The End of the Party

by Andrew Rawnsley

  The encouragement came in the form of praise for all Blair had achieved and all he could yet achieve as Prime Minister. Levy, ever the salesman, laid on his best patter to sell Blair to Blair. ‘Now is not the time to give up,’ said Levy, flattering Blair with the argument that he was the only person who could win Labour a third term.

  It seemed to have the desired effect. The next morning, Cherie waited until her husband was in the shower and out of earshot. Then she rang Levy. He had Cherie’s thanks: ‘Tony came home much happier last night.’ A little later, she sent the peer some flowers.83

  Cherie was ‘by miles’ the most significant influence in convincing her husband not to quit, according to Charlie Falconer.84 David Blunkett agrees she was ‘really crucial in persuading Tony not to step down’.85 She argued with him that to go now ‘would be read by history as a tacit admission of failure’,86 as indeed it would have been. ‘For her, it was beyond the pale to surrender to the next-door neighbour.’87

  Some close to him always bet that Blair would manage to talk himself out of resigning. ‘The nature of the man is that he’s an optimist. I never believed that he would resign in the end,’ says David Hill. ‘He pulled himself round. He argued himself round that there were still things for him to do.’88 A member of the Cabinet noted: ‘He got a new lease of life around June.’89

  Blair’s morale was decisively rallying by the time he flew out to Turkey in the early summer. Preparing for a news conference with the Turkish Prime Minister in Ankara, Tom Kelly warned him that the main issue in the media was whether the allies were going to make a sudden retreat from Iraq. Blair declared that there would be ‘no cutting and running or ducking out’, he was ‘for staying the course and getting the job done’.90 There was a subliminal message about his own future which was detectable by the few who knew how close he had come to quitting. When he returned to Downing Street, the Prime Minister was greeted by one of his senior aides, Pat McFadden. The aide said knowingly: ‘I particularly liked the line about not “cutting and running”.’ ‘That was Tom’s phrase,’ said Blair, smiling. ‘I liked it too.’91

  16. On and On

  Tony Blair celebrated the end of a lacklustre G8 Summit on Sea Island off the coast of Georgia by challenging his aides to a game of beach football. Nigel Sheinwald, who had taken over as his chief adviser on foreign affairs, put his bulky frame in goal. Tom Kelly, who had neglected to bring any sports clothing, played in his suit. The Prime Minister, who always travelled with his gym kit, hogged the ball. ‘He was a completely selfish player.’1 They noted the buoyancy of his mood despite impending elections back home which looked dire for Labour.

  He was still out of the country when the country returned its verdict on him. Blair had travelled on to Washington for the funeral of Ronald Reagan as Britons went to the polls for the local and Euro-elections on 10 June. The results were phoned through to the Prime Minister at the British embassy in the American capital. Labour lost over 450 council seats, slumping into third place behind the Liberal Democrats. The Euro-elections were even worse. Labour’s share crashed to a terrible 23 per cent. Blair was not exactly cheerful when he got the news, but neither did he react despondently. ‘They’re bad, but they’re not that bad,’ he told those travelling with him.2

  One bright spot was Ken Livingstone, who was re-elected as Mayor of London having this time stood as the Labour candidate. In a popular first term, he had confounded the fears of Labour’s high command by boldly and successfully introducing congestion charging and proving unexpectedly Blairite in his friendliness towards business and property developers. Four years earlier, Blair denounced Livingstone as ‘an absolute disaster’ and strained every sinew to try to stop him becoming Mayor.3 This time a ‘really enthusiastic’ Blair was on the phone to congratulate Livingstone the moment it was announced that he had held London.4

  The other comfort was the performance of the Tories. Michael Howard’s Conservatives fell short of the psychologically crucial 40 per cent threshold in the locals5 and scored a paltry 27 per cent in the elections for the European Parliament, a dismal result for the principal Opposition party at a time when the Government was so unpopular. ‘We seized on that very quickly,’ says David Hill.6 The Tories lost a big chunk of the anti-European vote to the withdrawalist UK Independence Party led by Robert Kilroy-Silk.7 It was an irony to savour. Tony Blair was thrown a lifeline by Livingstone, once his bête rouge, and Kilroy-Silk, the tangerine-skinned Europhobe.

  In the wake of the results, Cabinet loyalists flooded the airwaves to play up the disappointment for the Tories and play down Labour’s pummelling at the hands of the voters. ‘They were crap elections, but there was a brilliant operation afterwards. We had our people on every media outlet.’8 The exercise successfully smothered attempts by some of the Chancellor’s supporters to stir up discontent against the Prime Minister.

  The agitation was anyway half-hearted because Gordon Brown was working on the assumption that he would soon be moving into Number 10. ‘Gordon trusted him to hand over,’ says one of Brown’s closest allies. ‘Against all previous experience, he still trusted him.’9

  To help save the elections from being a total catastrophe for Labour, Brown and his team had put a lot of effort into the campaign. They were disconsolate and mutually recriminatory when the outcome weakened Howard and therefore strengthened Blair. To Brown’s face, Ed Balls said: ‘You’ve been a mug.’10

  On 12 July, he unveiled his Comprehensive Spending Review, setting out three years of spending on health, education and the other public services. The spending taps were turned up to maximum on the twin assumptions that economic growth would continue into the indefinite future and he would soon reap the political benefits as Prime Minister. His team were now intensively planning the crowning of their king. The media choreography of the take-over was all gridded out. Brown’s senior aides had even allocated to themselves the offices in Number 10 they intended to occupy.

  One warning that they had got ahead of themselves appeared on the very morning of Brown’s big spending statement. ‘Blair’s shock blow for Brown’ was the headline to a story by the Political Editor of the Sun, Trevor Kavanagh. ‘Tony Blair has vowed to be Prime Minister for five more years in a crushing blow to Gordon Brown.’11

  Blair was now almost completely resolved not to leave Number 10, his morale further buoyed by advice from Philip Gould that Labour could win another three-figure majority at the next general election.12 What Blair had yet to summon up was the courage to tell Brown that his promise of a handover was not worth the paper it was not written on.

  There were several reasons why Blair felt stronger by July. One was a victory in Europe over his old adversaries, Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schröder. Blair thwarted their attempt to impose Guy Verhofstadt, the arch-federalist Prime Minister of Belgium, as the next President of the European Commission. Britain successfully manoeuvred to get the job for José Manuel Barroso, the Portuguese premier, whose Atlanticist, freemarket, non-federalist tilt was much more aligned with Blair’s preferences.

  There was also some positive news about Iraq. The United Nations Security Council passed a resolution sanctifying the plan to appoint an interim Iraqi government and giving an international mandate for American, British and allied military forces to remain there until January 2006.13 Blair was with Bush at the NATO summit in Istanbul when civilian power was formally handed over to the acting Prime Minister, Ayad Allawi. Condi Rice scribbled a note to the President: ‘Iraq is sovereign.’ Bush showed the note to Blair and scrawled across it: ‘Let Freedom Reign!’14 This was one of the many false dawns in Iraq, but it gave Blair further encouragement to remain at Number 10.

  Before he reached the safety of the summer recess, the next potential booby trap was in mid-July, when the Butler committee unveiled the findings of its inquiry into the use of intelligence in the run-up to the war. Butler was far more critical than Hutton. When he presented his conclusions at a news conference, the former Cab
inet Secretary expected journalists to ask whether he thought the Prime Minister should resign. He pre-agreed with the committee that he would reply: ‘That question is not for us, but for Parliament and the people.’15 To Butler’s amazement, the question was never put. The report did provide ample and compelling evidence about the inflation of the flaky intelligence, but it pulled its punches by clearing Blair of ‘deliberate distortion or of culpable negligence’.16 The media herd had anyway come to one of its unconscious, collective decisions that it was now bored with trying to nail Blair on Iraq.

  The following night, Thursday, 15 July, Labour lost the Leicester South by-election to the Liberal Democrats on a massive swing.17 But that blow was softened because Liam Byrne just clung on for the Government at the by-election in Birmingham Hodge Hill. Only later did Byrne discover how much had been at stake when he was told by an ally of the Prime Minister: ‘If you hadn’t won, Tony might have had to go.’18 The Tories came third in both contests. Blair retired to Chequers that weekend feeling that he had survived the worst that could be thrown at him. Brown grew increasingly agitated that nothing was being said about the handover.

  ‘All conversation stopped,’ says an aide at the centre of Brown’s circle. ‘It all went suspiciously silent. Tony couldn’t bring himself to tell Gordon directly. He couldn’t explain what he was doing.’19

  Brown came round to Number 10 to try to get an answer. ‘Gordon was just losing it. He was behaving like a belligerent teenager. Just standing in the office shouting: “When are you going to fucking go?” ’20

  Members of the Chancellor’s entourage tried to take things into their own hands. Ed Miliband was always regarded as the least thuggish of the Chancellor’s crew, but the iron had now entered his soul. He stormed in to see Sally Morgan. ‘Why are you still sitting here? Why haven’t you packed up to go?’ demanded Miliband. ‘There’s a deal and he’s got to go. There’s a deal. Prescott was the witness to it.’ Morgan claimed to have never heard of any such deal: ‘I don’t accept what you’re saying is true.’ She went into the den to tell Blair: ‘You’re not going to believe this. I’ve had Ed Miliband round telling me to pack up.’ Blair contacted Prescott, who ‘went mad’ because he didn’t want to be dragged into it. Miliband phoned Morgan soon afterwards. ‘How dare you tell people?’ he shouted down the phone. ‘That was supposed to be a private conversation.’21

  According to David Hill: ‘It happened quite regularly. You’d have numbers of Brown people coming round to Number 10 saying: “You shouldn’t be here any longer.” ’22

  Brown’s camp were becoming demented in anticipation of what they saw as an incipient betrayal. No-one was more maddened than the Chancellor, who had been readier to believe the promises of a handover than the more sceptical Ed Balls and the rest of his entourage. Blair could not bring himself to tell Brown directly. So the media had the conversation for them.

  July the 18th was the beginning of the tenth anniversary week of Blair’s leadership of the Labour Party. On that day, the Observer splashed: ‘Blair: no deal with Brown on No 10’. My story and the commentary inside were based on extensive conversations at the highest levels within Number 10, where I had been given the emphatic impression that Blair had totally recovered from the psychological pit of the spring and was now fixed on fighting another election and serving a full third term.23

  It was widely conjectured among lobby correspondents that the principal source for this exclusive was Tony Blair himself. The Treasury took that as read. Brown vented his fury with his confidants. ‘Newspapers were hurled around the office and trampled on.’24 A boiling Brown then demanded an explanation from Blair. ‘I was asked a question,’ replied Blair, mock innocently. ‘I answered it.’ Brown shouted back: ‘Are you fucking going or not?’ He did not get a straight answer from the other man.25

  John Prescott got the two of them together for one of his marriage counselling dinners at Admiralty House. ‘Give me a date,’ demanded Brown. Blair finally admitted to his change of mind. He couldn’t go now, he contended, because it would look like he had been defeated by Iraq. ‘I need more time,’ he told Brown. ‘I can’t be bounced.’26 The dinner ended badly.

  The night sky over the Sardinian coast lit up with a massive display of fireworks laid on for the Blairs’ entertainment by Silvio Berlusconi.

  Their Italian host kept the best for the end. The spectacle climaxed with ‘VIVA TONY!’ sparkling across the sky. Cherie was amused. Her husband was mortified.

  They’d made polite excuses on all the previous occasions when the Italian Prime Minister issued invitations to stay at the billionaire’s Villa Certosa. Blair’s officials, fearful of the bad publicity and the political controversy of associating too closely with the Italian, were alarmed when the Prime Minister decided he would stay with Berlusconi in August 2004. Sir Stephen Wall and others argued that it was ‘best to sup with a long spoon’. Having politely listened to their objections, Blair responded: ‘I think you should leave the politics to me.’27 Berlusconi was a rare ally over Iraq and could deliver votes in support of a British bid for the Olympics.

  Blair began to have second thoughts when he set eyes on the Italian waiting to greet them aboard his colossal yacht. ‘Oh my God,’ he muttered to Cherie as they walked across the gangplank. ‘The office is going to have a fit.’28 Berlusconi was dressed in an extraordinary white outfit. Around his head was a piratical multi-coloured bandana. With his ability to instantly spot a presentational disaster in the making, Blair could already visualise the embarrassing pictures and mocking commentary this was going to generate in the British press.

  As the boat cruised out of the harbour, the Prime Minister reminded his Italian host that there would be photographers about and gently suggested he might like to change. ‘You’re right, Tony,’ said Berlusconi. ‘I should change.’ He excused himself and disappeared below. Blair was relieved. Moments later, Berlusconi reappeared looking exactly the same – except that the bandana had been exchanged for a fresh, white one to match the rest of his outfit.29

  The association with Berlusconi, one of the few pro-war leaders still in power, was an illustration of how far Blair’s politics were bent out of shape by Iraq and its aftermath. The continuing friendship with Bush was the most vivid example of all. In August 2004, the Democrats nominated Senator John Kerry as their candidate to take on Bush in the November presidential elections. The Labour Party, in common with the vast majority of Britons, was rooting for Kerry. He was the candidate of their sister party and promised to be a much more productive partner on global issues such as climate change and the Middle East peace process. One very pro-American member of the Cabinet declared that if Bush was defeated: ‘I will do cartwheels down the street.’30

  There was one exception: Tony Blair. He did nothing to help Kerry and forbade colleagues from doing so either. When Bush’s poll ratings dipped in the closing weeks of the contest, Labour MPs became excited by the prospect of seeing the back of the Texan. The exception again was Tony Blair. ‘Whenever Bush weakens in the polls, they start mucking about,’ he would say privately. The ‘they’ being Iran, Syria and North Korea. Were Bush to lose, ‘the bad guys’ would be encouraged to come out ‘from under their rocks’.31

  Blair maintained an ambivalent public face about the presidential race, which encouraged pundits to speculate about his real preference. The truth was that he wanted Bush to win – an extraordinary position for a Labour Prime Minister to have got to. The pro-war leaders of Spain and Poland had already lost office. If the architect of the invasion was thrown out of the White House, it would be a vote of no confidence in the war by the country that led it and a vote of no confidence in Blair’s judgement in joining it. He feared that the ejection of Bush would be seen as a rejection of himself.32

  On the night of the American election, he went to bed with exit polls indicating a victory for Kerry. Everyone in the Labour Party was happy. Except Blair. He was roused at 5.30 the next morning to be told that
Bush had won a second term. Everyone in the Labour Party was depressed. Except Blair.

  The Prime Minister’s summer break that year was long even by his standards. The fireworks with Berlusconi came at the end of a twenty-six-day absence from Britain which had begun with a fortnight at Sir Cliff Richard’s villa in Barbados, taken in a visit to Athens to see the Olympic Games and also included a stay at a Tuscan palace belonging to the wealthy Strozzis.

  Blair returned home on 25 August with any residual thoughts of surrendering power to Gordon Brown burnt away by prolonged proximity to Cherie and the restorative effects of several weeks in the sun. His Cabinet Secretary noted that Blair possessed ‘these fantastic powers of recuperation. He loves lying in the sun – that’s how he recharges himself. He’s like a solar battery.’33

  He bounced back from holiday with what he regarded as a secret killer plan, to be unveiled in stages, which would deal with the Chancellor. He was encouraged by all the important people around him. Jonathan Powell was as adamant as ever that Brown had to be cut down. So was Sally Morgan. Matthew Taylor began his time in Number 10 in a more conciliatory spirit, believing that there was fault on both sides and things might be done to make the relationship less dysfunctional. The others regarded Taylor as naive. After his attempts to reach out to the Treasury were repeatedly rebuffed, Taylor too became a Number 10 hardliner on Brown. When David Hill, a temperamentally unfactional personality, became communications chief, he endeavoured to create ‘a better relationship with Gordon, but he was not interested in people who could bridge things’.34 Peter Mandelson’s views about Brown were so well known he hardly needed to repeat them.