A Journey (102 page)

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’être
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 attitude 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 pass. 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 participate 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 sex 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.

As with any such issue, what happens is that the spotlight suddenly shines in a corner that has lain dark for ages. That’s fair enough; but what then occurs is that a complete
ex post facto
attitude is imposed on it, so that you end up with a ludicrously exaggerated sense of wrongdoing. So when the foreign offenders ‘scandal’ is uncovered, it leads the news and this is perfectly sensible; but then because the media focus is so intense, every detail becomes another headline as if the politician in charge, in this case Charles, has literally been doing nothing else for months on end and is therefore incompetent in not having sorted it all. Then, for sure, someone pops up and says: Ooh, I warned them all about this (usually an oblique reference in paragraph 193 of some memo), and then the frenzy develops into hysteria.

Anyway, you have to go through it, and by the end I became quite deft at dealing with these types of furore. Basically you have to get on top of the detail quick, and then grind people down with fact, context, rebuttal, explanation and the art of blinding with science.

And if all that wasn’t enough, then came John Prescott and news of an affair with his diary secretary, Tracey Temple.

It’s a strange thing, politics and sex. People have often said to me that power is a kind of aphrodisiac, and so women – politics still being male-dominated – would come on to politicians in a way they would never dream of with anyone else. I suppose it must be true since, let’s face it, most politicians are definitely on the debit side of the good-looks ledger. You could say the same about ugly billionaires with gorgeous women. What do they see in them? It’s pretty obvious.

What is interesting is why politicians take the risk. My theory is that it’s precisely because of the supreme self-control you have to exercise to be at the top. Politicians live with pressure. They have to be immensely controlled to get anywhere, watch what they say and do; and behave. And your free-bird instincts want to spring you from that prison of self-control. Then there is the moment of encounter, so exciting, so naughty, so lacking in self-control. Suddenly you are transported out of your world of intrigue and issues and endless machinations and the serious piled on the serious, and just put on a remote desert island of pleasure, out of it all, released, carefree. You become a different person, if only for an instant, until returned back to reality.

Which is not by way of an excuse, incidentally. It’s very stupid to put yourself in that position; and irresponsible; and on discovery it can cause immense hurt to those around you. Here is where the politician becomes extraordinarily, incomprehensibly naive. He could choose a range of safe options. No, hang on, there are no safe options. But he could choose safer options. He doesn’t. He is open to the first person who appears to take an interest, to fancy him genuinely (vanity), to like him as a human being, and to anyone who, above all, doesn’t think, act or talk like a fellow politician.

The thing about politics is that it is at a certain level very, very boring. The issues are self-evidently not – they are huge and are usually the reason for entering the political world – but somehow the hugeness can get so easily lost in the habitat in which those issues live. Day by day, meeting by meeting, it can be tedious. Occasionally you meet quite exceptional and inspirational people and I was lucky beyond any reasonable expectation in the people I had working near me, who were on the whole really fun people, as well as being good at what they did. Relations in my office and my close associations among MPs and ministers were always marked with laughter, a certain amused disdain for the absurdities of political life and a definite
joie de vivre
. To the extent I could choose, I would choose the optimistic and upbeat variety of our species to be around me.

But out in the jungle, quite apart from the man-eating beasts, there was the prospect of the swamp, of frustrating bureaucracy, weird and argumentative types, manic media and groundhog-day meetings.

For lots of my fellow politicians, the
joie de vivre
part was distinctly lacking, and the swamp was mostly what they experienced. I totally understood the desire to escape. And it’s nothing really to do with how happy or otherwise your marriage is. It’s an explosion of irresponsibility in an otherwise responsible life. Unfortunately, like all such explosions, it has consequences.

I was in a meeting with a foreign visitor when Gus O’Donnell, who had taken over from Andrew Turnbull as Cabinet Secretary, asked to see me urgently with Jonathan Powell. This was never going to be good news. I must say, however, I anticipated something more run-of-the-mill than to be told about John Prescott and Tracey.

At first, and I fear this was an error, I was inclined to treat it less gravely than I should. I was principally sorry for him, for his wife Pauline above all, and also for Tracey. What those who are the ‘telling’ party in any such scandal never realise is that they are about to define themselves forever. The politician can recover, at least partially; the telling party can’t. They are a one-story footnote. Their only choice is either to make a living from it or to perish with it. The first is demeaning and transient; the second is at least quieter, but nonetheless the fact remains it’s all anyone ever recognises them for. No amount of money can adequately compensate for that. In any event, it was clear Tracey didn’t do it for money and the story had emerged as much by mishap as malice.

From then on, it was a torrid time, complicated by the fact that since she was an employee, there was a further genuine point of criticism other than the obvious. I was determined not to have John go, however. He was a stalwart in the party, and had, on the whole, been loyal and supportive and at times very brave. I knew that for him to have become deputy prime minister was an achievement of which he was inordinately and rightly proud. To have dismissed him over what was, in the end, a silly sex scandal would have been to have finished his career in a manner that was brutally ungrateful for all the service he had given.

The media finally had him full square within their sights, sat on the wall like a watermelon in target practice. John had never hidden his loathing for them. They had never hidden their contempt for him. Now, and pretty much until the day he left, they kept up a barrage, sometimes with the bazooka of outrage, sometimes with the blowpipe of ridicule, but always with a merciless delight in destruction.

The battering had one other unfortunate consequence for me. In purely selfish terms it would have been better to fire him, I knew that. It would have given the media their scalp. It would have allowed some change at the top, and even if that had turned into a TB/GB contest, it would have served to flush people out. But I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Pauline was determined that he stay, in my view rightly (she always had far more about her than anyone ever thought). She wasn’t going to have him defined by the affair, if you can call it that. Also, sensible as she was, she knew what it meant and what it didn’t. She felt betrayed but not abandoned; and therefore angry rather than distraught. I felt that I should do right by her as well. So he stayed.

But the unpleasantness of the onslaught got to John. From that moment on, there was no pleasure in staying. There was defiance; but no joy. He wanted out; but it was hard for him to go without me going too. Slowly, and then more insistently, his desire to leave became his belief it was time to change leadership. There were many other factors of course. This one was not insignificant.