We are going to be in the position of nation-builders. We must accept that responsibility and acknowledge it and plan for it from the outset. That was clearly a failing in respect of Iraq.
Second, we need to build the indigenous local capacity on security as soon as possible. Tough stuff is plainly easier to do, and, politically, infinitely more sellable for local politicians under pressure, if done by local forces.
To be fair, in Iraq, this began almost immediately and, as has been recounted earlier, police academies and training facilities were being established in mid-2003. But creating a new Iraqi Army was a challenge of a wholly different order of magnitude. This took time. As my notes to President Bush in May and June 2004 indicate, General Petraeus, put in charge of the process of "Iraqi-isation" of security, was excellent, and by then had in place a plan for the Iraqi forces. Also, partly because this theme of "Iraqi-isation" had very much been my concept, we got the British deputy in beneath General Petraeus. But it was an immense logistical, technical and political effort. An army was being built from scratch. It needed training, an officer cla.s.s, support units, equipment, legitimacy and it needed all of this in circ.u.mstances where we had to be on constant watch for disloyalty or infiltration.
In June 2004, a further UN resolution gave the ISF the authority they needed and envisaged a timetable of handover. By November 2004, I was able to minute to the office that it looked like the Petraeus plan was working; but by the end of the year, as the terrorist attacks intensified, I returned time and again to the theme that we needed to improve the plan for "Iraqi-isation" and somehow hasten its implementation.
The elections in January 2005 were obviously a critical moment. The insurgency was diverted towards stopping them. Allawi, prime minister up to the election, was deeply frustrated that he couldn"t provide the security his people wanted. I signed off an additional $120 million for Iraqi forces in the south. As I said: "Can I be sure it is essential? No. But I"ll take the risk rather than find six months later that it was."
From then on through 2005, as Ayad Allawi was succeeded by Ibrahim Jaafari and then Jaafari by Nouri Maliki, I was in a constant dialogue with the US and my own people about how we could speedily improve the efficacy of the Iraqi forces. But the truth is, it was always going to take time. By 2007 they were ready, or at least in the first stages of proper capability, and in a sense maybe the surge was only going to work if it coincided with such a minimum capability. Going back over 2006, in particular, I am struck by the continual and detailed pushing for a better, faster, more effective plan.
The other recurrent theme of the notes of meetings was the requirement for Sunni outreach. This is the third lesson. The politics must accompany the security and the reconstruction. The Sunnis were bound to be destabilised through losing their position of total power, though they were only a minority of the population. It took time for them to understand that we did not wish to replace a Sunni dictatorship with a Shia one. From the beginning, we made outreach a priority. But Saddam remnants and al-Qaeda cleverly exploited Sunni anxieties. Throughout the political process, in spite of all our efforts, there was a persistent sense of alienation among them. We knew, too, that some of the terrorism was being financed from outside Iraq by wealthy people afraid of Shia power. Then as the Shia started to retaliate, so their sense of being in a sectarian war increased. During 2006, people really did see Iraq as in a civil war. Some even suggested part.i.tion of Iraq was the only solution.
In the end, however, as Sunni areas tired of the constant fighting brought about by al-Qaeda activity, they started to look for a way out. During 2007 and 2008, with the strong partic.i.p.ation of Major General Lamb, slowly but surely they struck deals with the multinational force and the Iraqi government and turned on the al-Qaeda terrorists who were causing them so much hardship and grief. Once that happened, in conjunction with the surge, the tide turned. Sporadic eruptions continued, but the ISF activity had weakened al-Qaeda badly and they began to lose heart.
Then Maliki showed in his actions against followers of al-Sadr that he was prepared to take on Shia as well as Sunni rejectionists. The progress of the const.i.tution through 2009, with all its attendant problems, shows how fragile it all remains. But whereas even those Iraqis who supported the war were increasingly pessimistic during 2006, by 2008 they had recovered their optimism. "It will take time," one remarked to me, "but it will be done." I pray he"s right.
My last meeting with Maliki was in late 2006. He still generates a lot of internal dislike (some described him as a sectarian underneath it all, and he was plainly struggling with the scale of the challenge); but as we sat in his room, one to one, we had a frank and friendly conversation. As ever, I had flown in by helicopter from the military airbase, circling around the danger areas and landing in the Green Zone, the fortified and isolated part of Baghdad housing the international community and the government. I visited the emba.s.sy where the day before mortars had fallen.
The government building was a former Saddam palace. Security was heavy. It was hard to believe real government could be conducted from there. As Maliki and I talked and I pressed him on the utter necessity of not just saying but demonstrating he was governing for all Iraq, not just Shia Iraq, he responded in very simple language. He told me he would show comprehensively that he would deal with anyone who took on the legitimate government. He said that some of the insurgents were former Saddam people who would never be reconciled and would be crushed; but also that he had had enough of the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. "He will learn I will not tolerate this," he said. I wasn"t sure I believed him.
But I was wrong. He did indeed take him on and disarm him. In the 2010 election, Maliki and Allawi both headed units that crossed sectarian lines. President Talabani continues to play a pivotal, unifying role.
So: could we have had more troops sooner? Done more to build up Iraqi forces faster? Made more effort to reach out to Sunni groups earlier? No doubt there were failings in all these areas. But in truth, in all of them we worked as hard as we could to make it work. Our troops fought valiantly. We built an Iraqi Army in under three years. We tried perpetually to involve even the outermost limits of Sunni opinion.
In all of those areas security, reconstruction, politics we could have done more and done it better, that is for sure, but I have a feeling that this will always be so. There never has been, there never will be, a campaign of any nature that does not turn out differently from what is antic.i.p.ated.
Our a.s.sessments of what to expect in Iraq were not casually made. The full array of experts were consulted. There were Iraqi exiles who added their knowledge, and though some had very clear personal agendas, others didn"t. We were told there would be a functioning Iraqi Civil Service. There wasn"t. We were told there would be a humanitarian disaster. It was averted. We were warned that Saddam might fight to the bitter end. He collapsed.
We were told that Shia/Sunni sectarian violence would be a factor. Actually, to begin with, it was much less than feared.
Above all, most people saw no connection between Iraq and al-Qaeda; and little risk of Iran interfering except at the margins. And in this lies the biggest lesson of all.
Towards the end of my time as prime minister, I asked our military and intelligence people at a meeting in Downing Street: Suppose we had not had al-Qaeda and Iran as players in this drama, would it have been manageable? Without hesitation, the answer was yes.
It was this external threat linking up with internal dissidents that very nearly wrecked the prospects for Iraq. They conducted this attempt at destroying a nation with a wickedness and vicious indifference to human life and human suffering that almost defies belief. Suicide bombers sent into markets. Worshippers targeted at their place of prayer. Soldiers and police, there to help put the country on its feet, a.s.sa.s.sinated. UN officials, members of NGOs, civilian workers trying to a.s.sist the Iraqi people to a better life, gunned down, blown up, kidnapped and killed.
Yet after saying all this, my conclusion does not concern the bombers" att.i.tude to this carnage and misery inflicted with brutal deliberation, but ours.
When was there a single protest in any Western nation about such evil? Where was the moral indignation? And where were the Iraqis" Muslim brothers and sisters at their hour of need? Who came to their aid? Where was the focus of criticism?
It was on the forces of the US and the UK who were trying to stop the carnage; not on those conducting it. Yet these agents of al-Qaeda and Iran are not confined to Iraq. Iraq became for them, and by their choice, the field of battle. Their influence is the same menace we face in Pakistan, in parts of Lebanon, in parts of Palestine, all over the Middle East and beyond it in Somalia, and even in parts of the Far East. It is what we face on our own streets, on our airways, in the meeting places of our own nations, each country now obliged to spend billions each year in protecting ourselves against terror.
So, my final conclusion is this. Whatever the planning, be prepared for this: to stand up and fight, if necessary in a long, protracted and b.l.o.o.d.y battle. Be prepared not just to rebuild a nation that has failed, but to do so in the face of an enemy doing as much wrong as it can to prevent us from doing what is right.
Are we up for this? Does our determination match theirs? That is the real question.
Had we foreseen what Iraq was going to be like following the removal of Saddam, would we have still done it? Should we have still done it? Many would say no. The cost in money and blood has been enormous.
My response, however, is very clear. Had this money and bloodshed been expended in removing Saddam, I would agree. But it wasn"t. It was largely expended in dealing with the consequences of extremism whose aim was not to implement the will of the Iraqi people, but to defy it.
What are we saying when we ask: Look at the bloodshed, how can it be worth it? First, consider who is responsible. It wasn"t UK or US soldiers. There was no inevitability about the violence. These were deliberate acts of sabotage. Had we conceded to them, we would have strengthened the wider ideology they represented. By refusing to concede and by supporting Iraqi democracy, we struck a blow against that ideology everywhere.
Perhaps, as Zhou Enlai said when asked for his a.s.sessment of the French Revolution, "It"s too early to say." All I know is that I did what I thought was right. I stood by America when it needed standing by. Together we rid the world of a tyrant. Together we fought to uphold the Iraqis" right to a democratic government.
I still keep in my desk a letter from an Iraqi woman who came to see me before the war began. She told me of the appalling torture and death her family had experienced having fallen foul of Saddam"s son. She begged me to act. After the fall of Saddam she returned to Iraq. She was murdered by sectarians a few months later. What would she say to me now?
SIXTEEN.
DOMESTIC REFORM.
It is easy to look back on the early years of Iraq and think they were dominated by that event alone. In reality, it was precisely during this time when the domestic agenda moved forward most radically and most satisfactorily.
Through 20034 and the beginning of 2005, there were critical battles over foundation hospitals and NHS reform; tuition fees; the beginnings of the city academies programme; ID cards; and antisocial behaviour. The closest I came to losing my job, ironically, was not over Iraq but over tuition fees. The nearest I got to giving up my job voluntarily was during 2004, when I thought I had had enough and would yield to Gordon, since I felt he might continue the reform agenda. And the clearest I became that I should stay despite it all was when I realised he wouldn"t, and that I should therefore fight a third term.
So though the headlines were often dominated by the travails of war, the battle inside the government was over the issues of reform, which went to the heart of the New Labour project.
I have described a journey. At first we govern with a clear radical instinct but without the knowledge and experience of where that instinct should take us in specific policy terms. In particular, we think it plausible to separate structures from standards, i.e. we believe that you can keep the given parameters of the existing public service system but still make fundamental change to the outcomes the system produces. In time, we realise this is wrong; unless you change structures, you can"t raise standards more than incrementally. By the beginning of the second term, we have fashioned a template of the reform: changing the monolithic nature of the service; introducing compet.i.tion; blurring distinctions between public and private sector; taking on traditional professional and union demarcations of work and vested interests; and in general trying to free the system up, letting it innovate, differentiate, breathe and stretch its limbs. Each aspect was subject to the most detailed searching enquiry and scrutiny. Each reform was painfully iterated and reiterated. Each was amended and adjusted; and occasionally and each time to my chagrin watered down. But together they added up to a substantial corpus of change and set the system in a new direction. They will form the essential basis of any future reform and where departed from, will, over time, be returned to.
For sure, however, each was harshly attacked, criticised and opposed. Perhaps the most fiercely contested was the change to university funding. The whole debate provided a fascinating glimpse into the difficulties of making change in the modern world, and almost led to my resignation. It aroused unbelievably tenacious dissent. It cost us several seats at the 2005 election, and what appeared like a poor result even with a majority of over sixty might well have appeared differently with those extra seats and a majority of over eighty. It split the government; but by the time the reforms were actually introduced in late 2005, they caused very little stir and the debate today is as much how to further them as how to dismantle them.
It is an object lesson in the progress of reform: the change is proposed; it is denounced as a disaster; it proceeds with vast chipping away and opposition; it is unpopular; it comes about; within a short s.p.a.ce of time, it is as if it had always been so.
The lesson is also instructive: if you think a change is right, go with it. The opposition is inevitable, but rarely is it unbeatable. There will be many silent supporters as well as the many vocal detractors. And leadership is all about the decisions that change. If you can"t handle that, don"t become a leader.
And the lesson goes wider: it is about rising above the fray, learning how to speak above the din and clatter, and about always, always, keeping focused on the big picture. Rereading the daily news about the changes, I am struck by how fevered each story was at the time, and how forgotten each story is today. Tuition fees in particular had an extraordinary series of mini-crises, debacles and revolts attending its every step. Yet all that matters now is that a necessary reform was made; and having been made, it is the structure upon which future reforms will be built.
It began with the usual fraught exchanges with Gordon and the Treasury.
I had allowed David Blunkett to put in our 2001 manifesto that we would not allow top-up fees. This was somewhat against my better judgement, but there were sound political reasons: worries that we were planning this had been circulating among the PLP and NEC, and David felt we had to kill the story. It was one of the few compromises I allowed with the 2001 programme.
But shortly after the election the challenge for our universities became clear. I had come to the view then and believe this even more strongly today that the future of developed nations such as ours, relying heavily on our human capital (as we must), depends on having a vibrant, dynamic and world-cla.s.s higher education system. In addition, a country like Britain with its traditions and its language is ideally suited for such a challenge. However, like so much else in this country, we can"t rest on our laurels. I looked at the top fifty universities in the world and saw only a handful in the UK, and barely any in mainland Europe. America was winning this particular race, with China and India coming up fast behind. The point about the US was especially telling. Their domination of the top fifty and top hundred, for that matter was not by chance or by dint of size; it was plainly and inescapably due to their system of fees. They were more entrepreneurial; they went after their alumni and built up big endowments; their bursary system allowed them to help poorer students; and their financial flexibility meant that they could attract the best academics. Those who paid top dollar got the best. Simple as that.
We had also got ourselves into a typical egalitarian muddle over the universities that were lower ranked. The previous Tory government had converted the so-called polytechnics into universities, which was fine except that it fuelled the myth that all universities were of the same academic standing, which manifestly they weren"t. And even the universities that had been polytechnics, some of which were offering outstanding service, needed flexibility in funding.
In late 2001, the key heads of the Russell Group the twenty leading British universities came to see me in Downing Street. Their message was stark: they needed significantly more funding. Roy Jenkins, then Chancellor of Oxford, was strongly in favour of tuition fees, urging them to me privately. Ivor Crewe, at that time president of Universities UK (the university princ.i.p.als" and vice chancellors" committee), was equally emphatic. As an old SDP hand and so someone with knowledge of progressive politics Ivor got the politics completely, and he was unequivocal that there had to be change.
I had promoted Estelle Morris to be Secretary of State for Education in June 2001, following on from David Blunkett who became Home Secretary. Estelle was an interesting example of what you see rarely in politics. She eventually resigned in October 2002, and said simply,"If I am really honest with myself I was not enjoying the job . . . I could not accept being second best. I am hard at judging my own performance. I was not good at setting the priorities. I had to know I was making a difference, and I do not think I was giving the prime minister enough." I wasn"t sure if she was serious; and came to the conclusion she was. It had just got too much for her, and she was unhappy. She was by no means emotionally frail on the contrary, she had held her seat against a fierce and, as ever with the Lib Dems (her main opponents), pretty vicious local campaign. She was by all accounts exactly as she seemed: decent and hard-working; but the top flight in politics is extremely rough, and she just felt overwhelmed.
So she went, and was replaced by Charles Clarke who, having lived through the Kinnock years,was sufficiently tough and could be rough himself. He gave the whole area a big push forward. However, he also had to inherit what had become a very tricky piece of politics with Gordon.
Once the university chiefs had laid out the problem, I knew we had to act. We had the manifesto commitment not to allow top-up fees, it was true, but frankly it would have been absurd to postpone the decisions necessary for the country because of it. So I began what turned out to be a process of internal debate and discussion, essentially with the Treasury, that lasted almost two years. From the outset it was clear that Gordon intended to resist. It was only afterwards I understood his problem. Essentially he thought he was going to fight the third election and he didn"t want anything that cramped his programme or was unpopular, and this was plainly going to be so. Therefore he approached the thing, as ever, not with outright dissent but with the tactic of postponement.
In late 2001, we first broached the subject. Not unreasonably at that point, he asked for a lot more work to be done. The work was duly done, and at further meetings during the first half of 2002 we started to get down to the decision. It was here that Estelle felt caught between the two of us, and her own instincts were insufficiently powerful for her to take a stand. So it more or less developed into a battle of wills between myself and Gordon. I would say that it was at this time that the creative tension, which up until then had been on balance positive, became on balance negative. I"m not saying there weren"t still enormous positives in having him there he was, as I always repeat, a big figure, a credible one and without question an a.s.set to the government in broad terms and therefore it was right that he remained as Chancellor. But the problem was that because of his expectation and desire, he wanted to freeze progress until he took over. I was never totally sure where his own proclivity lay in terms of policy, but the desire to freeze-frame the government evidently impossible became overlaid with an agenda that defined itself subtly but actually very clearly to the left as time went on. This was almost personified in our advisers: Ed b.a.l.l.s for his part (then chief economic adviser to the Treasury), Andrew Adonis for mine.
Andrew and I were both close to Roy Jenkins. I missed Roy hugely after he pa.s.sed away in early January 2003. When Andrew phoned to tell me the news, I was desperately sorry. Roy was, to the soul of his being, someone of genuine integrity. He had been a friend and mentor. He would have opposed Iraq, I am sure; but he would have understood why I did it. He had pa.s.sed on to Andrew not just his politics but his political character: a rational, reasoning seeker after truth. To him, as to Andrew, the first question was: is this right? Only after that question was answered would he ask: is it politic? It was and is the correct approach to politics and, incidentally, is certainly consonant with the public"s approach. But it is rare.
Ed b.a.l.l.s was and is immensely capable intellectually, and also has some of the essential prerequisites for leadership: he has guts, and he can take decisions. But he suffers from the bane of all left-leaning intellectuals. As I have remarked elsewhere, these guys never "get" aspiration. They would deny it of course, but they see the middle cla.s.s apart from the intellectual part of it as an unnatural const.i.tuency for them. Not that they see them as the enemy or anything that would be to exaggerate grossly but they would think that a person worried about their tax rates was essentially selfish, and therefore by implication morally a little lost. They could "get" that it might not be smart to penalise them; but not that it might be wrong to do so.
Ed had worked out a strategy for Gordon that sort of went like this: there is a trade-off between equity and markets; Blair is pushing us too far towards "marketisation" and thus away from equity. So all of this language around choice, compet.i.tion, diversity, flexibility; all of it is in the end an attempt to move us to a system that is intrinsically inequitable; and what"s more poorly motivated, since it"s all part of an obsession with the middle cla.s.s historically a small part of Labour"s support at the expense of our "core" voters.
To this intellectual critique he added a truly muddled and ultimately very damaging party critique. This was the view I fear tutored by Gordon"s inclination in dealing with the party that I deliberately chose confrontations with the party in order to demonstrate my independent credentials with the public, i.e. I sacrificed the party to woo the public. This was a very common opinion.
Mostly he was pretty respectful. Over time and the innumerable meetings with Ed and Gordon, I gradually got Ed to lose his reserve after all, I was prime minister and provoked him into his true opinions. His basic sense was that this whole a.s.sault on traditional party thinking was to prove I was "exceptional". "Exceptionalism", he called it. What he meant was that I believed only I could win, and that all these rows over tuition fees, schools reform, health reform, ID cards, asylum, law and order, welfare were almost manufactured, in order to create the sense of a leader above the party. He believed, and I think persuaded Gordon, that you could be a traditional Labour leader and still win.
I used to tell him this was fundamentally and dangerously to misunderstand both the intellectual and the political basis for New Labour. Intellectually, it was perfectly straightforward: all governments round the world, certainly those getting re-elected, were refashioning their state and public services to make them more accountable to consumers and users, who in the other domains of their lives were habitually making their own choices and decisions. In other words, my argument was that these reforms were cutting with the grain of where "the people" were heading.
Politically, I tried to explain that the whole purpose of my period as leader was to create a permanence in New Labour that meant precisely that I was not the exception. Even back in 2002, it was plain that we were a stronger, more enduring, more stable Labour government than any before us. It was true that I believed a Labour leader could not be a traditional Labour politician to win, but only because I believed we had to change the tradition. Once New Labour became integral to the way the Labour Party thought and operated, we would have a different tradition, one more sustainable, more credible and more electable. I didn"t choose to have rows with the party; I chose to reform. But if the reform was resisted, then you couldn"t avoid the row.
Anyway, as 2002 went on, it became apparent that we were stuck. In early 2003 and with Charles Clarke now pressing, we held further meetings. This time I insisted that the Treasury come forward with a specific alternative, rather than continually raising objections to the tuition-fee proposal we had outlined.
In summary, we were proposing that rather than pay tuition fees of 1,150 per annum upfront, while the student was at university, there should be a variable fee of up to 3,000 per annum the variation to be at the discretion of the university to be repaid after graduation on a means-tested basis. There would be maintenance grants for the poorer students and bursaries would be encouraged. The whole package would boost the income of the universities considerably, by over 30 per cent per annum. It was plainly a fairer system. It was true there would be more debt, but we would only recover the money from graduates as they started earning. And poor students would get real and significant help. As ever in these situations, there were tactical compromises along the way to sweeten the pill some of which I was reluctant to make and all of which added to the cost but there was no doubt it would be enormously advantageous to our universities, separate them out from those struggling in mainland Europe and bring us back into contention with those of the US. Indeed, after the measures were pa.s.sed, several vice chancellors told me the change literally saved their universities from financial collapse. Also, as our opponents knew, once introduced as a concept, there was no looking back.
The Treasury kept demanding that more work and a.n.a.lysis be done. They pointed to the fact that our proposals had drawbacks. I responded that all systems have drawbacks. They produced polling that said our scheme was unpopular. I said that all changes were unpopular, except funding universities better through higher general taxation, and the moment it stopped being a question about funding and became a question of tax, that of course was unpopular too. In truth, therefore, this was a cla.s.sic case of a change that was necessary and right and would never prove popular. On the other hand, as I always reasoned, people expected governments to take unpopular decisions, expected to complain about them and expected leadership to overcome complaint. However, if ever you stopped leading, it would cease to be a complaint and become a notice of dismissal; because, in their heart of hearts, people know governments are there to lead.
Eventually, we flushed out of the Treasury a kind of alternative, which was to all intents and purposes a graduate tax, pure and simple. This, naturally, was equally unpopular according to the polling, but more than that, it suffered from what I thought was a serious and irremediable defect: it meant that instead of a graduate paying back their own fees, there would be a general tax on graduates, dependent on their income and not on the education they had personally received. In other words, it amounted not to a personal repayment of a personal debt, but a general graduate repayment of the collective student debt. I didn"t like this at all. It broke the essential link between what a student got and what they gave back; and it changed the nature of our taxation system radically, but not sensibly or sensitively.
Being plainly Ed"s idea, it was never pushed very hard by Gordon, and so it kind of fell away. That meant it was our proposal or nothing. Eventually in mid-2003 I just said: we will meet again in a month"s time; the final decision will be taken; at that point you put up or we proceed. We proceeded, but we had wasted valuable time.
Throughout, Andrew Adonis had been a complete star, producing endless a.n.a.lyses and counter-a.n.a.lyses, marshalling the arguments with his customary clarity, patiently and politely urging it all forward. Andrew was in stark contrast to Ed. In a political sc.r.a.p, Ed would win. And Ed, as I say, was generally a clever guy. But in terms of public appeal and sense, Andrew was just in a different league. He understood entirely why it was so crucial that we reach out beyond Labour"s traditional base; he was himself a representative of aspiration, his father having been a Greek Cypriot immigrant postman; and he knew that if Labour was to govern for significant periods, it had to be as a party of the future-orientated centre ground.
Andrew carefully put together the facts and arguments. Charles Clarke was strongly in support. For the first time, I felt with Charles, Alan Milburn and David Blunkett I had people alongside me fully in tune with what I wanted to do and why. They had the same instincts and each had the political skill to mount the Labour case for modernisation and change. All of them had honed those skills in umpteen interactions with recalcitrant union leaders, bolshie MPs, lefty activists and a.s.sorted intellectuals whose main contribution was to explain why nothing should change in the name of being real radicals.
Whereas I had a tendency to think I could persuade anyone of anything provided I truly believed it (not even experience ever quite eliminated this trait of mine), they were more realistic and more effective. They knew the difference between tactics and strategy and how and when they had to be synchronised.
We held back the Queen"s Speech until late that year almost the end of November. Of course the news continued to be dominated by Iraq, by the continuing attempts to stop terrorism threatening that country"s fragile condition, and by the Hutton Inquiry. But the real reason for the delay was sorting out what was going to be a major domestic agenda around the NHS, schools, antisocial behaviour and tuition fees. After much prevarication and again a lot of opposition from next door at Number 11, I had also got agreement in principle to ident.i.ty cards. All of these issues at various stages of legislation were going on apace.
The saga on tuition fees came to a head around the vote for the second reading, which was scheduled for the end of January 2004. It was truly knife-edge stuff. It seems strange to relate that now, but it really was.
Michael Howard had just become leader of the Tories, and had made his first mistake. He had inherited opposition to tuition fees from Iain Duncan Smith. Of course, the Tories knew perfectly well that they should support the measure, and the reason why they didn"t do so is an interesting reflection on the art of good Opposition.
Leave aside principle for the moment i.e. the rights or wrongs of the policy and let us focus on the naked politics. The conventional view of Opposition is: pick up votes where you can. All the polls say tuition fees are unpopular. There is a public bandwagon of opposition. Clamber on board.
In many cases, that is the right thing politically. Take the rows over MPs" expenses. The truth is MPs are underpaid and the expenses were used to top up income; but you can"t say that. The public is whipped into outrage. The bandwagon rolls. It is completely unreasonable to expect the Opposition to resist it. Not wise long term, by the way; I frequently rued such moves made in Opposition which boomeranged in government. But fair enough. It"s what happens, and the Opposition, eager for votes, benefits in the short term.
But such bandwagons are dangerous if they are heading in a direction with which serious, elite cross-party opinion disagrees. Then it"s a mistake, and never worth it, because even though that opinion is elite and held by only a few, its quality is high and it marks you down sharply.
Every key Tory who had been in government and who had wished they had made such a reform was onside with us. Elite opinion was clear: the change was necessary and right. By allying himself with the opposition unions, the left, etc. Michael Howard didn"t win many votes and lost a lot of credibility. It tied in with his attempt to exploit the Hutton Inquiry when he had been vigorously in favour of Iraq, and it all contributed to our development of a telling counter-attack on him, namely that he was opportunist and therefore unreliable.
The charge of being an opportunist may seem a bit of a low-key attack. And in that also lies a lesson. With each successive Tory leader, I would develop a line of attack, but I only did so after a lot of thought. Usually I did it based on close observation at PMQs. I never made it overly harsh. I always tried to make it telling. The aim was to get the non-politician nodding. I would wonder not what appealed to a Labour Party Conference in full throttle, but what would appeal to my old mates at the Bar, who wanted a reasonable case to be made; and who, if it were made, would rally.
So I defined Major as weak; Hague as better at jokes than judgement; Howard as an opportunist; Cameron as a flip-flop, not knowing where he wanted to go. (The Tories did my work for me in undermining Iain Duncan Smith.) Expressed like that, these attacks seem flat, rather mundane almost, and not exactly inspiring but that"s their appeal. Any one of those charges, if it comes to be believed, is actually fatal. Yes, it"s not like calling your opponent a liar, or a fraud, or a villain or a hypocrite, but the middle-ground floating voter kind of shrugs their shoulders at those claims. They don"t chime. They"re too over the top, too heavy, and they represent an insult, not an argument. Whereas the lesser charge, because it"s more accurate and precisely because it"s more low-key, can stick. And if it does, that"s that. Because in each case, it means they"re not a good leader. So game over.
In fact, if Michael had backed me over tuition fees, it would have done me real damage with my own side; done him a power of good with sensible, informed opinion; and not changed the result. But he didn"t. And that helped me.
The rebellion on my side was not small, however. And it was led by Nick Brown and George Mudie, both close to Gordon and both supremely good organisers. I had my political team working overtime. Sally Morgan was at her best, performing to the highest level. She was New Labour but had the benefit of the 1980s student union training, and could reach the women in the PLP in a way others couldn"t. Some women, by the way, are the last people best placed to canva.s.s other women. Others do it superbly. Sally was not one of the "wimmin"; but she could reach outside of that New Labour circle, could talk more than one political language and was relentlessly realistic about the challenge. Charles and I were a bit of the "let"s just go and do this d.a.m.n thing" school, which was fine, but doing the d.a.m.n thing did also entail getting the d.a.m.n votes. And we were way short. Sally and Hilary Armstrong who was a great chief whip and also skilled in the highways and byways of PLP politics told me in no uncertain terms that the vote hung in the balance.
At a meeting before Christmas, we sat in Downing Street: me, Charles, Sally and Andrew, together with David Hill who had become press secretary after Alastair"s departure. Much to my delight, David had agreed to come back and serve after some years in the private sector, having been the Labour Party"s chief press officer for the 1997 election.
"I feel very confident," Charles said in typical Charles fashion.
"I really don"t see why," Sally remarked a little sourly. "Is it a calculation of the votes that leads you to think that, or just your natural good spirits? Because I"m looking at the votes and you don"t yet have them."
It was an ugly period. We were to have the second-reading vote on 27 January 2004, and the Hutton Inquiry reporting the next day. January was going to be uncomfortable. A bad result in either could mean curtains.
I always used to think, though, that if you go out on a point of principle, well, there are worse ways of exiting. As I have stated many times, I wasn"t obsessed with staying. I explained this to Sally as we sat having a cup of coffee after the others had departed. "Well, that"s very big of you, I"m sure," she said tartly with a smile, "but if you don"t mind, I think we should concentrate on winning the vote."
"How do we win then?" I asked.
"You can"t win," she replied, "without your Chancellor fully and unequivocally on board."
And that was the nub of it.
Early in the new year I restarted my conversation with Gordon about leaving. This was probably unwise in all aspects, but I was feeling genuinely worn down. At every major pa.s.sing point in every major path of policy, there were barriers being thrown across the road ahead.
The first foundation hospitals would shortly be coming into being. Carefully chosen from those already getting the highest ranking, these hospitals were to have greater freedom, power and discretion. They were the first big step to creating self-governing ent.i.ties capable of making the changes in medical care in the way they wanted, in order to meet the changing challenge of modern health care.
The problem with the NHS was quintessentially that of the monolithic, outdated public health service: it was rigid, and had no incentives to innovate. Bad practice and good were equally rewarded. Powerful professional interests, with widespread but ultimately ill-informed public support, held sway. Foundation hospitals were the breach in the wall of the monolith. In time they were to be followed by choice, by the introduction of the private sector and by far-reaching changes to the working practices of staff.
We had begun, with Alan Milburn, the task of introducing them in January 2002. They had provoked a furious row with the Treasury, however. Gordon felt Alan was hostile to him. As ever, he met the argument not head-on but by a Treasury-related argument: by having the power to borrow against their a.s.sets, foundation hospitals were a threat to the public finances. The debate was endless, rancorous and destabilising. By the time we finally got the legislation agreed again with a major rebellion, and again with many taking their cue from apparent Treasury disagreement with the policy Alan had left the government.
In May 2003, a month before the vote, he had come to see me. He knew it would be a bad blow, but he had had enough. I was very sorry to lose him. He was a quite exceptional minister. I don"t blame his fight with Gordon for his departure; there were many reasons for his standing down. One of them is something that British politics really needs to watch.
Being at the top now in British politics is like taking your political life in your hands each day. OK, politics is a hard business, not for the faint-hearted that has always been so but in today"s politics, the pressures are so intense, the criticism so brutal and the targeting so arbitrary, that we are in serious danger of creating a situation where "normal" people feel inclined to walk away, leaving the manically ambitious and the weird in their stead. Of course, people don"t always walk away, but there is an inclination to do so that is directly attributable to the sheer force of the storm that is in an almost perpetual swirl of scandal and intrigue, breaking around their heads. Someone with a life, a family, interests beyond politics, the ability to do other things, can feel deeply inclined to do them and leave the storm to itself.
Alan was the first person (though maybe Estelle fitted the same mould somewhat) who, in my time, just left because they wanted to. He was relatively young, under fifty, at the height of his talent; but he chose to leave. Needless to say the Westminster rumour mill refused to believe someone could make such a rational decision and tried hard to invent all sorts of "real" reasons why he left, but he left for the reason he gave: he no longer enjoyed it and wanted out.
John Reid was asked to pick up the baton. At first he was reluctant. He was a Scot, and under devolution, authority for the NHS in Scotland had been pa.s.sed to the Scottish Executive. I think he may have felt it also a poisoned chalice since it was going to be so hot politically; and of course he had followed the Alan/Gordon row. He had also been moved several times and probably wanted to stay in one place for a while, but I was sure he was right for it. For once, the judgement was undoubtedly correct: he completely understood the rationale for the reforms; understood their politics; understood how to make the case both in the party and to the public; and was determined to take it all further. He was a perfect fit, and was also absolutely capable of standing up to Gordon and what"s more, enjoying it. John believed I have no idea whether rightly that Gordon had tried to ignite a scandal under him some time back; and John was not a character to forget such an a.s.sault. He would work with him, but not buckle.
At the same time, David Blunkett was motoring on the law and order agenda and to great effect. The 2002 Queen"s Speech had had antisocial behaviour legislation at its heart. We had also published the first consultation paper on ident.i.ty cards. Both measures were right in themselves but also played to an important political game plan.
For many communities, especially those in poorer parts of town and city, antisocial behaviour and low-level crime and disorder was the number-one concern. The graffiti, petty drug dealing, violence and abuse could turn a nice neighbourhood into a nasty one within months. In terms of quality of life, there was no bigger issue. Live in such a place and you will know exactly what I mean. The Americans had come up with a "zero tolerance" idea to tackle it, and our antisocial behaviour laws were based on the same notion. The concept is this: if you tolerate the low-level stuff, you pretty soon find the lawbreakers graduate to the high-level stuff. So cut it out at source; tolerate nothing, not even painting a street wall or dropping litter. It fitted completely with my belief in cohesive communities based on a combination of improved opportunity and greater responsibility. We were investing billions in inner-city renewal, but it would count for nothing if life on the street degenerated as a result of lawlessness and disorder.
The reason for special laws to deal with antisocial behaviour was simple: the individual crimes were sufficiently small in themselves not to warrant either major police effort or serious punishment. As a result of their being treated conventionally as specific criminal offences, no one did much. The purpose of the new laws was to get them put under a rubric of antisocial behaviour, simplify the procedures and impose real restrictions on the offenders.
Naturally the laws aroused deep opposition and in some ways reasonably so, since they did involve short-cutting traditional procedures though never, it may be said, in the communities in which they operated, which loved them and only wanted more of them. The Tories got confused. They felt they should oppose because their lawyer friends rather despised or disagreed with the whole notion. Their const.i.tuents, however, agreed with the measures; and after all they were supposed to be the party of law and order. So they faced both ways, with much discomfort.
Ident.i.ty cards were another thing altogether. In this case, there was a substantial body of opinion opposed, including many on practical grounds. I was convinced that they were necessary for two reasons: firstly, I could see no other alternative to dealing with illegal immigration. I was worried about immigration both in itself and because I thought, unless tackled, it had the capacity greatly to undermine good race relations. Secondly, I thought that over time ID cards would help simplify transactions in both the public and the private sectors, which are nowadays the warp and woof of ordinary living. Mortgage transactions, bank withdrawals, credit cards, underage drinking, dealing with a myriad of public services, welfare all of these interactions frequently require some form of proof of ident.i.ty.