Speaking for Myself (20 page)

After the defeat, Tony was seriously of the view that Gordon should stand for the leadership against John, but Gordon said no.

“Well, if that’s the case,” I said to Tony, “why don’t you stand as deputy?”

He toyed with the idea, the main question being not “Is this sensible in terms of my career?” but “Is this sensible in terms of the kids?” In the end we decided it wasn’t. Besides, Gordon himself was against it. Only later did we discover that he’d done a deal with John right from the outset. In return for Gordon’s backing him for the leadership — with Margaret Beckett, an MP with strong links to the unions and the more left-leaning elements of the party, as deputy — Gordon would get Shadow Chancellor. And so it came to pass.

Change was definitely in the air. Tony decided he just couldn’t cope with the to-ing and fro-ing from Highbury twice a day. Getting across Holloway Road, the main artery from the north, was a nightmare. We needed to move farther in, he said. Through Margaret Hodge, an MP friend, we heard that a doctor and his wife, down the road from her in Islington, wanted to do a swap for a smaller house. There were a number of pluses: not only would traveling be easier, but we’d be within walking distance of my sister, who had married and had just had her second child. The drawback of the new house was that financially it stretched us right to the hilt, with nothing left over for improvements. This situation was exacerbated when interest rates went to over 15 percent following the financial meltdown of the Black Wednesday stock market crash.

Once we were settled in Richmond Crescent, we began to participate in “state-of-the-party” meetings either at our house or at Margaret Hodge’s. Peter Mandelson and Mo Mowlam would often be there, and also Sally Morgan, who was employed by the Labour Party in London.

Under the new regime, Tony became Shadow Home Secretary. At least in government, the Home Office is seen as a poisoned chalice. In opposition, however, it depends on what happens, and what happened in 1993 was the horrific murder of James Bulger. The abduction of this small boy by two older boys, caught on CCTV cameras, was played and replayed on television — the first time I can remember such a thing happening. Law and order had previously been seen as an Achilles’ heel for Labour, yet Tony’s unequivocal and hard-line response was proof that this was no longer the case. He combined compassion with a streak of steel — that steel I had recognized so early in our relationship. For the most tragic of reasons, Tony became a familiar figure on TV.

He had already shown that he was at ease in front of the cameras — he was the only MP who had been prepared to go on television the day after the 1992 election defeat. He also happened to be young and good-looking, with a growing family, all of which resonated with the public.

Tony was an impressive debater, and in February 1994 two of the most contentious issues in British politics went before Parliament: capital punishment and lowering the age of consent for homosexuals. These were both cross-party issues, and Tony showed in very practical terms how he could work effectively with people of opposing political views when he thought it necessary.

Over the two years of John Smith’s leadership, Tony did what he was asked to do, gave policy speeches and so on, but felt increasingly frustrated. On May 11, 1994, Tony went to a Labour Party fund-raising dinner in one of the big London hotels. (I didn’t go. For a big party fund-raiser like that, tickets cost hundreds of pounds even then.) Late that night he came back saying that he thought John had looked very ill. The next morning we had to be up early, as he was flying to Aberdeen and I was due in south London at an employment tribunal.

Just as we settled the case, somebody came in and said, “Have you heard?”

John Smith was dead of a heart attack.

I remember standing in the corridor not moving, with people bumping into me. I was in total shock. I went straight back into London. It was only when I was on the train, looking out at the gardens filled with blossoms, that I thought of his wife and daughters. He was only fifty-five. It was a terrible warning about the pressures of public life.

I remembered a conversation Tony and I had had barely a month before, when we’d taken a rare weekend away from the kids. He’d been asked to speak at the European Business School in Fontainebleau, outside Paris. It had been years since we’d been to the French capital, and we did all those things you do in Paris, including going to the movies, something we never had time for in London. We went to see
Schindler’s List,
a haunting film that left us feeling disjointed and somehow suspended in time. While we were having dinner afterward, Tony started talking about John Smith and how frustrated he felt under his leadership. He felt that the modernizers were grinding to a halt.

“It can’t go on like this,” he said. “But I’ve got this feeling that it won’t anyway.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that something’s going to happen. Got to happen.”

“Like what?”

“Some kind of bust-up. I don’t know. But something. It can’t go on like this.”

Never could he have imagined anything so tragic or so decisive.

Tony called about two minutes after I got into chambers.

“You’ve got to stand,” I told him.

“It’s difficult.”

“Listen to me. You have to go for this.”

He was about to board the plane. I said I’d meet him at arrivals. We’d pick up the car and talk about it then.

As I turned into High Holborn on my way to the tube, I bumped into our friend and former Hackney neighbor Barry Cox.

“Can’t stop,” I said. “I’m off to Heathrow to get Tony. When you talk to him, Barry, tell him that he’s got to stand. I’m frightened he’ll think that maybe he owes it to Gordon not to.”

When I got to Heathrow, I called Anji from a pay phone. Mo Mowlam had rung, and the influential Scottish MP John Reid, both saying the same thing: “He’s got to go for it.”

As usual the arrivals hall was crowded, but it wasn’t till I saw Tony come through on his own that I realized that many of those waiting were cameramen and reporters. They practically trampled me underfoot to get to him, shouting “Tony! Tony!” For a moment it was mayhem, then he gave them a few words on the theme of “It’s a great shock,” and of course it was. They may not have agreed on everything, but John had been good to him, and Tony respected and liked him. Eventually I managed to get him down to the parking garage and into the car.

I am a barrister, an advocate, and my job is putting a case coherently. This time it seemed that all my skills had abandoned me. I just said, “You’re the best candidate for the job, and you can’t let Gordon seize the moment through some misplaced sense of obligation.”

“He’ll have all the Scottish MPs tied up.”

“No, he won’t. John Reid’s been on the phone already. Listen, Tony. This is your moment. You’ve got to take it. Who dares, wins.”

He sat slumped in the passenger seat with his eyes closed and said, “I know.” But it was with no sense of triumph or eager anticipation. It was more resignation.

We both knew the arguments against: the children and Gordon. Tony looked pale. That he let me drive was a sign of how unnerved he was. “John Smith was working too hard,” he said, “burning the candle at both ends.”

I knew that time was of the essence. My fear was that Gordon would just move in and it would be a fait accompli, but I knew Tony was the right person for the job. By the next general election, there would be people voting who had never known a time when the Tories weren’t in power. The new leader had to be someone they could relate to. Tony had always been more appealing to the general public than Gordon, and more grounded in the realities of everyday life. What could be more grounding than bringing up a young family? Ironically, Tony was always saying, “Gordon, if you really want to be leader, you need to get married.” Yet he also felt it was a mark of how honorable Gordon was that he didn’t marry just for appearances. (In my view, however, if he had, he would inevitably have been a more rounded person, with another dimension to his life.)

Nothing would happen until after the funeral, so to that extent discussions would be ongoing. But we all had to know whether Tony was going to stand. When we got to the office, people were beginning to show their faces. Anji was there, and Mo and Peter Kilfoyle: the two of them would eventually head up his campaign. Also, to my great relief, I saw John Reid, one of Neil Kinnock’s close advisers and an early advocate of party reform. Although he and Gordon were both Scottish MPs, I knew he would support Tony. The voices were unanimous: Tony had to stand. And I think he knew in his heart that he was the better person to carry the modernizers’ message, if only because he embodied it better. It was about changing the perception of the Labour Party, making it a party of government and actually being relevant to people’s lives. Having made my position clear and knowing that I would see him later, I headed back to chambers.

The next day the BBC had Tony as the front-runner. Over the next few days I had plenty of time to think things over. I knew this was a pivotal moment for Tony. I knew that he had what it takes. I knew it would make a huge difference to Tony himself. I knew that he would have less time for the children, but I didn’t think it would make much difference to us as a family. My practice was going in the right direction, we had just bought a big family house, and I assumed we would tick on.

My own belief is that he decided to go for it straightaway. For him the real question was not whether he should stand, but how to reconcile Gordon in order to preserve the modernizers’ ticket. What he most feared was that if both of them stood, the modernizers would lose out through squabbling among themselves. Tony’s main aim over those next few days was to persuade Gordon to give way to him. He wouldn’t stand unopposed — the left would see to that — which was even more reason not to risk splitting the moderate vote.

Getting Gordon to stand aside was no easy task. First, he was the more senior. Second, he obviously had his supporters, too. One of the key players was Peter Mandelson. I remember sitting in our kitchen that first night and asking Tony, “What about Peter? What does he think?” Tony said with a sigh, “Peter is very conflicted.” I wish now that Peter’s ambivalence had been better known at the time, because Gordon’s conviction that Peter was instantly in our camp destroyed their relationship.

John Smith’s funeral was on May 20 in Scotland. Gordon had gone back to his constituency fairly early on, while Tony just flew up for the funeral. The fact that Gordon hadn’t been in London during the early stages was irrelevant to his campaign. We knew from day one that Nick Brown would be his campaign manager and had a good idea of the tricks he would have up his sleeve. Nick is an old-style political campaigner, and his people were basically going around saying, “Gordon is more acceptable to the unions. He is more true Labour than Tony. Tony is a young upstart.” He didn’t need Gordon in London to do that. In fact, it was more effective if Gordon wasn’t there.

After the funeral Tony stayed with Nick Ryden, a friend from Fettes, and that night Gordon went round there to talk. Nick had only recently bought the house, and not everything worked as it should. At one point Gordon disappeared upstairs. He was gone for what seemed like a very long time, and Tony was just wondering what on earth could have happened when the phone rang. It was Gordon calling from the bathroom on his cell phone. The handle had come off the door, and he couldn’t get out.

As the week went on, Tony clearly had the momentum, and I was coming to the view that if Gordon wanted to stand, Tony should let him.

“You’ll win anyway,” I said. “So don’t come to a deal. Just let him lose.” But Tony said no. The modernizers were a team, and this was a team effort. He didn’t want anything to break that up.

Back in London there was yet another get-together with Gordon. This time it was at Lyndsey’s house in Richmond Avenue, just round the corner. (One of the conditions of these meetings was that no one should see Gordon coming to our house.) This was the meeting where essentially it was agreed that Tony would stand unopposed and Gordon would be Chancellor; that they would work together and Gordon would support him, and the aim would be to reform the Labour Party and take power. Part of Gordon obviously didn’t want to accept that, but another part of him could see that Tony now had the momentum. There were plenty of ways he could have rationalized it to himself: that he had been unlucky in having the economic portfolio, which had failed to give him much exposure, whereas Tony, with law and order, had been able to strike a popular chord. It was always a given that they would work in tandem and that when Tony stood down, Gordon would take over. Tony also made it clear to Gordon that he had no intention of staying leader forever and that when he did stand down, he would support Gordon as his natural successor, assuming they worked well together as Prime Minister and Chancellor in the meantime.

As far as I know, the timing of all this was never discussed, but when Tony left for Lyndsey’s, I made my position perfectly clear, even if I framed it as a joke. “If you agree with Gordon that you’re going to do this for one term only, don’t come back home. Because that’s just ridiculous.”

But Tony was always very supportive of Gordon having his chance. He used to say that in terms of ability, Gordon was way ahead of everyone, and the irony is that if they’d only worked as closely together as originally agreed, his chance would have come sooner.

Barry Cox raised about £70,000 from various people to support the campaign, and Anji was organizing the campaign events.

Tony never takes anything for granted, but it was soon clear that he was the front-runner. I didn’t by any means go to all his meetings, because he was traveling round and I had the children to look after and a career to pursue. I did go to some meetings in London and the southeast, and I went to a couple of the question-and-answer sessions, where he was developing the relaxed style of campaigning that would soon become popular not just with Labour Party members but with the whole British electorate: sitting down on the edge of the stage and rolling up his shirtsleeves to his elbows. He did fantastically. I was so proud of him.