A JOURNEY

by Blair, Tony

  For me and for the people, this was sad. My relationship with them had always been more intense, more emotional, if that’s the right word, than the normal relationship between leader and nation. It was partly the sensation of the 1997 victory; partly New Labour; partly that I communicated and felt normal at the beginning, and then over time seemed to become distant, aloof, presidential, and therefore full of my own importance but not of theirs. Of course, part of the media worked hard to construct this image and then make it stick.

  However, it was more than that. In 2005, I had an unusual polling presentation by Charles Trevail of Market, Social and Opinion Research. Their theory, which at the time I found amusing and diverting but far-fetched, was that my relationship with the British people was more like a love match or marriage. At first, people felt an abnormally close bond. They trusted and liked me. Then in the second term, I suddenly left and went off on a foreign adventure, almost on an affair. I stopped caring about them. I became arrogant. I seemed to think I had grown bigger than them; or to put it another way, we grew apart and I found Britain too small for my egotistical ambition. I used to make them feel good; now I just sounded irritated that they wouldn’t go along with me.

  Charles said they had never conducted research on a person and seen such strong feelings aroused. Indifference was virtually non-existent. Now, Mrs Thatcher aroused that strength of feeling, but that was about her policies; this was about me as a person. Some hated, some loved; but they talked about me as someone they knew not just as a leader but as an individual. The predominant view, however, was that I had lost that common touch which had defined the earlier time in office and which had created the bond.

  I was certain part of this derived from the nature of the job. People see you on the news every night – serious face, serious issues, laying down the line, other people saying nasty things, PMQs and its confrontation, all messy, all off-putting. Occasionally I would step into an arena that was different, as I had done with the Des O’Connor interview in 1996. In March 2006, just before the ‘cash for honours’ imbroglio began, I appeared on Parkinson. Again it showed the other side and really worked. Kevin Spacey was the other guest and got it just right, chafing me about George Bush but in a funny way that had no malice in it. It was to be part of a major effort to reconnect on a personal level, but once the ‘scandal’ broke, it was stillborn.

  However, I came to realise that this almost inevitable distancing over time was not at the core of the problem. The problem was that I was doing things, not just in foreign policy but more broadly, that were generating opposition and disagreement; and I wasn’t budging. The left hated the support for America and public service reform; the right hated the support for Europe, the style of the government and, most of all of course, the fact we were still in power and they were still marginalised.

  The difference between the TB of 1997 and the TB of 2007 was this: faced with this opposition across such a broad spectrum in 1997, I would have tacked to get the wind back behind me. Now I was not doing it. I was prepared to go full into it if I thought it was the only way to get to my destination. ‘Being in touch’ with opinion was no longer the lodestar. ‘Doing what was right’ had replaced it.

  I knew this was causing upset in the matrimonial home in which I and the nation had lived happily together. It seemed arrogant; conceited even. But it wasn’t that I had run off with another woman. I had reached the conclusion that the family wouldn’t prosper and be taken care of unless we lived life differently. I wanted to move location. I could see the world changing rapidly. I could see our place in it needing fundamental and quick adjustment. The comfort zone was not where we needed to be. This time, the feeling was not about the party. It was about the country.

  I looked at the G8 – and this was before the economic crisis in 2008 – and I realised that there was no way it could survive. China, India, Brazil and others would demand a seat at the table; and if they didn’t get one, they would get their own table. I saw the danger for Europe of a G2: US and China. And then, if we weren’t careful, a G3: US, China and India. Or a G4: US, China, India, Brazil. And so on. In other words, we had to face the fact that Britain is a small island of 60 million people off the continent of Europe, in a world where two nations alone would each have populations twenty times ours and, in time to come, economies to match. How absurd and futile to believe we could be Little Englanders in such a scenario, or ignore the vast importance of our US relationship.

  As the new economies emerge, we have to compete. How? By brains and skill, by moving up the value-added chain. By working harder. By competing on merit, on ability. To do that, our education system and welfare state have to be reformed not more cautiously but more boldly. I could see the twentieth century left/right debate of Western politics dying on its feet, still swinging the odd punch but essentially just getting in the way of the practical debate about what needed to be done, and done urgently.

  I looked at the NHS and was proud of the change we had made, but I was in no doubt: as technology advances and people live longer, there is no way that health care systems of developed nations can survive at reasonable cost and with a minimum level of equity in provision, without putting individual responsibility and public health policy at the centre of the debate. I have described already how I saw the problems of nineteenth-century criminal justice procedures trying to cope with twenty-first-century crime and social dysfunction.

  The point is that it wasn’t dissatisfaction with the relationship that was driving me; it was a sense that unless I spelt out the necessity to seek a different context in which to nurture that relationship, I was not being honest or trustworthy. The irony was, right at the moment when, to my detriment, I was being most open about what needed to be done and why, my integrity was most under question.

  I had faced the fourth lesson of political courage that I refer to in Chapter 1 – the incalculable risk – and taken that step. I was now embarked on the fifth: doing what I thought was right, even though the people disagreed. I had started by buying the notion, and then selling the notion, that to be in touch with opinion was the definition of good leadership. I was ending by counting such a notion of little value and defining leadership not as knowing what people wanted and trying to satisfy them, but knowing what I thought was in their best interests and trying to do it. Pleasing all of the people all of the time was not possible; but even if it had been, it was a worthless ambition. In the name of leadership, it devalued leadership.

  None of this meant or means that the leader should not seek to persuade, and in doing so use all the powers of charm, argument and persuasion at their command. That’s tactics, and they should be deployed effectively and competently. The strategy should be to point to where the best future lies and get people to move in that direction.

  As I have said, in those last weeks, we were going full pace, both at home and abroad. Inside the Downing Street flat we were packing up. I don’t suppose there has been a period when the prime minister has had so much time to prepare the leaving. There were vast boxes full of the accumulated detritus of ten years. It was the longest time I had ever lived in one place. Leo had never known anywhere else. However, I am not sentimental about houses. When I left Downing Street and Chequers, I was sad to leave the people, but I didn’t mope over the physical structures. It’s lovely to live in historic and beautiful places, but it’s not of the essence. Home is where the family is.

  I got back from my last European Council on the Saturday, and then went up to Manchester on the Sunday for a special party conference to announce the leadership results and the handover to Gordon. I made my speech, shortly and without emotion – I had done all that at the last party conference. I could see they were eager to get on with welcoming the new era. Also, I was now, in my own mind, anxious to quit the stage. The farewells had to be gone through, with dignity and if possible with elan, but without mawkishness.

  I made a statement to the House on the European Council on Monday 25
June. On Tuesday I did my last visit as prime minister. It was to a primary school and was, in a surreal touch, with Arnold Schwarzenegger, the governor of California, who had come to Downing Street for a meeting on climate change. As he walked down the line of children who had been sent out to greet him, one infant piped up – in a slightly halting rehearsed tone, obviously having been tutored by one of the teachers who must have been ignorant of Arnold’s films – ‘Hello, Mr Governor. I did like watching your film The Terminator.’ I hastened to tell him we might have misheard. Anyway, he was great and the schoolkids were delighted.

  Next day, the Wednesday, was my last PMQs. I knew it would be weird. There was no point in me trying to advance things; no point in the Opposition trying to criticise things; no point in anything other than try to take one’s leave decently. The first thing, however, was to send condolences from the House to the families of fallen soldiers. Having done so, I also said the following:

  Since this is the last time that this, the saddest of duties, falls to me, I hope the House will permit me to say something about our armed forces, and not just about the three individuals who have fallen in the last week. I have never come across people of such sustained dedication, courage and commitment. I am truly sorry about the dangers that they face today in Iraq and Afghanistan. I know some may think that they face these dangers in vain. I don’t, and I never will. I believe they are fighting for the security of this country and the wider world against people who would destroy our way of life. But whatever view people take of my decisions, I think there is only one view to take of them: they are the bravest and the best.

  At the end, I gave some words in support of politics and politicians, which I also felt strongly about and knew the House would welcome:

  Some may belittle politics but we who are engaged in it know that it is where people stand tall. Although I know that it has many harsh contentions, it is still the arena that sets the heart beating a little faster. If it is, on occasions, the place of low skulduggery, it is more often the place for the pursuit of noble causes. I wish everyone, friend or foe, well. That is that. The end.

  David Cameron kindly got them to give me a standing ovation; and there it was. I went back to say farewell to the staff at Downing Street, and unlike in 1997, they were now crying at my leaving, not my arrival. The family posed with me one last time on the steps of Number 10. I went to the Palace, said goodbye to the Queen who was, as ever, very gracious; and got on the train to Sedgefield to say goodbye to my constituency too.

  I felt calm and at peace. I felt there was unfinished business; but then I consoled myself with the thought that the business is never finished. I was on to my new life. I had always been fortunate in having a passion bigger than politics, which is religion. I had, have, new ambitions now. I have come a long way on the journey, but I am painfully aware I have much further to go. There are greater steps and larger lessons that lie ahead. Maybe in time a more complete assessment of the ten years will come. Maybe not. But my own assessment of it no longer depends on whether it does or does not.

  In any event, the knowledge that the journey continues, the excitement at the new challenges to be explored, the sense of purpose that is as great as ever make me a very fortunate human being. There is so much frailty still to overcome, but in overcoming it lies the meaning of life. That, at least, I have learned.

  TWENTY-TWO

  POSTSCRIPT

  The term ‘the West’ is a bit of an old-fashioned throwback to the days when the world was split by Communism, but it serves as shorthand for ‘our’ type of nation: open, democratic, committed to a market economy, confident militarily (certainly since the fall of the Berlin Wall), and led by the world’s only superpower, the USA. For almost twenty years after 1989, the West set the agenda to which others reacted. Some supported us and some opposed us, but the direction of the globe, the destination to which history appeared to march, seemed chosen by us.

  True, certain cracks in the edifice had begun to appear. There was even the odd hole punched in the outbuildings. New forces were busy building something different, not far from where we were. But it was our model that still imposed itself and commanded most attention. So it looked in June 2007, when I left office.

  The three years since then have seen something of a revolution in that apparently unassailable order. The economic crisis of 2008 ruptured our confidence in the rationality of the market economy. The war in Afghanistan hangs in the balance. President Obama, as we did in 1997, faced an orgy of expectation when he came to office and, like any president or prime minister, has to face the difficult choices of government. The rise of China is there in real life, visible and pulsating, a fact, no longer an interesting intellectual conjecture. Power is shifting east. Other nations such as Brazil and Turkey grow assertive, no longer seeking permission to play a role, but simply playing it. The European Union is in trouble, and for once the word ‘crisis’ is not an exaggeration but a description. We in the West remain democracies, but we have never had less respect for those we elect.

  We thought the ultimate triumph of our way of life was inevitable. Now it is in shadow. Our confidence is low and our self-belief is shaken. Most of all, we feel weak, at points almost listless. The future, once so firmly in our grip, seems to have broken loose in search of new masters. Read much of our media, and that’s how it is: malaise, decline, impotence, challenges unmet, promises unfulfilled.

  Personally, I have never felt a greater sense of frustration or indeed a greater urge to leadership. I enjoy my new life much more than my old one, and find in it huge purpose. I am fighting for my world view, but in a different manner from that of being in conventional office. I have tried to gain a bigger and deeper understanding of the world. China is no longer such a mystery, though that is only a relative sentiment. The Middle East is endlessly fascinating and frightening. I see the economy from a broader and different perspective in business. In my two major charitable areas – Africa and faith – I find complete spiritual as well as political satisfaction.

  I’m living life full pelt, but I find my old world in a state of despair and feel both shocked and galvanised by this. Perhaps that is because I am removed from it and so think I see it more clearly. (This could be an illusion.) Perhaps it is because some of the bouleversement is directed at precisely what I represented in office: liberal economic policies, market reforms in welfare and public services, and engagement and intervention abroad. For whatever reason, a chapter that I intended to write as a postscript now resembles more of a credo.

  To summarise: I profoundly disagree with important parts of the statist, so-called Keynesian response to the economic crisis; I believe we should be projecting strength and determination abroad, not weakness or uncertainty; I think now is the moment for more government reform, not less; and I am convinced we have a huge opportunity for engagement with the new emerging and emerged powers in the world, particularly China, if we approach that task with confidence, not fear. In short, we have become too apologetic, too feeble, too inhibited, too imbued with doubt and too lacking in mission. Our way of life, our values, the things that made us great, remain not simply as a testament to us as nations, but as harbingers of human progress. They are not relics of a once powerful politics; they are the living spirit of the optimistic view of human history. All we need to do is to understand that they have to be reapplied to changing circumstances, not relinquished as redundant.

  The dramatic and far-reaching impact of the financial crisis of 2008 is still being played out. It will probably register in history as the most significant economic event since the 1930s. The facts of what happened are well known and don’t require repetition, but the interpretation of them is and should be a matter of enormous debate.

  Almost at once, as occurs now in virtually any such drama, a conventional wisdom arose that was extremely resistant to challenge. It has gone roughly as follows: there was a catastrophic failure of ‘the market’, necessitating a rescue by ‘governmen
t’ and a Keynesian reflation to counter the deflation. In late 2008, banks were stabilised by the injection of government support; regulatory systems began to be overhauled in order to bring the rogue financial sector into line; deficit spending became economic policy.

  Politically, of a sudden, the state was back in vogue. The market-led reforms of the 1980s and 90s appeared wrong. The economic growth was said to be a delusion based on debt. Above all, government was in the ascendant. You could almost touch the Schadenfreude of large parts of political and academic opinion as ‘the market’ was exposed as having been bereft of clothes after all.

  This led progressive politicians, on the left especially, to assert that politics was going to undergo a radical shift of direction towards a more interventionist and statist position. This seemed to accord with the change in mood in the US (though Obama’s appointments to key economic positions were actually very centrist). It signalled the end of an era that began over thirty years ago with the Thatcher/Reagan economic and political philosophy.

  Disentangling all of this and putting it in some order is a hugely difficult task, made much more difficult by the fact that challenging any part brings a fair amount of criticism since it is a conventional wisdom that is so entrenched. But we do need urgently to unravel it and come to a better and more considered view.

  First, ‘the market’ did not fail. One part of one sector did. The way sub-prime debt was securitised, spliced and diced and sold on with no real appreciation of underlying risk or value was wrong, irresponsible and immensely damaging. Some of the rewards, the huge payouts for shuffling round securities, the bonuses, are not just presentationally awful; they can’t be justified and, at worst, have helped create a propensity to ‘do the deal’ whatever the long-term merits, in a way that significantly contributed to the crisis. All this is correct and should be acted on. However, such practice should not define or represent the whole of the banking sector, let alone the whole financial sector, let alone ‘the market’.