A Journey (108 page)

Then there was the party. They would accept my ruling as to when the exact date would be, but there would be a constant underlying accusation of selfishness, that I was staying for my own good, not theirs.

There would be a genuine problem of authority. Gordon was the almost appointed successor. He was the future. He would draw people to him. If he disagreed on matters, even Labour ministers would think twice about siding with me over him. And though, to be fair, once I made the decision he did his best to get on with me, his people remained resistant, prone to resentment and straining at the leash.

The unions, who sensed that they were about to come back into the centre of things, certainly in respect of the party, were dismissive. When I addressed the TUC for the last time, they were polite but not much more than that. We both knew what we thought of each other, though there were genuine and really good union leaders – like those in USDAW (the shop workers’ union) and Community (the old iron and steelworkers’ union) – who were sad and worried about my leaving, but the big unions were never reconciled. We ended our time as we began: in mutual incomprehension. They couldn’t understand why I was doing what I was doing; and I couldn’t understand why they couldn’t see it was the way of the future. Funnily enough, as people I rather liked them and I was a lot more loyal to the basic union and Labour case than many ever realised. But they thought I was a Conservative in Labour clothing; and I thought they were conservatives in labour clothing. So there you are. But if you look back on the history of Labour governments, they were a lot less trouble to me than they were to Attlee, Wilson or Callaghan. Mind you, they had a lot less power by then.

Also, I had to focus on my own closest folk, in keeping their spirits up and maintaining their sense of purpose. They were an incredibly good bunch. There were those who had endured all the way through: Jonathan Powell, Jonathan Pearse and Liz Lloyd. Liz had come on immensely over the years, became deputy chief of staff and brought an order and discipline that Jonathan and I naturally lacked. She had an excellent temperament too: lovely to work with, honest and, underneath all the English feminine charm, quite steely. Above all, capable.

One of the most depressing dimensions of the return of Old Labour politics to the party organisation was that really good young people like Liz were going for nominations for Labour seats and being rejected in favour of those who had the GB machine behind them but who were much less competent. Something I was able to do in the early years of my leadership was to encourage smart, young professionals to join us and to stand for Parliament: David Miliband, James Purnell, Ruth Kelly, Liam Byrne, and, to be fair, the GB equivalents, Ed Miliband, Ed Balls, Yvette Cooper. The mood was for a younger generation of really good talent. Even though I knew GB’s lot might be trouble for me, I had an unbending belief that you always promote talent. I’ve had some harsh things to say about Ed Balls – I thought he behaved badly at points, and was wrong on policy – but I also thought he was really able, and a talent that any political party should be grateful to have. So I was very clear in my instructions to the folk at grass roots: don’t organise against these guys. Whatever we think, their ability gives them a right to come and be part of it all, and we have a duty to let them in.

But I could see towards the end that this was not reciprocated. And much more important than it being unfair, it is foolish for the long-term health of the party and will be a serious problem for the future. The very problem I had faced trying to be selected in the early 1980s, and the problem the party then had in attracting talent, had been because of old-fashioned fixing in ‘smoke-filled rooms’. By the end of the 1990s we had overcome it – if you were good, you stood a chance.

In that last period, I could feel it going backwards. Not to have someone like Liz in Parliament, if you could have her, was our loss, not hers. And a serious, indicative one. A party that turns away its talent corrodes its capacity. But she was too close to me and it told against her.

Others in the team had joined more recently. Matthew Taylor had a great combination of intellect and political nous. He could reach across the party in a way that didn’t desert New Labour ground, but expanded out from it. David Bennett, head of the policy directorate, had joined from McKinsey. He was a total outsider, and I think at points found the whole political experience alarming, but he was really clever and, as I had wanted, brought an outsider’s expertise and different perception analysis to bear. He was very helpful in writing the last policy chapter of the government.

Then the political team, Ruth Turner, John McTernan and Nita Clarke, and in the Labour Party the General Secretary Peter Watt, were of a quality far beyond what I could have hoped for at that stage of the game: dedicated, utterly loyal and fiercely determined on my behalf. But it was a tough hand: a leader on his way out; an alternative power base ruthlessly flexing its muscles; and in respect of all but Nita, a police inquiry into their integrity. When I think of how they managed and performed with distinction during that period, I am overcome with admiration.

Media, party, GB, unions, private office – the moment I declared I was going, all of them were going to take a lot of handling.

I had retreated to Chequers to think. I decided the only way through was to give them a defined and clear reason for believing I should stay until the summer of 2007. ‘What is the point of you?’ – that’s the question, as Matthew Taylor and Peter Mandelson both said. So I determined on the point. The point would be: I would go out having taken core, fundamental decisions on policy which embedded completely the New Labour programme on which we were engaged; and then I would create a process whereby the Cabinet and party participated in setting out a future programme. GB could be a full partner, he could agree to take part or stand aside from it, but he wouldn’t be able to say I hadn’t set it out for him, or that he hadn’t had the chance to shape it. If there were disagreements in the course of it, let them be had. At least at the end of it we would have a clear platform. If he took it, great. If he didn’t, no one could say he hadn’t had the opportunity, and any alternative leadership would be able to grasp it and run with it.

By and large, in the face of much cynicism from many quarters, that’s what we did. Despite having said I would leave, I was, after all, still prime minister, and had much nominal and much residual actual power. I could still reshuffle, still promote; even with a hostile media I still had the platform from which to speak, to argue, to persuade. The last nine months could have been a vanity valedictory – lots of media voices tried to make it so – but actually we pinned down crucial parts of the change programme and we left a perfectly sensible set of future policy directions if people want to take them up – on pensions, welfare, the NHS, schools and law and order.

No political leader had ever left like this before. But then, in this regard, like so many others, politics was changing. As leaders get younger and the place of Britain shifts in the world, I may be the first, but I doubt I will be the last.

TWENTY-ONE

DEPARTURE

T
hose months were a huge strain, especially on the family, a cloud of uncertainty and insecurity hanging over them. Though intimately involved, a family, particularly a young one, is oddly detached from the prime minister’s job. They witness the events, they participate in the moments of joy and sadness, but they always feel like bystanders, because, inevitably, in the end they are.

They are relieved of the intense pain and pressure that is the prime minister’s alone, but they are not relieved of the scrutiny. And the fact that they can see what you are going through, but at a certain level remain shut out, can give them a strange feeling of being lost, a little betwixt and between, never wholly involved in the prime minister’s life but still integral to it.

When we first went into Downing Street, we were the youngest family to have lived there since Lord Russell’s time in the 1850s and 60s, when the house was the family home. There were no official functions and it was not really a place of work. Today Downing Street is a busy, bustling thoroughfare of government, with adjoining buildings and hundreds of staff. The iconic nature of the most famous address in Britain means that it is very much the seat of power. It is therefore first and foremost now a working office, and only a family home a distant second.

The introduction of children was at one level lovely; at another, the place was completely unprepared for it. Once Leo arrived, we then had a baby in the building, which was immense fun for everyone and the staff adored him, but it wasn’t exactly geared up as an institution to crèche-style working. But we managed, and though I never appreciated how weird it must have been for the kids to have grown up in Downing Street, we coped on the whole pretty well. Also, Chequers was a blessed relief from the Downing Street swirl. Without it, the prime minister’s life would have been very different, and worse.

We lived in the flat above Number 11. We redid the kitchen, which badly needed it, but every refurbishment always brought its tales of expense – the contractors had to work to special rules – and ‘living it up’. People used to be amazed that we had no staff in the flat to cook and so on, but in fact we preferred it like that. It was quieter and more private, though of course there would be a constant stream of duty clerks, civil servants and messengers passing through. However, the people who worked in Downing Street were, by and large, friendly, helpful and, in an understated but nonetheless obvious way, supportive of the burden you bore as prime minister. They never talked about it much; but you could feel the emotional succour being gently and kindly offered.

The flat above Number 11 was bigger than was commonly thought and had a clutch of spare rooms above the two main floors, where the living and sleeping quarters were. There at the top, from where you could look out over Downing Street, Horse Guards Parade and St James’s Park, I had a gym with a running machine, rowing machine and weights. Nicky had a room where he used to keep his drum kit along with my guitars and occasionally we would sneak up to the top and jam together, making the most frightful noise, no doubt.

Somehow, and probably mainly due to the extraordinary Jackie, who had been with the family since 1998, we got through the adolescence of three youngsters, the birth of Leo and his first years at primary school. You are at your most real in a family – at your most angry, at your most loving, at your most suffocated, at your most motivated. You can’t be fully selfish in a family. You want to be, often, but in the end it drags you back to your need for and your commitment to the company of others. In the family there are few hidden spaces, few facets of character, good or bad, that lie undiscovered, few delusions and even fewer fantasies. There are many glimpses of the best and the worst of the human being. In the end, most important of all, you have to forgive the trespasses in order that yours too can be forgiven. And just occasionally, you espy the essential strength that the family represents, and realise it is a marvel of human achievement and for all its shortcomings, anxieties and tensions, greatly to be cherished.

We survived Number 10 intact and pretty strong. But the strain of living there told on us all in different ways.

The position of the spouse needs careful reflection. In the old days, men worked, women didn’t. Nowadays women do. For a working woman, it is always going to be very hard. It was hard enough for Cherie. She chose, rightly in my view, to remain a person with a career rather than become a political wife. I am not sure in retrospect that it’s possible, given the degree of scrutiny today.

Cherie kept up her practice but it was difficult. There were lots of cases she couldn’t do because they were politically sensitive. She had no support in Number 10 as the ‘official’ wife. Fiona, Alastair’s partner, and an old friend Ros Preston actually did brilliantly for her, but it all had to be done in a somewhat concealed way. When Gordon came in and his wife Sarah got a proper office and staff, that was absolutely right and should now be the norm.

Cherie didn’t always help herself, and as I have remarked before she had this incredible instinct for offending the powerful, especially in the media, who were unfortunately far too well placed in taking revenge; but she did a superlative job. She used Downing Street, really for the first time, as a proper place to recognise charities, having one function or other virtually every night. And she was a rock to me, strong when I was weak, determined when I was tempted to falter, and fierce in her defence of the family. Her media profile became such a caricature of the reality that it really was a bit of an outrage, but she put up with it and most of the time didn’t let it get to her. Mutual cordial loathing about best sums up her relationship with a large part of the press! Some of the criticism she would accept was valid. It was the lack of balance that wasn’t.

And the truth is that the media attack is often arbitrary; or, perhaps better, selective. As far as I am aware both my predecessors took holidays in homes provided by friends. Denis, certainly, had to carry on working even while Mrs Thatcher was in Number 10, but no one persecuted him over it. She was really attacked over her children, but on the whole, more slack was cut in those days. Now people want to know everything, and anything that is known can always have a negative construction put on it. Whether the attack becomes immensely personal or not depends on whether an editor decides to go for it. If a paper like the
Daily Mail
decides to do it, others soon join in, not wanting to be left out of the pack.