Broken Vows

by Tom Bower

  In the midst of their brainstorming, Anthony Hammond, a former Treasury solicitor asked to investigate the saga, delivered his report about Mandelson, who, he concluded, was not dishonest, although a call probably had taken place about Hinduja’s application for British nationality. Briefed by Mandelson, Andrew Marr announced on BBC TV that the minister had been cleared. That was untrue, Blair said, and an argument erupted between the two men. Blair drew the line: Mandelson would never return to government.

  In the midst of this recrimination, Gordon Brown told a sympathetic journalist that Blair was about to resign. ‘You’re a crap prime minister,’ he raged at Blair to his face, ‘and it’s time you moved over and let someone better do the job.’ Egged on by two aggressive advisers, Ed Miliband and Damian McBride, Brown encouraged Ed Balls to speak to Blair ‘like something on a shoe’.

  Not discussed amid all the abuse was Hammond’s description of the absence of checks on Hinduja by the Home Office. Despite warnings by MI5, the ministry did not ask the police, Inland Revenue or other agencies about the probity of a man who was under investigation in India. Suspicion now fell on Keith Vaz, a junior minister for Europe. His wife ran a company that advised on applications for British citizenship, and it had received money from the Hinduja Foundation. But Blair’s self-interest guaranteed that they all survived – except Mandelson.

  ‘I love his deviousness,’ sighed Blair’s loyal friend, ‘the way he is able to turn everything to his own advantage. His genius as a politician is his understanding of people, but also the fact that he is totally selfish and people either don’t see it or, if they do, they don’t seem to mind because of what he brings to them and the job.’

  In the final weeks before the election, outsiders rarely witnessed Blair’s doubts. At the launch of the campaign on 8 May in a London school, he appealed to his audience in a relaxed speech, portraying himself as a middle-class evangelist, ‘still basically someone who believes in the power of politics to change things’. The opening campaign advertisement was negative: ‘The Tories Present “Economic Disaster II”. Coming to a home, hospital, school, business near you.’

  ‘Last chance to save the pound,’ shouted Hague, leading a faltering party. Oliver Letwin, the shadow chancellor, revealed a proposal to cut taxes by £20 billion, then disappeared in order to avoid the merciless media hounding him to explain which public services he proposed to cut. Mocking the invisible Tory was the ideal backdrop for Brown to warn the country about the impending disaster of the Tories’ ‘Mr Boom and Mr Bust’.

  Yet victory could have been jeopardised on 16 May, the day the Labour manifesto was launched, when Straw was slow-handclapped by the Police Federation, John Prescott was photographed punching a protester, for which he refused to apologise, and Blair was harangued at a Birmingham hospital for two minutes by Sharon Storer about her partner’s inability to get a bed the previous night for cancer treatment. ‘He suffered terribly,’ she told the prime minister in front of the TV cameras, blaming the government and not the hospital. ‘You are not giving them the money to give them the facilities. All you do is walk around and make yourself known, but you don’t do anything to help anybody.’ Supremely polite, Blair did not let his mask slip. Even the succession of disasters did not dent Labour’s poll ratings, which showed them up to 26 per cent ahead of the Tories. Blair had faith that Campbell, plying his trade, would drown out the negatives.

  True to form, his consigliere revealed to the Mirror that Blair’s hidden strength was his Calvin Klein underpants, and that at the Blackpool party conference in 1996 he had worn a pair specially adorned with a red rose. He even supplied the words for his old newspaper: ‘cool men’ who wore CKs were men of ‘confidence, poise, good sense, sound judgement and style. CKs oozed class and statesmanship.’ The following morning, Campbell attacked the tabloid for ‘trivialising’ politics.

  By election day, 7 June, the result was not in doubt. Labour were at least 11 per cent ahead of the Conservatives in the polls, and would win by a margin of 9 per cent. Blair’s new majority of 167, losing just six seats thanks to the weak opposition, a sound economy and his own personal magnetism, provided another blank cheque to re-energise his revolution.

  At Myrobella, his home in Sedgefield, Blair appeared exhausted and not noticeably joyous. He felt misunderstood and isolated within his own Cabinet. There was a human limit, he decided, to anxiety and responsibility. Political life was not always a pleasure, and he anticipated resigning before the next election. In explaining his moodiness at the moment of glory, he would write, ‘I did lack courage.’

  In London the following day, the public accolades failed to lift the feeling of anticlimax. Neither his party nor many Cabinet ministers showed genuine gratitude for his achievement. The Brownites scowled and Blair’s confidants in Downing Street were at war. Cherie and Fiona Millar renewed their demand that Anji Hunter be dismissed. While Hunter remained, said Cherie, she would feel sidelined. Her jealousy may have been irrational but it was ineradicable. Cherie was ‘being ridiculous’, declared Blair, startled by the vehemence of the ultimatum. Millar sent a ‘vile’ email to a friend about Hunter, before Hunter finally offered to go. Only his praetorian guard – including Estelle Morris at education, Stephen Byers at transport and Patricia Hewitt, a former civil rights campaigner sent as the senior minister to the DTI – were unconditionally loyal. He sent them a message radiating positivity. With age and experience, he said, he had learned how to focus on important matters and work the system. New Labour would be reincarnated.

  During the upheaval, Blair delayed calling Brown, spending four days hoping to summon up the courage to send him to the Foreign Office. He knew the ensuing argument would be ferocious – not only with Brown, but with John Prescott, Neil Kinnock and other old Labour supporters. ‘The decision I didn’t take’, he would write, ‘was to move Gordon … the combination of the brilliant and the impossible.’ Without the benefit of having studied how predecessors such as Robert Peel, Benjamin Disraeli, Harold Macmillan and Harold Wilson had shrewdly sidelined their Cabinet rivals, Blair lacked the imagination to exploit his landslide victory. On Monday 11 June, he finally called Brown.

  ‘I assume you want to carry on as chancellor.’

  ‘Yes,’ replied Brown stiffly.

  Nothing more was said.

  PART 2

  A SECOND CHANCE

  * * *

  JUNE 2001–MAY 2005

  NINETEEN

  The Same Old Tale

  * * *

  The day after Labour’s re-election, David Blunkett arrived for dinner in the private room of Shepherd’s restaurant in Westminster, where he would be briefed by his senior Home Office officials. His two priorities were to reduce crime and stop the rising tide of asylum-seekers. Television pictures from Calais regularly showed men from Iraq, Afghanistan and Zimbabwe plotting to hide on lorries destined for Britain. Their success was highlighted by there being 97,000 applications for asylum in 2000, another record number, only 10,185 of which were recognised as genuine. ‘My inheritance from Jack [Straw]’, cursed Blunkett, ‘is a mess.’

  Stephen Boys-Smith confirmed that judgement. ‘We are not going to meet our targets for removing failed asylum-seekers,’ he told the home secretary, referring to the bogus asylum-seekers from Albania, ‘even though we are chartering planes to the Balkans.’ Only 4,870 had been deported, half the previous year’s number, against a target of 30,000.

  ‘I’ll have to clear it up,’ Blunkett replied. Labour’s liberalism, he added, would not change. Immigration from the Indian subcontinent would not be reduced or even discussed. In 2000, 210,000 immigrants had arrived as ‘family members’, compared to 70,000 in 1998. He supported more migration, but the controls on bogus asylum-seekers ‘need to show we were getting a grip’.

  During those days after his victory, Blair focused on the problem – for the first time, Boys-Smith would say – after witnessing Labour’s vulnerability during the election. At an early cr
isis meeting in Downing Street, Blunkett arrived with John Gieve, his permanent secretary, and Boys-Smith. Blair’s ‘big issue’, Blunkett knew, was the quick removal of anyone with an unfounded claim. His anger was directed at the unjustified welfare demands by the Roma and other benefit tourists.

  Blunkett waved that aside as a minor issue. ‘Our real problem’, he said, ‘is that controls over immigration into Britain have broken down. The asylum-seekers are economic migrants who want to work and live here.’

  ‘I understand why they want to come,’ came the reply, ‘but they can’t come as asylum-seekers.’

  Knowing that Blair supported managed migration, Blunkett summarised Sarah Spencer’s opinion. ‘You can’t shut the door,’ the academic had explained. ‘No government can control the number of economic migrants, neither by keeping people out nor by removing them. The government’s strategy is wrong because it’s failing to manage the public’s expectations.’ The general hostility to asylum-seekers, Blunkett was persuaded, could be reduced by admitting them as skilled migrants and giving them work permits.

  Obeying his political director Sally Morgan’s advice that he should not upset Labour supporters, Blair approved the ruse. ‘Right, this is what we’ll do,’ he said, his eyes tightening to suggest his determination. Blunkett would issue 150,000 work permits in 2002. Most of those migrants, including the unskilled, would become British citizens.

  As usual, the rising number of legal immigrants arriving every year from the Indian subcontinent was not mentioned. ‘Lifting the primary purpose rule’, Blair admitted to Blunkett, ‘was a mistake. It seemed the right thing to do in opposition, but I never thought that Afghanis, Iraqis and Somalis would take advantage of the change.’

  ‘Nothing can be done any more,’ replied Blunkett, who had also supported removing the rule. Neither politician, their civil servants and special assistants knew, wanted to discuss the new problems of polygamy, phoney marriages and the thousands entering Britain using invented relationships.

  Convinced that his first term had been damaged by ineffectual officials, Blair appointed the educationalist Michael Barber to head a new Delivery Unit. Civil servants would be directed to meet specific targets on 160 policies. With targets, Blair sensed, would come results.

  One month later, Blunkett and Gieve returned to Downing Street for Barber’s stock-take. Applications for asylum, Barber reported, were still rising. In reply, Gieve assured Blair that IND officials were making quicker decisions. Blair nodded. He was aware that these quicker decisions were not hastening the removal of failed asylum-seekers or halting the numbers. On the contrary, Boys-Smith had made the decision-making process faster in order to allow asylum-seekers to remain in Britain. No one volunteered to tell Blair that the new regulations were encouraging migrants. As Matt Cavanagh, a special adviser in the Home Office, would confirm, Blair ‘shared a conviction that immigration was good for Britain and the British economy’. The Cabinet was still not asked to discuss the principle.

  As the weeks passed, Blunkett failed to get to grips with the IND. ‘God knows what Jack did for four years,’ he complained, adding later, ‘I am simply unable to comprehend how he could have left it as it was.’ His spleen was directed at his staff in particular. Despite more officials having been recruited, the organisation was not improving. Blunkett blamed Gieve, whom he viewed as aloof and no better than the ‘hopeless’ Richard Wilson. He also condemned Boys-Smith as ‘incompetent’. For their part, Boys-Smith and his colleagues were not enamoured of Blunkett’s ‘bullying and aggressive style’.

  ‘It’s abysmal,’ Blunkett told Blair. ‘Nothing had prepared us for this. It’s worse than any of us imagined possible.’ He wanted Blair to approve Gieve’s dismissal. ‘We made a mistake of not reforming the civil service in 1997,’ he cursed. Blair’s response was more diffident than during the old days when they had discussed education. Now, he urged Blunkett to find a solution but offered no ideas of his own. Their discussions, Blunkett lamented, had become ‘always fraught’.

  By the time of Barber’s next stock-take, in early September, IND officials had already come up with a ruse to win approval. By ticking the right boxes in Barber’s questionnaire, Gieve could give the impression of ‘limited progress’. Blair and Blunkett were not convinced. To secure some political advantage, they directed Gieve to draft new legislation. ‘We need to show that we have the numbers under control,’ repeated Blair.

  After the meeting, rather than introducing new laws to strip asylum-seekers of their legal rights and welfare benefits, Blunkett agreed that Nick Pearce, his special assistant, should write a White Paper to be called ‘Secure Borders, Safe Haven – Integration with Diversity’. Pearce’s intention was to improve foreigners’ conditions in Britain. The fevered media reports from Sangatte, he believed, were inciting anti-immigration sentiment. Asylum-seekers, he agreed with Spencer, deserved the benefit of new citizenship rules to help their settlement. They knew that Blair supported the principle. If only, Pearce lamented, they could get rid of the poisonous headlines.

  TWENTY

  The Blair ‘Which?’ Project

  * * *

  ‘We need to see how we can break the monochrome,’ Blair told Alan Milburn, his health minister, soon after the 2001 election.

  The campaign slogans about closing the health gap between rich and poor, the pledges about building ‘a world-class public service’, recruiting 80,000 extra nurses, reducing waiting times from eighteen to six months and cutting waiting lists by 100,000 were meaningless when some health authorities, it was revealed, were massaging lists by removing names. The NHS Plan 2000 had produced headlines but still no profound solution, not least because Gordon Brown still refused to fund the expansion. The promise to build new hospitals and appoint thousands of new staff, Neil McKay, a senior official in Richmond House, the NHS’s headquarters in Whitehall, told Milburn, was not enough: ‘You need to change the way NHS people think.’ Milburn’s answer was to give Nigel Crisp, his new NHS chief, whom he barely knew, additional power.

  In an unusual breach of precedent, Blair and Milburn had decided not only to remove Christopher Kelly, the permanent secretary at the Department of Health, but also to scrap his job. Crisp would be simultaneously the permanent secretary and the NHS’s chief executive. Crisp arrived convinced there was ‘a real doubt whether the NHS could survive’. His melodramatic assumption reflected his professional bias. ‘I was always interested in NHS staff and not politicians,’ he said. The suspicion was mutual. Milburn blamed NHS executives like Crisp for blocking Blair’s modernisation ambitions. NHS managers, he told Blair, were culpable for the long delays and dirty wards. Now, the two politicians were dependent on another civil servant similar to all the others they disdained.

  The politicians’ distrust of the bureaucrats was mirrored by the public’s shock over medical negligence. A report had confirmed that, during the late 1990s, doctors at the Bristol Royal Infirmary had caused the deaths of twenty-nine babies; another report disclosed that Dr Harold Shipman, a GP in Manchester, had probably murdered over 200 of his patients. ‘This year must be the turning point for the NHS,’ Blair impatiently told NHS executives. He resented the experts’ warning that, despite the billions of pounds spent since 1997, they would need ten years to effect an overhaul. Ten months rather than ten years was his timetable, and his guests’ protests were unwelcome. The experts’ reaction, he wrote, was ‘a betrayal of public service ethos. I began to look for ways of getting business ideas into public service practice.’

  In reality, he was stumped. Other than spending money on new buildings and employing more people, he had no new ideas. Yapping at his ankles, Roy Hattersley, an old Labour stalwart, was deriding his ‘free-for-all philosophy’ for shifting the party to the right with ‘vacuous platitudes’. And Brown was still refusing to allocate the extra money.

  ‘We have to cut the waiting times for operations,’ Blair was told by Simon Stevens, his trusted adviser. ‘That’s th
e key to improving public satisfaction.’

  Blair agreed. He despairingly compared civil servants to the army and its successful response to the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease. ‘Why did the army succeed?’ he asked rhetorically. ‘Because they didn’t take “no” for an answer. They used rules as a means to an end.’ If only civil servants became social entrepreneurs taking risks to ‘achieve change’, many problems would be solved.

  Once again, he trusted one of Britain’s self-publicising businessmen to deliver salvation, although like Richard Branson and Richard Desmond, his latest hero, Stelios Haji-Ioannou, the founder of easyJet, had orchestrated several unsuccessful ventures. Unaware of his failings, Blair invited the Greek to map out the path for reform. The honest answer was disappointing. ‘You can’t have an entrepreneurial civil service’, Haji-Ioannou explained, ‘because you don’t have any competition.’ Milburn’s snap advice, after returning from his constituency with a litany of complaints about the NHS, was, ‘We must get back to choices.’

  Blair liked ‘choice’ as a slogan and had embraced it for education, but was resistant to adopting it for the NHS – as Julian Le Grand discovered when, during a conversation, the professor revealed a statistic. Productivity in the NHS, he told Blair, had peaked in 1997 and ever since had been flat. In 2001, it was beginning to slide back. Although the measurements were controversial, the trend as monitored by the reputable King’s Fund was embarrassing. The crunch statistic was ‘activities’. Despite all the extra money – £5 billion more in 2001 – spent on additional staff, higher wages and drugs, the number of patients being treated had risen by less than 1 per cent since 1997. Targets were intended to place NHS professionals under pressure to deliver, but they were failing in their efforts.