After his departure, he wistfully remarked: ‘I began hoping to please all of the people all of the time; and ended wondering if I was pleasing any of the people any of the time.’108 Polling in fact suggested that to the end he bested any rival at matching the mood of the electorate.109 He left office with very high ratings among Labour supporters, 89 per cent of whom rated him as a good Prime Minister overall. The same was said by 61 per cent of all voters. A majority of voters still thought of him as ‘likeable’.110 That was an outstanding result after ten years at the top.
The downside of his charm, panache and opportunism was that Blair leaned too heavily on those talents and made his party over-dependent on skills which were highly peculiar to him. He based success on the politics of personality. He was only intermittently engaged with the politics of ideas. One of the few occasions when he was totally confounded in the House of Commons was when a Labour MP asked him to ‘briefly outline his political philosophy’. In so much as Blairism was an ideology, it was one subject to constant revision. He did not have a coherently worked-out agenda before he became Prime Minister, he delayed developing and articulating one in the first term because he was obsessed with winning the second term, and then he became diverted by terrorism and Iraq. He did not have a theory for public service reform until the end of his first term, struggled against the opposition of Brown during the second, and was too drained of political capital by the third to fulfil all his goals. He never had sufficient interest in the politics of organisation. That showed in his inability to fully master Whitehall and the neglect of his withering party. By all accounts from his staff, he was both a pleasant boss and a poor personnel manager. In common with many charismatics, he was often inept at harnessing the talents of others. Appointments to the senior civil service and the Cabinet were frequently misjudged. Crucially, he had no strategy for the succession other than to hope, against all his own experience to the contrary, that Gordon Brown might become a changed man once he was Prime Minister.
On Thursday, 21 June, Tony Blair chaired his final Cabinet. They’d had a whip-round, enforced on rather reluctant ministers by Gus O’Donnell, to buy some farewell gifts for him and John Prescott: a painting of Chequers for the outgoing Prime Minister and one of Admiralty House for his deputy. Brown led the formal tributes: ‘Whatever we achieve in the future will be because we stand on your shoulders.’111
Their relations were relatively untroubled in the final days of transition. ‘I give 90 per cent of the credit to Tony for the smoothness of the handover,’ says one senior civil servant at the heart of it. ‘Tony behaved incredibly well. He was very good to Gordon, even helping him with preparing for things like PMQs.’112 He wrote a series of notes urging his successor not to forget aspirational voters.113 He also offered to take difficult decisions before he left, like ordering a proper prime ministerial aircraft, but Brown turned that down.114 There remained an underlying tension between them about the extent to which Brown would present his premiership as a sequel or a break. Blair worried that Brown would repeat what he saw as Al Gore’s error when he distanced himself from Bill Clinton in the 2000 American presidential election.115 It would be revealed only once Brown moved into Number 10 that he had not resolved in his own mind how to reconcile being both a continuation of the last decade and a change from it.
Severe doubts about Brown persisted in Number 10. Some feared that he and his acolytes were arrogantly unconscious of the level of performance required to be a successful Prime Minister. ‘They thought it was going to be easy,’ comments David Hill. ‘Their attitude was: “If Tony can do it, they’ll be able to do it.” ’116
Jonathan Powell was even more strongly sceptical and was often heard to say: ‘Gordon has not got his head around how many decisions a Prime Minister has to make every day.’117
Powell derived a certain amount of sadistic pleasure from torturing Blair for not finding an alternative to Brown. ‘Will he be the worst Prime Minister in half a century – or a century?’ Powell taunted Blair, who would curl up in his chair and not say much in response.118
Blair’s own doubts were profound. He emerged from one long meeting with Brown in despair: ‘Gordon hasn’t worked out that you can’t fix the country like you can fix the Labour Party. He has no plan. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do.’119 It was too late now.
On Sunday, 24 June, the two men flew up to Manchester for the formal coronation. Harriet Harman narrowly won the deputy leadership. After the transfer of preferences from less popular candidates, she beat Alan Johnson by a margin of 50.4 per cent to 49.6 per cent. Jon Cruddas, who had run on a ticket advocating a break with Blairism, performed very well. Hazel Blears, the most avowedly Blairite candidate, came last.
His last weeks were the longest goodbye in British political history: tears and cheers from his local party in Sedgefield, a last twosome with George Bush at the White House, a final summit with European leaders the week before, a visit to the Blue Peter studio. As a leaving present, Labour MPs bought him a guitar. There was something about this drawn-out goodbye of the ageing rocker on a farewell global tour who doesn’t really want to leave the stage at all. Philip Gould found Blair ‘sad and reflective’ in his final weeks in power. ‘He believed he was leaving too early and he was right about that. He had got clarity about what he wanted to do; he was at the peak of his powers. One of the tragedies is that you don’t crack it until the end.’120 To his staff, he usually put a light face on it. After a last visit to Jacques Chirac, a broken figure by this stage, Blair had his entourage ‘in stitches’ on the way home as he joked about how they’d have to prise his hand off the door knocker of Number 10.121 He was anxious that his life would be empty, a fear expressed in a desperation for a busy retirement. He took the poisoned chalice of being a Middle East envoy. Jonathan Powell was horrified when he later discovered that Blair accepted no fewer than 500 engagements around the world for the year after his premiership.122 On his last full day in office, he was still talking to his aides about what the Government would be doing in coming months. Powell murmured to Justin Forsyth: ‘I don’t think he knows he’s going.’123 That night, he padded around Number 10 in bare feet, shorts and T-shirt saying farewells and offering thanks to the staff.
At just before eight on the morning of Wednesday, 27 June, Gordon Brown walked through the connecting door between Number 11 and Number 10 to transact some last business with the man he would that day finally replace. Brown had with him a list of the ministerial appointments he planned to make. He did not require Blair’s approval, but he felt the need for the other man’s acquiescence. Brown did not want anything – especially not noises of dissent from Blair – to ruin his arrival. In earlier discussions, Blair tried to save his friend Charlie Falconer from the sack. He continued to make the case with Brown that he should not fire Tessa Jowell, another minister very close to Blair.124 Some of Blair’s worst fears about his successor – especially the anxiety that Brown would pack the Cabinet with factional acolytes – appeared dispelled. Seeing that some of his allies were protected, and some given dramatic promotions, Blair offered little criticism of the list.
Given the depths to which their relationship plunged in the year before, the transition was remarkably free of public rancour. They had a mutual interest in trying to make the day presentationally immaculate. Brown desired a smooth entrance; Blair wanted his exit ‘to be good-tempered and positive’.125
He went into the den to prepare for his final Prime Minister’s Questions. It was Blair’s boast, and the brag was just about accurate, that he never had three bad PMQs in a row. His swansong was always likely to be an easy ride. Yet he was ‘very nervous’ as he rehearsed his lines that morning.126 He was obsessed ‘with getting the tone right’ and ‘scared about getting it wrong’.127 He had put on his ‘lucky brogues’– a pair of Church’s handmade leather shoes which he had worn for every PMQs of his premiership. At noon that day he stood at the dispatch box for his 318th performance. It was
stylish, graceful and humorous. By the end, he even had his opponents on their feet to applaud.
He gave the usual weekly announcement of his engagements and added a poignant twist. ‘I will have no further meetings today. Or any other day.’ MPs chortled.
In that half-hour were encapsulated both the highs and lows of his premiership. The session began with a sombre recital of the latest deaths among British service personnel in Iraq and a last blast of self-justification about their sacrifice. ‘I know there are those who think that they face these dangers in vain. I do not, and I never will.’128
The ancient walrus Ian Paisley then led several tributes to his successful pursuit of peace in Northern Ireland. ‘Could I say that I fully understand the exasperation that you felt many a day when I visited your office!’
On the back of a helpful question about jobs, Blair launched into a prepared joke about receiving his P45. Another, more spontaneous opportunity to display his humour was offered by Nicholas Winterton. This foghorn of the Tory backbenches erupted into a denunciation of the European Union. Blair laughed: ‘First of all, I like the honourable gentleman. As for his good wishes, I would say to him: Au revoir, auf Wiedersehen, arrivederci.’ Winterton joined the merriment. The ability to lightly disarm opponents was always one of Blair’s gifts. Earlier in the year, he made an appearance on the Catherine Tate Show in which he gave a talented rendition of the comedienne’s catchphrase: ‘Am I bovvered?’ He’d been looking for an excuse to deploy it from the dispatch box. The opportunity was offered by Richard Younger Ross, an eccentric Lib Dem MP, who tried to engage him with a byzantine question about the relationship between church and state. Blair paused for a moment and then, to roars of amusement, simply said: ‘I am really not bothered about that one.’
At the end, and over time, he delivered a short speech which closed not only his premiership, but also his twenty-four-year parliamentary career for he had announced that he was also quitting as MP for Sedgefield. He ‘never pretended to be a House of Commons man’ but ‘I can pay the House the greatest compliment I can by saying that, from first to last, I never stopped fearing it. That tingling apprehension that I felt at three minutes to twelve today, I felt as much ten years ago, and every bit as acute.’ Then he paid a wider compliment to the profession he shared with them all. Politics had ‘harsh contentions’ but it was an arena in which ‘people stand tall’. He went on: ‘If it is, on occasions, the place of low skulduggery, it is more often the place for the pursuit of noble causes.’
To the last, Blair was brilliant at bringing an audience on his side by flattering it.
‘I wish everyone, friend or foe, well.’ There was a tremor in his voice. ‘And that is that.’ His throat cracked. ‘The end.’129 Labour MPs rose to reward him with a standing ovation. David Cameron, who had praised Blair for ‘considerable achievements that will endure’, motioned his side to join the tribute and the Tories stood too. The packed public galleries rose to applaud as well.
Gordon Brown thwacked him on the back, once to say well done, and then again as if to be sure that Blair really was leaving. He was departing at least a year earlier than he had originally intended, but the manner of his departure successfully masked any bitterness about that. Lauded by his opponents, clapped out of the chamber, celebrated as a leader above party, he choreographed for himself a very elegant exit.
He returned to Number 10 and addressed the Downing Street staff in the Pillared Room on the first floor. He thanked everyone for ‘going the final mile with me’. His audience could see that he ‘had to stop himself crying’.130 Many others were in tears as applauding staff lined up either side of him and Cherie. It is traditional for outgoing Prime Ministers to be clapped out. Though he had said he didn’t want this, they ignored him.131 Then he and his wife emerged through the door to pose on Downing Street for one last time. He ruffled his son Leo’s hair for the family’s final photograph outside the famous door. Cherie, fearsome in magenta, could not resist firing a parting shot at the media. ‘Goodbye,’ she shouted over her shoulder as they got into the car. ‘I don’t think we’ll miss you!’
Not for the first time, she was voicing what her husband thought. ‘You can’t resist it, can you?’ he said to his wife as the door of the Jaguar was closed. ‘For God’s sake, you’re supposed to be dignified, you’re supposed to be gracious.’ There were some moments of stony silence as they rounded Parliament Square. Then, as the car turned into the Mall, he shrugged, took his wife’s hand and grinned.132
The Jaguar drove on to Buckingham Palace and Tony Blair finally relinquished power after ten years and fifty-five days in Downing Street.
The moment he left, officials back at Number 10 began to move furniture around to prepare for Gordon Brown. Blair’s Chief of Staff and the rest of his people were meanwhile ‘scuttling out through the basement so that we didn’t spoil Gordon’s triumphant entrance’.133
27. A Short Honeymoon
After thirteen years of waiting for the crown, Gordon Brown had become king without a contest. He was still biting his nails. On the day that he finally ascended to the premiership, he nervously started phoning around his confidants at just before six in the morning, which was slightly later than had been feared by those long accustomed to his voice jolting them awake before sunrise. One of the first calls was to Spencer Livermore, the senior aide who worked intensively with Brown on the short speech he would make outside Number 10. They had been at it for days and Brown was not yet satisfied. Down the phone, he rehearsed his performance once again.
He had chosen to memorise it for fear of repeating the embarrassment when he launched his candidacy with his face obscured by an autocue screen.1 He continued to worry over it when his team met for a cooked breakfast at Number 11 after Brown’s final conversation about his first Cabinet with the outgoing Prime Minister. Then, for one last time, he was kept waiting for the premiership as Tony Blair milked his finale.
One hundred and ten minutes after Blair’s final ride to the palace, the armour-plated Jaguar nosed back through the Downing Street gates now carrying Gordon and Sarah Brown. On the May morning in 1997 when New Labour made its triumphant entrance, the sun shone brilliantly from a sky untroubled by clouds. Blair processed up to Number 10 to the cheers of hand-picked Labour activists waving Union flags. When Brown made the same journey, there was an absence of rapture. A grey sky gloomed overhead. The loudspeakers were wrapped in bin bags to protect them from threatened rain. The only people to greet him were the media corralled behind the steel barriers on the opposite side of the street. It was almost as if his team had reviewed video of Blair’s exultant arrival a decade ago and decided to do the exact opposite.
Brown emerged from Pegasus and then paused to pat his jacket pocket like a man wondering where he has left his house keys. In a becomingly courtly gesture, he walked round the Jag to open the car door for his wife. He approached the microphone and tapped at it, apparently less than confident that it would be switched on. Then, at 2.52 p.m., he made his first statement to the nation as Prime Minister.
There was a whiff of the pulpit when he pledged to be ‘strong in purpose, steadfast in will, resolute in action’. He fell back for inspiration on his childhood in Kirkcaldy by recalling his school motto: ‘I will try my utmost.’2
Though a self-declared enemy of the politics of celebrity and image, Brown was not entirely without vanity. He had his teeth fixed before he became Prime Minister and could be highly sensitive to how he was portrayed by cartoonists. ‘Why do you draw me so fat?’ he complained to Martin Rowson of the Guardian. He made the identical protest to Dave Brown, who cartooned for the Independent.3
His most audacious aim that day was to reinvent himself as the agent of a fresh start. ‘This will be a new government with new priorities,’ said the man who had run at least half the government for a decade. ‘I have heard the need for change. Change in our NHS, change in our schools, change with affordable housing, change to build trust in governmen
t, change to protect and extend the British way of our life. This change cannot be met by the old politics.’ His brief statement contained no fewer than eight references to ‘change’, which climaxed with the declaration: ‘And now let the work of change begin.’4 His pollsters were telling him that ‘change’ was the most popular word with their focus groups.5
In this respect, there was a similarity with Blair’s arrival ten years before. Brown wanted to represent himself as a new dawn and his very lack of showmanship was supposed to be an element of the contrast.
He and his wife turned to walk into Number 10 only to find that the door remained stubbornly shut, as if Cherie had superglued the locks. The famous black door opens only from the inside. The officials watching on the TV monitor inside the lobby were assuming that the new Prime Minister would want to enjoy his moment for longer than he actually did. They missed their cue to open the door.6 For want of a better idea, the Browns were forced to linger on the doorstep for a while longer. He fixed a rictus on his face and awkwardly waved to the cameras. Then the door finally opened and he was inside at last. Soon afterwards, it began to drizzle.
As the door closed behind them, the Browns were ritually clapped in by the Number 10 staff. ‘Everyone in the building was trying to be friendly,’ says one civil servant. ‘But the atmosphere was odd. It was a bit like the barbarians entering the city because everyone knew Brown and his people had been working against not just Blair, but everyone in the house.’7 After taking some congratulatory calls from foreign leaders – the first was with George Bush – the new Prime Minister made some brief, pleasant remarks to the people who would be looking after him. In the Pillared Room on the first floor where they had listened to Blair’s farewell a few hours earlier, Brown said: ‘I know you’re all sad that Tony has gone. One of the reasons I’m glad to be here is that you looked after Tony so well.’ He invited them to call him ‘Gordon’ and offered one of his little prepared jokes: ‘It’s not every day that you meet the Queen at 1.30 p.m., become the Prime Minister at 2 p.m., speak to the President at 3 p.m., and get told by Sarah to put the kids to bed at 7 p.m.’8
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