A Journey (99 page)

On Africa, we agreed a comprehensive plan of action, based on the Africa Commission. We got the $50 billion uplift in aid, debt cancellation, commitments on Aids treatment, on malaria, on governance and corruption.

On climate change, we agreed to begin the G8+5 dialogue with the express aim of reaching a new global deal that would first slow down emissions and then cut them.

For good measure, we also agreed a package of support for the Palestinian Authority.

But most of all we stood up for proper politics. Even with all the suits, the paraphernalia of summitry, the flat words of the communiqué, the grand surroundings all looking like politics as usual, there was something felt by us all – hardbitten and inured to most political emotions though we were – that was true and real about what we were doing.

I did the press conference in the garden of the hotel. There was the usual nonsense from some NGO bloke about how we had all let Africa down, and the unusual riposte from Bob who basically tore the bloke’s head off for being so negative and followed him down the path from the press area, shouting abuse as only an irate Irishman can.

I recorded an interview with Jim Naughtie for the
Today
programme. I like Jim, but I knew already where it was heading: if we hadn’t gone to Iraq, we might have been spared this. It’s a nightmare of an argument to deal with because, of course, at one level, if you don’t fight these people, it’s possible you don’t feature so much on their hate list. But what does that say about how your foreign policy is determined? And you know that if you give even a sliver of credence to the argument, then suddenly it’s our fault, not theirs, which is, naturally, the very thing they want.

At that moment I was content simply to walk around it and not confront it. However angry it made me feel, at this point there was no point. But I could feel this whole debate moving to a new place, one where I was going to be very isolated, falling out not with the party but with the people. I felt it at a profound level, about us as a country, about our character. I felt it not with any fear of political mortality – though I could sense that coming, but in a way that was both less frantic and more painful.

I had a vision for Britain. All the way I had believed I could and would persuade the country it was the right choice, the modern way, New Britain going along with New Labour. It was about something bigger than Iraq, bigger than the American alliance, bigger than any one thing; a complete vision of where we should be in the early twenty-first century; about how we finally overcome the greatness of our history to discover the full potential of our future.

But now I wasn’t sure I could do it. I wasn’t sure people were really persuadable any more. The forces aligned against me were so many. If I fought back too hard, there would be so much division and bitterness – and yes, be honest, personal pain – when I could so easily be released.

All of this I felt, but put to one side. There would be a later reckoning. For now, I was just relieved that the week had finally come to a close. It had begun in triumph, was enveloped in tragedy and ended in some sort of truth about the best politics could be.

I thought of how the week would be viewed in retrospect. For some families as a moment of supreme bereavement. For others in Africa, unconscious of the efforts made to free them from poverty, hunger, conflict and disease, maybe life instead of death measured not in tens of people, but in millions.

As I staggered through the flat door that Friday night, I looked in on Leo sleeping up in his room, poured myself a drink, decided on a movie – something utterly escapist – tried to focus on the family things Cherie was asking me about, and tried to put it all out of my mind; tried to free myself of the worry of what comes next, of the next call, the next slip of paper, the next confrontation, the next frisson of fear.

I reflected on the awesome nature of the weight on my shoulders; the pain and the excitement. Politics: noble causes, ignoble means; the plans you make and the events that turn them upside down; the untold misery and the imperfect attempts to alleviate it.

I went back upstairs and looked in on Leo again, still sound asleep. A life ahead of him.

How much triumph, how much tragedy, how much happiness and sorrow would he accumulate? How many tears, and to what purpose? I remembered my mum. At fifty-two, I had just passed the age she had been when she died. So young, I thought now. When she was already ill and knew she might die soon, I once asked whether she would go back to being my age, then twenty, and live it all again if she could. ‘No,’ she said, ‘no, too much pain. Wouldn’t like to go through it all again.’

‘But you were happy, Mum, in life, weren’t you?’

‘Yes, of course. But no, I wouldn’t repeat it all, no, definitely not.’

I knew what she meant now: not that it’s better to be dead – of course it isn’t – but going through it all again, the anxiety, the ambitions that have to be fulfilled, the dreams you know will be dashed, so much striving . . . That’s the purpose of life: to strive.

Leo could have been on that Tube train, on that bus. Oh God, don’t let my children die before me. I think of the grief of it, of the fathers and mothers of the soldiers who died in Iraq, in Afghanistan, of the other people, buried in the rubble of Baghdad or Kandahar.

Think of the horror. My responsibility.

I quietly closed the door to Leo’s room and paused for a moment to throw it all off me. Let me forget for a while. Till the time comes to put it back on.

NINETEEN

TOUGHING IT OUT

T
he last two years in office were, in many ways, the best of years and the worst of years. The best because by this time I felt liberated, strong and up for anything. The worst because it was just as well I felt like that. For these two years, the party was revolting; Gordon was in a perpetual state of machination; the anti-Blair media (i.e. most of it) had given up any pretence at objectivity; Iraq teetered on the brink; and when all else failed, there was a police inquiry into me and my staff that very nearly toppled the government without a charge ever being laid. I look back on it now and think: How did you survive it?

In this time, I was trying to wear what was effectively a kind of psychological armour which the arrows simply bounced off, and to achieve a kind of weightlessness that allowed me, somehow, to float above the demonic rabble tearing at my limbs.

There was courage in it and I look back at it now with pride. I was cornered, so it was either go down or fight. I remember years ago a friend of mine in the constituency, who was used to rough neighbourhoods, told me: if you ever get in a street fight, stay upright, never go down. People always think if you’re on the ground they will let you be; they won’t, they will kick you in the head and most likely kill you. So stay on your feet, he warned. They’ll rearrange your face, but you’ll live.

While my face was certainly rearranged, I stayed on my feet and got a lot done.

I had more or less set in my mind a date of mid-2007 – the halfway point of the Parliament – as the right time to leave, but I was open to going sooner if Gordon cooperated, and later if he didn’t. As it happened, he didn’t really, or not in any way that gave me confidence he would continue the programme properly; but I was pushed out regardless after the September 2006 uprising, of which more later.

Despite all the difficulties, I felt enormously confident of what I was doing. Of course, it would have been better to have stayed an extra year or eighteen months and embedded the reform programme still further, better for the party and for the country. Nonetheless, what was done was significant and will last.

The reason for the confidence was that I was now completely on top of the policy agenda. I had ministers in key positions who understood what I was trying to do and why. Although the programme was subject to continual frustration from next door, I could tell Gordon was worried about pushing it too far for fear of Murdoch people and others concluding – as opposed to merely suspecting – that he was against reform.

Each step was a battle; but by then I was inured to it all, ready to get up each day and gird my loins, to go out and fight whatever might be barring the path, not unafraid exactly, but near to being reckless about my own political safety.

It wasn’t that I didn’t do all the normal political body swerves to find a way through, I made the odd tactical compromise, here and there. But by and large, for the first time since I became prime minister, I was guided simply by what I genuinely thought was right on domestic as well as foreign policies. I was prepared at any point to be defeated and walk away, but I was not going to budge on the essential strategic objectives.

In February 2006, I wrote a paper for the meetings that Philip, Alastair and I were having with Gordon, Ed Balls, Ed Miliband and Sue Nye. I was consciously involving them, putting ideas before them, trying actually to persuade them. Several times I offered on sensible terms to go, if there was a proper relationship in the meantime. But by then I was adamant: there would be no voluntary departure unless it was clear the reform programme was going to be continued.

In the February paper I set out a basic template for how we could work and then went through a potential future agenda on each individual item. In addition, I had launched an internal exercise, after much Treasury dissent, called the Fundamental Savings Review. The purpose of the FSR was to get to the point where we could move beyond the catch-up in investment in public services, and instead focus on a smaller, more strategic government. This was, in my mind, right in itself but also critical to dealing with the ‘big state’ and ‘tax and spend’ arguments that I was sure, in time, would pull apart our coalition in the country, and therefore our ability to win. It went back to the argument, already described, during the 2005 election.

Unfortunately, the FSR was fought every inch of the way and was the one element I was unable to put in place prior to departure, it being the one that really did depend on Gordon’s cooperation.

However, the rest of the programme proceeded apace. In the domain of schools reform, in particular with Andrew Adonis now a minister and Conor Ryan my special adviser, we were able to forge ahead with what was a very ambitious programme that finally got me to where I needed to be.

The months before Christmas 2005 had been especially busy. On 25 October, we published a new schools White Paper in which we advocated the idea of independent non-fee-paying state schools. We did not revive the principle of selection, which had so riven the country between grammar schools and comprehensives; but in every other respect we broke with the traditional comprehensive state school. We made it clear that, in time, all schools could and should become self-governing trusts, either foundation schools or academies, with far greater flexibility in staffing and pay, with partners from whatever sector they wished, and as extended schools be part of the community in which they were situated, able to be used by the adult and youth population for learning, sport, leisure and community services.

In a speech in the summer of 2005 to the National Policy Forum, a body which was the product of an earlier reform of the party to make policymaking more rational and less confrontational, I had set out the rationale for reform.

Although by now I was writing most of the crucial speeches myself, Phil Collins, who had joined the team, was by far the best speech-writer I ever had and was helping greatly. Under pressure of time, the speeches would often be written in the early morning in the Downing Street flat. I would get up at about five, slipping quietly downstairs so as not to wake the children, make myself a mug of tea and take it into the sitting room. There, perched on a chair by a round leather-topped table, I would write in longhand, occasionally looking out of the window at the back of the house, watching as people went jogging in St James’s Park or scurried to work in the early-morning light, sometimes stealing a glance at Britain’s most famous home. I wondered about them, what lives they led, what mood they were in that day, what thoughts occupied them, each life a web of friendships, anxieties, ambitions and fears.

In the speech I said:

If it is a system that is keeping people back, the system should change. Not to change it is to say we care more about the system than the people. That is totally unacceptable.

And, of course, the reforms must be the right ones, the changes able to achieve their purpose. But far too often people claim the change is a breach of principle whereas in reality, they’re not protecting a principle but a practice and often an outdated one at that.

The good news, however, is that there are real examples of progress, driven by our willingness to overcome resistance to change but also by the willingness, indeed enthusiasm, of many public servants to let their own creativity and innovation loose. So this is a time to push forward, faster and on all fronts: open up the system, break down its monoliths, put the parent and pupil and patient and law-abiding citizen at the centre of the system. Yes, we’ve made great progress. Let us learn the lessons of it not so as to rest on present achievements but to take them to a new and higher level in the future . . .

Eight years in, there is a body of empirical evidence to draw on. The conclusion of it is plain: money alone doesn’t do it. It is where money has been combined with modernisation of systems, working practices and incentives that the best results have come . . .