The End of the Party

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The End of the Party Page 10

by Andrew Rawnsley


  The NATO forces lingered there without well-conceived political or military goals. The Taliban regrouped to eventually become so resurgent that America and Britain were forced to commit many more troops later.

  In November 2001, though, the Americans were hubristically celebrating what they took to be a swift and famous victory. The White House focus was already swivelling from the mountains of Afghanistan to the deserts of Iraq. As for Tony Blair, he now needed to pay urgent attention to his battles on the home front.

  4. The TB-GBs

  ‘Well,’ said Cherie. ‘I think you should sack him.’1 She had many times before urged her husband to fire Gordon Brown. She would do so many times again.

  Tony Blair was careful to whom he confided the full torture of being umbilically bound to the Chancellor. He feared that it might destroy the Government if the ugly truth came out. So he usually tried to conceal, even from his senior staff, just how toxic the relationship was turning. He would bottle up all his frustration and fury about the other man’s impossible behaviour and then pour it out to Cherie when he went up to the flat in the evening. That helps to explain why her hostility to the next-door neighbour was so intense. Barry Cox, a close and non-political friend of the Blairs, explains: ‘She bore the brunt of the consequences for Tony of the confrontations with Brown. She reacted personally to what she regarded as Gordon’s very bad behaviour and she took deep mortal offence at it. She was not as calm and measured as Tony. She got very angry. She felt betrayed.’2

  Cox was with them on holiday in the summer of 2001 when he, Tony and Cherie had ‘a long conversation’ about ‘how difficult Brown had turned’. Blair, having not done it after the election, was now asking: ‘Should I sack him?’3

  In the salad days of the Government, when there was some residual trust, respect and even affection between them, Blair often described his relationship with Brown as ‘like a marriage’.4 That, in many ways, it was. There has been no more creative, destructive, talented and turbulent pairing in high British politics. Despite all the difficulties between them, no Prime Minister and Chancellor were twinned together for so long since the Napoleonic Wars. The longevity of the partnership was the more extraordinary because it was so tempestuous. They were the rock on which New Labour was built and the rock on which it so often threatened to break apart. When they were working together, their complementary skills created a synergy which made the Government pretty much unstoppable. When they were at war with each other, it terrified and divided the Cabinet, horrified and bewildered their party, astounded civil servants, transfixed the media and poisoned the Government into paralysis.

  As characters, they were a contrast. Blair rose to the top through his charm, communication skills and creative dexterity; Brown by his brain, organisational ability and steamrolling persistence. Blair was much the more emotionally intelligent, which gave him the advantage in connecting with the public and colleagues. Brown was more ruthlessly focused on executing his domestic policy ambitions, an attribute which he frequently used to thwart his nominally superior next-door neighbour. Blair was basically comfortable in his skin; Brown was not at ease with himself, let alone other people.

  There was a deep well of fury in Brown which expressed itself in a beetle-browed glower and volcanic eruptions of temper. ‘That’s none of your concern,’ he growled at Cabinet colleagues who dared to offer opinions about the economy, while believing he had the right to interfere in their departments. Battered by one of Brown’s pummellings, Geoff Hoon groaned to a friend: ‘Why can’t he behave like a human being?’5 After being subject to Brown’s bullying about the funding of the Olympics, Tessa Jowell, one of the more placid-natured members of the Cabinet, was provoked into shouting back: ‘Don’t you ever fucking speak to me like that again.’6

  Brown was a forceful speaker, but not a great debater. The diplomat and senior official Sir Stephen Wall noted that he did not engage in argument: ‘Gordon’s technique is to hammer away at the same point in a bulldozing way.’7 A very senior civil servant agrees that ‘He finds argument very difficult. His answer is to thump out bullet points until he has ground you down.’8 Paul Boateng, Chief Treasury Secretary, once burst into tears with a colleague because of the relentless briefing against him by Brown’s acolytes.9 Alan Milburn’s partner, Ruth, a psychiatrist, was once heard referring to Brown as ‘a psychopath’.10

  Blair was not a bully. His friend Charlie Falconer rightly says it was not his style to ‘take on other politicians in a very macho way’.11 There were occasions when he raised his voice and quite a lot when he used Anglo-Saxon language. ‘Holy Joe has a dirty mouth,’ observes Clare Short.12 But it was not his way to try to shout other people into submission. His manners were usually impeccable. ‘One of Tony’s fantastic qualities is that he is always polite with people in almost all circumstances. I’ve never seen him be rude to somebody,’ says Jack Straw. ‘If he was frigged off with you, there’d be a certain coolness or you’d read about it in the newspapers.’13 Bruce Grocott was Blair’s Parliamentary Private Secretary for seven years. ‘In all that time, we only had one serious set to. Within about an hour, he apologised to me, which I thought was very big of him.’14

  John Prescott was a man who got up angry and went to bed even more furious. On Prescott’s account, Blair was superb at massaging his volatile deputy. Prescott would often storm into Number 10 intent on a fight. After the application of the Blair schmooze, he would find himself saying: ‘Christ, Tony, I came in here disagreeing with you – and now we’re in agreement.’ As Prescott says, it was ‘a good trick’ to be so ‘brilliant at persuading people’.15

  Blair was a manipulator. ‘He believes he can persuade anyone of anything,’ remarks Peter Hyman, who was a member of his senior staff for six years.16 ‘Persuasive charm is one of his great weapons,’ notes Margaret Jay, a member of the Cabinet. ‘He does have to the absolute nth degree the advocate’s ability to persuade you of the argument he’s thinking about this morning.’17

  The character differences between Blair and Brown were reflected in their working methods. The Chancellor sweated the midnight oil; the Prime Minister was more likely to be flying by the seat of his pants. Blair was a political glider, riding the thermals of public opinion to soar across the landscape. Brown was the saturnine obelisk glowering over it. ‘They were almost the exact opposite of each other in terms of personality types so they complemented each other,’ observes Andrew Turnbull, who was Permanent Secretary at the Treasury with Brown before becoming Cabinet Secretary with Blair. ‘They were a very powerful duo.’18

  Brown won his first political campaign in his early twenties when he defeated the establishment of Edinburgh University by getting himself elected rector; Blair spent his time at Oxford acting, playing in a rock group, enjoying a string of attractive girlfriends, finding God and having nothing to do with politics. Blair, the mildly rebellious public school boy, was attracted more to religion and philosophy. Brown, the industrious state school swot, was very young when he published his first socialist tract. Though Brown was only two years older, they seemed to come from different decades. The son of the Manse was shaped by the serious but socially repressed fifties while Blair was much more a child of the trendy but self-indulgent sixties. Blair was most comfortable wearing jeans; Brown was never seen in a pair. Blair was innately optimistic while Brown was more of a miserabilist. Even as a student, Brown behaved as if he were old for his years. Blair managed to sustain an aura of youthfulness about him even as he advanced into middle age.19

  Blair put in the hours as Prime Minister, but he would, if he possibly could, get up to the flat by the early evening to relax with Cherie, his children and guitar. As an explanation for Brown’s obsessive behaviour during the first term, Blair would suggest: ‘Gordon’s problem is that he hasn’t got a family.’20 The workaholic Brown would rise very early and work late into the night, habits which continued even after his marriage to Sarah Macaulay, a former public relations executive.


  Blair was a brilliant communicator. Brown’s genius was for carving out dividing lines with opponents that exposed their vulnerability. Blair would often say that Brown was the smartest electoral tactician that he had ever met, though Brown was typically more grudging about offering reciprocating compliments to Blair.

  ‘Tony was the weaker negotiator,’ says a very senior civil servant who worked closely with both men. ‘If you want to put someone in a room with other EU leaders, give me Gordon any day. Gordon is stronger because he doesn’t care whether people hate him and Tony does.’21

  Blair was an intuitive and sometimes impetuous decision-maker, governed more by his instincts than by evidence. ‘Brown was the exact opposite of Blair,’ says Richard Wilson. ‘He had a capacious brain and an impressive intellect. He did do detail. He really does read Annexe E.’22 Brown wrestled with problems in a generally more considered, but also more agonised way. ‘He likes to know what all the options are,’ remarks Murray Elder, a friend since childhood.23 Brown would brood and brood, within his own head or among his tight circle of trusties, and then suddenly launch his conclusion on to his colleagues. They thought he was late to share decisions with them because he was uncollegiate and cussed. Sometimes it was that; sometimes it was simply because he took a long time to make up his mind.

  At their best, Brown’s technical mastery allied with Blair’s potent powers of persuasion made them a dazzling combination. The barrister son of a lawyer, Blair was the advocate: most effective when addressing the sceptical jury of public opinion. The son of a Church of Scotland minister, Brown was the preacher: most impressive when rousing a crowd of believers. Brown liked to preach to the choir; Blair to reach out to the unconverted.

  Blair could understand why people were Tories. His father had been one. Brown could not. Conservatives aroused in him a Caledonian red mist. Blair’s lack of tribalism, his fluid and protean qualities, allowed him to reach parts of the electorate that Brown struggled to understand or impress. This combination of personality and talents made them one of the most formidable partnerships in British electoral history. For the purpose of winning and retaining power, the coupling proved stunningly successful by delivering three election victories in a row. As a way of running a government, the results were much more ambiguous.

  The root of the evil in their relationship was the arrangement they came to over the leadership in 1994, a deal which programmed a permanent power struggle into the DNA of the Government and led to years of recriminatory accusations of broken promises. Believing that he was an Esau, robbed of his birthright by Jacob, a smoother, younger brother, Brown never forgave Blair for taking the leadership and displaced much of his fury on to Peter Mandelson. The third musketeer later reflected: ‘Within the New Labour family there has been a fissure from the word go. The reason is Gordon thought he should have succeeded John Smith, and he has never fully reconciled himself to not doing so. A very deep breach was opened up.’24

  The events of the traumatic days after John Smith’s fatal heart attack became accreted with many myths. The biggest legend was that the bargaining took place on 31 May 1994 at Granita, a now defunct restaurant in Islington. The meeting there was actually the culmination of a series of highly charged encounters, at least ten in all. Brown initially and naively expected his younger partner to defer to him. Blair had to withstand the older man’s fury and then manage his bitter feelings. One negotiation took place on the evening of John Smith’s funeral in the Edinburgh home of Nick Ryden, a friend of Blair since their schooldays at Fettes. When they turned up, Ryden could see how bad things were between them. ‘Don’t kill each other. You’ve both got a lot to offer the country’ was his parting advice before he took himself off to the pub.25 Their arguing was interrupted at one point when Brown disappeared to use the lavatory. When time passed and he didn’t come back, Blair assumed that the other man had stormed off in one of his rages. Then he heard the phone ringing and a familiar Scottish voice growling into Ryden’s answering machine. Brown was calling on his mobile from the lavatory. The door handle had come off, imprisoning him in the loo. Blair picked up the phone: ‘I’ll let you out, Gordon, but only if you give me certain assurances about the leadership.’26

  It was some time before they met at Granita that Brown realised that he would lose a contest with Blair. After a Scottish leader who was preceded by a Welsh one, there was an overwhelming feeling in the Labour Party that it needed a leader with a feel for the centre ground and telegenic appeal to Middle England in order to win power after four election defeats. As Mandelson famously suggested in an interview with me at the time, Blair was the one who would ‘play best at the box office, who will not simply appeal to the traditional supporters and customers of the Labour Party, but who will bring in those extra, additional voters that we need to win convincingly.’27

  That was seen as rank treachery by Brown, to whom Mandelson had originally been closer than he was to Blair. This rupture generated a hatred between Brown and Mandelson which was the more intense because it had been preceded by love. From it flowed fourteen years of venomous feuding. One witness who heard Mandelson’s end of a hysterical telephone conversation with Brown in 1994 recalls him screaming: ‘I love you, but I’ll break you! If you do that, I can destroy you!’28 Michael Wills, who was one of the few people who managed to be a friend of Brown while remaining on reasonable terms with Mandelson, reckoned they were ‘like scorpions in a bottle; only one of them will crawl out alive’.29

  Mandelson made the rational choice when he backed the more promising candidate. Blair was always going to win. As Jack Straw puts it: ‘In May 1994, the stars were saying to everybody that Blair is the leader.’30 He was more popular in opinion polls, enjoyed much greater support in the media, had a more impressive spread of endorsements from Labour MPs and senior colleagues, and was way ahead among party members.31

  That ought to have given Blair the strong hand in his negotiations with Brown. Yet he played it weakly. Before he left for Granita, Blair stood in the kitchen of his home in Islington discussing with Cherie and Mandelson how he should tackle Brown. Cherie was always worried that her husband would concede too much, telling him before an earlier meeting: ‘If you agree with Gordon that you’re going to do this for one term only, don’t come back home.’32 Mandelson believed Brown had to be accommodated for the sake of their project. Blair concurred, says Philip Gould, because ‘Tony was nervous about dividing the modernisers.’33 He left for the restaurant saying: ‘I’ve got to give him something.’34

  Blair ended up giving so much to Brown that the latter was encouraged to believe that they had effectively agreed a dual premiership. There were several reasons for Blair’s timidity at this crucial moment. He had just leapfrogged over Brown, but Blair was the junior partner for most of the decade beforehand. The two first met when they came into Parliament together in Labour’s nadir year of 1983 and shared a windowless room dominated by towering heaps of Brown’s papers and books. Neil Kinnock, under whose patronage they both rose, regarded them as ‘soulmates’.35 The Newcastle MP Nick Brown correctly identified them as ‘the two outstanding personalities of the 1983 intake’.36 The politically more experienced Scotsman was regarded, not least by himself, as the future Labour leader and Blair was looked on as his impressive but junior brother. ‘There was no question which of the virtually inseparable couple was the senior partner,’ says Kinnock’s deputy, Roy Hattersley.37 For most of that time, Brown was psychologically dominant. ‘You have to remember that for many years Blair was number two to Brown,’ says Barry Cox. ‘Tony was always talking about Brown as the great thinker, the great political strategist, and he always assumed that he would be number 2 to Brown.’38

  Only in the two years before Smith’s unexpected death did Blair achieve equal status with Brown. So even at the point when he moved ahead, he approached the other man with a mixture of admiration, dependency and fear. He worried that he would not succeed in making the Labour Party ele
ctable without the other man’s intellectual firepower. ‘I love Gordon,’ he told Brown’s younger brother, Andrew. ‘He’s the best mind the Labour Party has ever had.’39 There was also some brotherly guilt. Even after the 1997 victory which made him a landslide Prime Minister, Blair remained ‘very defensive and sensitive’ about how he had become leader. He even felt it necessary to explain himself to one of his Cabinet Secretaries. To Sir Richard Wilson, Blair said: ‘He had his chance when Neil Kinnock stood down. Gordon should have gone for the leadership then. Why shouldn’t I have stood when John Smith died?’40

  While Brown exhibited an intellectual superiority which often awed Blair, the Scotsman was internally riven with self-doubt. Charlie Falconer would tell Blair that Brown was ‘not as intellectually confident as he likes to appear’.41 Cherie, a woman who came top of almost every exam she took, was not intimidated by the Scotsman’s brain. Her husband was. Blair had a mild inferiority complex which persisted into government. He would say: ‘Gordon has a much more developed political philosophy than me.’42

  Blair’s view, according to Nick Ryden, was that ‘a deal had to be done to put them on a firm footing.’43 Barry Cox agrees: ‘Why did he give so much power to Brown? He needed a partner. He’d never run anything. He thought he couldn’t do it on his own. It seemed a perfectly sensible deal at the time.’44

  On the account of the negotiations that Brown gave to his friends, it was Blair who volunteered the idea that he wouldn’t serve as Labour leader for more than a decade.45 Blair always denied that he said anything quite so explicit, but it is entirely plausible that he floated the notion that he would hand over after ten years, not least because that would have seemed a very distant prospect to him at that time. As someone close to both of them once put it to me: ‘Tony is a great one for saying what he thinks the other person wants to hear. Gordon is a great one for only hearing what he wants to hear.’46

 

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