A Journey (91 page)

My programme revolved around visits to schools and hospitals, to children’s centres, to the whole infrastructure of public services in which we had invested massively and where the results were coming through. You could see the bricks-and-mortar effect of the money. The statistics on school results, hospital waiting times and crime figures told of the benefits of reform. Ten-year-old pupils ranked third best in the world in literacy and the fastest improving in numeracy, with three-quarters of eleven-year-olds reaching high standards in reading, writing and maths. Less than four-hour waits in accident and emergency for 97 per cent of patients, and virtually no one waiting more than nine months for an operation. Overall crime as measured by the authoritative British Crime Survey down 30 per cent – the equivalent of almost five million fewer crimes a year. Record numbers of police – almost 13,000 more than in 1997 – working with 4,600 new community support officers.

The fresh programme in the manifesto no longer seemed like a politician’s wish list, but the next stage of an already fructifying and coherent plan. The people who worked in the public services felt we were on their side and felt, instinctively, the Tories weren’t. So on the domestic agenda, we were strong.

The Tories had one good issue to beat us with: immigration. In our early years, we had had a real problem with asylum claims made by people who were really economic immigrants. The system to deal with such claims was, as I described earlier, hopelessly out of date. Eventually and after much bureaucratic agony, we had battered it into shape, but illegal immigration persisted as an issue. Britain was not the only country facing such a problem, of course, but I watched with dismay as progressive parties around Europe, one after another, got the immigration issue wrong and lost.

People on the left are, on the whole, people with immensely decent instincts on migrants. They loathe racism and know the issue of immigration is often a carrier for the racist virus. When people in Britain used to say they were against immigration, a goodly proportion would really be against a particular type of immigrant, i.e. a black or brown face. It was unspoken, but everyone knew it was there.

So the tendency for those on the left was to equate concern about immigration with underlying racism. This was a mistake. The truth is that immigration, unless properly controlled, can cause genuine tensions, put a strain on limited resources and provide a sense in the areas into which migrants come in large numbers that the community has lost control of its own future. In our case this concern was natural, given the numbers involved. It was not inspired by racism. And it was widespread. What’s more, there were certain categories of immigrant flow, from certain often highly troubled parts of the world, who imported their own internal issues, from those troubled parts of the world, into the towns and villages in Britain. Unsurprisingly, this caused real anxiety.

Every time we regulated and tightened the asylum laws, I would get grief from well-intentioned progressives who thought I was ‘conceding’ to racism. I used to explain that it was precisely to avoid racism that we had to do it. The laws were a mess. The political challenge was to prevent subjective racism building up into a coalition that was mainstream. But time and again across Europe, right-wing parties would propose tough controls on immigration. Left-wing parties would cry: Racist. The people would say: You don’t get it.

The Tories were desperate to push us into the same bind, so they began a high-profile assault on illegal immigration, claiming that it was not racist to be worried about it and hoping that we would say that it was. Of course, I insisted we did no such thing.

Instead, some way into the campaign I visited Dover, where unfounded asylum claimants were often lodged, and made a speech that directly took on the issue. Gwyn Prosser, the MP for Dover, was someone on the left himself, and canny enough to understand that if he wasn’t armed with an argument that conceded there was a problem, he was not going to be re-elected. I praised the contribution of immigration to Britain, but also acknowledged the problem of illegal immigration. I described how we were going to tackle it. I attacked the Tories for raising the issue without having a policy to deal with it, i.e. they were exploiting the issue, not solving the problem. Rather to their surprise, I put ID cards at the centre of the argument, reasoning that some system of identity check was the only serious way of meeting the challenge. Essentially, after that speech we shut down that Tory attack, and for once the media actually allowed an issue to be aired and debated. Because our position was sophisticated enough – a sort of ‘confess and avoid’, as the lawyers say – we won out.

However, all this did was leave our opponents, especially those in the media, with nothing to go on except Iraq.

The campaign had to be very carefully managed. Well, obviously, you say. But in this instance, we had to be more than usually careful. Wherever we went in the 2005 campaign, anyone who shouted or made a scene captured the news. Of course, the campaign then reacts by trying to ensure it doesn’t get disrupted. Result: media and politics in a stand-off. We feel unfairly treated; they feel unfairly shut out or manipulated.

It was a nightmare for the party organisers, but they were a brilliant and deeply loyal bunch who were prepared to throw themselves in front of a passing train in a heartbeat if it was of help. I had taken care to build a strong party machine. Although it was always going to be harder raising money for this campaign than in 2001, it wasn’t that much harder, and Michael Levy, our chief party fund-raiser, had done superbly well, as ever. Our basic, centre-ground, reasonable, middle-opinion coalition remained solid, and the business community instinctively distrusted the Tories and didn’t like the slightly nasty edge of their policies on Europe and immigration or the personal attacks on me. The Tories were well funded from Eurosceptic sources, but the modern, sensible money stayed with us.

Kate Garvey and the campaign managers also did a great job of preserving our energy, carefully ensuring that we didn’t become exhausted. The TV inquisitions were bound to be challenging. And, self-evidently, the whole thing was really about me – my record, my personality, my decisions. I was on the perch. I was the target. I was the one to knock off. All very obvious and natural, but it meant we had to be extremely careful. And we were.

I was also in a good deal of pain. As I found out later, I fought the entire campaign with a slipped disc. I alternated between trying to appear young and dynamic, bounding up onstage, moving fast, pacing with purpose – all the usual rubbish – and frequently suffering the most agonising twinges as I did so. If that happened, above all, I couldn’t let my expression change. I was more or less continually aware that of the score of photographers who picketed my every move, at least four or five were only there for the bad picture. And, as Diana used to say, the picture is what counts. If you’ve ever suffered back pain, you know what I mean. There’s nothing worse. Actually, there is for a public figure. Back pain is awful, but it is invisible. Visible illness is at all costs to be avoided, especially with our media. Broken limbs are OK, but anything disfiguring and, before you know it, Quasimodo is running for office. Not good.

So I would go from meeting to meeting, each event a risk, each encounter potentially explosive, each remark liable to be scrutinised, each facial expression a cause for either serenity or alarm, each smile a grimace if too small, cheesy if too large . . . And they say political campaigns are overly manufactured. Well, they need to be.

The relations with Gordon were, believe it or not, rather good during the campaign. This was partly because we were together a lot, and I think this calmed him. We had an interesting debate, not quite a contretemps, about tax and spending. My view was that we had reached the limit of spending. We had increased National Insurance to pay for the NHS, yet even with the economy still growing I could sense that enough was enough. We had stayed within New Labour boundaries, but we were bumping up against the fence at points; or so I thought. The third term had to be about making the money work. After all, we had increased investment in health, education and public services by amounts unprecedented outside of wartime. It was always one of the ridiculous things about the charge that we were not really a progressive government. The truth is we made a radical increase in public spending to cure the underinvestment of the Thatcher years; but it was not an end in itself.

Ed Balls was of the opinion that the public wanted even more spending and were prepared for the extra tax, by reference to polls that the Treasury had – which I said was nonsense. On these issues, the public fib. They say they want increased spending, and in theory they do – but in practice they think someone else should pay for it. However, there it is. As I used to say, the public aren’t always logical, but that’s their prerogative. They do expect their government to be, nonetheless.

During the campaign, I slowly but surely started to posture, to be in a position of saying: there are no big increases in tax to pay for more spending coming this time. After all, in 2001, we had fought on keeping income tax constant. We had kept the promise, but a little disingenuously since we had increased National Insurance to pay for the NHS. This was justified. But there was no way we could pull the same trick twice; nor should we try to do so.

Gordon was more inclined to keep all options open, but as the campaign progressed, he found, as I said would happen, that by doing so everyone assumed he was planning a fresh National Insurance hike, which he wasn’t. So over time, perforce, he more or less assumed the same posture as me.

All in all, though, we got on fine and by the end of the second week the poll lead was extending. The strength of our forward agenda, its New Labour nature, the fact we were so manifestly on top of the policy debate – all these were moving people towards us. By contrast, the Tory campaign looked a little paltry, shamefaced even. The Lib Dems were eschewing a highly personal campaign at a leadership level – because Charles Kennedy was essentially a decent bloke – even though locally they basically plastered areas with leaflets of me and George Bush with words that the Socialist Workers would have been proud of.

Two-thirds into the campaign, it was clear we were going to win and win comfortably. As we hit the last days, the media, deprived of a close fight, decided to go on the offensive. People at the BBC were genuinely outraged by Iraq. As the campaign had gone on, they also became outraged that it wasn’t dragging us down in the way they felt it should. It was of course a big part of the campaign, but it didn’t dominate. They thought that was because we were so damned clever. In fact, as I say, it was because while people understood its importance, they also understood its complexity. They didn’t ignore it, but they were wary of it determining the outcome.

The
Mail
had been given a secret copy of the Attorney General’s advice. Like all lawyers’ advice – especially where plainly there are arguments on both sides – it was nuanced, explaining the pros and the cons and coming to a conclusion. We had published the conclusion that on balance the war was lawful, but in accordance with hallowed practice – in this instance, for a very sensible reason – the advice itself remained confidential to all except senior members of the government and the Butler Inquiry, which had been shown it on Privy Council terms.

The
Mail
published excerpts essentially suggesting he had advised the war was unlawful. The BBC took it up. Although we released the entire thirteen-page document the next day, 28 April, they had the opportunity they wanted. Tragically, we lost another soldier shortly before the election day. The result was that the final ten days of the campaign were virtually submerged in Iraq. In desperation, the Lib Dems and Tories returned to the ‘liar’ attack. We lost 3–4 per cent in that final period as votes went to the Lib Dems. The
Mail
didn’t really try to say: Vote them out. Instead it cleverly concentrated, as did the BBC, on effectively saying: Curb the majority. It chimed with the mood – another three-figure majority would have been considered too much. So I suppose the public got what they more or less wanted.

However, as a result, election night felt more like a setback than a victory. I sat in Myrobella waiting for the exit polls. Gordon phoned to tell me Andy Marr, the BBC political editor, had told him that they thought it would be a hung Parliament. I really doubted this. Even with the huge focus they had given Iraq, I was sure Britain wanted the government to survive intact with a proper working majority. Also, I was sure that although in north London and elsewhere a certain type of Labour voter was going to defect, the more aspiring lower-middle-class voter – the core of New Labour – were sticking with us.

Philip Gould phoned to say he thought we could get a majority of eighty. If we had, it would have been fine. Funny that. The difference between sixty-six – what we got – and eighty is only fourteen seats. In fact, if seven were changed, that would be the difference; and we had lost seven at least on the student vote over tuition fees. But the vote at just below 36 per cent was very low for a winning party, and it dampened my spirits.

As ever, I had the count to go through. In my constituency, one of the candidates was Reg Keys, the father of Lance Corporal Tom Keys who was among the six Red Caps killed by a mob in Iraq in June 2003. I felt profoundly sorry for him, sorry that he felt his son had died in vain, convinced that it was all for nothing. I wanted to reach out and talk to him about it; but I knew too that the cameras were ever-watchful for the scene that could define the election in the way they wanted.