"What do you mean "John is John"?" they said.
I shrugged my shoulders expressively. "I mean John is John."
And so the great scandal subsided. The Cherie/John Burton view also started clearly to predominate. People or at least a lot of people loved it. A politician turns human wow! After forty-eight hours, back in my own patch in Sedgefield I was regularly accosted by voters, including older women, who echoed Cherie"s remark. "Well, what would you have done?" they said. "You wouldn"t have hit him, would you, laddie?" and they didn"t mean it as a compliment.
And so the election launch that began with a manifesto replete with serious policy prescription for the nation"s future, ended in a mullet, an egg and a punch that sank the serious policy to the bottom of the political sea.
John Prescott always brought something unique to the Labour Party, and to the government. He could be maddening; he could be dangerous; he could be absurd; he could be magnificent. But dull, placid, uneventful and forgettable were words that would never be a.s.sociated with him.
Neil Kinnock once described him as someone with a chip on both shoulders, which was true, though I always thought they somewhat balanced each other out; whereas Neil"s single chip could be more troublesome.
What did John bring to the party? A lot, actually. When John Smith died and the issue arose as to who should be deputy it being reasonably clear I was going to win the leadership the safe bet was certainly Margaret Beckett. She had been part of the pre-1992 economic team; she was capable and was undoubtedly a safe pair of hands. John could not be described as that; but he brought an authenticity, an appeal to the party"s traditional wing, especially within the union movement, and he had something else that I valued greatly: in a tight spot, I thought you could count on him. You couldn"t necessarily count on him in terms of individual policy items, or more generally in terms of New Labour, but, on the basis of the tiger-shooting a.n.a.logy (would you venture into the jungle with this person?), he pa.s.sed muster. I wasn"t so sure of Margaret. I liked and respected her, but if things got really ugly, I wasn"t sure she would step up and throw a protective cordon round me; whereas John, I thought, would do so. I never took a position in the election of a deputy. Some of my closest people voted for Margaret, but the very fact I didn"t go all out for her sent a signal that I could live with John. In any event he was the party"s preferred choice. They wanted a bit of yin and yang, and if I was very yin, he was certainly thoroughly yang.
The contrast between the two of us couldn"t have been greater. I was the private school, Oxford-educated barrister. He had been a ship"s steward, doyen of the union movement, and was proud of his working-cla.s.s roots. He is one of the most fascinating characters ever to hold really high office. Nowadays, of course, John would not be John. In that, he is very similar to Dennis Skinner. Dennis is a really brilliant guy first-rate mind, great wit, huge insight into people but was brought up in the days when exceptionally clever people were regularly failed by the education system, or just fell between the cracks of poor schooling, and the narrow-minded views of parents and communities. But they are, thankfully in one sense, a dying breed. John had failed his eleven-plus, which must have made a terrible impact on him and been responsible for at least one of the chips on his shoulders. Yet he was naturally very clever and incredibly hard-working. Which is why, in the end, it"s not sensible to base your school system on such a test at such an age.
However, all those days have pa.s.sed and now John would most likely have taken a job in industry or the public sector as a manager and probably never have gone near a trade union. Instead, he was a major link with a part of Labour"s roots that might be withering, but still had reach and depth in critical parts of the political forest.
Despite failing his eleven-plus he had been to Ruskin College in Oxford (as had Dennis Skinner) and was a lot more intellectually interested and capable than he let on. This latter part of him I also liked. He would start from a position of natural hostility to any New Labour policy, but if the matter were argued properly, he was prepared to listen; and eventually, if he saw merit in the proposal, he was prepared to be persuaded. That doesn"t mean to say that he always went along frequently he didn"t, and it"s fair to say that some of those around me came to see him as a liability because he was a rallying point for opposition in the drive for reform.
Later, he came to have a relationship with Gordon that was unfortunate. Gordon had backed Margaret strongly and put his machine to work for her, so the initial relationship between him and John was not good, but over time I urged Gordon to make peace with John. "Don"t underestimate him," I used to say, "and if you want to be leader, don"t have him as an enemy. He couldn"t necessarily make someone leader; but he could stop it happening."
Gordon took the advice and, from my point of view, a good deal too much. It"s not that John was ever personally disloyal he wasn"t but Gordon pitched his own position on reform in such a way that it was obviously more simpatico with John"s; so it changed the constellation of forces around me.
John also came to the view that Gordon and I were interchangeable as leaders, with Gordon"s position a little left of my own, but no less attractive for that (possibly more so). He therefore bought the idea that the handover was only fair and right, since Gordon was after all simply a slightly different version of New Labour. In particular, he backed the view that on public services and welfare we had gone far enough in the "market" reforms, whereas I was strongly of the view we hadn"t gone far enough.
Two consequences flowed from this. The first was that on city academies, the introduction of new health service providers and on greater conditionality in welfare, I could frequently count on the support of neither the deputy prime minister nor the Chancellor. Although in the end John was just about persuaded he waxed eloquent on the failures of the traditional state comprehensive school system in Hull, his const.i.tuency it was a struggle, and it took many painful hours of meeting, discussion and debate.
The second was that by the end, in 20067, John agitated strongly for me to go, partly because of his own problems with the media turning savage on him, and partly because he really didn"t think it mattered electorally if I was swapped for Gordon. By then, I had decided I would have to go anyway; but, unsure of whether I was sincere and also partaking of the general a.s.sumption that no one would ever voluntarily give up Number 10, he told me in the spring of 2007 that he would resign as deputy prime minister if I didn"t go. He didn"t mean it in a disloyal way, and funnily enough, I didn"t take it that way; he just genuinely believed that it was in the interests of the party that Gordon became leader.
That said, there were countless times over the years where I needed his support and where he gave it with great courage. He knew he was there, to an extent, as the brake on New Labour. He knew therefore that his own credibility rested on his ability to wring changes out of me. He knew that every time he went with me, he sacrificed some of that credibility. But he did so.
Over Clause IV, he moved from a position of doubt to a position of positive advocacy, because in the end he was convinced it was right. Once convinced, he became the staunchest proponent of change. After September 11 indeed at any moment of crisis on foreign policy he stuck by me one hundred per cent, giving crucial support at moments when any hint of a split between us would have been deeply corrosive.
So all in all, and given the gigantic stresses and strains imposed on any relationship at the top of the political tree, I have to say I was lucky to have had him as deputy.
As a minister, he could be at points too enthusiastic about the power of government, intervene too readily, mix too much bureaucracy into the policy pie; but he could also be innovative and imaginative. He brought the shipping industry back into the UK by getting the Treasury to change the rules on flags of convenience. He led the negotiations at Kyoto and helped the UK to become the only country in the world to meet its Kyoto target. He played a vital role in housing, chairing the housing policy committee to drive forward the White Paper proposals to improve the planning system. In his ten years, the government secured decent homes for two million more people. He also represented the UK internationally and headed the China Task Force, leading on cross-departmental accords on trade and investment and other areas. His civil servants, once they got used to his moods and saw beneath the rough exterior, liked him and respected him.
His foibles were usually on the endearing end of the spectrum though some women I know strongly disagree with that a.s.sessment. He was definitely old-fashioned, not great at working with a certain type of middle-cla.s.s woman, and though sound on the policy on gay rights was led more by his head than his heart, if you know what I mean. He was also completely paranoid about smart, young, well-spoken intellectual types. With these, he was like a pig with a truffle. He could smell out condescension, a slight, an air of superiority or a snub at a thousand paces; and once smelt, he would charge after it with quite shocking abandon. Whole swathes of younger advisers, used to the subterranean soil of collegiate debate and temperate exchange of views, would be pursued with manic fervour until forced from their hiding place and sliced into tiny bits. It was made all the more alarming for them by the fact that they would usually be entirely oblivious as to how they had caused such offence.
I confess I was highly amused by this, even though I shouldn"t have been really. Back in the late 1980s when I first came to prominence and got elevated to the Shadow Cabinet, John was just like that with me. Peter and I were part of what he called the "beautiful people set", and that was as big an insult as he was capable of bestowing.
I suppose what made it all bearable, even acceptable, for me at least, was that it was all so transparent. Though John could be extremely cunning, to say he wore his heart on his sleeve would be a severe understatement. He put the whole body map there. At Cabinet, he would occasionally sit like a grumbling volcano ready to erupt at any moment. The proximate cause of the eruption would more often than not be one of the women intervening. Patricia Hewitt was certain to get him moving. She was, in fact, a really good minister and was excellent at the Department of Health, taking truly difficult decisions with immense determination, but at Cabinet, she would usually raise the women"s angle. John would make some slightly off-colour remark if he was in a sour mood. I would then bring her in again, just for the sheer entertainment of watching him finally explode. She would patronise him in the most wonderfully insensitive fashion: "Now, John, that"s a very, very good point you"ve just made, and it"s always so worth listening to you."
He genuinely made me laugh. It was a bit like "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?" in The Sound of Music The Sound of Music, though the similarity between John Prescott and Julie Andrews pretty much stops there. Laughing at him or with him was equally good. I always used to tell him that his confrontations with the English language were part of his appeal, but he worried about them, was embarra.s.sed by them, and when it came to things like standing in for PMQs, he was put in genuine dread. Threatening to have a meeting abroad on a Wednesday was the only way I knew of terrorising him; he would palpitate with the horror of the approaching encounter, but he got up and he did it, with a kind of swaggering blunderbuss approach that the House quite liked. The only time it could be a real problem was when he was meeting foreigners and required interpretation, where his manner of speaking defied the talents of most interpreters, who generally needed extensive therapy and counselling after one of these sessions.
He also knew me very well, and knew especially when I was trying to hoodwink him into something or circ.u.mvent him or when I was retreating only with a plan to advance again. He was ultra-sensitive to his position not being taking seriously enough. A meeting would be convened and he would come in steaming and puffing to complain vigorously. I developed a specialism in how to handle such situations: the thing was to let him speak and not interrupt or hit back; but rather to absorb and let the anger naturally subside.
Perhaps his most alarming trait was his habit of starting a conversation in the middle no beginning, no context, no explanation of what the problem was. I remember a time when it looked as if I was going to bring the Lib Dems into the Cabinet the papers were full of it and JP was horrified. Some days had pa.s.sed since the issue was live, so it was not in my mind. But it was in his.
I was working at the Cabinet table, my head full of some policy conundrum or other. In storms John. "Where"s f.o.o.kin" Menzies?" he begins. It wasn"t a promising start. He then began searching under the Cabinet table. "Come on, where is he?" I had literally no idea what he was talking about. He raged about the room. I finally cottoned on: Menzies is of course the proper name of the senior Lib Dem person we all knew as Ming Campbell. John had been ruminating on the press reports of Lib Dems coming into the Cabinet, and by some process had decided it was Ming and had for some reason not known he was called Ming, or maybe thought "Ming" was some private-school nickname and was therefore suspect and was going to put a stop to it.
I protested in vain that Ming was not joining the Cabinet, and neither was he lurking underneath the Cabinet table. After a few minutes of expletives, John went to leave. As he got to the door, he turned round and said: "So do I have your word he"s not coming in the Cabinet?"
"Yes," I said.
"Well, just to let you know," he replied, "I"m not f.o.o.kin" havin" it."
He was deeply suspicious of the aristocracy of course, and therefore the royals, but he treated them with respect and decorum nonetheless. For their part, they were half nervous, half intrigued by him. He and Prince Charles corresponded regularly on issues, and as John had responsibility for some rural affairs, it was a relationship that was always a little tricky. John was a vigorous opponent of hunting and there was no persuading him out of that, period.
Shortly after their first meeting, I b.u.mped into Prince Charles. "I had a meeting with Mr Prescott recently," he said.
"Ah," I said, "how did it go?"
"Fine, fine," Prince Charles replied with a somewhat distracted air, "except ..."
"Yes?" I said encouragingly, knowing some Johnism was about to emerge.
"Well," he said, looking round to see we were undisturbed, "does he ever do that thing with you?"
"What thing?" I said.
"Er, well, when he"s sitting opposite you, he slides down the seat with his legs apart, his crotch pointing a little menacingly, and balances his teacup and saucer on his tummy. It"s very odd. I"ve never seen someone do that before. What do you think it means?"
"I don"t think it means anything really," I said.
"Hmm. You don"t think it"s a sort of gesture or sign of hostility or cla.s.s enmity or something?"
"No," I said, "he does that with me often."
"Yes," he replied, clearly unconvinced, "but-"
"You mean," I interjected, "he"s making a working-cla.s.s point against you, upper cla.s.s, and me, middle cla.s.s?"
"Well, it could be," he said.
"No, I think he just likes drinking his tea that way."
"Yes, you"re probably right," he said, plainly puzzled and unpersuaded, "it"s just I"ve never seen it done before."
So there you have him. A one-off. Occasionally my bane. More often my support. But genuine, unvarnished and, in the ultimate a.n.a.lysis, true. And in my profession, you can"t say better than that.
The day after John and his punch, we just had to get on with it. I went up to Manchester. There was the usual round of visits to provide background pictures: not too few, so as to provide variety; not too many, so as not to provoke additional unnecessary risk.
After the events of the manifesto launch, it was not surprising that we wanted to keep a grip. But it was frustrating. The trouble was we were in a rhythm. The media wanted a story and the only story was a stumble. We wanted to focus on record and policy, where we thought we were strong and the Tories weak. The result was that the two campaigns never really met; they ran on parallel lines.
From time to time I would call Peter Mandelson and keep him informed of the campaign and get his advice. He was fighting up in Hartlepool, showing his steel and his fort.i.tude in doing so. I thought it might be best for him to stand down, but he was determined not to and he was right. If they were going to pull him down, he wasn"t going without a fight. Later, I wondered about the difference between us. Of course, fighting to stay as prime minister and fighting to stay as an MP are a world apart from each other.
At that point in June 2001, I was fairly clear about myself: I was ready to go before the third election. I was less clear about my motives. I liked to think it was because I could walk away; I was not obsessed with being prime minister; I had a hinterland and another mission in my interest in religion. But I had a nagging doubt that part of it was just cowardice; part of it was wanting to be free of the burden, of the pain it brings, of the sometimes near-intolerable weight of responsibility. Did I want to go for unselfish reasons, or for reasons that were in fact utterly selfish? Was I kidding myself about my desire to keep power? Was I kidding myself about the desire to lay it down? Was I fearful of outstaying my usefulness or, in reality, fearful of the bitterness and rancour of the fight to stay?
Peter Mandelson could have taken the easy way out after his second resignation. He would have gone straight into the Lords and would still have been EU commissioner. But he chose to stand his ground, to make the point that he had nothing to be ashamed of and that his detractors, who liked to say how hated he was, would be proved wrong in his own patch.
The election was difficult for him. I told him to stay out of the national limelight and to focus on the local, make it a fight about Hartlepool"s right to choose their MP, not have the decision taken for them by a media out to get him. He did so with aplomb, and with down-to-earth political skill. Of course the London media travelled up, baiting him, being unremittingly negative, cynical and unpleasant about him, and naturally poking fun at the whole idea of Peter being capable of getting on with "the Northern working-cla.s.s folk of Hartlepool".
Of course, as ever, such stereotypes were ridiculously simplistic; and, being sensible, the people of Hartlepool decided that Peter had done a lot to put the place on the map and had defended and supported it, despite not being from there himself. In the end, his majority decreased only slightly. But in one sense the problem that Peter had was reflected in the wider problem of the campaign.
We managed to rea.s.sert our grip. Events came and went. We had celebrities out in abundance. That again added some spice. The regulars like Alex Ferguson, some of the cast of Coronation Street Coronation Street, Richard Wilson and Michael Cashman turned out of course, and other EastEnders EastEnders stars like Mich.e.l.le Collins. In a rather wonderful turn, Sir John Mills came out for us and introduced me at rallies. Well into his nineties, he remained fit and sharp and very clear. He wasn"t natural Labour; but he was supportive of me. Charlotte Church sang for us at one rally, as did Lesley Garrett. Mick Hucknall was staunch in his support. stars like Mich.e.l.le Collins. In a rather wonderful turn, Sir John Mills came out for us and introduced me at rallies. Well into his nineties, he remained fit and sharp and very clear. He wasn"t natural Labour; but he was supportive of me. Charlotte Church sang for us at one rally, as did Lesley Garrett. Mick Hucknall was staunch in his support.
To this day, I"m never sure of the effect the celebrity thing has. I don"t dismiss it, as some do. When you are trying to capture the mood and this is more often so for a progressive party celebs can reinforce, even boost the message. They add some glamour and excitement to what can often be a dreary business. What they can"t do, of course, is subst.i.tute for the politics. In fact, if they try to, they become immediately counterproductive. If they begin lecturing the people as to why or how they should vote, it"s nearly always a disaster. The public feel they are overstepping the mark and put them and their political fellow travellers in their place. They clearly don"t determine the outcome, but properly used, they help. And frankly, given the difficulty in rousing the d.a.m.n thing, we needed the help.
I went through a carefully calibrated oscillation between the marginals Dartford, Gravesend, Basildon, Loughborough, Weymouth, Forest of Dean, a roll call of the seats Labour thought for decades we could never win and now were looking to keep and the solid Labour parts of the inner cities, northern shires and old industrial communities, in order to deal with the argument that, as we gained new voters, we would somehow lose interest in our traditional heartlands. As press conference gave way to meeting, which gave way to event and then rally, and interview piled upon interview, the frustration began to tell on me. And also the worry.
At one level, the campaign was going brilliantly. We were well ahead in the polls. Pace Pace the Prescott punch (and possibly even because of it) we were making the running. Whatever the paddling underneath, and as ever, some of it was frantic, not much was disturbing what looked like a comfortable and serene ride to victory. As it became clearer that the Tories had no magic potion and could not achieve breakthrough, they started to fall apart at the seams. Their right wing started to say silly things, as when the then Shadow Health Secretary Liam Fox actually clever let his guard down and remarked: "All we hear from Labour is poverty, poverty, poverty, la, la, la. It"s just boring for Conservative members." A partially true statement, but unwise. Then Oliver Letwin the Shadow Treasury Secretary, and also clever let the cat out of the bag about how the Tories wanted spending cuts of around 20 billion. the Prescott punch (and possibly even because of it) we were making the running. Whatever the paddling underneath, and as ever, some of it was frantic, not much was disturbing what looked like a comfortable and serene ride to victory. As it became clearer that the Tories had no magic potion and could not achieve breakthrough, they started to fall apart at the seams. Their right wing started to say silly things, as when the then Shadow Health Secretary Liam Fox actually clever let his guard down and remarked: "All we hear from Labour is poverty, poverty, poverty, la, la, la. It"s just boring for Conservative members." A partially true statement, but unwise. Then Oliver Letwin the Shadow Treasury Secretary, and also clever let the cat out of the bag about how the Tories wanted spending cuts of around 20 billion.
Here"s where modern politics becomes ridiculous. Past a certain figure, amounts of money are, for a large part of the public, completely without meaning in terms of scale. "We will spend 500,000 on new school toilets" sounds, at one level, quite a lot. 1 billion sounds just enormous, while 20 billion is beyond wildest dreams or nightmares, and all sense of relativity is lost. Most Treasury forecasts of GDP or revenue can be out by that amount and not much account taken of it, but put it in a headline and it seems revolutionary. It was a total mystery to me why the Tories ever thought it was sensible to quantify what they were planning to do, since it was as plain as a pikestaff (and by the way always is, which is why it"s daft as an Opposition to get into this game) that any such figures would be subject to rea.s.sessment were a new government to be elected.
However, such p.r.o.nouncements indicate instinct, direction of travel, an underlying intent. For a Tory Party put out of power because it underinvested in public services, it was about as dumb a move as only the very clever can organise. Labour pounced. The hapless Mr Letwin spent the next days in hiding. The Tories weren"t sure whether to endorse, explain or expunge, and so did all three simultaneously. It gave me something to run on, preoccupied the media at least for a few days and thus gave us respite; and it provoked other criticisms from within the Tory Party to surface. The anti-Europeans went anti. The pro-Europeans went pro. The public went: they"re not ready yet, are they?
But even as I revelled in the chance to put the Tories down again, and keep them down, I sensed my own political mortality. Yes, the campaign was succeeding. Yes, the media were in one sense with us, The Times The Times supporting us for the first time; yet peering beneath that, and looking at what really lay there, I felt a deep sense of isolation. The papers on the left, like the supporting us for the first time; yet peering beneath that, and looking at what really lay there, I felt a deep sense of isolation. The papers on the left, like the Guardian Guardian, were of course urging our re-election, but on the basis of fear of the Tories, and expressly warning the government and me that any reform of public services would be fiercely resisted. Likewise the Mirror Mirror. On the right, the Sun Sun and the and the News of the World News of the World were advocating that we be given the benefit of the doubt, but were vigorous against Europe and thought we hadn"t gone far enough on reform. were advocating that we be given the benefit of the doubt, but were vigorous against Europe and thought we hadn"t gone far enough on reform.
The point is: no one bought the package. Except the people, of course. Many of them did. They were the New Labour believers. There were more of them than was thought. They were the people who in 2005 made certain we would not lose. They "got" the balance, the newness of the political approach: personal tax rates held steady (or reduced) but investment increased; pro-business but pro-fairness at work (not pro-union); reform along with the spending on public services; a tough approach to responsibility in law and order and welfare; strong with the US and a player in Europe. They knew Mrs Thatcher had been right to make Britain compet.i.tive, but they also wanted a compa.s.sionate society. They were liberal about private lives; hard line on crime. They had no difficulty with a modern Britain. They wanted it, and disliked and distrusted Little England att.i.tudes.
There was a const.i.tuency for New Labour all right, but it was not reflected in the media and it was still in its adolescence in the Labour Party. Around me, at the top, were people who for one reason or another were lukewarm. Those who supported it like John Reid, David Blunkett, Tessa Jowell, Charles Clarke, Alan Milburn, Hilary Armstrong and John Hutton were on their way up, with still some distance to go; or, like Peter, were under a lot of attack. Go back to May 2001 and none of the major posts deputy prime minister, Chancellor, Foreign Secretary, Home Secretary was held by an out-and-out moderniser.
Yet I had now become militant for radical change. I was absolutely clear that in each of these areas, we had an argument that was strong, right and could win the country. Here was the rub: I couldn"t get the argument heard. I don"t mean I didn"t make it I did, loud and clear but it was not really listened to. It found insufficient echo among other Labour speakers and very little within the media. The result was a campaign and mandate that meant different things to different people. I was completely certain: the manifesto and the mandate was one for New Labour, but the absence of serious policy discussion meant there was no sense of that being so. If you had asked ordinary people, they would have said: You"ve done OK, the other lot aren"t ready, carry on. It was an election fought in prose, when I was trying to make poetry out of it.
At the time, at one level, what did it matter? We won, and handsomely. But it gave rise to a dangerous confusion among the party, part of which believed that what had won the election was not really New Labour but a benign economy, some extra cash and the parlous state of the Tories. I was absolutely sure the only route to victory was New Labour; even without a focus on policy, that essential radical centre-ground position had somehow still been established and come through. But it was not clear to the party or to the media.
The turnout was low, and the myth was born that the true victor was indifference. We were a.s.sailed by cynical over- and undertones. Of course, turnout is often a function of how close people think the result may be. The 1992 turnout was higher than 1997; 2005 higher than 2001. It is actually a very unreliable guide to the feelings about the government.
But, hard as I tried, it meant that as the campaign came to a close, though we were out-of-sight winners, there was a tinge to the victory that discomfited me, and made me realise that reform in term two was going to be a rocky road indeed.
Nonetheless, election night was the opposite of 1997, when everyone except me had been euphoric. This time I was fairly euphoric, while everyone else felt a little flat. After all, it was the second biggest win in the history of British politics two landslides in a row was impressive. (George Bush phoned me after the election to say, "Man, how did you do that?") As the results rolled in and it was plain it was going to be overwhelming, this time I did permit myself a drink and some celebration. But I also had decisions to make.
One was internal to the office. Anji was keen to go. John Browne, the boss of BP, had offered her a job. I, of course, thought her mad to give up being at the heart of Number 10, even for the sake of working for a company the size of BP and a person of John"s reputation and talent. Frankly I couldn"t believe it, and I spent significant time before and during the election trying to get her to reconsider.
Eventually, she relented and agreed to stay, but for her it was a mistake. She repented of relenting, and finally left at the end of the year, though not before seeing me through the challenge of September 11.
It was a terrible wrench. She was one of my oldest friends. I trusted her totally. The prime minister"s job is a lonely position, and given that my political isolation was acute for the reasons stated, someone like that, in whom you can have complete confidence, is a G.o.dsend. She had developed into an outstanding operative charming, vivacious, spreading lots of happiness and contentment, while retaining a formidable ruthlessness and capacity to scheme. She was a solid voice for Middle England, had no ideological baggage and was calmness personified in a crisis.
I learned a lesson: never try to keep someone who"s moved on in their mind or who wants to go.
On the morning of 8 June, I put Anji in a new position with added power. I hastily moved Sally to the Lords and made her a minister, which she took with remarkably good grace and from which experience she profited enormously, so that when she took charge of government affairs and political liaison some months later, she had turned into a quite exceptional political manager and was invaluable in the travails of the second term. I had soon realised I missed her badly; and that her skills, more attuned to the party than Anji"s, were equally required.
Partly because much of the reform had to be driven from and through Number 10, I knew that we had to strengthen the centre of government considerably, and I made major changes. It is a feature of modern politics that nothing gets done if not driven from the top. Once the framework is set, the departments know their direction and they know what they should do, but leaving it up to them to do it is highly risky, unless the individual ministers fully buy into the vision; and even then, they need to have the power of the centre behind them.
My impatience with the scale and ambition of our reform was now carved in granite. I was going to do it, come h.e.l.l or high water. I needed to be able to solve the tricky questions of policy detail that added up to the general shape of the change; and I needed to track whether and how the change was being introduced. I had also become aware that the length and breadth of foreign policy issues were creating a requirement for a wholly different order of service. Summits were proliferating, and the scope of foreign policy decisions and their consequences meant leaders, and not foreign ministers, inevitably took on bigger roles.
This was never popular with the traditionalists. There was a lot of talk of centralising government; wanting to be a president; overweening (even manic) desire to have absolute power. It was complete tosh, of course. The fact was you couldn"t get the job done unless there were clear procedures and mechanisms in place to implement the programme. There was so much to do in foreign policy terms, where an interdependent world was exponentially increasing the impact of multilateral and foreign policy decisions. And, in domestic policy, changing public service systems inevitably meant getting into the details of delivery and performance management in a radically more granular way. Increasingly, prime ministers are like CEOs or chairmen of major companies. They have to set a policy direction; they have to see it is followed; they have to get data on whether it is; they have to measure outcomes.
There was, again, a lot of exaggerated nonsense about targets and so on in the public sector. Some criticism was valid. Targets can be too numerous. Sometimes different targets conflict, which is a recipe for incompetence. Sometimes they are too prescriptive. All of that was valid.
However, as I used to say to ministers and civil servants, if that is true, cut them down to the essentials, unwind any conflicts, grant a sensible discretion on how they should be met but don"t think for an instant that in any other walk of life you would spend these sums of money without demanding a measurable output. Inputs we had aplenty, but I knew, as the money spent increased, it would be on the outputs that the focus would come; and rightly so.
We established a Delivery Unit, headed by Michael Barber, who had been David Blunkett"s adviser in the Department of Education. The concept of the Delivery Unit was Michael"s idea. It was an innovation that was much resisted, but utterly invaluable and proved its worth time and time again. It was a relatively small organisation, staffed by civil servants but also outsiders from McKinsey, Bain and other private sector companies, whose job was to track the delivery of key government priorities. It would focus like a laser on an issue, draw up a plan to resolve it working with the department concerned, and then performance-manage it to solution. It would get first-cla.s.s data which it would use for stocktakes that I took personally with the minister, their key staff and mine, every month or so. The unit would present a progress report and any necessary action would be authorised.
We reduced radically the number of unfounded asylum cases that way; drove up literacy and numeracy in schools; applied it to NHS waiting lists, street crime and a host of other things. It was like an independent private or social enterprise at the heart of government. In the process, whole new areas needing reform would be illuminated, since often it became clear that the challenge was systemic, requiring wholesale change to the way a public service worked, rather than a centrally or bureaucratically driven edict.
We also created a Strategy Unit, to look ahead at the way policy would develop, the fresh challenges and new ideas to meet them. That also was highly successful. It allowed us to take a medium- and even long-term view of certain issues that were looming but not imminent. Whereas the Policy Unit handled the day-to-day and focused on managing the departments to produce the policies and their implementation that derived from the manifesto or the departmental plans, the Strategy Unit was trying to construct the next policy platform. Of course the two overlapped, but in areas like pensions, welfare to work, public health and further education, the Strategy Unit was constantly putting issues on the agenda that, even if not urgent today, would become tomorrow"s crises unless prepared for.
In addition, I strengthened the foreign policy team. Instead of one poor soul covering all foreign policy for the prime minister, which usually meant they worked fourteen-hour days and were never able to interact with other parts of our system or those of other countries in the way they needed to, we formed a unit of four or five, with one senior person on Europe and another on the rest of foreign policy, and some other officials to help. This hugely helped Downing Street to cope with the mounting burden of foreign policy challenges.
I wanted to go further in the machinery of government. I was really pa.s.sionate about antisocial behaviour and petty crime and the misery it caused people. I also believed we needed a completely new approach to organised crime. This area was to prove incredibly frustrating. I had a plan to reorganise the whole way the criminal justice system worked: to reduce crime, the fear of crime and their social and economic costs, to speed up the process of cases through the system, to dispense justice fairly and efficiently, to promote confidence in the rule of law and to promote confidence in the system.
The decision I didn"t take was to move Gordon. When people look back, they always think that was the crucial moment when moving him could have been achieved politically; and that therefore this was an opportunity missed. On balance, I still disagree. He was recognised as an outstanding Chancellor. He was a big figure, a towering figure in many respects. He had a solid media and party following. Moving him would have seemed, and been written up as, a piece of petty spite on my part, as a jealousy move, a self-interested one rather than a disinterested one. And who would I have put in his place? At that point only Robin Cook or Jack Straw could have filled the position. In truth, neither would have been as good more amenable, maybe, but not as formidable. The Gordon problem the combination of the brilliant and the impossible remained.
I think he believed I would move him, so when I tried to say to him the second term must be different from the first and you must cooperate, he immediately said he knew I wanted to get rid of him. What was an attempt to have a frank way of putting the thing on an even keel only further destabilised the vessel.
I did move Robin from Foreign Secretary and put in Jack Straw. Robin had done well, but four years was considered a long time doing that job. It wasn"t necessarily wise politically, however. From then on, he was a potential danger. Indeed, I had the same problem with Jack in 2005. The trouble is no one ever wants to stop being Foreign Secretary. As I have said, of all the jobs, that"s the one they get to thinking is theirs and should jolly well continue being theirs until the end of time, or at least the end of the government, and even then some harbour the thought that they had done it so well, shouldn"t it be elevated above the squalor of party politics?
At the first PLP meeting after election, the PLP were in truculent mood. Unbelievable second landslide in a row, what"s there to complain about? The tension I had felt during the campaign was coming to the surface: they felt they had won on one basis; I felt I had won on another.
However, before either of us had much time to moan about the other, within less than nine weeks of our victory the world would change, and the fate of my political leadership along with many other things of far greater importance would change with it.
TWELVE.
9/11: "SHOULDER TO SHOULDER"
It is amazing how quickly shock is absorbed and the natural rhythm of the human spirit rea.s.serts itself. A cataclysm occurs. The senses reel. In that moment of supreme definition, we can capture in our imagination an event"s full significance. Over time, it is not that the memory of it fades, exactly; but its illuminating light dims, loses its force, and our attention moves on. We remember, but not as we felt at that moment. The emotional impact is replaced by a sentiment which, because it is more calm, seems more rational. But paradoxically it can be less rational, because the calm is not the product of a changed a.n.a.lysis, but of the effluxion of time.
So it was with September 11 2001. On that day, in the course of less than two hours, almost 3,000 people were killed in the worst terrorist attack the world has ever known. Most died in the attack on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center that dominated the skyline of New York. It was a workplace for as diverse a workforce as any in the world, from all nations, races and faiths, and was not only a symbol of American power but also the edifice that most eloquently represented the modern phenomenon of globalisation.
The explosion as the planes. .h.i.t killed hundreds outright, but most died in the inferno that followed, and the carnage of the collapse of the buildings. As the flames and smoke engulfed them, many jumped in terror and panic, or just because they preferred that death to being on fire. Many who died were rescue workers whose heroism that day has rightly remained as an enduring testament to selfless sacrifice.
The Twin Towers were not the only target. American Airlines Flight 77, carrying sixty-four people from Washington to Los Angeles, was flown into the Pentagon. A total of 189 people died. United Airlines Flight 93, bound from Newark to San Francisco with forty-four on board, was hijacked, its target probably the White House. It came down in Somerset County, Pennsylvania. Its pa.s.sengers, realising the goal of the hijack, stormed the cabin. In perishing, they saved the lives of many others.
It was an event like no other. It was regarded as such. The British newspapers the next day were typical of those around the globe: "at war", they proclaimed. The most common a.n.a.logy was Pearl Harbor. The notion of a world, not just America, confronted by a deadly evil that had indeed declared war on us all was not then dismissed as the language of the periphery of public sentiment. It was the the sentiment. Thousands killed by terror what else should we call it? sentiment. Thousands killed by terror what else should we call it?
Opinions were forthright and clear, and competed with each other in resolution, not only in the West but everywhere. In the Arab world, condemnation was nearly universal, only Saddam ensuring that Iraqi state television played a partisan song, "Down With America", calling the attacks "the fruits of American crimes against humanity". Ya.s.ser Arafat condemned the acts on behalf of the Palestinians, though unfortunately, most especially for the Palestinian cause, the TV showed pictures of some jubilant Palestinians celebrating.