Having legislated, we then built on the foundation. Over time, we increased the powers and gave the police an incentive by allowing them to keep a certain per cent of the a.s.sets seized from suspected criminal activity. This policy offended virtually every Treasury sensibility, but in the end they agreed, and though we always fought over how much went to the Treasury and how much to the government, the principle was accepted.
The 2006 Queen"s Speech extended these powers still further: to establish a new Serious Crime Prevention Order preventing organised crime by individuals, or organisations, by imposing restrictions on them; to introduce new offences of encouraging or a.s.sisting a criminal act with intent, or encouraging or a.s.sisting a criminal act believing that an offence may be committed; and to strengthen the recovery of criminal a.s.sets by extending powers of investigation and seizure to all accredited financial investigators. Given my own way, I would probably have taken it a good deal further still, but we had broken new ground, as we had with the antisocial behaviour legislation; and once different people in government reflect and try to a.s.suage the public demand, they will go back to this agenda and fulfil it.
Fear and personal insecurity are terrible factors in everyday life for too many people. Reduce them and the quality of living improves dramatically. Seizing this agenda, especially on antisocial behaviour, was one of my proudest achievements. There is a trade-off with civil liberties there"s no point denying it and though it was sometimes felt I was indifferent or dismissive of them, I truly wasn"t. I was very conscious of the need to protect the innocent falsely accused of being guilty.
Twice in my career I had good reason to thank G.o.d for the independence of the British judiciary and Bar: once in the Hutton Inquiry; and then when the ruling on the "cash for honours" business was made. On both occasions, the lawyer came under intense and at points wholly improper pressure to do what a large part of the media wanted; and on both occasions, they made decisions according to the evidence. So I can bear witness to the value of the independent and impartial authority that keeps power in check, that protects the innocent and judges without fear or favour.
However, I could also see that ordinary people living without any protection in some parts of towns and cities were acutely vulnerable in ways the outdated system did not acknowledge. I"ve seen lawless places and places where people behave because they know they must. There is always a certain harshness in the latter. But believe me, put it to the vote and people know in which sort of society they would choose to bring up a family.
So we charged ahead on the law and order agenda, and even in the last days of office brought into effect some of the reforms.
We were less successful on the casino legislation. What a saga that one was! An interesting example, though, of how a public mood can be shaped.
We had, and still have, a problem with some of the old British seaside towns. In the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century people would flock to them, not minding the spasmodic evidence of summer, enjoying the arcades, sampling the entertainment, the end-of-pier shows, the carnival atmosphere. They were brash and bulging with good old-fashioned entertainment. Then in the 1960s came the package holiday and air travel. I remember going to Benidorm as it was taking off in the 1960s. I loved it. It was the first time I had ever flown. After a taste of Spain tapas, Ducados and Rioja (bit underage, but never mind) staying in the UK seemed tame and unfashionable. Gradually the seaside towns declined, and as the new millennium dawned they faced an unpredictable future; or perhaps all too predictably, no future. Blackpool was the cla.s.sic example.
Another problem was the explosion in different types of gambling especially online alongside traditional betting shops. For years we and these towns had been approached by major leisure companies, often American, wanting to build vast leisure complexes that would have casinos but also a huge array of other entertainments, cinemas, sports outlets and facilities and so on.
I thought we should let them. It would be a big injection of private sector cash. There was realistically no alternative. Seaside towns were queuing up for them. Manchester also wanted one and had advanced plans to redevelop the city centre on that basis. They would be governed by strict rules, and the top operators were well used to complying with them responsibly.
So I gave the go-ahead. There was an enormous backlash. Religious groups protested it would increase gambling, the Daily Mail Daily Mail did its usual thing and in the course of it suggested it was all some corrupt deal, targeting various of the civil servants involved. No one had seemed to notice that anything you could do in a casino you could do in an arcade, betting shop or online but with far fewer protections. did its usual thing and in the course of it suggested it was all some corrupt deal, targeting various of the civil servants involved. No one had seemed to notice that anything you could do in a casino you could do in an arcade, betting shop or online but with far fewer protections.
Tessa Jowell womanfully supported it and we got it moving, but spurred on by Church and press, it ran into the ground, we lost a vote in the Lords and we were faced with the ludicrous choice of either Blackpool or Manchester, and had to cut down the number of proposed so-called super casinos, those that would get most by way of investment. After I left, Gordon ditched even the Manchester one. It is a real shame for the places for which no very obvious alternative form of investment will be available. It was the worst form of puritanism partisan as well as ineffectual. So people can gamble to their hearts" content and their wallets" limit but not in a brand-new town complex with a casino, entertainment centre, sports facilities and shops.
However, even with this, I took a kind of perverse pleasure in just ploughing on, doing what I thought was sensible and catering very little for the waves of public opinion that ebbed and flowed unless I thought they had a permanent case that should be listened to.
In February 2007, we had the avian flu scare. This was potentially serious. The H5N1 virus was confirmed on a turkey farm in Holton in Suffolk. There were constant meetings and preparations in case it should turn into a fully-fledged crisis. As with the flu pandemic, you had to steer an ever-so-careful line between overreacting and underreacting. There is always a torrid deluge of bureaucracy for those caught up in an overreaction.
We agreed to the renewal of the independent nuclear deterrent. You might think I would have been certain of that decision, but I hesitated over it. I could see clearly the force of the common sense and practical argument against Trident, yet in the final a.n.a.lysis I thought giving it up too big a downgrading of our status as a nation, and in an uncertain world, too big a risk for our defence. I did not think this was a "tough on defence" versus "weak or pacifist" issue at all. On simple, pragmatic grounds, there was a case either way. The expense is huge, and the utility in a post-Cold War world is less in terms of deterrence, and non-existent in terms of military use. Spend the money on more helicopters, airlift and anti-terror equipment? Not a daft notion. In the situations in which British forces would likely be called upon to fight, it was pretty clear what mattered most. It is true that it is frankly inconceivable we would use our nuclear deterrent alone, without the US and let us hope a situation in which the US is even threatening use never arises but it"s a big step to put that beyond your capability as a country.
So, after some genuine consideration and reconsideration, I opted to renew it. But the contrary decision would not have been stupid. I had a perfectly good and sensible discussion about it with Gordon, who was similarly torn. In the end, we both agreed, as I said to him: imagine standing up in the House of Commons and saying I"ve decided to sc.r.a.p it. We"re not going to say that, are we? In this instance, caution, costly as it was, won the day.
We had agreed the forward policy process shortly after conference at Cabinet in late October. Rather grandiosely it was called "Pathways to the Future". The purpose was to use the remaining nine months to give a sense of unity, to meld together the Blair and Brown teams, and to allow Gordon"s a.s.sumption of leadership to be defined as continuity as well as change, and above all as New Labour.
Naturally, I suppose, he always thought it was designed to constrain and corral him; but by putting Pat McFadden, my person, and Ed Miliband, his, to handle it in tandem right at the outset, I sought to rea.s.sure him. The truth was I still hoped it might be possible to convince him. I understood that at least some of the opposition to the reform programme had been for political reasons; but once in office, once he actually had to deal with the issues, I thought it might be different, that he might see I wasn"t pushing the programme for effect but because experience as well as intuition had persuaded me that there were no better solutions to the challenges the country faced. As opposed to 2004, we now had clear empirical evidence that the reforms worked: the longest period of economic growth for over two hundred years, with over 2.5 million more in work; in health, no one waiting over six months for treatment; in schools, standards up across the board and spending on education per pupil doubled; and in criminal justice, crime down by 35 per cent.
Also, there was now no longer a compet.i.tion between us: he had won, he would take over. The only thing that mattered, and it should matter to both of us, was that he succeeded and the New Labour project was established in an enduring way, so that the party never went back to its old routine of short bursts of power and long periods of Opposition; so that Britain escaped the curse of twentieth-century politics; and so that progressive thinking should claim equal if not superior purchase on popular opinion as conservative thinking.
I knew, with every fibre of political instinct, that only through holding to the New Labour course, and with pa.s.sionate not tactical engagement, could we hope to succeed. As I said earlier, I believed that if he deviated, he would be lost.
But I"m afraid he couldn"t see it. He played along with the policy part of "Pathways to the Future" and intermittently he switched on, yet I knew that behind the scenes his folk with the exception of Ed Miliband were denigrating it as a vanity project and treating it with scorn. The problem was I also knew that they didn"t have an alternative. Frequently I would say to him and to them: OK, I understand you don"t agree with my a.n.a.lysis; give me yours. What I got was, on the one hand, a confusion of attempts to avoid the hard choices and questions which lay, like it or not, at the heart of the policy issues; and on the other, a resistance to disclosing their thoughts. They ended up convincing themselves that the reason for this was that they should unfurl their radical ideas at the moment of the takeover. As I began to say to him, that"s fine as a concept so long as you know what it is you wish to unfurl, but why not at least discuss it with me and test the propositions out?
As for the party reforms, again with much justification, he wanted to keep those to himself. I had, for my part, two goals. The first was simply to put the party funding business to bed. I thought it possible to reach an agreement with the Tories that would allow us to make sensible reforms. The former senior civil servant Sir Hayden Phillips had been appointed to chair a committee on the subject in 2006, and had approached it in a typically pragmatic and intelligent way. His 2007 report proposed caps on personal donations and campaign spends, together with an increase in the amount and reach of state funding. I thought it was a good compromise package.
Jack Straw was the minister in charge of it. We took the discussions quite a long way but I couldn"t really get Gordon to agree a compromise. I think he thought he could get a better deal when he was prime minister, but he lost the opportunity to limit Tory spending and I had a hunch that for election number four, and without Michael Levy"s and my partic.i.p.ation, we were going to raise a lot less money. This was ultimately a housekeeping issue, but one with clear implications for fighting the election.
The second party issue was for me far more fundamental. For some time I had believed Labour faced a choice in its conduct of politics, in the way the party worked, interacted with the public and campaigned. Essentially, I had come to the view that the traditional method of politics was out of date, i.e. parties with defined members, activists, general committees, executive committees and all the infrastructure of twentieth-century political campaigns. There are some obvious truths about mainstream political parties in Britain and elsewhere that are worth a.n.a.lysing. We have fewer members than gra.s.s-roots, single-issue NGOs like those for protection of birds, aid, conservation and environmental groups. The ways in which we communicate with the public who support us would be regarded by the average supermarket chain as antediluvian. Our use of new technology is lamentable the Obama campaign was an obvious breakthrough, but actually even in the Kerry campaign in 2004, the Democrats were streets ahead of most progressive parties in Europe. The Bush campaign, the infrastructure of which I used to discuss with George and which was devised by his key politicos like Karl Rove, broke new ground in reaching out to sympathisers.
All successful modern campaigns, including the Sarkozy campaign in France in 2007, utilised modern methods and this to me being the crucial point blurred the distinction between the inner core the activists and the broader public support.
I used to say to my people: after ten years in government, we are now at our lowest point politically. We"ve lost a certain amount of support it"s inevitable. Some of those who rushed to us in enthusiasm in the run-up to May 1997 have fallen away. But think of 2005: a really tough campaign, a huge onslaught on us, yet many New Labour voters stuck with us and in some seats we increased our majority. What this means is that out there, yes there are those who hate us, but we also have our adherents. What"s more, this latter group have not come to us in a rush of enthusiasm, quickly swelling but just as quickly subsiding; they are believers. They"re not unaware of all the problems and mistakes, but they have taken a decision to stick with us nonetheless.
Let"s say some voters, perhaps many, backed us because they didn"t want the Tories. Fair enough. But even supposing only one in ten are true believers (and it"s probably more like four or five in ten), that"s over a million people. Now that"s a political base.
We can identify them. Some of these people are the new stakeholders in New Labour. They may be from entirely new categories of people who, due to our policies, are in jobs sports coordinators, teaching a.s.sistants, small business and professional people in the new industries who buy into the vision of a new economy people who are pro-Europe, those who support the interventionist foreign policy (and there are a few ...), people involved in local community campaigns on antisocial behaviour, and so on.
In other words, along with the detractors, I could see a potentially enormous body of supporters, people not there on the bandwagon but with us due to a belief in a modern and different type of progressive politics. These were the people we needed inside our tent, not for their sake but for ours. Long-term, the health of party policymaking, the selection of good candidates, pressures for change coming from below all depend on the quality, the sentiment, the instinct and the att.i.tude of those involved in the party. In Opposition, even more so. Restrict ourselves to the old-fashioned or the union base and you"ve got one sort of party; open it up and let it breathe the fresh air provided by real believers and you have a different sort of party, one capable of governing for long periods of time, one with a coalition of support that would sustain a government, one that would prevent any recrudescence of the errors that had given us eighteen years of Tory rule and only nineteen years of Labour government up to 1997 in the whole of our history (for five of which we had to survive in a rickety alliance with the Liberals).
In a way, such a party had always been what I was groping towards all those years ago when I expanded the membership of my const.i.tuency party and when we made the reforms to the way candidates and leader were selected. New technology and new forms of campaigning now gave us tools to do it. My vision was to discard the conventional notions of party membership and structure, to treat supporters as members for key decisions and to use the new technology not merely to build out into new support but also to interact with supporters and to campaign in a different manner.
It was clear to me that, today, people in the party would not be supporters for the same reason, or have the same interests or be as pa.s.sionate about the same subjects. Someone might support us because of aid to Africa, another because of health service changes and another because of antisocial behaviour policies. Young people would have different interests from old people. The fact they lived in the same geographical area was important come the election or in very specific local campaigns, but otherwise geography meant little.
We had a huge opportunity to rebuild the party along modern lines. Also, some change was surely inevitable. Unions were merging. In particular, the amalgamation of the TGWU with Amicus in May 2007 created a new behemoth called Unite. On present going, they would have half the votes at party conference along with Unison, the public service union. The union structures remained deeply in the past. They were still activist-dominated. There was no way it would be healthy for the party to become dependent on them again. So for a mult.i.tude of reasons some external, some internal, but all to do with the consequences of a changing world reform was not just sensible, it was essential if we were to preserve the enormous gains the New Labour project had delivered.
I could see where the current party debate was heading. Both Jon Cruddas and Douglas Alexander had written pamphlets. Jon made quite a name for himself. It was clever political positioning. To his overall political a.n.a.lysis New Labour had deserted the working cla.s.s and thus our base he had added a programme for the party. It was clothed in some modernist language, but was ultimately an attempt to build a left coalition out of Guardian Guardian intellectuals and trade union activists. However beguiling and he was smart enough to make it beguiling it was, in effect, reheated and updated Bennism from the 1980s. It was not without its public appeal, by the way, but had no serious prospect of reaching the aspiring middle ground once the policy implications were exposed. intellectuals and trade union activists. However beguiling and he was smart enough to make it beguiling it was, in effect, reheated and updated Bennism from the 1980s. It was not without its public appeal, by the way, but had no serious prospect of reaching the aspiring middle ground once the policy implications were exposed.
Douglas was and is a very clever guy indeed. I had tried to wean him off membership of Gordon"s inner circle; but to no avail. It was a real shame. He and his sister Wendy, who is a lovely and also very smart person with great integrity, were a cla.s.sic product of a decent Scottish Presbyterian background. Their father was a vicar and himself very accomplished. Douglas came to Gordon"s attention before Douglas was an MP and had been rightly snapped up. He had a great way with words, a really first-cla.s.s intellect and could have been (and maybe still can be) an outstanding leader.
But the Gordon curse was to make these people co-conspirators, not free-range thinkers. He and Ed b.a.l.l.s and others were like I had been back in the 1980s, until slowly the scales fell from my eyes and I realised it was more like a cult than a kirk.
Douglas had written this pamphlet that had a brilliant a.n.a.lysis of what was wrong, but the solutions all seemed to me to avoid the hard questions and lapse into woolliness.
I put Hazel Blears, as party chair, in charge of a commission for renewal of the party. I knew Hazel was a strong supporter of mine. She was a great campaigner, an activist with an understanding of the limits of activism. However, though she struggled with great application, the truth is Gordon was strongly opposed to the outgoing leadership deciding the future of the incoming one. This was all totally understandable except for the fact, as I kept saying to him, there was no alternative vision; and in the absence of a clear vision, the party organisation will just go backwards.
All those years ago we thought we had precisely the same perspectives on politics, party and life, whereas in fact we had somewhat different perspectives, shared at points but not an indivisible confluence. There was sufficient cohesion to allow us both to indulge; and by the time we realised it was an indulgence, it had become part of the party"s unique selling point and it was too damaging to ditch it. But myth it was.
The policy process fared better and, in the end, produced some not bad conclusions and a.n.a.lysis. On security, crime and justice, "Pathways to the Future" outlined the progress in tackling crime and its causes, but highlighted the rapid changes affecting society which impact on crime, security and cohesion. The paper argued that the continued reform needed was based on three main elements: more effective prevention; better detection and enforcement; and reform of the criminal justice system by applying the principles of public service reform.
The paper also set out the challenges that Britain faces in a rapidly globalised world, and how Britain"s interests can be best served working together with shared progressive values and in a world where governments work peacefully within international law. It set out how Britain still has influence and power, but now has to use both hard and soft power. Be prepared to intervene where necessary using military action where appropriate but also take global action on issues such as poverty and climate change; recognise that Britain"s foreign policy is driven by values justice and democracy in a world which is increasingly interdependent. Ensure that everyone has access to an equal standard of life and has certain shared global values, and recognise that climate change is increasingly important and tackling it will only be successful by working on a wider global level.
On families, the paper recognised the important role they have to play in society, whatever their structure. The government also recognised that the success of families is not about their make-up but about the commitment of those who live within them, and that the government still has a role to play in ensuring all families are treated fairly and have access to the same choices others do. The vision that was set out was to: support families to exercise their rights to manage their own affairs while living up to the responsibilities they have; enable a workfamily balance, by helping people move from welfare to work, improving childcare and supporting family commitments; and address the hardest to reach families, by tackling the causes and consequences of deep-seated social exclusion.
On the role of the state, the paper introduced the idea of the strategic and enabling state, as a response to the continuing evolution of global and domestic trends. The paper set out the six key features of this state: a strong focus on outcomes; tackling insecurity; empowering citizens; rights and responsibilities; building trust; and a smaller strategic centre.
Finally, the paper drew together the twin challenges of energy security and climate change, outlining a comprehensive policy framework for achieving our goals, including: promoting compet.i.tive energy markets; working towards a robust post-2012 international framework; putting a price on carbon that reflects its damage costs; driving the transition to new technologies through standards, incentives and support; removing the barriers to change in behaviours, choice and investment; and ensuring that the UK and others are able to adapt to the impacts of climate change.
Indeed, had we simply taken all these elements and pushed them forward, I think they would have evolved to a pretty strong future agenda, in policy and in legislation.
I also decided to make a series of speeches called "Our Nation"s Future", trying to summarise the philosophy behind the New Labour project, what we had done well, what we hadn"t and the underlying rationale for it all. There had always been this notion that it was all a bit of clever marketing and I wanted to set it out as a piece of political thinking. I have to say that, unsurprisingly really, the media were disinclined to report them much, except the one on defence. Their problem was not simply that I was leaving; it was unclear whether my departure was solely a change of personnel, or whether it was also a change of policy. So a series of policy speeches was of insufficient interest unless pitched against someone or something. Of course, you might think it was their job to discover this, but the GB crew had hit on a brilliant device for not exposing any flanks, which was to say that it would plainly be wrong and disrespectful to set out their views while I was still prime minister. To my amus.e.m.e.nt, this was generally bought hook, line and sinker.
Rereading them now, I think they have contemporary relevance so let me summarise them briefly. The purpose, in each case, was not simply to state a policy but to describe an evolution of my own thinking based on my experience in government.
This comes back to something I said in the opening chapters. In 1997 I had boundless vision, but no political experience of policymaking in government. People sometimes a.n.a.lyse politics as if a new government arrives, it has a programme, it works at getting it done, and succeeds or fails in that endeavour.
However, real-life governing, like anything else in life, isn"t like that. There is nothing mysterious, still less mystical, about "government". It is indeed like any other activity. You learn as you go. You learn facts; and of course events can change them. You learn processes. You learn the art and science of your profession. But because political power is the outcome of a political fight "our" ideas, platform policies against "theirs" the inclination is to treat the business of government as the closing of the door on the old home and moving to somewhere new. Actually you don"t change ownership; you change tenant.
It is therefore quite sensible to try to understand why the previous tenant did this or that, what they learned and what they found when living there. Unfortunately that education is inconsistent with the way politics is conducted. In an age in which objectives are often shared and it is policy that is crucial, where the issue is often not right or left but, as I have said earlier, right or wrong, this is a significant democratic disadvantage. You spend several years relearning what the last occupant could have told you from experience.
So in these late speeches I chose policy areas where I thought there was a lesson to impart.
The first was on law and order. It concentrated on what I discovered in the course of trying to deal with crime, a huge issue for the public which always looms larger for the people than the politicians. I had started with the good old mantra "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime". Good as far as it goes. What I learned was that the real problem was that in a world of very sophisticated crime gangs, drugs, people trafficking, money laundering, to say nothing of terrorism and deep social issues giving rise to a type of criminal undercla.s.s, traditional law and order didn"t work. I understand the traditional view: prove guilt conventionally, according to the normal judicial processes. Sorry, but with these people, it doesn"t work. If you want to beat them, you need draconian powers that can be wielded administratively and with instant effect. Hence the antisocial behaviour laws, DNA database, "proceeds of crime" legislation, anti-terror laws and so on. Now you may decide that this is too high a price to pay, in terms of traditional liberties. Fine, but and this is what I learned it is the price. If you don"t pay it, you don"t get the result.
The trouble is you can identify those who will say sometimes with justification we the accused have been denied our rights. But you can never identify adequately the lives lost or buried by criminality unchecked. They are victims and the criminality could be stopped; but not by conventional means. So choose; but don"t delude yourself that it is not a choice.
Linked to this was a speech on social exclusion. Here I was referring specifically to my own education from the time of the Bulger speech back in 1993. I used to think that the shocking behaviour of some young people violence, knives, drug abuse was a symptom of a society that had lost its way. In that sense, I presaged David Cameron"s later claim of a "broken society".
Over time, I came to the conclusion I was making a dangerous error in eliding the behaviour of what is actually a tiny minority with society as a whole. The truth is most young people are fine, good even, actually better than I remember many of my generation being. It really isn"t true that the shocking behaviour is definitive of society. In fact, it is the opposite: it is wholly exceptional, of a different character. Therefore rather than policy being a.n.a.lysed and then prescribed in the context of general "society", it should instead be absolutely, specifically focused on the exception. When you examine the data, this is not about "young people" or even "poverty". It is about families that are utterly dysfunctional. And neither is this about "family life". Most families, despite all the stresses of modern living, are not dysfunctional. They function. Even those that are marked by divorce or separation. A tiny minority don"t. So concentrate on them.
For these families, we need special intervention that again can"t be done by normal social services procedures. For them, the absence of state interference is not a liberty, it is encouraging them to destructive behaviour that damages them and all around them. There is no earthly point in making periodic visits or checking up on them from time to time. They require gripping and seizing. To do that effectively their "rights" need to be put into suspense, including the right to be a parent. These families are not hard to identify. Neither are their children. I"m not suggesting every such situation means children are taken into care and so on; I"m merely making the point that any policy needs to be formed out of the box. Otherwise it won"t work.
Where there is a wider lesson for society, is in the field of personal responsibility for health. In this third speech, I set out why, over time, I had come to the conclusion that a modern health care policy had to encompa.s.s strong intervention on diet and fitness.
Normally, I am highly suspicious of regulation. Not in this arena; because the cost of poor diet and lack of fitness is borne by the nation as well as the individual. So I made the case for the smoking ban, for food labelling, and above all for sport. In respect of sport, I tried, not with complete success I fear, to persuade the system that sport was part of the day job, i.e. it should be part of mainstream policymaking. We had increased ma.s.sively the investment in and priority given to sport in schools. I set out the case for going further but also for making that part of an infrastructure in which we opened up fitness opportunities and dietary advice to everyone, going well beyond the elite. My theory was that there was plenty of focus on healthy lifestyles, and much more advice, but the problem was organising, coordinating and widening access to it. I supported Jamie Oliver"s school dinner programme for the same reason. These issues are no longer an afterthought, a bit of fun at the end of the ministerial day. They are of the essence.
The fourth speech again concerned a quiet pa.s.sion of mine that was partly the result of missed opportunities at school: science. I had been a woeful student. Failed my physics, gave up on chemistry, sc.r.a.ped through in maths, never bothered with biology and spent the rest of my life regretting it! For some reason or other, I just couldn"t grasp it. I felt a deep stupidity about it, unable to glimpse let alone see fully its principles and elements, in any shape that bestowed understanding. So my early life in regard to it pa.s.sed in a slough of frustration, incomprehension and indifference.
Now I am fascinated by science and by its possibilities; in awe of how its progress is changing our world and the lives we lead.
The purpose of the speech was threefold: to explain why science was important; why we had doubled investment in it under the very able guidance of David Sainsbury; and why we should not let its critics undermine its ability to break new ground. I had been having a ferocious argument with critics of GM food, led as ever by the baleful siren of the Daily Mail Daily Mail, who invented all sorts of nonsense to suggest it was a health hazard.
I had also battled with the same people over Leo and whether he had had the MMR vaccine. There was an attempt by a Dr Wakefield later discredited to suggest it was linked with autism. The Mail Mail took it up. The issue was then framed as to whether Leo had had it if the government is saying it"s safe, has the prime minister"s son had it? took it up. The issue was then framed as to whether Leo had had it if the government is saying it"s safe, has the prime minister"s son had it?
It was not actually an unreasonable question and it would have been better frankly if we had just answered it upfront at the outset. But for private reasons the family was sensitive about issues to do with Leo, and so we argued on the ground of saying: the issue of Leo"s vaccination is not for the public domain. However, very soon, we realised we couldn"t sustain it. We then said, off the record, Look, we believe vaccination is best for children, including Leo, and we wouldn"t ask others to do what we would not do for Leo so draw your own conclusions; and of course that was an effective admission. So the journalists knew perfectly well that Leo had been vaccinated. But part of the media contrived to write that it was unclear and so public concern continued.
The speech set out a strong defence of science and drew the distinction between the right of science to tell us the facts, and the right to decide to act on them or not. What should not happen in the public debate is that, for reasons of prejudice or because we wish the facts were different, anti-science or bogus science suppresses the truth. From Galileo through Darwin to the modern day, that has always been the consequence of such an att.i.tude; and today a nation like Britain cannot afford to be governed by it.
The next speech was on "multiculturalism". Again it was an attempt to move policy on from a sterile debate about whether diversity is a strength or weakness. To me, it was clearly a strength. But, with citizenship should come certain clear duties as well as rights. This was a common s.p.a.ce, which all British citizens should inhabit together. This s.p.a.ce included support for basic British values, for our language, culture and way of life. In that regard, we should not be diverse; but unified. Outside of that s.p.a.ce, diversity should be free to roam; and then it was indeed a strength.
I gave another speech on defence which set out my basic philosophy; but also made one very practical point. We need a new deal for the armed forces today. We are asking them to go back into combat and sustain casualties. For almost fifty years, the Falklands and Northern Ireland duties apart, that wasn"t the case. So we need to equip and reward them properly. However, if we fail to partic.i.p.ate in the battles ahead, usually with our American allies, then we will lose the armed forces as a significant part of what gives Britain influence, reach and power.
The seventh speech was about the workplace. Rereading it, it strikes me as a little intellectually incoherent but it had one germ of an idea. Essentially, I was trying to articulate that the modern workplace is today all about utilising human capital and developing it. In this regard a "management/workers" mentality was completely out of date. So rather than concentrating on a zero-sum game with management or capital, government and unions should be demanding the ability for their creativity and skill to be used to maximum effect; and should be active partic.i.p.ants in the concept as well as the delivery of wealth creation. Hence government policy should be oriented towards lifetime upgrading of skills, not to labour market regulation.
The subject of the final speech was irresistible after ten years of being prime minister: the media! Naturally I knew they would dismiss it, caricature it and generally ridicule it. In one sense I was worst placed to speak about it. No one has sympathy for politicians and the media, and politicians (and me especially) have to spend much time cultivating the media. So the charges of being self-serving, hypocritical and disingenuous are easy to make. I was still determined to make the speech, because, in another sense, only someone with that experience of dealing with them, and with the position and office of prime minister, can dare articulate the criticism.
I wrote it having got up at 4.30 a.m. and just set it down in one draft. I confess as I read it later, live on TV, before an audience of journalists, I somewhat quailed. It was written as felt; and the feeling was strong.
However, the argument was right: the fact that the media now works by impact, which leads to sensation, crowds out a sensible debate about policy or ideas. What"s more, the media is 24/7, incredibly powerful and yet without any proper accountability. When they decide to go for someone, they are, as I said, like "feral beasts". But more than that, they are also, partly through the presence of compet.i.tion, highly partisan in order either to get maximum impact or to put across the views of their proprietors or editors.
Anyway, you can imagine how it went down! Though even today, people both at home and abroad mention the speech to me. Despite the best efforts to distort or discard it, it had cut through.
The last weeks were dominated by the Scottish elections and then the final preparations for leaving. I had now pencilled in the date of 27 June, after the G8 and European Council summits. During that time we hoped to bring the Northern Ireland peace process to final fruition and restore the power-sharing executive, and I was working flat out on that.
We had an interesting contretemps with Iran when they arrested fifteen Royal Navy personnel on 23 March. The Iranians said they were trespa.s.sing in Iranian waters, which we were sure was wrong, but it created some anxious days. Though I was outraged by the Iranian action, I played it very cool. The only thing that mattered was getting them back, and soon, so we went the diplomatic rather than confrontational route, despite criticisms for doing so. Unfortunately, some of the personnel were paraded on camera looking as if they were being overly friendly to their captors; and when they were released twelve days later a "gift" to Britain, as President Ahmadinejad called it some gave accounts to the papers. This caused much synthetic fury, especially among those papers who hadn"t got the story. I just felt sorry for all of them. They were in a totally unexpected situation with little or no experience in dealing with anything like that, so I was inclined to overlook any lapse of judgement. But it occupied the nation"s mind for days.
We put forward proposals for reforming the House of Lords. Gordon was signalling he wanted an elected house. Jack Straw had become an advocate for partial election and proposed options. I went along with his recommendation, but personally, as I cheerfully told the Liaison Committee at my last appearance before them in June, I thought it mad. There"s a huge head of steam behind it now, though I still somehow doubt it will actually happen.
The House of Lords is a funny old place, a uniquely British inst.i.tution. Though I"m naturally attracted by iconoclasm, in this instance I think the uniqueness is worth preserving. Hereditary peers are a nonsense and really can"t be justified, but the argument between electing and appointing members is far more balanced than the proponents of election ever allow. The danger with appointment is cronyism, placemenship, patronage and so on, but that can be countered by a different system of nomination, as indeed the House of Lords Commission introduced in May 2000 now ensures.
The danger with election is that you end up with a replica of the House of Commons, the only difference being that you elect those who for one reason or another can"t get into or don"t want to get into the Lower House. The whole benefit of the existing House of Lords is that you are able to put in people who have not spent life as a full-time politico, who aren"t replicas or ersatz versions of MPs, but who have a different and deeper experience or expertise. For example, to have had someone like Ara Darzi as a lord and a health minister someone who is a surgeon and knows all about the new frontiers of medical care is a huge bonus for the political talent pool. Indeed, the ministers in the Lords often turn out to be among the most able, but I doubt many, if any, would want to put in the political apprenticeship necessary to stand for election and become an MP.
Also, it depends on the function you want the House of Lords to perform. If it is a revising chamber, even better to have a different type of member in it. If you want a competing chamber, then I accept that the case for an elected house is stronger. But look around the world at the examples of such bicameral compet.i.tiveness, and there aren"t many working well; or, at least, not many that don"t lead to significant gridlock. So all in all I was against it.
The election campaign for the Scottish Parliament got under way in April. We had won twice before, but this time would be much harder. We were also coming up to the ten-year anniversary of the government. This was a huge achievement for the party, the first time it had ever got near such a milestone and I thought there was a real chance to focus on some of the successes of that decade.
The truth is, whatever anyone might say, and whatever has happened subsequently, between 1997 and 2007, Britain had ten years of uninterrupted economic growth. (I deal later with the causes of the 2008 crisis.) The living standards of the poorest 20 per cent improved significantly compared with the Tory years. Pensioners stopped dying for lack of heating every winter. The NHS was taken out of the news as a crisis case, and waiting lists and times improved, in some cases by leaps and bounds (where was it as an issue in the 2010 election?). In 1997, there were nearly a hundred London schools with fewer than a quarter of pupils getting five good GCSEs. By 2007, it was way down to two. The academy programme was now roaring ahead. It was the only government since the war under which crime had fallen rather than risen. We had introduced a plethora of individual items of change, from the first statutory minimum wage through to vastly expanded maternity and paternity leave through to gay rights and Sure Start for children. Inner cities in Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham and Sheffield were regenerated. There was a huge new const.i.tutional settlement and reform. And while many disagreed with the decisions on Iraq and Afghanistan, in 2007 Britain counted in the world, had a strong alliance with America and was a key player in Europe. There was also Northern Ireland. Taking a step back and examining it, the decade had been reasonably successful.
As 1 May approached, we started, unbelievably, to get that message out, and by the time of the anniversary itself, we had narrowed the polls almost to evens. Given we were now absolutely midterm, and given the wretched "cash for honours" inquiry, it was quite something.
I decided to go and campaign vigorously in Scotland. There was a feeling I shouldn"t, but I was equally clear I should go and put real credibility on the line. The Scottish local elections were also being held, all of which gave me an opportunity to get out there and remind people what I could do.
The Scottish Labour Party responded brilliantly, whatever they might have felt privately. Lesley Quinn, the organiser and General Secretary, was a real trouper, tirelessly flogging them all on. I did a mixture of visits, speeches and Q & A sessions, some planned as with a well-prepared speech on devolution and others more of the stump variety. The audiences had to be fairly carefully selected, however. By then it was clear that anyone who disrupted anything could wipe off any other news, and the media were in a state of constant vigilance to get such a moment of destruction. I also did some more light-hearted media, which involved fairly quick-fire repartee rather than gravitas; but it was all pretty good-natured.
I even got to visit the street in the Govan district of Glasgow where my dad used to live. It was odd to think of him in that poor part of the city all those years ago, collecting his lemonade bottles for cinema money, living in a corporation tenement, a wee Glasgow laddie whose son would one day become prime minister.
The election result came and we nearly won it, losing by only one seat. As the count drifted into recounts and the whole thing hung in the balance, I thought for a short while that Jack McConnell might pull it off. But no; by the narrowest of margins, the Scottish National Party and their leader Alex Salmond were in. Had we had greater belief in ourselves the a.s.sumption being we couldn"t win I think we might have done it.
I was concerned about my own position in respect of both the Scottish and the Welsh campaigns. I wanted to complete Northern Ireland and set out the forward policy agenda, but I knew some people, with understandable feeling, thought I was being selfish in staying on through these campaigns. With a new leader we could have done better, and in particular it is possible with Gordon we would have won in Scotland. Jack McConnell was loyal and decent enough to deny this to me, but I wasn"t sure he meant it. On the other hand, people knew change was happening, so it was hardly sensible to vote against someone who wasn"t going to be there in a few weeks anyway. It was very frustrating. I knew once Alex Salmond got his feet under the table he could play off against the Westminster government and embed himself. It would be far harder to remove him than to stop him in the first place.
The speeches were going well not in the sense that they were getting big coverage, but they were well received by those who received them, as it were, and they did amount to a serious corpus of argument about what we had done and why in the ten years in power. Throughout those final months, I was still charging forward with decisions.
I visited Wales a few times also. I could tell the Welsh First Minister Rhodri Morgan, who was a Gordon supporter, was not wildly enthusiastic about my partic.i.p.ation in his election, but he handled the visits with good grace.
The news from Iraq continued to be worrying, but as a result of the decision to surge it was clear it could be turned. I made a visit to Baghdad and Basra, thanking the troops for what they had done. Down in Basra they were continuing to be mortared almost daily. As we sat in the compound, one landed nearby, and I knew it must be h.e.l.lish to be living with the constant fear. Amazingly, the troops themselves stayed in good heart; but I could tell that the senior officers thought our utility in Iraq had ended and they chafed at the bit to get stuck into Afghanistan, which was just beginning to be a bigger problem.
Late in April, I met the family of one of the soldiers who had died on a very difficult and risky mission. I brought them into the den in Downing Street. These are emotional, highly charged meetings. Families deal with grief in different ways. Some grieve as if what has happened is an inevitable risk, especially in the life of a combat soldier. They are honest enough with themselves to know that we have a volunteer not a conscripted army, and that their loved ones died doing what they wanted to do. Others feel the injustice of a young life ended and want someone to blame. Others still are a mixture of sentiments, some of grieving, some of grievance.
On this occasion, the wife of the soldier had her two young children with her, both toddlers, neither of whom would ever know their father except from s.n.a.t.c.hes of their mother"s memory. The parents and parents-in-law both had military backgrounds and so understood, but it was uneasy nonetheless. I didn"t justify any decisions or make a case. I just let them ask questions and then I asked them about him, and they painted a picture of him with pride.
After about forty minutes, I asked to spend some time alone with the widow. We talked for a bit and suddenly I was overcome with tears. When you meet such people and realise what effect your decision has had on someone"s life, and by extension the life of a whole family, something changes within you. You have to have the sensibility to feel it; and then, without ever losing that sensibility, the courage to overcome it, take the decision and move on despite it.
Of course, much of this reflects the impact made by the person before you, the real-life reminder, the physical manifestation of a decision. In more objective and detached moments, you can reflect on other decisions where you may never meet or even appreciate the real-life consequences of a decision because those affected never stand before you: the millions helped in Africa, including, incidentally, those helped by the Bush PEPFAR (President"s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief) programme; those walking the streets in Northern Ireland; even those saved by the NHS. Or those who have been casualties of decisions delayed or mistaken, whom you never hear about and can never know.
Whether the decisions" consequences are before our eyes or not, ultimately you have to go on living, go on working, go on striving. But you do so conscious of the duty born of the impact your decisions have had; and with an imperative urgency that in my case I know will not leave me until the day I die.
In the run-up to the European Council, I was also visiting capitals Paris, Berlin, Warsaw and elsewhere trying to drum up support for a strong resolution on climate change. I saw Nicolas Sarkozy in early May straight after his election victory. He was in great form, vitality in every sinew, ambition and determination in lockstep, full of enthusiasm for the challenge ahead.
I recalled seeing him at Downing Street just before the campaign began and he was as bouncy and confident as ever. He had vast plans for France, for Europe, for the world. "G.o.d," I said to him after twenty minutes of this, "you sound like Napoleon."
"Thank you," he replied straight-faced; then I looked closely, and saw with relief that twinkle in his eye.
This time in Paris, first over drinks and then over dinner in a restaurant near the Elysee Palace which he walked to greeting startled onlookers as if he were still fighting for every last vote, he repeated his desire for me to be president of Europe when the Lisbon Treaty was agreed. I, a little self-consciously, went along with it and could see its attractions; but I also knew (as it turned out indeed) that it was going to be incredibly difficult to get someone like me into that job. I had respect in Europe; I had a lot of enemies too, people I had crossed, people to whom I had paid insufficient attention. I was a big figure, not someone easy to have around if you were worried about your share of the limelight. I thought Nicolas himself had a relaxed view of big figures around him because of his self-confidence. Others would not see my presence as European president in that way.
He was fascinating company engaging, energetic and with that captivating French bravado around women, life and laughter that I loved. I liked too the fact that he was a "my way or no way" person. He had the spirit certainly to demand change, and to get it or go. And I was very sure that was the only way to get the necessary reforms fast. But, as ever, it is one thing to propose in theory; another to execute in practice. In that first flush of limitless possibility which characterises the new inc.u.mbent, I saw something of my own feeling ten years before. "It will get tougher," I warned him.
"Of course, I know that," he replied, in exactly the way I would have done, when you think you know; but until you have the experience, knowledge is deeply imperfect.
I saw Angela Merkel around the same time, and was rather chagrined to be leaving just as she and Nicolas were arriving. She had been Chancellor for almost two years, but it was clear she was only now establishing herself fully. By this time I was getting on with her really well and liked her immensely.
On 8 May, Northern Ireland came good, with power-sharing restored. On 9 May, I told the Queen I would announce the next day when I was to stand down. On 10 May, I travelled to Sedgefield as prime minister and as their MP for the last time. It was there that the journey had started, and there that it should end. I gave my valedictory speech and announced that I would leave on 27 June, just after the European Council. That left six weeks for a leadership contest or process and then handover for the summer break so that Gordon could play himself in.