A Journey (7 page)

These were not just changes in policy; they were radical departures in the way Britain was governed, in the constitution and in attitude.

The hundred days ended with the publication of the plan to give London a mayor for the first time in centuries. And on the hundredth day we rested. Or at least I did, fleeing first to Tuscany and then to the south of France in search of the chance to relax after the helter-skelter of the first months.

What sort of leader was I at that point? I had a philosophy that was clear and clearly different from that of a traditional Labour politician. I was middle class, and my politics were in many ways middle class. My programme was every bit as much geared by the aspirations of the up-and-coming as the anxieties of the down-and-out. Partly for that very reason, and to emphasise to the party that I had not pulled up its roots, my first major domestic speech outside of the House of Commons was on the Aylesbury Housing Estate in south London on 2 June, a deprived estate forgotten in the Tory years. I set out my basic pitch for the mantle of one-nation politics. Very consciously I was setting out my stall as a unifier. I didn’t want class war. I didn’t like division or discord. I could see how a coalition of the well off and the less well off could establish points of common interest. I had no patience with tribal party politics, with its exaggerated differences, rancorous disputes and irrational prejudices.

The themes underlying the philosophy were also clearly spelt out: welfare as a hand up, not a handout; responsibility accompanying opportunity; a desire to reinvent government and get it to work coherently across departments; quality public services available on the basis of need, not wealth; communities free from the pervasive fear of petty crime and antisocial behaviour. Perhaps above all, an emphasis bordering on the religious on what counts to be what works – i.e. free ourselves, left and right, from dogma and get the country moving for the commonweal.

Rereading it now, it’s all good stuff. It echoed many of the sentiments of Bill Clinton. Funnily enough, he visited Britain in late May 1997 en route to a NATO summit. I brought him into Cabinet, where they were fairly in awe of him. He gave us a great Bill pep talk, using some of our campaign lines (like a real pro he had studied them all) and interweaving them cleverly with his own experience in office. I always remember him saying, ‘Don’t forget: communication is fifty per cent of the battle in the information age. Say it once, say it twice and keep on saying it, and when you’ve finished, you’ll know you’ve still not said it enough.’

I had led the Labour Party to victory. I had reshaped it. I had given it a chance to be a true party of government. All of this took a degree of political skill and courage. And I wasn’t such a fool back then to imagine that it wasn’t all going to get tougher, sharper and uglier. I knew I was enjoying a honeymoon and I had no illusions about the marriage, even if my other half did. All of this made me fearful, apprehensive and on edge, even though at that time it seemed as if I could do no wrong and no challenge was beyond me.

What was missing? There was a naivety about my belief that merely by adopting an approach based on reason and the abstinence from ideological dogma, hard problems could be solved, complex issues unravelled, divergent positions reconciled. It is true that such an approach was an advantage, necessary even; but by a large distance, insufficient. In fact, such an attitude only bestows an open mind. It doesn’t obviate the need for analysis, in-depth examination of policy options, going right down into the bowels of a problem and, there in the messy tangle, trying to solve it. Once you get down from the Olympian heights, where you can breathe freely the air of consensus and shared values and common goals, and you descend into that morass where the problem lies, what do you find? You find it’s full of unforeseen difficulties, technical minefields, and above all vested interests that want the solution to remain buried with the problem. These interests – professional, financial, sectoral – do not take kindly to your disturbing them. Very soon, the political opposition that wants you out and themselves in, allies itself to the vested interests. They fight back.

Here’s the thing: they don’t fight cleanly either. There are you, the leader, full of genuine desire to do good; yes, of course, to be top dog and decision-maker, but nonetheless sincere in your wish to improve the world. You think: We have a disagreement; let’s reason it out. I’ll hear you; you’ll hear me. We may even persuade each other, but if we don’t, well, reasonable people can disagree and I know we both accept that ultimately I’m the prime minister and have to decide.

No, it’s not like that; not like that at all, in fact. They get after you. They abuse your argument; they misrepresent your motives; they deride your sincerity and your protestations of good faith and the commonweal. For progressive politicians coming into power, that is always the biggest shock. The right get after you, from the off, with a vigour, venom and vitriol that has you reeling. You’re appalled by it, offended by it, but most of all surprised by it. Criticisms become accusations. Disagreements become rows. Attempts at change become assaults on your opponents’ fundamental liberties. You think you’ve come to a debating society but suddenly find you’re in a cage with a bare-knuckle fighter and a howling mob outside laying bets on how long you’ll last.

I had discovered long ago the first lesson of political courage: to think anew. I had then learned the second: to be prepared to lead and to decide. I was now studying the third: how to take the calculated risk. I was going to alienate some people, like it or not. The moment you decide, you divide. However, I would calculate the upset, calibrate it, understand its dimensions, assess its magnitude, ameliorate its consequences. And so I got over the surprise of the onslaught and became used to the derision, began to develop the carapace of near indifference to dispute that is so dangerous in a leader yet so necessary for survival.

Through it all, I was slowly coming to grips with the other dimension of government for which no amount of political courage is sufficient: the technical details of getting the policy right. I could see I might have to choose between what was right and what was politic, but deciding what was right was itself complex and highly contentious. The more I investigated the facts, the closer came the understanding that changing a nation was a whole lot harder than changing a party. The risks inherent in that, and the courage to take them, were of a different order entirely.

I was going to do my best and I was going to do it carefully; but even in those first months, even as it seemed we were masters of the political scene, I could see where the next lesson lay: what happened when you came to the risk that could
not
be calculated? What happened when your opponents were not the usual vested interests, and the noise was not the normal clamour aroused by anyone who tries to change anything, but came from the mainstream voices of mainstream people? What happened if the disagreement was not with the party or a limited section of the public, but with the body of the people?

I was aware I was a very popular leader. It was a bit like a love affair with the public, on both our parts. Like newly-weds, we envisaged ourselves growing together, learning together, falling out from time to time as all couples do, but retaining something profound that made our love real and whole, always there to be retrieved. What happened if we grew apart?

TWO

THE APPRENTICE LEADER

T
he journey from Opposition to government had taken three years. It sounds a short time. It’s not how it feels. Every day drags. Every week a fresh anxiety or event or statement disturbs the careful orchestration of the march from impotence to power. Every month your competitors, or someone in the media simply bored or irritated by your success, looks to sully the brand, cheapen it, ridicule it. Every year there is a new height to be attained so that the momentum is not lost.

Yet I look back on the stories and commentary during those years, and I deride the feelings of difficulty I had at the time. That was tough? It was a stroll, a breeze, a gentle jog towards the finishing line. I reread the notes, remember the calls, run through the meetings, each one of which mattered so much and, in my mind, contributed so much, and I wonder at the simplicity and ease of it all.

What never changed between Opposition and government was the intensity of the focus. Of course, back then, I was learning and reaching new levels at every important juncture; at the time it naturally felt so much harder and challenging.

As a child you first learn about courage and fear in the playground fight, when the bully bullies and you are scared of being hurt. Finally, at some point, you turn and fight. I can still recall the exact moment for me: aged about ten, outside the gates of Durham Choristers School in the beautiful and ancient Cathedral Close where we first lived when we came to the city, with the old SPCK bookshop and the eighteenth-century houses and cottages beside the Norman splendour of the cathedral.

He wasn’t even a very big bully. Certainly not a very frightening one. I even remember his name. He had been on at me for weeks. I hated it, and dreaded going into the class where he was, and avoided going wherever he would be. Then, for some reason or no reason, out there by the school gates when he came upon me unexpectedly and started up, I turned on him and told him I would hit him if he didn’t stop. He could tell I meant it, because I did and my eyes would have shown it – so he stopped. Silly, isn’t it, to recall that tiny moment of character development after all these years.

Later, you learn courage in different situations: the first time onstage, when you wish you had never agreed to do it, you curse your pretensions and lament your ego, and want only to go back into the corner. But somehow you don’t; you step out. Going down to London aged eighteen on my own for the first time; spending months alone in Paris, as I did after my Bar exams in 1976; making that call; seeking that meeting; pushing and striving and driving. Each step is fearful, yet each refusal means not only remorse at an opportunity missed, but, worse, despising yourself for not even summoning up the courage to try.

Sometimes I marvelled at the way I did indeed step forward, but more often I was aware of the constant struggle to make the choice to do so. For it is a choice. The alternative option always beckons and does so adorned with good arguments: it’s not a propitious moment; it is a risk too far; others are against it; there will be another moment. Often there isn’t, however, and in any event, deep down you know the reason: the fear of being out there, exposed, prone to fail. If you never try to succeed, you never have to fail. So why do it?

There are people I’ve come across who are shorn of such doubt, who have that inner courage to step out instinctively and without forethought, and for whom it is as natural as breathing. Their problem is rather different: mine is about the battle between courage and fear, while theirs is the consequence of being fearless. Fear makes you calculate and calculation can sometimes save you (though over-calculation finishes you off); for those who don’t calculate at all but go headlong, the risk can be foolhardy and lead to downfall. But I always admired that temperament, liked its swagger and absence of manipulation.

After leaving Oxford I had joined the Labour Party. Geoff Gallop, who had left the year before me, had decided to join the Australian Labor Party. ‘It may be a sell-out,’ he said cheerfully, ‘but it’s the only way we are ever going to make change.’ His free spirit had finally rebelled against the dogma and blinkers of the far left, and I suspect he was also prodded by the vast Aussie common sense of his wife Bev.

From 1975 to 1983 I toiled away in various parts of the party. But my views began to shift. For a start I was working, and really hard work it was. Through a girlfriend, I got an introduction to the famous Derry Irvine, then only thirty-six and regarded as one of the best and brightest junior counsels at the Bar. And so began that life-changing relationship.

Derry taught me how to think. In intellectual terms, I had only ‘passed exams’ before meeting Derry, and I hadn’t a clue how to think. I mean really think – analyse, dissect a problem from first principles, and having deconstructed it, construct a solution.

As my pupil master, he was tyrannical but a genius. I used to help write his opinions and do the pleadings. I remember the first time I wrote an opinion, I gave it to him expecting him to read it, make a comment or two and then bin it, because naturally I thought he would write it himself. He glanced at it, signed it and to my horror told me to tell the clerk to put it out. ‘Is that wise?’ I said, absolutely aghast. I mean – I was only a pupil!

‘Well,’ he said, looking up from his desk, ‘it’s your best work, isn’t it?’ He was growling and I was terrified. I stammered something about ‘Well, it was quite difficult and I hope it’s OK, but it’s my first . . .’ etc. He picked it up and literally threw it at me. ‘I don’t want your ramblings, I don’t want your half-thoughts. I want your best work, work that you personally will be responsible for. Understand?’

‘Yes,’ I said humbly.

‘Then come back to me when you’ve done it.’ And he looked back down at his desk. ‘Go on, bugger off,’ he said, without even glancing at me.

I returned with a different and better draft. This time, he told me to sit down and went through it, explaining the faults, questioning the arguments, above all drilling down to the answer. This drilling down is a process that fascinated me then, and fascinates me still.

Most people with a tricky problem grasp that it is difficult, and they think about it. Maybe they read up on it, learn what others have said. They think about which of those solutions they find best. They choose one, or they sort of ‘um and ah’ about it and decide it’s really all too difficult.