At that moment I was content simply to walk around it and not confront it. However angry it made me feel, at this point there was no point. But I could feel this whole debate moving to a new place, one where I was going to be very isolated, falling out not with the party but with the people. I felt it at a profound level, about us as a country, about our character. I felt it not with any fear of political mortality though I could sense that coming, but in a way that was both less frantic and more painful.
I had a vision for Britain. All the way I had believed I could and would persuade the country it was the right choice, the modern way, New Britain going along with New Labour. It was about something bigger than Iraq, bigger than the American alliance, bigger than any one thing; a complete vision of where we should be in the early twenty-first century; about how we finally overcome the greatness of our history to discover the full potential of our future.
But now I wasn"t sure I could do it. I wasn"t sure people were really persuadable any more. The forces aligned against me were so many. If I fought back too hard, there would be so much division and bitterness and yes, be honest, personal pain when I could so easily be released.
All of this I felt, but put to one side. There would be a later reckoning. For now, I was just relieved that the week had finally come to a close. It had begun in triumph, was enveloped in tragedy and ended in some sort of truth about the best politics could be.
I thought of how the week would be viewed in retrospect. For some families as a moment of supreme bereavement. For others in Africa, unconscious of the efforts made to free them from poverty, hunger, conflict and disease, maybe life instead of death measured not in tens of people, but in millions.
As I staggered through the flat door that Friday night, I looked in on Leo sleeping up in his room, poured myself a drink, decided on a movie something utterly escapist tried to focus on the family things Cherie was asking me about, and tried to put it all out of my mind; tried to free myself of the worry of what comes next, of the next call, the next slip of paper, the next confrontation, the next frisson of fear.
I reflected on the awesome nature of the weight on my shoulders; the pain and the excitement. Politics: n.o.ble causes, ign.o.ble means; the plans you make and the events that turn them upside down; the untold misery and the imperfect attempts to alleviate it.
I went back upstairs and looked in on Leo again, still sound asleep. A life ahead of him.
How much triumph, how much tragedy, how much happiness and sorrow would he acc.u.mulate? How many tears, and to what purpose? I remembered my mum. At fifty-two, I had just pa.s.sed the age she had been when she died. So young, I thought now. When she was already ill and knew she might die soon, I once asked whether she would go back to being my age, then twenty, and live it all again if she could. "No," she said, "no, too much pain. Wouldn"t like to go through it all again."
"But you were happy, Mum, in life, weren"t you?"
"Yes, of course. But no, I wouldn"t repeat it all, no, definitely not."
I knew what she meant now: not that it"s better to be dead of course it isn"t but going through it all again, the anxiety, the ambitions that have to be fulfilled, the dreams you know will be dashed, so much striving ... That"s the purpose of life: to strive.
Leo could have been on that Tube train, on that bus. Oh G.o.d, don"t let my children die before me. I think of the grief of it, of the fathers and mothers of the soldiers who died in Iraq, in Afghanistan, of the other people, buried in the rubble of Baghdad or Kandahar.
Think of the horror. My responsibility.
I quietly closed the door to Leo"s room and paused for a moment to throw it all off me. Let me forget for a while. Till the time comes to put it back on.
NINETEEN.
TOUGHING IT OUT.
The last two years in office were, in many ways, the best of years and the worst of years. The best because by this time I felt liberated, strong and up for anything. The worst because it was just as well I felt like that. For these two years, the party was revolting; Gordon was in a perpetual state of machination; the anti-Blair media (i.e. most of it) had given up any pretence at objectivity; Iraq teetered on the brink; and when all else failed, there was a police inquiry into me and my staff that very nearly toppled the government without a charge ever being laid. I look back on it now and think: How did you survive it?
In this time, I was trying to wear what was effectively a kind of psychological armour which the arrows simply bounced off, and to achieve a kind of weightlessness that allowed me, somehow, to float above the demonic rabble tearing at my limbs.
There was courage in it and I look back at it now with pride. I was cornered, so it was either go down or fight. I remember years ago a friend of mine in the const.i.tuency, who was used to rough neighbourhoods, told me: if you ever get in a street fight, stay upright, never go down. People always think if you"re on the ground they will let you be; they won"t, they will kick you in the head and most likely kill you. So stay on your feet, he warned. They"ll rearrange your face, but you"ll live.
While my face was certainly rearranged, I stayed on my feet and got a lot done.
I had more or less set in my mind a date of mid-2007 the halfway point of the Parliament as the right time to leave, but I was open to going sooner if Gordon cooperated, and later if he didn"t. As it happened, he didn"t really, or not in any way that gave me confidence he would continue the programme properly; but I was pushed out regardless after the September 2006 uprising, of which more later.
Despite all the difficulties, I felt enormously confident of what I was doing. Of course, it would have been better to have stayed an extra year or eighteen months and embedded the reform programme still further, better for the party and for the country. Nonetheless, what was done was significant and will last.
The reason for the confidence was that I was now completely on top of the policy agenda. I had ministers in key positions who understood what I was trying to do and why. Although the programme was subject to continual frustration from next door, I could tell Gordon was worried about pushing it too far for fear of Murdoch people and others concluding as opposed to merely suspecting that he was against reform.
Each step was a battle; but by then I was inured to it all, ready to get up each day and gird my loins, to go out and fight whatever might be barring the path, not unafraid exactly, but near to being reckless about my own political safety.
It wasn"t that I didn"t do all the normal political body swerves to find a way through, I made the odd tactical compromise, here and there. But by and large, for the first time since I became prime minister, I was guided simply by what I genuinely thought was right on domestic as well as foreign policies. I was prepared at any point to be defeated and walk away, but I was not going to budge on the essential strategic objectives.
In February 2006, I wrote a paper for the meetings that Philip, Alastair and I were having with Gordon, Ed b.a.l.l.s, Ed Miliband and Sue Nye. I was consciously involving them, putting ideas before them, trying actually to persuade them. Several times I offered on sensible terms to go, if there was a proper relationship in the meantime. But by then I was adamant: there would be no voluntary departure unless it was clear the reform programme was going to be continued.
In the February paper I set out a basic template for how we could work and then went through a potential future agenda on each individual item. In addition, I had launched an internal exercise, after much Treasury dissent, called the Fundamental Savings Review. The purpose of the FSR was to get to the point where we could move beyond the catch-up in investment in public services, and instead focus on a smaller, more strategic government. This was, in my mind, right in itself but also critical to dealing with the "big state" and "tax and spend" arguments that I was sure, in time, would pull apart our coalition in the country, and therefore our ability to win. It went back to the argument, already described, during the 2005 election.
Unfortunately, the FSR was fought every inch of the way and was the one element I was unable to put in place prior to departure, it being the one that really did depend on Gordon"s cooperation.
However, the rest of the programme proceeded apace. In the domain of schools reform, in particular with Andrew Adonis now a minister and Conor Ryan my special adviser, we were able to forge ahead with what was a very ambitious programme that finally got me to where I needed to be.
The months before Christmas 2005 had been especially busy. On 25 October, we published a new schools White Paper in which we advocated the idea of independent non-fee-paying state schools. We did not revive the principle of selection, which had so riven the country between grammar schools and comprehensives; but in every other respect we broke with the traditional comprehensive state school. We made it clear that, in time, all schools could and should become self-governing trusts, either foundation schools or academies, with far greater flexibility in staffing and pay, with partners from whatever sector they wished, and as extended schools be part of the community in which they were situated, able to be used by the adult and youth population for learning, sport, leisure and community services.
In a speech in the summer of 2005 to the National Policy Forum, a body which was the product of an earlier reform of the party to make policymaking more rational and less confrontational, I had set out the rationale for reform.
Although by now I was writing most of the crucial speeches myself, Phil Collins, who had joined the team, was by far the best speech-writer I ever had and was helping greatly. Under pressure of time, the speeches would often be written in the early morning in the Downing Street flat. I would get up at about five, slipping quietly downstairs so as not to wake the children, make myself a mug of tea and take it into the sitting room. There, perched on a chair by a round leather-topped table, I would write in longhand, occasionally looking out of the window at the back of the house, watching as people went jogging in St James"s Park or scurried to work in the early-morning light, sometimes stealing a glance at Britain"s most famous home. I wondered about them, what lives they led, what mood they were in that day, what thoughts occupied them, each life a web of friendships, anxieties, ambitions and fears.
In the speech I said: If it is a system that is keeping people back, the system should change. Not to change it is to say we care more about the system than the people. That is totally unacceptable.And, of course, the reforms must be the right ones, the changes able to achieve their purpose. But far too often people claim the change is a breach of principle whereas in reality, they"re not protecting a principle but a practice and often an outdated one at that.The good news, however, is that there are real examples of progress, driven by our willingness to overcome resistance to change but also by the willingness, indeed enthusiasm, of many public servants to let their own creativity and innovation loose. So this is a time to push forward, faster and on all fronts: open up the system, break down its monoliths, put the parent and pupil and patient and law-abiding citizen at the centre of the system. Yes, we"ve made great progress. Let us learn the lessons of it not so as to rest on present achievements but to take them to a new and higher level in the future . . .Eight years in, there is a body of empirical evidence to draw on. The conclusion of it is plain: money alone doesn"t do it. It is where money has been combined with modernisation of systems, working practices and incentives that the best results have come . . .All these reforms are, in the final a.n.a.lysis, simply means to an end. The end is not choice. The end is quality services irrespective of wealth. The end is opportunity to make the most of your ability whatever your start in life. The end is utterly progressive in its values. But the only progressive means are those that deliver the progressive ends.
The first academies had been ma.s.sively oversubscribed. It was plain this was not solely because of the new buildings. It was precisely because the academy school seemed to belong not to some remote bureaucracy, not to the rulers of government, local or national, but to itself, for itself. The school would be in charge of its own destiny. This immediately gave it pride and purpose. Because the sponsors were determined and successful individuals, they brought that determination and drive for success into the school. And most of all, freed from the extraordinarily debilitating and often, in the worst sense, politically correct interference from state or munic.i.p.ality, the academies just had one thing in mind, something shaped not by political prejudice but by common sense: what will make the school excellent.
So, even in areas like Hackney, where I visited the new Mossbourne Community Academy at Hackney Downs on the site of a previously failed comprehensive, and where you might have expected the local middle cla.s.s to be a bit sniffy and precious, the emphasis on rigorous discipline, a proper dress code and good manners was like a dream to parents, poor and comfortably off alike. When the Dispatches Dispatches programme on Channel 4 did a covert programme on the new Doncaster Academy, with footage of some parents complaining that their kid had been threatened with expulsion if he didn"t turn up to school on time, I knew we were really getting somewhere. Of course, the programme-makers thought people would be outraged by such draconian discipline, whereas naturally the other parents were delighted. programme on Channel 4 did a covert programme on the new Doncaster Academy, with footage of some parents complaining that their kid had been threatened with expulsion if he didn"t turn up to school on time, I knew we were really getting somewhere. Of course, the programme-makers thought people would be outraged by such draconian discipline, whereas naturally the other parents were delighted.
Though the academy idea was watered down after I left, it had an unstoppable momentum and will easily recuperate and get back to full strength. In late 2006, I announced again I"m afraid to shrieking and barking from next door that we would double the existing programme to four hundred schools, and was satisfied then that if we attained that and combined it with foundation schools, we would be on a transformative path.
Gordon will protest that he never opposed the programme, and to be fair he never did so head-on; but it was obvious his people weren"t in favour, and getting anything out of the Treasury required a machete constantly slicing through the thick foliage of their objections day by day. I recall an event at Downing Street where we welcomed head teachers who were going to apply for foundation-school status. One of them blithely told me he had come up against the express advice of his local MP. "Oh," I said, irritated, "who"s that?"
"Ed b.a.l.l.s," he replied, unaware he had confirmed my sense of where the GB team sympathies really lay.
The initial a.s.sessment of academies was often described negatively, but the whole tenor even of the negative coverage was, in a sense, a mark of their success. People compared academies to the best schools, conveniently forgetting that they had, in every case, replaced state schools that were failing chronically i.e. we had chosen the toughest nuts to crack. The very fact people made such a comparison was a measure of the very heightened expectations around them. It was a.s.sumed they would be good, a cut above, fit to sit alongside the best. And that was precisely the measure we wanted.
Today, of course, the results are clear: academies are improving three times faster than other schools. But, back then, some were bound to struggle, some even fell by the wayside and had to be recovered; yet taken as a whole, they succeeded not beyond my imagination, but in line with it.
The party opposition was fairly steady and consistent. To my sadness, even Estelle Morris questioned academies, going back to the old saying "standards not structures" and bemoaning the fact we had ditched the mantra. But the whole point was that without the different structure, there was no possibility of achieving the higher standards. Neil Kinnock weighed in, by now pretty much routinely offside and agitating for my replacement by Gordon. His take on academies was that they were elitist, though on closer examination it was less that they were elitist in the sense of being for the wealthy plainly they weren"t and more that they were better than other local schools. For me, this was the point. However well motivated, it was cla.s.sic levelling down. It was an argument that went to the heart of what New Labour was about and its championing of aspiration. Equity could not and should never be at the expense of excellence. My abiding insistence was never give up on excellence, wherever it might be. Attacking it irrespective of what we felt about grammar schools, private schools, special schools, any schools was to commit a fatal solecism. It meant that, in the ultimate a.n.a.lysis, we were prepared to get rid of something that was excellent on the basis that it represented the wrong ideology.
Now, by the way, it can be true that such a school might represent the wrong ideology. I am opposed to selection aged eleven. It"s too crude, too final, and therefore too determinative at a ridiculously young age of a child"s life chances, or, to put it less emotionally, their academic ability. I used to reflect on the experience of my brother Bill. He is a wise, sensible, level-headed and thoroughly decent man. It was and is a privilege to have him as a brother. He is also very clever, now a High Court judge, after being a top QC and author of academic works on banking law.
When Bill came to take his entrance exam for Fettes back in the 1960s at the age of thirteen, he only just pa.s.sed and was put in a lower academic stream. He really had not shone at all. By the time he sat the Oxford exam five years later, however, he had developed and got to Balliol with an exhibition.
Kids change, and therefore separating them out at an early age is not right or fair. But the way comprehensives were introduced and grammar schools abandoned was pretty close to academic vandalism. And not a great reflection on the Secretaries of State mainly Labour but also Tory who, of course, continued to send their own children to private school. Not experiencing through their own children the reality of the change, and hugely egged on by the teaching establishment, they legislated so that grammar schools (selective but also excellent) were changed into comprehensives (non-selective and frequently non-excellent, and on occasions truly dire).
This was done because the a.s.sumption was that the only reason grammar schools were better was because they were selective. This is to make the same mistake as when people say that private schools are good just because the parents are middle cla.s.s, better off and the facilities are better; i.e. they are better only through privilege and cla.s.s.
The truth is that both types of school are good for other reasons too. They are independent. They have an acute sense of ethos and ident.i.ty. They have strong leadership, and are allowed to lead. They are more flexible. They innovate because no one tells them they can"t. They pursue excellence. And here is a major factor they a.s.sume excellence is attainable. In other words, they believe failure is not inevitable, it is avoidable; and it is their fault if they don"t avoid it, not the fault of "the system", "the background of the children" or "the inadequacy of the parents".
Now, of course, these characteristics att.i.tudes of thought, if you will are easier if your parents are middle cla.s.s or you select. Easier to think; easier to do. But the whole basis of my schools reform was that they weren"t impossible or unattainable in state schools that were non-selective, provided we were a) prepared to acknowledge the reasons why grammar and private schools worked, b) prepared to let state schools have the same freedoms and encourage new ways of working with new partners, and c) prepared to fund them better.
I used to have fierce internal arguments all about this, even with my closest staff. In the end, the trouble often came down to this: if you introduced a really good school in an area full of really average ones, lo and behold the parents all clamoured to get their children into the really good one. And, yes, of course that caused consternation among all the parents that failed to get their children in, and the local councillors, teachers and so on. But as I used to argue: that simply cannot be a reason not to have the really good school; that must be a reason for a.n.a.lysing why the others are average or worse and changing them.
I remember visiting a school in London just before the 1997 election. As the head teacher welcomed us in, there was a fight going on in the foyer. We stood talking for a time until the noise of the scuffling being distracting he said, "We"d better move elsewhere."
"Shouldn"t we stop that?" I said, pointing to the sc.r.a.pping students.
"Not really," he said as he led us down to his study. He then explained how the families in that neighbourhood were problematic, drugs were a real issue, kids were badly brought up and not interested in studying. It was a credible and to him absolutely persuasive explanation of why the school was bound to fail. He was, by the way, a nice guy and committed. He also said that since the school had "not a great" reputation i.e. everyone locally thought it was a dump they ended up taking the excluded pupils from other schools.
The point was that we accepted failure, and not just the individual failure of certain of the pupils, but a collective failure for all of them. I knew two things were clear: I would never accept such a thing for my own children; and it would never be true that all the pupils and/or all the parents shared the same att.i.tude or problems. What we were permitting was a disaffected and alienated minority to sour it all for the majority. Of course, we shouldn"t accept failure even for the disaffected and alienated. But to accept it for the entire school and there were hundreds like this when we took office was gross, an unbelievable social injustice; and what"s more, one which our mistaken ideology had helped perpetrate.
Prior to 1997, the Conservatives had partially tackled the issue with grant-maintained schools, whose status gave greater freedom and independence. The trouble was it was partial, and basically freed those schools already doing better. This was not wrong, and I fought hard to ensure that though we altered the status the party hated grant-maintained schools we tried to keep the basic freedoms. But the journey from 1 May 1997 to 27 June 2007 was really about first correcting the partiality of that programme focusing on the poorest schools instead and then, second, creating through the academy programme a whole new type of school that could fulfil the purpose both the grant-maintained and our reforms aimed for: quality state schooling. Whereas the Tories paid most attention to middle-cla.s.s schools, I knew that in order to gain universal or at least widespread acceptance, the programme had to be for the worst of the system as well as the best.
But what a fight it all was. And even in the latter months of 2005 when I was battling away, now with a trusted inner group of ministers who shared the same vision and knew this was where Labour had to be, we were still very much in a struggle with a large part of the party. However, I felt we were winning the argument.
We were battling on other fronts too. Just before Christmas, the Civil Partnership Act came into force, granting the same rights and responsibilities to same-s.e.x partners as enjoyed by married couples. I was really proud of that. On this one, the PLP were largely supportive, of course, but I reflected on how absolutely vituperative the debate had been in days gone by, when the Tories had savaged us over our position on gay rights. In the 1980s it had been a real problem for us as we feared losing votes in by-elections, and yet here we were with the Act coming into force, and a general air of celebration.
The first couples to use the ceremony were in Belfast. I must say I expected a bit of a backlash, but it pa.s.sed with barely a murmur. We received messages from round the world and I appreciated just how much it meant to so many people, more than I had ever thought when pa.s.sing the legislation. It must be a horrible thing to feel you are consigned to second-cla.s.s status as a result of something that is natural to you. So I shouldn"t have been surprised by the extent of the outpouring. But I was.
In a way, the best part was that by then the Tories had also come to support it, meaning that the issue would not be used again as a dividing line in British politics. This was an important gain for the health of our political debate, I thought, and the way the issue played revealed something of the changing nature of politics. I always felt progressive politics had to create a different set of paradigms about politics in order to achieve a greater and deeper spread of support. I evolved over time a position again, similar to that of Bill Clinton of what I would call "tough on crime, pro-gay rights" politics.
This might seem the correlation of two completely separate questions, but to me they indicate a significant shift in progressive social att.i.tudes. In the old days, a Conservative was hard line on law and order and on "political correctness" issues like immigration and gays. The left-winger was liberal, the right-winger illiberal. My generation had defined a different paradigm: what you did in your personal life was your choice, but what you did to others was not. So a distinction came about between att.i.tudes to human beings (non-discriminatory in race, gender or s.e.xuality) and att.i.tudes to social order (we need to impose it). It is still possible to find on both right and left the old att.i.tudes and divisions prevailing, but much less so, and politicians who don"t understand these changing currents are likely to flounder.
Less happy was the episode over the new anti-terror laws which we were seeking to pa.s.s following the House of Lords ruling in December 2004 that our existing power to detain suspects was unlawful under the European Convention on Human Rights, which was now incorporated into UK law. Here, there was simply a fundamental disagreement between myself and the judiciary and media, or at least a large part of it, about the threat we faced.
Although these decisions are supposed to be a strict matter of law, inevitably in the human rights field there is a lot of subjective judgement around the politics. I doubt such a ruling would have been reached in September 2001 or July 2005 i.e. in the wake of terrorist attacks in the US and London but as time pa.s.ses, the sense of urgency goes with it. And it was true: we were asking for draconian powers, unacceptable in principle except in the most rare circ.u.mstances.
Essentially, the problem was straightforward, at least to describe: the terrorist suspects being watched were, we believed ("we" being the security services, police, political leadership), a danger. But proving a charge beyond reasonable doubt was often very difficult. We were spending a large amount of time and manpower watching such groups, in more or less constant surveillance and a.s.sessment. Frequently we would want to wait until evidence of terrorism was collected, but were also afraid of waiting too long in case something unexpected happened, the plot came to fruition and we missed it. With suspects who were foreign nationals, and most were, I conceived of offering them a choice: leave the country, or stay in custody. This both fell foul of the usual principles of habeas corpus and also discriminated between foreign and UK nationals, so it was a problem legally but born of a real-life security conundrum.
Once the House of Lords made the ruling, we had to amend the law. The issue was over the power we sought to allow the police to detain terror suspects for up to ninety days without charge. Of course, there was a stack of safeguards, including the fact that every seven days they had to come before a court. But the police were clear the power would help and after the July bombings I just felt we had to err on the side of toughness. We tried before the 2005 election. The Tories opposed any further detention without trial. David Davis, who was at that time the Shadow Home Secretary, had moved the Tories to a liberal position on many law and order issues, opposing not just the international terror laws but measures on fraud trials by jury, antisocial behaviour and proceeds of crime. I liked David and thought him an unusual and principled politician. But I also thought it a crazy mistake for the Tories.
However, in the run-up to the election, traditional Tory support rallied to an untraditional Tory position. Right-wing papers like the Mail Mail and and Telegraph Telegraph that, had I been a Tory prime minister, would have been tearing the Opposition apart, instead tore us apart. It all got very ugly. that, had I been a Tory prime minister, would have been tearing the Opposition apart, instead tore us apart. It all got very ugly.
After the election we were able to take it more calmly, but the Tories remained opposed. The Lib Dems were naturally against it, and a hefty group of the PLP rebelled. I knew that at the time, and for all I know the position is the same today, we were watching a score or more of cells of radical groups and potential terrorists, and I wanted the power both in its own right but also to send a strong signal out that Britain was going to be a severely inhospitable place for terror groups to operate. As I used to say to people: you may not like Bush"s methods, but since September 11 2001 no serious terror attack has occurred in the US. Don"t ignore the possibility that it may not be luck.
Although the public were with me, the majority of the House of Commons wasn"t. In November 2005, we lost a vote for the first time since we came to office. However, I was easy enough with it. By then, I had calculated that my only chance of survival for the two years I had set myself as a minimum time necessary to put in place the reform programme was to govern in a way that kept people constantly surprised by the seeming indifference to party or even public opinion, provided I thought what I was doing was right and would work for the long-term benefit of both party and public. In other words, I believed that the only way to keep power was to be prepared to lose it, but always to lose it on a point of principle.
I had complete clarity about what it was I had to do. I really did feel absolutely at the height of my ability and at the top of my game. I appreciated the bitter irony that this had happened when my popularity was at its lowest, but I also knew that in May 2005 I had won, not lost, and that there was a residual respect for and attachment to strong and decisive leadership. I might be bloodied but I would definitely also be unbowed.
Contrary to conventional political wisdom, when it came to the vote I decided not to compromise on the essentials, but to lose without having yielded. Of course, when we lost there were all sorts of articles about the prime minister"s vanishing authority, etc.; but I could sense that the very recklessness of it, on something I believed was right, got me traction among the public. Now, to have done that on schools or the NHS might have been different. But on this a simple, almost pristine issue of national security I felt instinctively more comfortable losing than winning through compromise.
A couple of weeks later, the storm already behind us, we introduced another controversial measure: allowing UK drinking laws to come into line with those in Europe. I thought the insistence on a strict closing time was irrational and in many respects counterproductive. I also had an inbuilt resistance to the idea that because a small minority misbehaved, the overwhelming majority should be restricted in their freedom to enjoy a drink when they wanted. The answer, I reasoned, was to come down hard on the lawless minority, not penalise the law-abiding majority. There was the usual Mail Mail campaign, supported by some of the others, but we held our nerve. Tessa Jowell was adamant and saw it through (though from that moment she became a target). campaign, supported by some of the others, but we held our nerve. Tessa Jowell was adamant and saw it through (though from that moment she became a target).
I was pushing hard on all fronts. At the end of 2002 I had appointed Adair Turner to do a review of pensions policy. This had provoked strong opposition from Gordon, as had the appointment of David Freud, an independent consultant, to do a similar review on welfare. I knew Adair and David would give me radical proposals. Both issues had to be confronted.
Both also had to do with my concern over the future pattern of public spending. The FSR, as I say, had been created to try to shift the debate from the amount of investment to the value added by it, which is why the pace of reform had to be quickened. I had no precise percentage of public spending in my mind that corresponded to the right figure for the economy"s equilibrium between public and private sector, but I knew there was a limit. So I thought, post-2005, this was the time to shift focus and to drop the notion that it was all about who would spend most.
I thought this right for the country, and also smart politics. It would have been tougher if the Tories had carried into effect their initial instinct, which was to back the reforms. It is always uncomfortable to be cheered on by the Opposition. Although David Cameron did take this view to begin with, and in education they more or less kept to it, elsewhere in public service reform they started allying themselves with vested interests, especially on health. In a political sense, this was far more congenial and allowed us to secure our basic coalition, who distrusted the Tories on litmus-test questions and felt they were changing position too often.
However, it wasn"t just about the amount of public spending, it was also crucially about its composition. This is where the pensions and welfare reforms were so critical. Like every other developed nation, we were going to face major problems from the pensions bill in time to come. A growing elderly population; a declining younger generation; expectations of increased living standards; and increased health care costs as people live longer: there was inevitably going to be a crunch at some stage. Better to confront it now and set in place a framework that over time would make costs manageable and tilt the responsibility for provision from state to individual. The state would still be there as an enabler and, in case of hardship, guarantor; but it made sense for people to provide more for themselves; and also to do it in a way that reflected something else: that today they choose far greater flexibility in how they provide for their retirement in working part-time, in the equity in their home, in various savings investment vehicles, instead of conventional pension arrangements.
We had tried once before with the ill-fated reforms of Harriet Harman and Frank Field, but the trouble with "stakeholder" pensions, as they were called, is that they were never quite one thing or another, sitting uneasily between state and private provision. During the course of that attempt at reform, I had learned one rather larger lesson: be clear that if someone isn"t screaming somewhere, it probably isn"t going to work. Consensus is great, but in modern politics, where debate unfortunately works through disagreement, it is like the philosopher"s stone sought by alchemists: if it sounds too good to be true that you can turn base metal into gold, that"s probably because it is. So consensus is wonderful, but not if it is part of a delusion that making real change with real impact is going to please everyone. It isn"t. And in these circ.u.mstances the "consensus" can be a sign that the reform isn"t really biting, in which case it probably isn"t going to fulfil its purpose.
Stakeholder pensions hadn"t aroused much opposition; but nothing much had flowed from them. We needed to think far more radically and devise both a more realistic package for state support, including raising the retirement age, and a far more comprehensive method for middle-income earners to save.
I asked Adair to lead on the reform. He had two sensible wing players with him in John Hills and Jeannie Drake. What they produced in two reports of October 2004 and November 2005 will, in the end, form the basis of the next generation"s pension provision. The reform protected the basic state pension, but used it as a platform upon which the individual could choose to enhance the pension by his or her own efforts and decisions, and it did so within a framework that meant spending on pensions would not rise as a percentage of GDP.
As a team they conducted a hugely wide-ranging consultation, and actually, pace pace what I said earlier, got as close to consensus as it was possible to get without yielding on the essential principles of reform. But bits of support peeled off on various different aspects. The Tories were not fully behind it, and the Treasury reaction was fierce. On this occasion, to be fair, Gordon"s disagreement was genuine. It wasn"t simply to frustrate progress he felt that by protecting the basic state pension we were making an unnecessary commitment. He was in favour of rebalancing rich and poor in provision of the basic state pension. what I said earlier, got as close to consensus as it was possible to get without yielding on the essential principles of reform. But bits of support peeled off on various different aspects. The Tories were not fully behind it, and the Treasury reaction was fierce. On this occasion, to be fair, Gordon"s disagreement was genuine. It wasn"t simply to frustrate progress he felt that by protecting the basic state pension we were making an unnecessary commitment. He was in favour of rebalancing rich and poor in provision of the basic state pension.
I was totally opposed to that. I felt that the public at large would consider the basic state pension as their "dividend" or "ent.i.tlement" for their National Insurance contributions. Start tampering with that, and especially on the basis of some drive for redistribution, and we were going to be ensnared in a really damaging debate.
This touched on another highly sensitive political issue. I had opposed the 50 per cent top-rate-tax idea before the 1997 election. I had always wanted to keep the option of tax cuts open, on the basic rate. But I had allowed some really significant measure of redistribution. National Insurance ceilings had changed; personal allowances altered; and above all, as the economy grew we had spent billions on the poorest families and pensioners. It was and is the purest moonshine to suggest the 19972007 government wasn"t redistributive. It was, and ma.s.sively so.
Now it is also true that because the economy grew strongly, the middle cla.s.s and highest earners did well, and the very highest did best. So you could always take the income gap very top to very bottom and say it"s widened. In reality, this was a function of the very top doing well. The bottom deciles had had their income changed really substantially. I might have done it differently, not being a fan of tax credits, but I would have done it anyway. The poorest pensioners had a huge rise in income, something that the better-off pensioners came to resent (as my mother-in-law used to express to me with consistent persistence).
Emotionally I shared the view that some of the top earnings were unjustified, but rationally I thought this was the way of the world in a globalised economy, and there was more harm than good in trying to stop it. Should Wayne Rooney earn more than a nurse? Or actors or best-selling authors? Or market traders of stocks or derivatives? Or people who sell businesses at the right time and pocket hundreds of millions with a low capital gains tax? In a sense none of it is rational, but it"s irrational to stop it in a world in which, like it or not, certain people have transferable, global skills in high demand and short supply.
And, ultimately, you could tax every Premier League footballer double and it wouldn"t bring in much money. What you inevitably end up doing is pushing the higher taxes down the income chain, until the people you are hitting are those who work hard, don"t have global transferable skills and aren"t really what we might call the "undeserving rich" at all.
So I also thought post-2005 that we needed to take care. Some might say we hadn"t been redistributive enough. I was sure we had done plenty of redistribution and needed to give some TLC to our middle-cla.s.s and lower-middle-cla.s.s aspirants as well. Therefore I backed and encouraged Adair to come up with a policy that eschewed any notion of redistributing the basic state pension.
And, on this account, the left were also happy since they feared undermining the basic state pension from the other perspective, i.e. leading to a diminution of the principle of universal provision. What"s more, we did it on the basis of changing back the uprating of pensions to be done in line with earnings, not prices. This had long been a demand of the unions. But by conceding this which I thought right in any event, given the link between pensions and National Insurance contributions on earnings we managed to achieve a package that seemed fair and balanced.
The debate on welfare was always going to be much tougher, but it was just as necessary and there were good and sound people on the progressive side of politics who could see the need to change. The raison d"etre raison d"etre for reform was set out earlier: incapacity benefit was abused; too many people were in long-term benefit dependency; too little was done by way of active support to shift them into the labour market. for reform was set out earlier: incapacity benefit was abused; too many people were in long-term benefit dependency; too little was done by way of active support to shift them into the labour market.
John Hutton had been a great minister in health, giving a sharp boost to reform. He was in his element in welfare. John was a thoroughly nice guy, loyal, hard-working and bright. To people whose ambitions were unlimited (me, I"m afraid), he seemed consciously lacking in the final thrust of determination; but in his own skin, he felt comfortable with the level of ambition he had. What this gave him, among other things, was courage he wanted to do the right thing in his job or he wanted nothing to do with the job. It was a great att.i.tude and served him well. He didn"t so much argue with Gordon as cheerfully work around him, like a postman delivering a letter to a house with a large barking hound straining at the leash. He wouldn"t ignore him, or refuse to pay careful attention. He might even chuck a biscuit at him. But in the end, he would deliver the letter.
David Freud"s review of welfare spending, with emphasis on incapacity benefit, also produced a sensible report that was radical and would allow us in time to redesign the welfare budget.
Both the Turner proposals and those of Freud gave us a huge opportunity to characterise, define and implement reforms of a vital nature not just for the country but for the survival of the government. I kept saying to Gordon, Quite apart from the fact that both sets of proposals are manifestly right in themselves, if we don"t do them, a future Tory government will, but in a Tory way. So let us own them and do them. They will also give you a great platform to prove continuity and commitment to reform.
Both, in essence, redrew again the boundaries between individual and state responsibility. This I saw as the proper way to express the relationship between society and citizen for the twenty-first century. People have to and what"s more will want to take more of the burden on themselves, rather than paying ever higher general taxation; and though they are perfectly prepared to fund those who can"t look after themselves, that generosity doesn"t extend to those who they believe, with some justification, are simply playing the system. Unfortunately I couldn"t get Gordon to see it.
As all this serious and important work to determine the future nature of the British welfare state was going on, there were the usual scandals real, less real and surreal that occupied the headlines. Around this time, I did come to see the interaction with the media in a different light. They could drive down the poll numbers by the most colossal onslaught. But you know what? It would then pa.s.s. The key was to survive. And the key to surviving was to keep your head when all around were losing theirs.
During the first months of 2006 we lived a dual existence. Underneath the surface, major changes in the NHS, schools, crime, pensions and welfare were either being made or being planned. The basic design of a modern set of services was being debated repeatedly in the government, but this was at points so hidden from view that the public had no idea about it and therefore, sadly, no real chance to partic.i.p.ate in the debate. Growing over the previous two decades, this was now the established media culture. Scandal mattered. Policy didn"t (unless combined with controversy, in which case it might).
This trend was multiplied in intensity by the fact that after nine years, the media had decided there should be change. If, for whatever reason genuine disagreement, boredom, the yearning for something and someone new to report on a significant part of the media decide they want change, they create a prism of reportage that makes change seem right, inevitable, inarguable. In the final resort, they just excise policy in favour of scandal, and then to the public it seems as if a government mired is all there is. From there, it"s a short walk to a perception that the government can no longer deliver for the people.
In my last two years, they would constantly say that we were running out of steam, when on any objective basis we were full steam ahead, at least on domestic reform. What was really meant was that they were running out of patience and interest.
It was as well that by then I had David Hill in charge of communications in place of Alastair. I think the latter would have been tipped over the edge completely in that last period and would have rampaged through the media like a mad axeman! It was an extraordinary time.
In January, we had Ruth Kelly and the s.e.x offenders list. Oh, the days and weeks of howling outrage and frenzied commentary over a fault discovered that meant someone had been missed off a list as part of a wider systemic failure (but with no evidence anyone had actually suffered as a result) and which was really the result of a new system being put in place.
In March, the so-called "cash for honours" scandal broke, of which more later.
Then, in April, there was Charles Clarke and the foreign offenders who on completion of their sentence should have been deported and removed from the country and weren"t. This was serious, but Charles made the mistake of trying to be too open too early, when the full facts could not be known the problem, as with many such things, had existed for a long time, well before we came to power and he suffered a mauling with bad consequences for me, him and the government.