out to get him. He did so with aplomb, and with down-to-earth political skill. Of course the London media travelled up, baiting him, being unremittingly negative, cynical and unpleasant about him, and naturally poking fun at the whole idea of Peter being capable of getting on with ‘the Northern working-class folk of Hartlepool’.
Of course, as ever, such stereotypes were ridiculously simplistic; and, being sensible, the people of Hartlepool decided that Peter had done a lot to put the place on the map and had defended and supported it, despite not being from there himself. In the end, his majority decreased only slightly. But in one sense the problem that Peter had was reflected in the wider problem of the campaign.
We managed to reassert our grip. Events came and went. We had celebrities out in abundance. That again added some spice. The regulars like Alex Ferguson, some of the cast of Coronation Street, Richard Wilson and Michael Cashman turned out of course, and other EastEnders stars like Michelle Collins. In a rather wonderful turn, Sir John Mills came out for us and introduced me at rallies. Well into his nineties, he remained fit and sharp and very clear. He wasn’t natural Labour; but he was supportive of me. Charlotte Church sang for us at one rally, as did Lesley Garrett. Mick Hucknall was staunch in his support.
To this day, I’m never sure of the effect the celebrity thing has. I don’t dismiss it, as some do. When you are trying to capture the mood – and this is more often so for a progressive party – celebs can reinforce, even boost the message. They add some glamour and excitement to what can often be a dreary business. What they can’t do, of course, is substitute for the politics. In fact, if they try to, they become immediately counterproductive. If they begin lecturing the people as to why or how they should vote, it’s nearly always a disaster. The public feel they are overstepping the mark and put them and their political fellow travellers in their place. They clearly don’t determine the outcome, but properly used, they help. And frankly, given the difficulty in rousing the damn thing, we needed the help.
I went through a carefully calibrated oscillation between the marginals – Dartford, Gravesend, Basildon, Loughborough, Weymouth, Forest of Dean, a roll call of the seats Labour thought for decades we could never win and now were looking to keep – and the solid Labour parts of the inner cities, northern shires and old industrial communities, in order to deal with the argument that, as we gained new voters, we would somehow lose interest in our traditional heartlands. As press conference gave way to meeting, which gave way to event and then rally, and interview piled upon interview, the frustration began to tell on me. And also the worry.
At one level, the campaign was going brilliantly. We were well ahead in the polls. Pace the Prescott punch (and possibly even because of it) we were making the running. Whatever the paddling underneath, and as ever, some of it was frantic, not much was disturbing what looked like a comfortable and serene ride to victory. As it became clearer that the Tories had no magic potion and could not achieve breakthrough, they started to fall apart at the seams. Their right wing started to say silly things, as when the then Shadow Health Secretary Liam Fox – actually clever – let his guard down and remarked: ‘All we hear from Labour is poverty, poverty, poverty, la, la, la. It’s just boring for Conservative members.’ A partially true statement, but unwise. Then Oliver Letwin – the Shadow Treasury Secretary, and also clever – let the cat out of the bag about how the Tories wanted spending cuts of around £20 billion.
Here’s where modern politics becomes ridiculous. Past a certain figure, amounts of money are, for a large part of the public, completely without meaning in terms of scale. ‘We will spend £500,000 on new school toilets’ sounds, at one level, quite a lot. £1 billion sounds just enormous, while £20 billion is beyond wildest dreams or nightmares, and all sense of relativity is lost. Most Treasury forecasts of GDP or revenue can be out by that amount and not much account taken of it, but put it in a headline and it seems revolutionary. It was a total mystery to me why the Tories ever thought it was sensible to quantify what they were planning to do, since it was as plain as a pikestaff (and by the way always is, which is why it�
��s daft as an Opposition to get into this game) that any such figures would be subject to reassessment were a new government to be elected.
However, such pronouncements indicate instinct, direction of travel, an underlying intent. For a Tory Party put out of power because it underinvested in public services, it was about as dumb a move as only the very clever can organise. Labour pounced. The hapless Mr Letwin spent the next days in hiding. The Tories weren’t sure whether to endorse, explain or expunge, and so did all three simultaneously. It gave me something to run on, preoccupied the media at least for a few days and thus gave us respite; and it provoked other criticisms from within the Tory Party to surface. The anti-Europeans went anti. The pro-Europeans went pro. The public went: they’re not ready yet, are they?
But even as I revelled in the chance to put the Tories down again, and keep them down, I sensed my own political mortality. Yes, the campaign was succeeding. Yes, the media were in one sense with us, The Times supporting us for the first time; yet peering beneath that, and looking at what really lay there, I felt a deep sense of isolation. The papers on the left, like the Guardian, were of course urging our re-election, but on the basis of fear of the Tories, and expressly warning the government and me that any reform of public services would be fiercely resisted. Likewise the Mirror. On the right, the Sun and the News of the World were advocating that we be given the benefit of the doubt, but were vigorous against Europe and thought we hadn’t gone far enough on reform.
The point is: no one bought the package. Except the people, of course. Many of them did. They were the New Labour believers. There were more of them than was thought. They were the people who in 2005 made certain we would not lose. They ‘got’ the balance, the newness of the political approach: personal tax rates held steady (or reduced) but investment increased; pro-business but pro-fairness at work (not pro-union); reform along with the spending on public services; a tough approach to responsibility in law and order and welfare; strong with the US and a player in Europe. They knew Mrs Thatcher had been right to make Britain competitive, but they also wanted a compassionate society. They were liberal about private lives; hard line on crime. They had no difficulty with a modern Britain. They wanted it, and disliked and distrusted Little England attitudes.