A Journey (114 page)

As for the country, they too, or at least a large proportion of them, had stopped listening and were irritated with the manner in which I continued to press policies they had decided they didn’t agree with. They didn’t buy the foreign policy, which they thought far too close to the US. They didn’t like Europe and I seemed to. They were persuaded there were easier, less confrontational ways to reform public services. They were confused over the law and order agenda, supporting its basic message but unconvinced we were actually enforcing it.

Most of all, they were being bombarded, deluged even, with stories about ‘cash for honours’, ‘lies’ over Iraq, this corruption, that scandal, the other shortcomings of government. We were like two people standing either side of a thick pane of glass trying to have a conversation. I thought, and still think, that they could be persuaded, but when I spoke they couldn’t hear me; and after a time they stopped trying to.

When I ventured out and met people, which in those last months I did very frequently, the people I met would not have the pane of glass in the way. We would converse very well and both found the experience interesting. Right up to the last moment, I was really learning from those encounters, but they can never be with more than a tiny fraction of the people. The rest can only engage indirectly, and for them, the pane of glass swiftly becomes a pain in the neck.

For me and for the people, this was sad. My relationship with them had always been more intense, more emotional, if that’s the right word, than the normal relationship between leader and nation. It was partly the sensation of the 1997 victory; partly New Labour; partly that I communicated and felt normal at the beginning, and then over time seemed to become distant, aloof, presidential, and therefore full of my own importance but not of theirs. Of course, part of the media worked hard to construct this image and then make it stick.

However, it was more than that. In 2005, I had an unusual polling presentation by Charles Trevail of Market, Social and Opinion Research. Their theory, which at the time I found amusing and diverting but far-fetched, was that my relationship with the British people was more like a love match or marriage. At first, people felt an abnormally close bond. They trusted and liked me. Then in the second term, I suddenly left and went off on a foreign adventure, almost on an affair. I stopped caring about them. I became arrogant. I seemed to think I had grown bigger than them; or to put it another way, we grew apart and I found Britain too small for my egotistical ambition. I used to make them feel good; now I just sounded irritated that they wouldn’t go along with me.

Charles said they had never conducted research on a person and seen such strong feelings aroused. Indifference was virtually non-existent. Now, Mrs Thatcher aroused that strength of feeling, but that was about her policies; this was about me as a person. Some hated, some loved; but they talked about me as someone they knew not just as a leader but as an individual. The predominant view, however, was that I had lost that common touch which had defined the earlier time in office and which had created the bond.

I was certain part of this derived from the nature of the job. People see you on the news every night – serious face, serious issues, laying down the line, other people saying nasty things, PMQs and its confrontation, all messy, all off-putting. Occasionally I would step into an arena that was different, as I had done with the Des O’Connor interview in 1996. In March 2006, just before the ‘cash for honours’ imbroglio began, I appeared on
Parkinson
. Again it showed the other side and really worked. Kevin Spacey was the other guest and got it just right, chafing me about George Bush but in a funny way that had no malice in it. It was to be part of a major effort to reconnect on a personal level, but once the ‘scandal’ broke, it was stillborn.

However, I came to realise that this almost inevitable distancing over time was not at the core of the problem. The problem was that I was doing things, not just in foreign policy but more broadly, that were generating opposition and disagreement; and I wasn’t budging. The left hated the support for America and public service reform; the right hated the support for Europe, the style of the government and, most of all of course, the fact we were still in power and they were still marginalised.

The difference between the TB of 1997 and the TB of 2007 was this: faced with this opposition across such a broad spectrum in 1997, I would have tacked to get the wind back behind me. Now I was not doing it. I was prepared to go full into it if I thought it was the only way to get to my destination. ‘Being in touch’ with opinion was no longer the lodestar. ‘Doing what was right’ had replaced it.

I knew this was causing upset in the matrimonial home in which I and the nation had lived happily together. It seemed arrogant; conceited even. But it wasn’t that I had run off with another woman. I had reached the conclusion that the family wouldn’t prosper and be taken care of unless we lived life differently. I wanted to move location. I could see the world changing rapidly. I could see our place in it needing fundamental and quick adjustment. The comfort zone was not where we needed to be. This time, the feeling was not about the party. It was about the country.

I looked at the G8 – and this was before the economic crisis in 2008 – and I realised that there was no way it could survive. China, India, Brazil and others would demand a seat at the table; and if they didn’t get one, they would get their own table. I saw the danger for Europe of a G2: US and China. And then, if we weren’t careful, a G3: US, China and India. Or a G4: US, China, India, Brazil. And so on. In other words, we had to face the fact that Britain is a small island of 60 million people off the continent of Europe, in a world where two nations alone would each have populations twenty times ours and, in time to come, economies to match. How absurd and futile to believe we could be Little Englanders in such a scenario, or ignore the vast importance of our US relationship.

As the new economies emerge, we have to compete. How? By brains and skill, by moving up the value-added chain. By working harder. By competing on merit, on ability. To do that, our education system and welfare state have to be reformed not more cautiously but more boldly. I could see the twentieth century left/right debate of Western politics dying on its feet, still swinging the odd punch but essentially just getting in the way of the practical debate about what needed to be done, and done urgently.

I looked at the NHS and was proud of the change we had made, but I was in no doubt: as technology advances and people live longer, there is no way that health care systems of developed nations can survive at reasonable cost and with a minimum level of equity in provision, without putting individual responsibility and public health policy at the centre of the debate. I have described already how I saw the problems of nineteenth-century criminal justice procedures trying to cope with twenty-first-century crime and social dysfunction.

The point is that it wasn’t dissatisfaction with the relationship that was driving me; it was a sense that unless I spelt out the necessity to seek a different context in which to nurture that relationship, I was not being honest or trustworthy. The irony was, right at the moment when, to my detriment, I was being most open about what needed to be done and why, my integrity was most under question.

I had faced the fourth lesson of political courage that I refer to in Chapter 1 – the incalculable risk – and taken that step. I was now embarked on the fifth: doing what I thought was right, even though the people disagreed. I had started by buying the notion, and then selling the notion, that to be in touch with opinion was the definition of good leadership. I was ending by counting such a notion of little value and defining leadership not as knowing what people wanted and trying to satisfy them, but knowing what I thought was in their best interests and trying to do it. Pleasing all of the people all of the time was not possible; but even if it had been, it was a worthless ambition. In the name of leadership, it devalued leadership.

None of this meant or means that the leader should not seek to persuade, and in doing so use all the powers of charm, argument and persuasion at their command. That’s tactics, and they should be deployed effectively and competently. The strategy should be to point to where the best future lies and get people to move in that direction.

As I have said, in those last weeks, we were going full pace, both at home and abroad. Inside the Downing Street flat we were packing up. I don’t suppose there has been a period when the prime minister has had so much time to prepare the leaving. There were vast boxes full of the accumulated detritus of ten years. It was the longest time I had ever lived in one place. Leo had never known anywhere else. However, I am not sentimental about houses. When I left Downing Street and Chequers, I was sad to leave the people, but I didn’t mope over the physical structures. It’s lovely to live in historic and beautiful places, but it’s not of the essence. Home is where the family is.

I got back from my last European Council on the Saturday, and then went up to Manchester on the Sunday for a special party conference to announce the leadership results and the handover to Gordon. I made my speech, shortly and without emotion – I had done all that at the last party conference. I could see they were eager to get on with welcoming the new era. Also, I was now, in my own mind, anxious to quit the stage. The farewells had to be gone through, with dignity and if possible with elan, but without mawkishness.

I made a statement to the House on the European Council on Monday 25 June. On Tuesday I did my last visit as prime minister. It was to a primary school and was, in a surreal touch, with Arnold Schwarzenegger, the governor of California, who had come to Downing Street for a meeting on climate change. As he walked down the line of children who had been sent out to greet him, one infant piped up – in a slightly halting rehearsed tone, obviously having been tutored by one of the teachers who must have been ignorant of Arnold’s films – ‘Hello, Mr Governor. I did like watching your film
The Terminator.
’ I hastened to tell him we might have misheard.
Anyway, he was great and the schoolkids were delighted.

Next day, the Wednesday, was my last PMQs. I knew it would be weird. There was no point in me trying to advance things; no point in the Opposition trying to criticise things; no point in anything other than try to take one’s leave decently. The first thing, however, was to send condolences from the House to the families of fallen soldiers. Having done so, I also said the following:

Since this is the last time that this, the saddest of duties, falls to me, I hope the House will permit me to say something about our armed forces, and not just about the three individuals who have fallen in the last week. I have never come across people of such sustained dedication, courage and commitment. I am truly sorry about the dangers that they face today in Iraq and Afghanistan. I know some may think that they face these dangers in vain. I don’t, and I never will. I believe they are fighting for the security of this country and the wider world against people who would destroy our way of life. But whatever view people take of my decisions, I think there is only one view to take of them: they are the bravest and the best.

At the end, I gave some words in support of politics and politicians, which I also felt strongly about and knew the House would welcome:

Some may belittle politics but we who are engaged in it know that it is where people stand tall. Although I know that it has many harsh contentions, it is still the arena that sets the heart beating a little faster. If it is, on occasions, the place of low skulduggery, it is more often the place for the pursuit of noble causes. I wish everyone, friend or foe, well. That is that. The end.

David Cameron kindly got them to give me a standing ovation; and there it was. I went back to say farewell to the staff at Downing Street, and unlike in 1997, they were now crying at my leaving, not my arrival. The family posed with me one last time on the steps of Number 10. I went to the Palace, said goodbye to the Queen who was, as ever, very gracious; and got on the train to Sedgefield to say goodbye to my constituency too.

I felt calm and at peace. I felt there was unfinished business; but then I consoled myself with the thought that the business is never finished. I was on to my new life. I had always been fortunate in having a passion bigger than politics, which is religion. I had, have, new ambitions now. I have come a long way on the journey, but I am painfully aware I have much further to go. There are greater steps and larger lessons that lie ahead. Maybe in time a more complete assessment of the ten years will come. Maybe not. But my own assessment of it no longer depends on whether it does or does not.

In any event, the knowledge that the journey continues, the excitement at the new challenges to be explored, the sense of purpose that is as great as ever make me a very fortunate human being. There is so much frailty still to overcome, but in overcoming it lies the meaning of life. That, at least, I have learned.

TWENTY-TWO

POSTSCRIPT

T
he term ‘the West’ is a bit of an old-fashioned throwback to the days when the world was split by Communism, but it serves as shorthand for ‘our’ type of nation: open, democratic, committed to a market economy, confident militarily (certainly since the fall of the Berlin Wall), and led by the world’s only superpower, the USA. For almost twenty years after 1989, the West set the agenda to which others reacted. Some supported us and some opposed us, but the direction of the globe, the destination to which history appeared to march, seemed chosen by us.