A Journey (25 page)

I got to know her reasonably well before the 1997 election. A Labour peer, Lord Mishcon, had me round to dinner to meet her. My friend Maggie Rae knew those who knew her and had her to dinner as well. We kept in touch, and met from time to time.

She was extraordinarily captivating. The aura that already surrounded her was magnified by the radical combination of royalty and normality that she expressed. She was a royal who seemed at ease, human and, most of all, willing to engage with people on an equal basis. She wasn’t condescending, she laughed normally, she conversed normally, she flirted normally. That was her great charm: put her with any group of people anywhere, and she could get on with them.

She had a strong emotional intelligence, certainly, but she was also very capable of analytical understanding. I had a conversation with her once about the utility and force of photographs and how they could be best used, which showed a mind that was not only intuitive but also had a really good process of reasoning. She had the thing totally worked out. Occasionally she would phone and say why such-and-such a picture was rubbish or what could be done better, and though not, as I say, at all party political, she had a complete sense of what we were trying to achieve and why. I always used to say to Alastair: if she were ever in politics, even Clinton would have to watch out.

She was also strong-willed, let us say, and was always going to go her own way. I had the feeling she could fall out with you as easily as fall in with you. She knew the full range of the power of her presence and knew its ability to enthral, and most often used it to do good; but there was also a wildness in her emotions that meant when anger or resentment were woven together with that power, it could spell danger. I really liked her and, of course, was as big a sucker for a beautiful princess as the next man; but I was wary too.

Anyway, for sure, just as we were changing the image of Britain, she was radicalising that of the monarchy; or perhaps, more accurately, her contrast with them illuminated how little they had changed. For someone as acutely perceptive and long-termist about the monarchy and its future as the Queen, it must have been deeply troubling. Above all, the Queen knew the importance of the monarchy standing for history, tradition and duty. She knew also that while there was a need for the monarchy to evolve with the people, and that its covenant with them, unwritten and unspoken, was based on a relationship that allowed for evolution, it should be steady, carefully calibrated and controlled. Suddenly, an unpredictable meteor had come into this predictable and highly regulated ecosystem, with equally uncertain consequences. She had good cause to be worried.

After the holiday and before my first visit to Balmoral for the prime minister’s weekend with the royal family – a tradition stretching back to the time of Gladstone and Queen Victoria – I went to Sedgefield. It was great to go back as prime minister. I was proud of them, and they were proud of me. By and large that feeling persisted until the end. Despite the fact that ever since becoming Leader of the Opposition I had not been able to get back there with anything like the old regularity, they welcomed me each time I did. I would go to the local party’s General Committee meeting and give my report, then spend an hour or two chatting, exchanging views, answering questions with people who had in many cases known me since 1983 and who had watched my rise; and in that room, I would be very frank. It was a privilege for me to be able to talk to people I genuinely trusted, under John Burton’s watchful eye; and they felt it a privilege in return to have the access and feel part of history in the making.

I would visit the Dun Cow pub in Sedgefield Village or the working men’s club. People were friendly but also respectful of the fact I was out for a pint or two and to relax. Politics was rarely discussed unless it was around the table over dinner with John and Lily Burton, Phil Wilson (later my successor as Sedgefield MP), Peter and Christine Brooks, really nice decent people, and Paul Trippett, a rough, tough but lovely and very smart man who was steward at the working men’s club and became a close friend. We would chat, go through the constituency problems, and I would take their temperature on the big issues of the day. Collectively and individually, they had a great instinct for where the public was; and rarely, if ever, did they fail to help me feel my way. They also represented a very important strain of the British people. They might read the
Guardian
but weren’t
of
the
Guardian
; they were not at all ‘London’, and neither were they typical
Daily Mail
. They were highly political, but knew lots of people outside politics.

They were yet another interesting example of how the old pigeonholes into which people were put didn’t fit any more. My politics represented that completely, but it was very hard to get the commentating classes to see it. Sedgefield was a ‘northern working-class’ constituency, except that when you scratched even a little beneath the surface, the definitions didn’t quite fit. Yes, of course you could go into any of the old mining villages – the Trimdons, Fishburn, Ferryhill, Chilton and so on – and find the stereotype if you looked for it, but increasingly it wasn’t like that. The new estates were private estates of three- and four-bedroomed houses, and while the people who lived there couldn’t be described as ‘middle class’, neither were they ‘working class’ in the sense of Andy Capp. They drank beer; they also drank wine. They went to the chippy; they also went to restaurants. They were taking one, two or even three holidays abroad a year, and not all of them in Benidorm.

This was a different Britain, and one in which I felt at home. There had been an article – usual
Daily Mail
stuff – about how I was a poseur and fraud because I said I liked fish and chips, but when in London living in Islington it was well known that I had eaten pasta (shock-horror). Plainly you couldn’t conceivably like both since these were indications of distinct and incompatible cultures. The Britain of the late 1990s was of course actually one in which people ate a variety of foods, had a multiplicity of different cultural experiences and rather enjoyed it. This was as true ‘up North’ as it was ‘down South’. The world was opening up. My closest friends in Sedgefield symbolised that difference. There I was at ease and could be myself, and they were just them and that was fine by all of us.

Things had changed around our constituency house, as they had everywhere in our lives. There was a twenty-four-hour police guard, not as heavy as it became later, but always there. The roads had been changed to limit access, but it still felt like the one bit of our lives that remained constant. The surroundings were familiar and cosy.

My thoughts on the evening of 30 August 1997 were focused on the perpetual concern of getting an agenda together that made the changes match the rhetoric. I was worried that if people did not notice major change soon, cynicism would set in. I knew that we had the political initiative, and that the Tories were disconnected and ill-disciplined, but I also knew our media hold was fragile and based in many cases on convenience, not conviction, on both our parts. Once they decided they were going to go for us, if they couldn’t get us on substance, they would try to get us on style, to make our strengths weaknesses and our very political success into a form of trickery. Also at some point, the right-wing media would understand we weren’t actually a mild form of Thatcherism, and the left-wing media would realise New Labour was for real and not going to yield to the usual demands of the left.

Probably, too, I had been preoccupied getting the kids to bed – usually my job – settling them down (impossible with three aged thirteen, eleven and nine), fetching drinks, reading stories and hoping they would give us enough respite at least for a quiet meal together.

I went to sleep around 11.30. At about 2 a.m., something most peculiar happened. Cherie is difficult to wake once asleep, but I woke to find a policeman standing by the bed, which as you can imagine was quite a surprise. As I struggled into consciousness he told me that he had tried the bell but I hadn’t heard it; that Princess Diana had been seriously injured in a car crash; and that I should immediately telephone Sir Michael Jay, the British ambassador in Paris.

I was fully awake now. Cherie had also woken up. I explained the situation to her, then rushed downstairs and Downing Street put Michael through. It was clear from the outset that Diana was highly unlikely to survive. Michael went over her injuries, informed me that her boyfriend Dodi Fayed and the driver had been killed outright, and the bodyguard was alive but unconscious.

I phoned Alastair. He had heard from media monitoring, of all sources. We were both profoundly shocked. I couldn’t believe it. She was such a force in people’s lives, so much part of our national life, so clearly, indubitably and unalterably alive herself, it was impossible to think of her dead.

At 4 a.m. I was phoned again, however, to be told that she was. Michael was full of praise for the way the French had handled it: the Interior Minister Jean-Pierre Chevènement, the Health Minister Bernard Kouchner, and President Chirac had been sensitive, cooperative and respectful. From that time onwards there was a constant round of calls and, through it all, we were trying to work out how it should be managed.

I know that sounds callous. I was genuinely in grief. I liked her and I felt desperately sorry for her two boys, but I also knew that this was going to be a major national, in fact global event like no other. How Britain emerged was important for the country internally and externally. I was the prime minister; I had to work out how it would work out. I had to articulate what would be a tidal wave of grief and loss, in a way that was dignified but also expressed the emotion and love – not too strong a word – people felt for her.

If the Queen had died, it would have been, in one sense, simple: there would be an expression of great respect and praise, but all of it, though deep, would have been nonetheless conventional. This was completely different. This was not a conventional person nor a conventional death; and there would not be a conventional reaction.

In addition to grief I felt something else, which stemmed from the last meeting I had with Diana. It had not been all that easy. She had wanted to come to Chequers and offered a date in June, which I accepted. Alastair – despite adoring her – and Number 10 felt that it was unseemly for me to see her before I had met Prince Charles, and it might be misinterpreted. Reluctantly I agreed, and we refixed for July. As astute as ever, she guessed the shifting of the date was deliberate and was cross about it.

She came for the day with Prince William. The weather was gorgeous and Chequers looked beautiful. The staff were thrilled she was coming, and she was gracious and friendly to all. We had been talking about what she could do for the country in a more formal way. It was self-evidently tricky to see what that might be, though she was enthusiastic to do something. She was undoubtedly an enormous asset and I also felt it was right that she be given the chance to shift the focus somewhere other than exclusively on her private life; but I also felt – and I don’t know, maybe I would be less punctilious about it nowadays – that Dodi Fayed was a problem. This was not for the obvious reasons, which would have made some frown on him; his nationality, religion or background didn’t matter a hoot to me. I had never met him, so at one level it was unfair to feel nervous about him, and for all I know he was a good son and a nice guy; so if you ask me, well, spit it out, what was wrong, I couldn’t frankly say, but I felt uneasy and I knew some of her close friends – people who really loved her – felt the same way.

At that time, on a good day at Chequers, we would get the kids, the police, protection squad and the staff together and play football out on the back lawn where there had been a lovely grass tennis court in the 1930s. It was a fantastic pitch and we used to have great fun. Everyone except Diana and me went off to play, including William. Poor bloke, I think he wondered what on earth she had brought him for and he didn’t much want to play football, but, like a good sport, he did.

Diana and I had a walk in the grounds. She reproached me gently but clearly for cancelling the June date. I wonder how I would deal with her today, but then I just broached the subject of her and Dodi straight out. She didn’t like it and I could feel the wilful side of her bridling. However, she didn’t refuse to talk about it, so we did, and also what she might do. Although the conversation had been uncomfortable at points, by the end it was warm and friendly. I tried my hardest to show that I would be a true friend to her, and she should treat the frankness in that spirit. I joined in the football game while she watched and laughed with the staff, had her picture taken and did all the things she was brilliant at. It was the last time I saw her.

As I contemplated her death and what I would say, I felt a sense of obligation as well as sadness. I felt I owed it to her to try to capture something of what she was. We were both in our ways manipulative people, perceiving quickly the emotions of others and able instinctively to play with them, but I knew that when she reached out to the disabled or sick in a way no one else could have done and no one else in her position ever had done, it was with sincerity. She knew its effect, of course, but the effect could never have been as powerful as it was if the feeling had not been genuine. I sat in my study in Trimdon as the dawn light streamed through the windows, and thought about how
she
would have liked me to talk about her.