A Journey (2 page)

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INTRODUCTION

I
wanted this book to be different from the traditional political memoir. Most such memoirs are, I have found, rather easy to put down. So what you will read here is not a conventional description of who I met or what I did. There is a range of events, dates, other politicians absent from it, not because they don’t matter, but because my aim was to write not as a historian, but rather as a leader. There have been plenty of accounts – and no doubt will be more – of the history of my ten years as prime minister, and many people could write them. There is only one person who can write an account of what it is like to be the human being at the centre of that history, and that’s me.

So this is a personal account; a description of a journey through a certain period of history in which my political, and maybe to a certain degree my personal character evolves and changes. I begin as one type of leader; I end as another. That’s why I call it a journey. I describe, of course, the major events of my time, but I do so through the eyes of the person taking the decisions in relation to them. It is not an objective account; it doesn’t pretend to be, though I hope it is fair.

I have also written it thematically, rather than following a precise chronology. It is true that my themes essentially start in 1997 and end in 2007; but within that framework I deal with individual subjects: for example, the coming to power; or Northern Ireland; or Princess Diana; or 9/11; or Iraq; or reform in public services; or the Olympics; or July 2005. You can, as a reader, take a subject and pretty much view it in isolation if you wish to, though of course there are a multitude of cross-references. Some things, like my relationship with Gordon Brown and with American presidents, flow through it all.

Because I have read autobiographies or memoirs that begin enthusiastically and then tail off in desperation and haste as the publisher’s deadline approaches, I also took the unusual step of writing the chapters out of sequence, tackling some of the hardest first, and the easiest last. I wanted to keep the same pace and energy throughout. I took three years to write it.

This book is above all, however, not simply retrospective. Naturally, since it deals with past events, it examines those events as they were at the time. But I’m not really a retrospective person. I look forward. I still have much to do and a great amount of purpose in my life. I’m working as hard as I have ever worked. I am still learning.

So as well as using the past to illuminate issues that are still present,
A Journey
often projects into the future. Particularly in respect of foreign affairs after 9/11, and the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also in respect of major reforms to health, education, welfare, and law and order which preoccupy current governments, I seek to set out a view of the world both as it is and as it may become, not simply as I found it while in office. The last chapter deals specifically with 2007–10 and, since it disagrees with much conventional wisdom about the financial crisis and continuing challenges of security, it is very much engaged with today’s debate about today’s issues.

Finally, the book is something of a letter (extended!) to the country I love. I won three general elections. Up to then, Labour had never even won two successive full terms. The longest Labour government had lasted six years. This lasted thirteen. It could have, as I say in the final chapter, gone on longer, had it not abandoned New Labour.

Those victories came about because there was a group of people who felt the same as I do about Britain. That it is a great country. That the British people are, at their best, brave, determined and adventurous. But that we need a vision, a concept, a sense of our place in the world today and in our future, as well as a strong regard for our past. That is why I was and remain first and foremost not so much a politician of traditional left or right, but a moderniser. I wanted to modernise the Labour Party so it was capable, not intermittently but continuously, of offering a progressive alternative to Conservative rule. I wanted to modernise Britain so that, while retaining pride in having worn the mantle of the world’s most powerful nation as the twentieth century began, it didn’t feel bereft and in decline as the twenty-first century arrived, because that mantle would no longer fit. I wanted us to be a nation proud of being today a land of many cultures and faiths, breaking new ground against prejudice of any sort, paying more attention to merit than to class, and being at ease with an open society and global economy. I wanted us to realise a new set of ambitions at home and abroad. We would reform our public services and welfare state so as to make them consonant with the world of 2005, not 1945. We would use our membership of Europe and our alliance with the United States to influence the decisions of the world, even as our power relative to the emerging nations diminished. We would play a new role in continents such as Africa, as partners in development. We would forge a new politics, in which successful enterprise and ambition lived comfortably alongside a society of equal opportunity and compassion.

The book sets out the attempts to achieve such a vision – in parts successful, in parts not, and therefore what it describes is a work in progress. It gives my opinion as to why powerful forces, left and right, disagree with such a vision and tried hard to inhibit it, but why I still believe it is the only hope for Britain’s future.

Though my politics consciously and deliberately reached beyond traditional left or right, it shouldn’t be thought from this that I was or am disdainful of party politics. In particular, as I always used to say, I owe the Labour Party, its members, supporters and activists, a huge debt of gratitude. I put them through a lot! They took it, most of the time, with quite extraordinary dignity and loyalty. It is true that my head can sometimes think conservatively especially on economics and security; but my heart always beats progressive, and my soul is and always will be that of a rebel.

ONE

HIGH EXPECTATIONS

O
n 2 May 1997, I walked into Downing Street as prime minister for the first time. I had never held office, not even as the most junior of junior ministers. It was my first and only job in government.

The election night of 1 May had passed in a riot of celebration, exhilaration and expectation. History was not so much being made as jumping up and down and dancing. Eighteen years of Conservative government had ended. Labour – New Labour – had won by a landslide. It felt as if a fresh era was beginning. As I walked through the iron gates into Downing Street, and as the crowd – carefully assembled, carefully managed – pressed forward in enthusiasm, despite the setting, the managing and the fatigue of being up all night, I could feel the emotion like a charge. It ran not just through the crowd but through the country. It affected everyone, lifting them up, giving them hope, making them believe all things were possible, that by the very act of election and the spirit surrounding it, the world could be changed.

Everyone except for me, that is. My predominant feeling was fear, and of a sort unlike anything I had felt before, deeper even than the fear I had felt the day I knew I was going to take over the leadership of the Labour Party. Until election night, this fear had been kept in check by the routine, rigour and sheer physical and mental exertion of the campaign. Also, campaigning was familiar emotional as well as political territory. I had a strategy for guiding us from Opposition into government; I adhered to it, and I knew if I did so, I wouldn’t fail. I had redefined the Labour Party as New Labour, a changed progressive force in British politics; I had set out an outline programme of sufficient substance to be credible but lacking in the details that would have allowed our opponents to damn it; and I had fashioned a strong but believable attack on the government, and assembled a ferociously effective election-fighting machine.

In order to instil discipline, into the party and even my close team, I was the eternal warrior against complacency. I regularly spoke about how big opinion-poll leads could be lost, how the Tories should never be underestimated, how we had this problem and that challenge. Since we had lost four elections in a row and had never won two consecutive full terms, I was cultivating fairly fertile ground. The party had almost come to believe that it couldn’t win, that for some divine or satanic reason, Labour wasn’t allowed an election victory no matter what it did. For some, it was like the old football adage: a game played with a round ball, two teams of eleven players, forty-five minutes in each half and the Germans always win.

I thought that was complete baloney. We had lost because we were out of touch with the modern voter in the modern world. The first rule in politics is that there are no rules, at least not in the sense of inevitable defeats or inevitable victories. If you have the right policy and the right strategy, you always have a chance of winning. Without them, you can lose no matter how certain the victory seems.

Pretending that it was all really on a knife-edge helped motivate, galvanise and keep us in line. Though underneath I was very confident, you never know. What’s more, I believed the current prime minister John Major was much better than most others thought. He had real appeal as a person. Fortunately, his party had gone off the rails, to a heavy, hard-right position, and over the seemingly interminable time I had spent as Leader of the Opposition – almost three years – I had learned how to play him and his party off against each other.

Major had decided on a long campaign of three months. It was tough, of course, but it wasn’t an uncharted landscape and it fitted a pattern. The hope was that we would trip up, I would suddenly lose my head, by some trick of fate or fortune the mood of the public would switch. It was never really going to happen.

Instead, and rather more predictably, the Tories fell apart. Every time Major tried to get them on the front foot, someone in his ranks resigned, said something stupid, got caught in a scandal and frequently all three at once and occasionally the same person. It was like watching a slow-motion suicide or an escape artist who ties concrete blocks to his legs, puts on handcuffs, gets in a lead box, has it sealed and jumps into deep water. You think, How’s he going to get out of that? – and then you realise he isn’t. Amazing how a political party can go like that, though it is possible to tempt them to it if their opponents are smart enough; and by occupying the centre ground, make them foolishly go off to the side.