I had always believed that the best relationship between parties in partnership was to be in government together – to form a coalition – because this made both sides subject to the disciplines of power. But would Blair pay the price of proportional representation, without which a coalition would mean the near certain decimation of the smaller party at a future election, when the Government started to get unpopular (as it inevitably would)?
The alternative, I mused, would be for us to co-operate with the Government from the opposition benches. This might work for a bit. But it could never last long; we Lib Dems would soon find it too difficult to resist the easy pickings of opposition and too frequently damaged by being blamed for the actions of a Government over which we had little influence and no control. This would also mean, as Blair himself had said in our last conversation, that we would forfeit the historic opportunity to heal the schism on the Centre Left which had made the Tories the natural party of government in Britain for three-quarters of a century. Furthermore, with a Commons force only a quarter the size of the Government’s majority, what bargaining power would we have? Why should Blair pay any attention to us, when he didn’t need us at all? A loose partnership in Opposition might be an option, but it would be one which it would require a lot more skill and a huge amount more leadership to handle.
By the time we reached London it was full daylight, and the Special Branch escort† had peeled off. The Lib Dem celebration at Pizza in the Park, however, was still in full swing. They gave me a great welcome, I made a short speech, drank a few glasses of champagne and then went off to catch an hour’s nap before what I knew was going to be a demanding and historic day. The last image I saw before falling into an exhausted sleep was of Tony and Cherie Blair being greeted by cheering crowds at Labour’s victory rally at the Royal Festival Hall.
By eleven o’clock I was back in my office for the phone call with Tony Blair that my advisers had arranged with his staff the previous day. He rang exactly on time, saying he was just off to see the Queen, but wanted a word before he left. He would spend the afternoon making his major Cabinet appointments and now had in mind a ‘framework of co-operation’ with us. There was no mention of a relationship with us in government.
The first thing that struck me was how his tone had changed since yesterday. Thinking about this afterwards, I have concluded that something happened overnight to change his view of the previous day that a coalition was a good option. Some months later a private conversation with Robin Cook confirmed this. He told me he had met Cherie just before they had gone to Downing Street on the morning of the election. She had said that, as Blair listened to the results roll in, he had been taken aback by the size of his majority. She had told him that he really must go ahead ‘with the thing with Paddy’, as he would never get another chance. According to Cook, he had agreed. But then, in the early hours of the morning, probably while I was travelling up from Somerset, he had either met or spoken with Prescott and Brown, and both had made clear their virulent opposition to this – leading him to conclude that, if his Government was to get off to a smooth start, he had to begin by taking the easier option of a loose relationship across the floor of the House of Commons, rather than the bigger gamble of a tighter one in government.
In my early-morning conversations with my advisers I had reached the same broad conclusion. A partnership in Opposition was probably marginally better for us. But I had decided that, if Blair had wanted to go for a coalition, I would take the risk, providing PR was in the package.
So it came as something of a relief to me when, during our phone call later that day, he said he wanted to take up my suggestion of using a ‘Cabinet Committee’ as the context for a relationship outside government, adding, however, ‘I am absolutely determined to change politics with you and heal the schism. If we allow ourselves to get into a position where we play conventional politics, the schism will just reopen.’*
It is my experience that far more mistakes are made in life by being too careful, than by being too bold; the SAS motto, ‘Who dares wins’, is not just an exhortation to show courage, it is also a statement of wisdom. I have come deeply to regret the decisions both of us took that morning, and I suspect that Tony Blair has too. For what we lost in the very early hours of 2 May was, I think, a unique opportunity to do something really historic: to enter into a partnership government at the optimum moment – not because we had been forced to do so to command a majority in the House of Commons in the aftermath of a hung parliament, but on the high ground of principle and in the aftermath of a great victory. This could, in my view, have led to a complete realignment of the Centre Left in British politics, keeping the Tories out for the best part of a generation. It would, using the old language of the heyday of the Liberal–SDP Alliance which so captured the public imagination, have really ‘broken the mould’ of British politics, which is what I came into politics to do. And a partnership with the Lib Dems might, I also allow myself to believe, have prevented some of the worst aspects of the Blair government, not least some of its early follies, such as its egregious attacks on the fundamental civil liberties built into our democratic system – and maybe (but perhaps not under my leadership) even its later tendency to embark on military action without properly thinking through the complexities of peace-building afterwards.
Most of the fault for this failure to seize the moment lies, of course, with the two of us. But some also lies with that unique and much vaunted, but in my view overrated, British constitutional institution, the Downing Street removal van. In many countries there is a gap between an election and the new Government taking office. In the US a President is elected in November and doesn’t move into the White House until the following January. But in Britain the removal van turns up at the back door of No. 10 Downing Street as soon as the result of the election is known, usually around 9 o’clock on the morning after polling day. The outgoing Prime Minister is then bundled out, bag and baggage, so that the place is empty and ready for the next Prime Minister to take over as soon as he has ‘kissed hands’ with the Queen. From that moment the new Prime Minster, exhausted from four largely sleepless weeks and probably still awash with the adrenalin of the campaign, is instantaneously faced with all the key and complex decisions necessary to set up a new Government, while at the same time running the country. This is just not sensible. It would be far better if there were an interregnum, as in the US, but briefer, while the old Government continues to govern and the new one has time to get a rest after the exertions of the campaign trail, before preparing itself for office.
I know that, from a purely personal point of view, I felt relieved when it became clear that I could go home to Somerset, my garden, some holiday with my children and a good rest. But, although I did not recognise it at the time, the truth was that this decision, so quickly taken, meant that over the next three years both Blair and I would spend huge amounts of time and energy, initially trying to recover the opportunity lost that morning and then, when it became clear this was impossible, trying to blow as much heat as we could into the dying embers of a partnership that had lost its fundamental purpose: to ‘change politics and heal the schism,’ as Blair himself had put it.
My first meeting with Blair as Prime Minster took place a fortnight after the election, just after the State Opening of the new Parliament. On my way in through the back entrance to Downing Street (which runs from the Cabinet Office through a passageway, one of whose walls is the edge of Henry VIII’s Royal Tennis Court, still constructed of the red brick of his time) I met the Cabinet Secretary, Robin Butler. He told me that he was much impressed with the start made by the Blair government; but, he added in a confidential whisper, accompanied by a slightly perturbed Civil Service look, ‘Do you know, they don’t eat lunch!’ On balance, I thought this rather a good sign, though he seemed faintly offended by this break with Whitehall tradition.
Blair agreed that we should set up a Cabinet Committee along the lines of our discussion on
polling day, and that this would have the primary function of overseeing the constitutional changes which were agreed in the Cook/MacLennan agreement. Though stressing he was still ‘unconvinced by the case for proportional representation’, he also undertook to set up a Commission to look at electoral reform for Westminster, which was, for us, the sine qua non for the kind of closer relationship in government to which he said he was still committed.
One thing was becoming increasingly clear to me, however, even in these early days of the new Government. Blair’s heart was never really in the constitutional reform agenda. Before the election he had told me many times that it was his aim to change Britain permanently, as Mrs Thatcher had done. It is ironic, therefore, that it was arguably only in the field of constitutional reform that he really succeeded in achieving this, because constitutional change was a subject that evidently bored him, and which I think he saw as a distraction from the business of ‘real’ government. He went along with the Cook/MacLennan reform agenda, I suspect, not because he really believed in it, but because it was a legacy from John Smith that he felt duty-bound to honour and a framework within which to build a closer relationship with us. It was, if you like, the entry ticket he knew he had to offer to get us to enter his ‘big tent’. A few days after the election I had concluded that the best time for me to step down as Leader would be the end of the year. But now, after meeting Blair, I realised that I would have to stay until as much of the constitutional reform agenda was delivered as possible; for, if the relationship ended before then, there would be much less chance that the elements of the constitutional reform agenda which were important to us Liberal Democrats would be incorporated in the Government’s programme, in the way Blair and I had agreed.
Our meeting of 15 May 1997 was, I suspect, one of the first to be held on the famous sofa in his little office off the Cabinet Room in No. 10, which was destined to become the nerve centre of his later style of ‘sofa government’. What neither of us realised at the time, however, was that this was merely the start of a complicated gavotte that we would dance over the next two years. Ultimately, it would deliver most of the Cook/MacLennan agenda, including a Parliament for Scotland and an Assembly for Wales, the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights into British Law, a Freedom of Information Act and, for the first time, the introduction of PR into British elections at the European, Scottish and Welsh levels. But when the dance ended, with it would also end the chance for voting reform for Westminster, the opportunity to break the mould by creating Britain’s first peacetime partnership Government, and my leadership of the Lib Dems.
Mercifully, the end of May brought the Parliamentary Whitsun holidays. Jane and I spent them in glorious spring sunshine at our house in Burgundy, where we ate too many of the local cherries, drank too much of the local wine with our French friends and slept a lot. But none of this could stop my brain churning as I pondered what to do next. By the end of our holiday I had concluded that the Cabinet Committee could only, at best, be a stop-gap. Its effectiveness would be bound to erode over time as a result of the inevitable temptations of opposition for the Lib Dems, and the inevitable mistakes which were bound to be made by the Government. Before I left I wrote a letter to Blair telling him this and saying that, if he was serious about creating a partnership Government, as he had claimed to both Roy Jenkins and I, then it had better be done soon, or he would lose the opportunity.
Shortly after my return from holiday Roy Jenkins and I joined the Blairs and Peter Mandelson for a private dinner in the Blairs’ new apartments in Downing Street to discuss the situation and, especially, how to handle the issue of PR. When we arrived, Blair explained that they had taken over the apartments normally used by the Chancellor, because these were larger, and the Blairs needed the extra accommodation for their family, while Gordon (then still single) could do with the rather smaller Prime Ministerial flat upstairs. The rabbit-warren passageways of Nos 10 and 11 had caused some confusion amongst his new ministers, Blair told me. He said that the new Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, couldn’t find his way out of No. 10 after a meeting in the Blair’s new flat and had to be shown out by Euan, the Prime Minister’s eldest son.
We had dinner in their dining room, which was still decorated in the most garish red-flock wallpaper, making it look like an Indian restaurant. This caused some mirth as we speculated which past Chancellor was responsible. We concluded that it could have been John Major, but was probably Norman Lamont.
At this dinner, we agreed on four outline ‘decisions in principle’. First, that we would go ahead with the joint Cabinet Committee, probably in July. Next, the Government would agree proportional representation for the European Elections, and then Blair would set up a Commission on Electoral Reform for Westminster. Lastly, all this would be treated as a process which would lead to the Liberal Democrats taking up ministerial posts in what would then become a coalition government, probably by the autumn, when Blair said he was anyway planning a reshuffle of his Ministers.
On 30 June I flew to Hong Kong for the ceremony handing over the Colony to the Chinese. Blair asked me to fly back with him in the Prime Ministerial aircraft, so that we could have a chance to talk. There was also a posse of journalists and a Tory MP (Alastair Goodlad) on the plane, so, to be able to speak in privacy, we went off to the Prime Ministerial sleeping space. There we sat cross-legged on his bed, with our backs on opposite aircraft bulkheads and a bottle of claret precariously balanced between us, as the aircraft bumped through a rather violent thunderstorm. At one stage, Cherie, in night attire, put her head round the curtain and instructed me not to keep him up too late. A few moments later Alastair Campbell did the same, shook his head and said, with a smile, ‘VERY cosy’. The discussion was chiefly about the timetable of events which would be needed if we were to make the announcement of our intention to move to a formal coalition on the basis of a commitment to electoral reform for Westminster and an agreed programme of policy. This would happen in October or November, leaving me time to take this to my party and seek its approval (I knew it would be far from easy to convince my fellow Lib Dems, and, if I failed, it would mean the end of my Leadership). The conversation ended when the bottle was finished at about 3.30 a.m., and I went off, dog tired, to find a seat to sleep in.
I woke with the dawn and looked out of the window to see the wastes of Siberia slipping by below us. I went forward to chat with the RAF crew, arriving just in time to watch them land for refuelling at the bleak and semi-derelict airport at Novosibirsk. As soon as the Russian ground crew came with the aircraft steps I went out to get a breath of fresh air, blinking in the early-morning Siberian sunlight. Shortly afterwards, Blair appeared, tousle-haired and bleary-eyed, at the top of the aircraft steps. We continued our previous night’s conversation on the tarmac, wandering away from the plane so as to get out of earshot. We had gone no more than thirty yards, however, before a very determined Russian border guard rushed up to us and, waving his weapon, told us that we were illegally trespassing on Russian soil and would be arrested if we didn’t return immediately. Using sign language he pointed to a circle in red paint drawn round the aircraft and said that we could walk around inside this, but must not cross it on pain of arrest for illegal entry into the Russian Federation. We continued our conversation in these somewhat surreal circumstances for the next twenty minutes or so, walking round and round the aircraft. Finally I said, referring to the chronology we had worked out the previous night, ending in a coalition Government in October, ‘I am assuming we have now taken the formal decision to go ahead.’ He nodded and replied: ‘Yes.’ (It was at this stage that the Press finally woke up and, emerging from the aircraft, spotted us deep in conversation. John Hibbs of the Daily Telegraph, commented, ‘Ah the Lib/Lab Novosibirsk Pact!’, little knowing just how close he was to the truth.)
Later in July we took the first step in the programme mapped out at Novosibirsk, when Blair announced the formation of a joint Cabinet Committee, tasked,
among other things, with co-ordinating the implementation of the constitutional reform agenda. Shortly afterwards Jane and I left on our annual holiday, where, sitting in my daughter’s garden in France, I wrote the first draft of the policy programme for the intended coalition government and sent it to Blair, as promised. He rang me a few days later from Chequers saying that he broadly agreed with the policy document and that, the more he thought about ‘all this’, the more important he believed it was – though he had some doubts about whether he could do it in October or November and thought it might have to be left till later. I replied that the longer he left it, the more difficult it would be – the gloss was already coming off the Government. It was very important to do this during the Government’s honeymoon period, before it made too many mistakes and events started to erode his popularity.
But no one could have predicted the next event, which shook every one of us and came very close to toppling one of the fundamental pillars of the whole British constitutional establishment: the Royal Family.
On 31 August, at 4.30 a.m. the phone by my bed rang, and a bleak voice told me that Princess Diana had been killed in a car crash in Paris.
I met Blair again on the day before Diana’s funeral. His mind was, quite understandably, preoccupied with the nasty public mood which had developed over the fact that the Queen had stayed too long in Balmoral before coming to London and that the flag on Buckingham Palace had not been lowered to half-mast. He told me how uncomfortable it had been to have to explain just how dangerous the public mood was to the Queen and advise her to come to London. I thought he had very skilfully embodied the public mood and done himself a huge amount of good in the process, and told him so. Inevitably, our discussion of the Novosibirsk plans on this occasion was sketchy. But he did reveal that he had spoken to Gordon Brown about them and was now beginning to believe that we had to delay things a little to give him more time to convince his colleagues. I again warned that the longer he left it, the more difficult it would get. If he really wanted to do this, he had to do it soon or risk losing the opportunity.
A Fortunate Life Page 40