Peter and Gordon had been rowing about the euro, with Peter ill-advisedly talking to the media about our position on the single currency. As usual, Gordon overreacted, but I was getting worried about the number of colleagues who had it in for Peter and the sheer venom of the GB lot towards him. As my close ally, Peter was at that time, of course, a target for Gordon"s supporters.
Then in early 2001, Peter was forced to resign for the second time. It was typical of the way so-called scandals erupt, hot mud is poured over all concerned and the victims are eliminated before anyone quite has the chance or the nerve to wait until the mud is seen to stick or not. Even more than on the first occasion, I deeply regretted it afterwards.
The Observer Observer ran a medium-size story about Peter, having raised money for the Dome from the Hinduja brothers, Indian businessmen and philanthropists, then securing a pa.s.sport for one of them. As ever, the way the story was handled turned into the issue, not the allegation itself. It is a real lesson in such things. ran a medium-size story about Peter, having raised money for the Dome from the Hinduja brothers, Indian businessmen and philanthropists, then securing a pa.s.sport for one of them. As ever, the way the story was handled turned into the issue, not the allegation itself. It is a real lesson in such things.
There would have been no problem if Peter had merely pa.s.sed on the pa.s.sport request or even asked that it be expedited, provided he had also sought to ensure that the proper procedures had been followed. As it happened there was absolutely no reason why S. P. Hinduja should not have been given a pa.s.sport he qualified, and as a wealthy and successful businessman, there was no issue about whether he could support himself.
But here"s what happens in such situations: I"m busy, Alastair"s busy, Peter"s busy (there had been another, far bigger story in the Sunday Times Sunday Times about Peter and Gordon which had preoccupied him). The story is medium-level. If you are not careful and we weren"t you get the facts just a fraction off, and then you are in the proverbial hurricane. about Peter and Gordon which had preoccupied him). The story is medium-level. If you are not careful and we weren"t you get the facts just a fraction off, and then you are in the proverbial hurricane.
Peter said and Alastair repeated to the media that Peter"s private secretary, not Peter himself, had pa.s.sed on the request. In fact, it transpired that Peter had mentioned it to Mike O"Brien, a Home Office minister.
It seems almost pathetic now when you look back on it. Because a wrong statement had been made to the media, they were able to turn it into a full-blown scandal. Peter, with the GB people strongly against him, was pretty much alone and without support except from me. It seems utterly bizarre, given what Peter subsequently became to the Labour Party during Gordon"s premiership, but back then he was as isolated as you can be in politics.
Wednesday came. PMQs day. Nightmare. Alastair"s and Derry"s view was that it was irretrievable. Jack Straw felt the same and was worried because there was a note of the Peter call, and it was therefore bound to come out. I called Peter in before PMQs and told him he had to go. He felt Alastair was pushing me. He wasn"t; it was my decision. I agreed to an inquiry into the affair, headed by the former Treasury solicitor, Sir Anthony Hammond, whose report five weeks later cleared Peter of any wrongdoing. It was a miserable though redeeming finale to a sorry episode.
Peter fought his seat bravely at the election and won it, and then clawed his way back with his usual genius, but I missed him desperately in Cabinet between 2001 and 2005. He would have been such a strength.
Back then, however, election fever started to incubate in the Westminster hothouse. I set out in a note the campaign structure, the key dividing lines, the future vision of the nuts and bolts of how we would fight the campaign. It wasn"t going to be easy, managing conflicting egos and personalities, letting everyone think they were directing it while making sure I was.
We aimed for a May 2001 election, but an event took place that meant a complete upheaval of all previously laid plans. I was in Canada to address the Parliament and meet my friend Jean Chretien, the Canadian prime minister. He was a very wise, wily and experienced old bird, great at international meetings, where he could be counted on to talk sense, and, as Canadians often are, firm and dependable without being pushy. All in all, a good guy and a very tough political operator not to be underestimated.
While we were there, we were told that the Ministry of Agriculture had been informed of a case of foot-and-mouth disease at an abattoir in Ess.e.x. You"re given a piece of information like that and your first reaction is: is that a big deal? The answer was yes. A very big deal. Two days after the disease had been found, the European Commission imposed a complete ban on all British meat, milk and livestock exports. Was that not an overreaction? I asked. No. OK, so this is really serious. Jean Chretien immediately identified it as a crisis. "Watch that, young Tony, watch it very carefully. That"s trouble." We put movement restrictions on all livestock. I asked anxiously from Canada whether we could be sure of lifting the ban within a week. If only I had known.
For the next few days, I remained abroad but was also living on UK time, trying to get some order into the response. Nick Brown, the Minister of Agriculture, appeared to be doing well, and for once the ministry was fully apprised of the gravity of the situation.
Four days after the first case, another outbreak was confirmed, this time at the other end of the country in Tyne and Wear. There then followed near enough three months of almost constant focus on what was the worst ever outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in Europe, and one of the worst in world history.
Foot-and-mouth affects all hooved animals, but doesn"t necessarily kill them, and nor does it make their meat unfit to eat. Some countries Argentina, for example have areas where the disease has existed for decades. But of course it isn"t great for the export market, and the average consumer isn"t exactly going to be rushing out to buy infected meat. It has never migrated to humans, although the fear is there that it could. It"s a disease that is at one level not serious in terms of life and death, even of the animal, but its practical consequences on the livestock industry are devastating; if it is not eradicated, then, to all intents and purposes, the effect is terminal.
What had happened was that infected meat had somehow got into the country, possibly illegally, and had contaminated a farm. Animals are transported around the whole country, and as the incubation period can be up to ten days, the disease was only discovered and livestock movements halted several days after it began to spread. The result, as we quickly appreciated, is that we didn"t have the foggiest notion how many animals were affected, or where they were.
What"s more, the disease is airborne and can be carried on the soles of shoes. Footpaths, walking trails and other elements of rural tourism were all potential sources of it spreading. Within days, we were having to shut down the British countryside. The only way to deal with it is to slaughter the infected herd. There is a huge debate about whether to vaccinate, a debate that ricocheted around the public discussion during the course of the crisis. The blunt truth was that EU requirements meant that even vaccinated animals had to be slaughtered eventually, and in any event vaccination couldn"t be guaranteed effective in sheep; and sheep could spread the disease to cattle.
Animals were having to be taken away to slaughter but not, of course, in the abattoir, so burning funeral pyres started to spring up. One was situated near the Heathrow flight path, to delight the pa.s.sengers hoping to spend a few days in rural idyllic Britain. The pictures of the pyres went round the world. Rumours abounded; so-called human cases were detected (it didn"t matter they were all later found to be false). When we shut down the tourist sites, it was a.s.sumed it was because of the risk to people. The Americans are great tourists, but they are hopeless when it comes to these types of things. The American tourist influx virtually ceased, on the basis that if they came to Britain they would all go back with two heads.
By the time I had got back home from my transatlantic trip, there was a palpable sense of crisis. I had thought the ministry and Nick were pretty much on top of it. They were somewhat jealously guarding their patch on it and were happy to consult, but I sensed that Nick was feeling pressurised by me and didn"t want to yield up control. Jonathan alarmed me by describing how the Number 10 switchboard had accidentally put him in on a call between Gordon and Nick, with Gordon telling Nick not to give in to my "presidential style" interference which was not greatly helpful.
As the cases grew, and the bitter facts of the shutdown started to affect jobs, livelihoods, export orders, businesses, tourist attractions, hotels, B & Bs i.e. the whole infrastructure of rural Britain I was feeling distinctly queasy and, yes, frightened by it. I let it go for a few more days of the ordinary meetings, queries, debates and instructions and then I thought, No, this isn"t going to work.
The National Farmers" Union leader was Ben Gill. Both he and his deputy, Richard Macdonald, seemed to me eminently sensible and sane citizens. They were representing a community that was literally seeing their entire past, present and future go up in smoke. There was pain, panic and real grief out there. Ben and Richard were forthright: the only answer was slaughter and the only way to do it was fast.
The challenge was how to do it. We could throw resources at it, but throw them where? At the weekend, I got down to Chequers early. It always helped me clear my head. I read all the papers, spoke to a few people. The chief vet Jim Scudamore was a good bloke, but he was overwhelmed. We all were. I got as detailed a briefing as I could. Then I just sat and thought.
Sometimes in a crisis, you have to demonstrate activity to keep spirits up, but the actual machinery is working away effectively. Sometimes the machinery itself is non-existent or inadequate and then you have to think first. Otherwise the activity is useless or, even worse, counterproductive.
The basic challenge was one of logistics. You had to have enough vets to inspect the herds where cases were suspected. You then had to be able to do the slaughter. You then had to have the capacity to dispose of the carca.s.ses. You then had to have a system of compensation that was rational and quick, and a system of welfare for the burgeoning cases of hardship. You then had to have a plan for reopening the countryside and a strategy to entice the tourists out of their funk. And you had to do it all while tracking the disease to make sure you weren"t opening too early or proclaiming victory too soon. On the other hand, restoring confidence to the battered and bruised rural community could not come a moment too soon.
When I got back to Downing Street on Sunday I decided to grip the whole thing, and got my close advisers together. By some masterstroke not mine, I hasten to add, but Richard Wilson, the Cabinet Secretary"s our chief scientific adviser, Sir David King, was invited to join the inner circle. If anyone tells you that scientists are impractical boffins, refer them to David. What he told me sounded a trifle wacky, but over the weeks to come it was to be of priceless value in defeating the disease. Essentially, by means of graphs and charts he set out how the disease would spread, how we could contain it if we took the right culling measures, and how over time we would eradicate it.
The officials were extremely sceptical. So was I. How could he predict it like that, with so many unknowns? But, almost faute de mieux faute de mieux, I followed his advice and blow me, with uncanny, almost unnatural accuracy, the disease peaked, declined and went, almost to the week he had predicted. Remarkable, though it was not without my undergoing a deep immersion in every detail. By the time it was under control in the summer, I knew everything there was to know about it: how it started; how it was spread; the methods of containment; the pros and cons of slaughter and vaccination; the different reactions of sheep and cattle; the impact on humans; the workings of farms and abattoirs; the numbers of animals normally slaughtered in a week and the number we eat in a year (a lot, by the way).
But I also learned more about crisis management and the utter incapacity of the normal system to deal with abnormal challenges than I had ever needed to learn before. Though the public naturally thought we mishandled it and no one gave us any thanks for any of it, actually when I look back and reread the papers, reminding myself of the sheer horror, depth and scale of the crisis, it is a total miracle we came through it.
ELEVEN.
A MANDATE FOR NEW LABOUR.
The 2001 election was an odd, disjointed affair. The outcome was never in doubt. It resulted in another landslide majority. Our well-constructed and well-oiled political machine whirred effortlessly or so it appeared over the Heath Robinson contraption that was the Tory Party. And perhaps for those very reasons, it was odd and disjointed.
I learned two things from the campaign. The first was that, increasingly, there was simply no media interest in policy at all, unless it was accompanied by visible, high-impact controversy. The second was that the TB/GB story was unlikely to have a happy ending, at least so far as my time as prime minister was concerned.
The foot-and-mouth crisis was in its last stages. The disease wasn"t beaten completely or culled out, but it was waning. We were on top of it, and it was not going to dominate the election. The decision to postpone the election for a month had been right. However, there was now a will, among the electorate as well as politicians, for the mandate of the government to be retested.
I had shaped the 2001 manifesto very carefully and deliberately. I had decided that we had been, understandably, erring on the side of caution; and now was the time to strike out boldly. I had learned much about government and, above all, I had learned that the risk was not some hidden agenda that the system harboured secretly, the risk was inertia. We had seen enough, done enough, experienced enough, to know how to do the whole thing better and more radically.
I was now clear that public service reform needed major structural change, including a much closer relationship with the private sector. I had become convinced that the law and order agenda was the prisoner of a system of criminal law and criminal justice that simply didn"t measure up to the nature of twenty-first-century society and the types of crime and types of criminal. I wanted a new emphasis on science, technology and small businesses to form part of a modern enterprise and industry policy. I had come to the conclusion that on welfare, we had to focus far more particularly on social exclusion and the danger of families becoming isolated outside society"s mainstream. In respect of the euro, I was still wedded to the economic test of convergence, but I wanted to make the political case far more clearly; and if the economics could align, I was prepared to risk all in a referendum on joining the single currency.
So the manifesto was one I was more or less very happy with. The one exception was over university reform and tuition fees, where I backed away from a clear commitment since there were remaining major policy differences in the party and of course with the Treasury. However, all in all, it set out a plain, unadulterated New Labour position.
The campaign got off to a bizarre start and didn"t much depart from the bizarre until it ended. We decided to launch the campaign not in the old, boring, "men in suits sitting on a platform in a conference centre" mode, but at a school, to emphasise the importance of education to the second term. I went to St Saviour"s and St Olave"s Church of England Secondary Girls" School in Southwark in south London, met some of the students, visited a cla.s.sroom or two and then we had a.s.sembly. Being a church school, some hymns were sung and then I got up to speak. It was one of those moments. I was in front of a stained-gla.s.s window, we were praying and singing. Then I was addressing the serried ranks of teenage girls, all of whom were of course under voting age, about how we couldn"t return to the boom and bust era of the Tory years. As I began, I felt an almost irresistible desire to giggle at the utter absurdity of it, but I soldiered on, to their bemus.e.m.e.nt and my embarra.s.sment, and then got out as quick as I could.
It was, of course, inappropriate, and there were shrieks of self-righteous anger. Anji and Kate Garvey were brilliant at organising such things and indeed were brilliant generally; but apparently our extraordinary machine had, for once, sprung a gasket or whatever gaskets do. The school took it well, especially as the head teacher got roasted for allowing it.
In part, we were victims of our own mythology. Everyone a.s.sumed it was a masterstroke. Well, it must be, mustn"t it? After all, we were the sultans of spin, blah blah blah.
The interesting question, however, is why we thought it necessary to have a "new style" launch at all. People a.s.sume that politicians are constantly looking for better ways to present because they condone the triumph of presentation over substance. Actually, the politicians are reacting to the situation, not creating it.
Your average politico is at their happiest talking policy, believe me. They love it. I do too. I could talk for hours about the ins and outs of education or health reform. I was genuinely intrigued by a.n.a.lysis of the criminal justice system and the debate and balance between civil liberties and effective law and order. It is one of the supreme myths about politicians that they are talk-show hosts who have to learn about policy; more often they are policy wonks who have to learn to be talk-show hosts.
As the media have become more geared to sensation, scandal and impact, so the politicians have had to look for more devices and strategies to generate interest. I came to the sad conclusion through the 2001 campaign that the best I could hope for was that underneath some whizz-bang piece of marketing creativity or twist to a story, we might squeeze some policy. But there was never any chance of having the policy out there centre stage.
When a government is in its first months and it is a novelty, and some of the policies mark a sharp break with the philosophy of the previous government, then policy can be out in front, able to speak and be heard. But as time goes on and the agenda becomes familiar even if the actual policies are new interest fades and very quickly a sense of "we"ve heard it all before" takes over.
To be fair to the media, it was hard in circ.u.mstances where the Tories didn"t really engage, except on Europe. But even so, it was dispiriting and it meant that when we tried, as with the launch at the school and c.o.c.ked up, it only allowed them to confirm for the public that we were indeed only interested in "spin". But we knew for sure that if we did a conventional general election launch, it would go nowhere.
Throughout the campaign, with the polls showing us anywhere between ten and twenty points ahead and varying only slightly, we attempted to fire the whole thing up only to find that the squib exhibited perpetual signs of dampness. After a rally at Croydon, sitting in my hotel room, I took a call from Bill Clinton. It was eerie how he could read my mood from several thousand miles away.
"Just phoned to see how you"re doing," he said.
"Great," I replied.
"No, I know what you"re feeling," he said. He then explained to me how in the 1996 campaign against Bob Dole, he had been a certain winner from the outset. All this did, he said, was make the media mad and the public think it was a shoo-in. He knew that at this moment I would be fretting and fearing that the public would react against it.
"OK, you"re right," I said. "So what"s the answer?"
The answer, he went on, was to fight the campaign as if it were neck and neck, to show the people how much you want it, how much you are prepared to fight for it, and how grateful you are for every last vote you are going to get. "Show them you are desperate for their mandate, and the more you"re up in the polls, the more desperate you should become."
It was good advice. I took it. From then on, I didn"t care how bad the Tories were, I just sc.r.a.pped and fought and clawed my way through as if my life depended on every vote. It didn"t change the media mood, and heaven knows if it changed the outcome, but it gave me a sense of energy and the party a sense of urgency.
The Tory campaign was indeed abject. I had puzzled over William Hague. He was a truly outstanding debater, he had a good mind and a high-grade intellect. There was lots of real quality in him and about him. I thought he had definite leadership character. In different circ.u.mstances and at a different time, he could have been and very possibly may still be a great leader and even prime minister.
As I listened to him, however, I wondered if it is possible to love words too much. Such was his ability and use of words and humour, his capacity to weave clever conceits and amusing demonstrations of wit, that he expended too much of his mind on that and too little on the purpose for which the conceits and wit were devised. The result was that although he often humiliated an opponent, he less often beat them in argument.
While he was formidable and I could not underestimate him, he and the Tory high command inexplicably based their campaign on Europe. There were perfectly sound opinion poll and media reasons for such a strategy: polls showed Tory policy hugely preferred to ours; the Murdoch press, the Mail Mail and the and the Telegraph Telegraph were all very Eurosceptic and therefore strongly supportive of the Tory position. The problem was that very senior Tories like Ken Clarke were against such a strategy and the issue had the capacity to divide the party badly. What"s more, while Euroscepticism was just about tolerable, there were as there always are with such issues those who wanted to take a position that was already at the outer edge of respectability and push well beyond it. The leadership stance gave them permission to go even further and there"s where the public"s position on Europe couldn"t be entirely guessed by reference to the polls. True, if asked, they supported the Tories on it, but it was never going to determine the election. It wasn"t their priority, so the Tory focus on it gave the Tories a curious, lopsided look that swiftly turned into the thought among the public that, well, maybe they just weren"t ready to govern. Once such a thought takes hold, the election"s over. were all very Eurosceptic and therefore strongly supportive of the Tory position. The problem was that very senior Tories like Ken Clarke were against such a strategy and the issue had the capacity to divide the party badly. What"s more, while Euroscepticism was just about tolerable, there were as there always are with such issues those who wanted to take a position that was already at the outer edge of respectability and push well beyond it. The leadership stance gave them permission to go even further and there"s where the public"s position on Europe couldn"t be entirely guessed by reference to the polls. True, if asked, they supported the Tories on it, but it was never going to determine the election. It wasn"t their priority, so the Tory focus on it gave the Tories a curious, lopsided look that swiftly turned into the thought among the public that, well, maybe they just weren"t ready to govern. Once such a thought takes hold, the election"s over.
Obviously, the single most important thing was for us to avoid a serious mistake. Of course, the media knew that too and tried to work out how to force us to make one. We had crafted our essential practical message: a lot done; a lot to do; a lot to lose. It was simple. No one could deny the economy was strong and the money was now beginning to flow into schools and hospitals (though the commitment to keep spending tight for the first two years had hampered things the decision was right but it had constrained us). And it was a first term; surely we should be given the chance to complete what we had started. The memory of the Tories was still fresh enough for the "a lot to lose" line to resonate.
Naturally, I wanted a more elevated campaign which moved the country beyond the choices of the past, beyond Thatcherism in a sense. In a note I did just as the election got under way, I spelt out what was wrong with Thatcherism, having spent much of the previous time rea.s.suring people about what had to be kept.
Where Mrs Thatcher was absolutely on the side of history was in recognising that as people became more prosperous, they wanted the freedom to spend their money as they chose; and they didn"t want a big state getting in the way of that liberation by suffocating people in uniformity, in the drabness and dullness of the state monopoly. It was plain that compet.i.tion drove up standards, and that high taxes were a disincentive. Anything else ignored human nature.
Where she was wrong and running against a tide of history, however, was in her att.i.tude to Europe and her refusal to countenance the fact that the majority of people were always going to have to rely on public services and the power of government to get the opportunities they needed. The government should change; the public services should be reformed; but she just went too far in thinking everything could be reduced to individual choice. She was in that sense a very traditional Tory, but with the added impatience, like my dad, with anyone who hadn"t succeeded she had, so why hadn"t they? In that way, though she "got" one side of human nature, she appeared to ignore another.
The result was she had a view of Britain that was at one level correct and necessary regaining our spirit of enterprise and ambition but at another, completely failed to take account of the changing position of Britain in the world, however enterprising we were, by dint of population, size and geography; and allowed a desire for people to stand on their two feet to cross into a profound lack of compa.s.sion for those who were left behind. She was essentially uninterested in social capital.
I saw our role as taking Britain on a further stage of modernisation, creating public services and a welfare state that combined investment with reform to make them personal, responsive, entrepreneurial and, so far as the welfare side was concerned, based on responsibilities as well as rights and ent.i.tlements that were earned. There was no doubt in my mind that this was where the majority of the public stood, where the sensible, serious centre ground could congregate and where we could define an agenda that was essential third-way material: personal ambition combined with social compa.s.sion.
As for Britain"s place in the world, it seemed to me self-evident that we had to exercise power through alliances. We had the two best Europe and America so why not keep them strong and use them? This argument was less easy to make popular; but its strength was clear, and although its supporters might be fewer in number, they were high in quality. Business, in particular, understood the point thoroughly.
The trouble was, from the off, it proved wholly impossible to get coverage for any of this elevated stuff. I decided to use a series of speeches on Britain"s future as the washing line on which to hang the various parts of the agenda and so try to stimulate a vigorous policy debate. The speeches were thorough and, though I say it myself, well argued. I wrote most of them personally, along with help from chief strategy adviser Matthew Taylor, Andrew Adonis and David Miliband. But within days of the campaign starting, it was plain that whatever else it was going to be, an intimate account of the nation"s future policy choices it was not!
The day we launched the manifesto, 16 May 2001, was an almost comic ill.u.s.tration of the point. If elections were to be judged on the success of the election-day launch, the landslide would have been the other way. I doubt it is possible to have more mishaps, missteps and misadventures in a single day"s campaigning.
We chose to do a big serious manifesto press conference, with ministers wheeled out to describe the next Parliament"s programme. I decided to give the whole thing real edge by setting out clearly our design to bring the private sector into the running of public services. There was still an overwhelming tendency among senior politicians and advisers to see this as part of a plan to their mind, unnecessary to veer rightwards to appease the right-wing media. I kept trying to explain that I actually believed it which I think may have made it worse. When you considered public service systems in other countries, it seemed to me axiomatic that certain core lessons stood out. Health care systems in which there was a mixed public/private provision, or which at least demanded some individual commitment and gave some individual choice, did best. Monolithic systems either were in the process of being changed or were failing. It was true that the failing of the US system was the numbers of poor people left out, but and this was an uncomfortable truth too many ignored for those who were covered, the standard of care and its responsiveness (together with the second-order things like food, the environment, the ability to switch appointments and so on) were often much higher than in a purely state-run service. Surely it must be possible to combine equity and efficiency.
Also in the US, charter schools were just starting, and the results of the Swedish education reforms were starting to come through, so there was a wealth of empirical evidence from around the world as to what changes were being proposed, by whom, for what purpose and with what success.
All of this was anathema to the various interest groups that were determined to keep the status quo but just spend more money; yet I knew that any sensible, objective observer would want to know that we were open to new ideas, whatever the party traditions seemed to dictate.
So the 16 May launch was a much bigger moment than it appeared. There were all sorts of scratchy behind-the-scenes issues around who spoke when and on what, with people slightly resenting my insistence on dominating it, but I just wanted to be sure that the desire to secure a radical second-term mandate was plain and unvarnished. Some of the ministers, like David Blunkett and Patricia Hewitt, entered fully into the spirit, sensing, as I did, that a second term was pointless unless it broke new ground, and that this meant taking more profound risks.
But, as ever, in our wish to make it all properly organised and run smoothly, we were a bit of a parody of ourselves, with ministers given their two minutes otherwise the whole thing would be too long and then retreating into the shadows. Nonetheless, it pa.s.sed relatively without incident; which is more than can be said for the rest of the day.
I was due to visit Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, where we were to open the new cardiac centre that was going to become (and indeed today is) one of the foremost and advanced in Europe. I met Gisela Stuart, the excellent local MP, at the entrance. Gisela was unusual in that she is German, speaks with a slight but noticeable German accent, and had won a seat in the Midlands which only shows that people are not as prejudiced as you think. She was smart and very New Labour. As we entered the hospital a woman called Sharron Storer, who became rather famous as a result of the encounter, approached me and started to harangue me about the treatment her partner, a cancer patient, was receiving at the hospital. Of course, there turned out to be a mult.i.tude of disputes as to whether he had been badly treated or not, with the hospital staff protesting loudly, but their protests were drowned out by the fact of the prime minister getting an ear-bashing from someone "telling the truth" about the NHS and how dire it was.
Naturally for the media, already bored to death with a campaign whose outcome seemed not to be in doubt, it was manna from heaven. She became an overnight star. There was a great rejoicing that at last Labour"s slick machine had run into a "real" person. There was a running theme pushed hard by the Mail Mail that we were not meeting "real" people, but that everything was stage-managed. In fact, I"ve never come across a campaign in an election that wasn"t stage-managed (though whether well or badly is another matter). And of course we were meeting lots of people. that we were not meeting "real" people, but that everything was stage-managed. In fact, I"ve never come across a campaign in an election that wasn"t stage-managed (though whether well or badly is another matter). And of course we were meeting lots of people.
Here"s the thing: a person is not a "real" person unless they are bawling out a politician; unless there"s a scene; unless there"s anger, and preferably rudeness. Only a scene gives the news its impact. The truth is that most "real" people I mean real "real" people don"t behave in that way at all. Most Britons are polite. They listen. They may disagree, but they do so reasonably. You meet plenty of them, but they aren"t "real" because they are not combustible.
A curious but highly significant phenomenon was developing: the celebration of the protest. Let"s say a politician attends a meeting at which there are a thousand people present, and one of them shouts something. The other 999 people can be supportive, or at least reasonable in their opposition, but the lone disruptive voice is presented as representative when the chances are it isn"t. Most people don"t make a scene, so by definition the sole protester is atypical, not typical.
I recall a visit to Hebron in Palestine after I left office, when I went to the Ibrahimi Mosque where the New York Jewish settler Baruch Goldstein had murdered Muslim worshippers in 1994. There was a single voice of protest who shouted at me, who turned out to be a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir, an Islamist group banned in certain countries and totally unrepresentative of most Palestinian opinion. The next day it was literally the only news out of the visit. The protester was interviewed, and his opinion debated and a.n.a.lysed. All other voices were delegitimised. No one else got a look-in.
It"s a key development in the reporting of modern politics, and the more people realise it, the more they attempt to disrupt. It has now become absolutely the paradigm within which the news is created. Throw something, heckle, confront, storm the stage and you lead the news, with your views thereby legitimised. The politician looks astounded or affronted, cannot retaliate (with an exception I am about to relate) and thus there"s only one winner. That is why more and more people do it. Not for an instant does it advance debate or necessarily represent opinion. Any argument conducted in heat is a clash of views, not an exchange of views. No matter; it"s news!
Anyway, this, rather than the manifesto, was obviously going to dominate. I sort of staggered off round the cardiac centre, realising that the big launch day was written off.
But things were only just warming up. After a quick lunch, I heard the news that Jack Straw had got slow-hand-clapped at the Police Federation Conference. He told me afterwards and Jack, to be fair, was very grown-up about such things that what was amusing was that the audience reaction appeared completely divorced from the content of his speech. Not being daft, Jack had decided in the middle of an election campaign to give a pretty routine and fairly hard-line law and order speech; but they were having none of it. He could have doubled their pay and they were going to boo him. (Well, that might have stopped them.) So by late afternoon, you would have thought the nation was in revolt at this government they were about to re-elect with another landslide. Part of the problem when the Opposition is useless is that the public feel strangely disenfranchised. This was how many Labour people felt during the Thatcher years. It"s why after 1992 Labour started to consider electoral reform. We had lost four elections in a row. The system must be faulty, mustn"t it? Whereas, of course, we were at fault. So this sense of alienation is not, in fact, reasonable. Actually, it"s worse than that; it is profoundly undemocratic. It"s the losing side feeling it shouldn"t have lost and trying to manufacture a rerun, or a change of the rules.
Here is where a progressive government is often treated differently from a Conservative one: the Tory side thinks it really should be in power, and if it isn"t, someone isn"t playing fair. When Labour was out of power for eighteen years, the attempts by some groups (like parts of organised Labour in the miners" strike) to upend the democratic result were widely and rightly seen as wrong, whatever sympathy people felt for individual miners. But when, as in our time, the boot was on the other foot, such opposition was regularly portrayed as an entirely justifiable protest by people inexplicably denied their legitimate voice.
There was thus a weird disconnection between public opinion as expressed in the polls (and indeed in the result), and the public opinion apparently struggling under the oppression of a government, against whom severe action had to be taken because there was no alternative, since the democratic system was for some reason or other not working as it should. Towards the end of my time in office, this meant that those who leaked government papers, for example, were treated as people"s heroes rather than condemned for a breach of confidence.
On that day, the interaction between government and governed was given a monumental, vivid and impactful expression beyond the media"s wildest dreams. John Prescott was doing a campaign meeting in Rhyl, North Wales. There was the normal motley crew of protesters outside to jeer him on the way in. As he walked down the gauntlet, a big bloke, with an amazing mullet hairstyle from the 1970s, slapped an egg on him; John turned round and give him a sharp left hook, which sent him sprawling. After that, well, you can imagine. Even if instead of our manifesto launch of profound and detailed policy nuggets we had got up and danced the can-can, it wouldn"t have mattered.
I had been doing a TV programme with voters, compered by Jonathan Dimbleby. Alastair had kept the incident with John from me before the programme, which was recorded just after it took place and before it could be a.s.similated into the questioning. As I got into the car afterwards, glad to have got out of the studio more or less intact, Alastair said cheerfully: "Um, there"s some more news. John Prescott just thumped a voter."
I misheard him. "Someone"s. .h.i.t John?" I said. "That"s awful!"
"No," he said, "John did the hitting. He just belted someone."
You know when they say in books "His jaw dropped"? Well, it happens. My jaw dropped.
There began a period of intense reflection, a.n.a.lysis, introspection, retrospection and general panic about what to do. We knew we had twelve hours before the press conference the next morning, and we had to have a line by then. The deputy prime minister a.s.saulting a member of the public, even one who slapped an egg on him, was at one level mind-boggling and grave. At another, it was mind-boggling and comic.
Looking back, I know now the comic wins out, but I can a.s.sure you it wasn"t clear-cut at the time. How the comic won out provides an interesting insight into how instinct in politics is so important; and also a sense of proportion, even when all around you proportion is being chucked overboard.
I personally felt the thing was extraordinarily funny. The egg was funny. The mullet was funny. The left hook was funny. The expressions on both their faces were funny. But there was no getting away from another point of view, and some of the women in the operation were voicing it loudly: you can"t have the deputy prime minister doing that. It was undignified. It was macho. People would be repelled, appalled, ashamed, etc.
The Southern women took this view strongly. Anji, surprisingly, was of the same mind, but I wondered later whether that wasn"t because Adam Boulton from Sky News (whom she subsequently married), with whom she may well have discussed it, had taken a position of such disgust about it and was very up on his high horse. Anji"s instincts were normally superb. Even the usually certain Sally was uncertain. So was Alastair, though that may have been Fiona"s influence. But most of the blokes and the Labour Party staff, men and women, were riotously with John.
I decided an apology at least might be in order, to take the sting out of it, genuflect a little in the direction of the soft Southerners. So I phoned John. I began at my most mellifluous. Sorry about what happened. Dreadful of him to do that. Must have been a shock. Really, in the heat of the moment, not surprising. After about five minutes of this guff, John interrupted me. "I know you," he said, "I know what you"re up to. You want me to apologise."
"Well-" I started to say.
"Aye, well, I"m b.l.o.o.d.y well not. So you can forget it."
I got a little more steely and became insistent; and as ever with John, when he knew I was really serious, he was prepared to accommodate. So we agreed some form of words and the call ended.
I got home and felt uncomfortable. The news was of course near hysterical, the Tories jumping all over it and the Liberals being very "Liberal-ish", i.e. wet. But I still couldn"t quite bring myself to feel I should condemn it.
I went up to the flat where Cherie was waiting. "What a day!" I said. "My G.o.d, what was John thinking of? People say it"s terrible," I said, testing her out. She"s a QC, liberal, lives in London.
"Oh, don"t be ridiculous," she said with a snort. "Why shouldn"t he hit him? The other man hit him first." You see, she is also a Liverpool girl. "Well, what would you have done?" she said. "Put on one of your smiles and ask him not to do it again? He got what he deserved. John"s just a man."
I phoned John Burton. He and all the boys were exactly of that view. "I think it"s great," said John. I rate John"s judgement very, very highly. I know world leaders with less good judgement than John. What"s more, he told me the women were of the same view up North. When the news had come on in the Trimdon Labour Club, everyone had cheered as JP hit the guy.
That settled it. However, there remained the question of how to deal with it at the press conference, when the media would undoubtedly be tut-tutting about it. I decided on the essential line: no more apology, no resigning, no nothing. Some of the team still voiced concern, but by then I had my bearings. How to express the line was a little trickier. The trouble is, you can"t actually defend the deputy prime minister hitting a voter. On the other hand, we had now decided not to condemn it.
We puzzled over it, sitting in the room preparing for the press conference. David Blunkett was there and he too was strongly of the John Burton school of thought. As the minutes ticked by and this was world news, incidentally we fumbled over various formulae.
"The thing is," I said eventually, with about a minute to go, "John is John, really. Nothing more you can say." It was an Eric Cantona approach: you say something so enigmatic that people just move on in a somewhat confused way. So that"s what I said.