Speaking for Myself (46 page)

Balmoral felt almost like a film set the first time I went there, in 1997. Everywhere I looked were stags’ heads and tartan. And being in the Scottish Highlands, it was always cold — even in the first week of September. That first year we went only for lunch, rather than the full weekend, because of Diana’s death.

The atmosphere the next year, the first year we stayed overnight, was noticeably tenser than it was in subsequent years, as 1998 marked the first anniversary of Diana’s death and William and Harry were both visiting their grandmother. Other members of the family were also in evidence. Prince Edward had just got engaged to Sophie Rhys-Jones, I remember, so they were there, as were Princess Anne and Princess Margaret, while the Queen Mother was a fixture until she died. The Queen herself was always very approachable. She has never been anything other than gracious and charming to me, and I admire her enormously. From what I’ve seen, she isn’t half as stuffy as some of her courtiers.

We usually stayed in what was known as the Prime Minister’s Suite, which was warmed by an electric heater, not dissimilar to one my grandma had in Ferndale Road. We had two rooms, one with a double bed, the other with a single. The big bed came complete with feather pillows, which, unfortunately, I am allergic to, though later these were kindly changed. Beside the bed were two bells, one marked “maid” and the other “valet.” The maid who was allocated to me the first year was very young and kept curtsying and calling me “my lady.” “Please don’t call me my lady,” I insisted, but this only flustered her more.

The visit would always start with tea, a proper sit-down affair, with the Queen at the head of a large table, in charge of an urn bubbling with water. She would make the tea herself, from putting the leaves into the pot to the pouring. To eat, there would be cucumber sandwiches, bread, Balmoral honey, and Duchy preserves. (Prince Charles, also known as the Duke of Cornwall, has a commercial venture that makes these jams and chutneys.) It was all delicately done, and the first time, I watched to see what other people did before daring to lift a finger, let alone a teacup.

At six o’clock the Queen would have her audience with Tony, so I would go back to our room to get ready for dinner. Tony would join me later. On our first visit, I was horrified to discover that my suitcase had been unpacked and everything put away in drawers or hung up. We were both puzzled by what turned out to be the traditional country-house practice of laying out the husband’s belongings in the single room. Was he supposed to sleep there? we wondered. Or was he allowed to come and visit me in my double bed?

Bath done and suitably attired, we would go downstairs. Saturday evening was usually a barbecue, but in the event of bad weather, it would be switched to a formal black-tie dinner. Although we always brought the necessary clothes for both, the barbecue was never canceled. As it was, trousers and sweaters were de rigueur, so press reports about the Queen being shocked at my wearing trousers were pure invention.

When Tony and I arrived downstairs on our first visit, it struck me that we had been invited into a private home. The Queen presumably didn’t mind at all — and certainly must have been used to it — but I couldn’t help feeling I was somehow encroaching. Yet everything looked very normal. The Queen was playing cards with the boys, and Prince Edward was tackling a crossword. Family life was just going on, and round the edges were us, the guests — not only Tony and me, but other people, too.

At one point that first year, Princess Anne came over and said something that included “Mrs. Blair.”

“Oh, please call me Cherie,” I said.

“I’d rather not,” she replied. “It’s not the way I’ve been brought up.”

“What a shame,” I said.

My relationship with the Queen’s only daughter went rapidly downhill after that and never recovered.

I got the distinct impression that the Queen Mother thought I didn’t know the first thing about protocol, and she was right. I never really got the hang of it in terms of what you call people and how you greet them. Diana I called “Diana.” Charles I called “Charles,” and in fact I would always kiss him, though I’m not convinced he really liked it. The Queen, however, was always “Ma’am.”

I would watch other people go through the rigmarole. That first weekend, Sophie Rhys-Jones was still clearly finding her feet. When Charles came in, she’d bob. When Anne came in, she’d bob. I decided I’d limit my bobbing to the Queen and the Queen Mother and leave it at that.

The highlight of the visit was undoubtedly the barbecue, though it was not remotely what I’d expected. The barbecue itself was an amazing design, and I was so impressed that I asked where it came from. The answer was unexpected to say the least: Prince Philip had designed it himself, and in fact he very kindly gave us one.

The arrangements never changed. The Queen herself would take the wheel and drive Tony and me across the moor. We’d arrive at about eight. Being so far north, it was still reasonably light, even in September. Prince Philip and his equerry (an officer allocated from one of the services, who spends about a year filling a role somewhere between private secretary, companion, and looker-after) had gone ahead, and by the time we arrived at the little house where the barbecue was held, the grouse stuffed with haggis were already on the flame. (Not traditional barbecue fare, perhaps, but something I can highly recommend.) Venison sausages also were featured regularly on the menu. Plates, cutlery, and salads in plastic containers arrived in a massive hamper on wheels, which was towed behind the Range Rover. Everyone had a job. That first year Prince Edward was in charge of the first course and did a thing with prawns. The Queen laid the table, which was set up in the kitchen near a big wood-burning stove, and I helped her. There was no electricity, and as the light faded, candles took over. There were no staff at all, except the Queen’s equerry. As the evening wore on, the light faded slowly, and we all helped clear up before driving back. It was just fabulous: wonderful landscape, completely empty, and the air so clean.

In September 2002, following the Queen Mother’s death in the spring, I asked the Queen whether she would mind if we had a picture of Leo with her, and so we did. She is very good with small children, and she liked Leo, who really loved her dogs. I remember when he was about eighteen months old, the Queen was showing him how to throw a biscuit to one of the corgis. After he successfully tossed the treat, she told him that they all had to have one now, so he took a handful and flung them across the room. The corgis went wild. “Oh,” she said, “that wasn’t quite what I meant.” But she wasn’t remotely cross at the ensuing mayhem.

By the time Leo was two and a half, he had learned the words to “God Save the Queen,” and at the end of our stay he sang it to her on his own. Her Majesty was very gracious and congratulated him. (All praise to Jackie, who had taken a lot of trouble over it.)

Leo was really the person who broke the ice at Balmoral. Once he came along, the whole atmosphere completely changed. Indeed, during our first visit I was on edge the whole time, thinking,
Oh, my God, what faux pas am I going to make next?
But over the years we got used to each other. The Queen was clearly very fond of Tony, and the last time we went, I was really sad to think that we would never go there again.

Whereas the Queen is very approachable, I can’t say the same about her sister, Princess Margaret, whom I met several times at Balmoral. One evening I was at the Royal Opera House for some gala performance. As I was talking to her about what we’d seen, Chris Smith came over.

“Have you met Chris Smith, our culture secretary, Ma’am?” I asked.

She peered at him.

“And this is his partner,” I continued.

“Partner for what?”

I took a breath. “Sex, Ma’am.”

She stalked off. She knew exactly what kind of partner I meant. She was just trying to catch me out.

Her niece, Princess Anne, and I similarly never found an accord. The reason, I think, was less our slightly awkward meeting when we were first introduced at Balmoral than her perception that I was was egging Tony on with a proposed ban on foxhunting. Anne had very strong feelings about the matter, which she made clear to me when Tony and I attended a state banquet at Windsor Castle while the bill was going through Parliament. Prince Charles and Prince Andrew, by contrast, who also had strong views on the subject, were extremely civilized about it.

I actually had no feelings on the issue whatsoever, but that message did not get through to the pro-foxhunting lobby. In September 2004 my fiftieth birthday party at Chequers was stormed by a group of hunt supporters. The party had been due to start at seven-thirty, but with protesters blocking the gates, only three guests somehow managed to beat the blockade. It looked as if we were in for a quiet evening.

Tony was in a pessimistic mood. “I warned you, Cherie. I told you we shouldn’t have a party in our position.” We certainly hadn’t had one the previous year for his fiftieth, because of the Iraq War.

Eventually, after inviting the leader of the protesters in, Tony charmed her into seeing reason. They had made their point, he said, so perhaps now they could unblock the road. From then on, his mood lightened considerably. Gradually the friends who had been diverted by the police to a nearby supermarket parking lot started drifting in, but it was nine o’clock before the party got going. For many of our guests, it was a strange experience: in their youth they more likely would have been on the picket line. In the end everyone agreed that this was one birthday party they would never forget, between the picketers and Tony himself up with the band and having a brilliant time, letting his hair down for what seemed like the first time in years.

Chapter 30

Going the Distance

I
n September 2003, no sooner were we back from Balmoral than Tony was off again, this time to Berlin for talks with Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schröder on the rebuilding of Iraq. It was no wonder he always seemed so tired: no world leader before him had undertaken so much traveling. Next in the round of talks were the Aznars. At least they were coming to us. That evening over dinner, the conversation again came round to José Maria’s decision to stand down at the end of his second term in 2004.

A few weeks later, we were at Chequers for the weekend. Tony had been down at the police guardhouse, where they had a small gym, exercising on the running machine, and he came back looking distinctly gray. He had a pain in his chest, he said. He didn’t understand: no matter how much effort he put in, he was short of breath and didn’t seem to be getting any fitter. I said I was going to call the doctor. He told me not to be ridiculous, but I did anyway.

Dr. Shah was the resident GP at the local Royal Air Force base, and he expressed amazement that the Prime Minister didn’t have his own doctor on hand. I told him that he had probably been offered one but, knowing my husband, had said no. Dr. Shah arranged for him to go immediately to the local hospital. I went with him.

At the hospital they erred on the side of caution, saying they’d prefer to send him to London. A garden girl arrived at Hammersmith Hospital in London shortly after we did and sat outside the consulting room throughout, with the prime ministerial red box. Tony’s condition, the consultant explained, was an irregular heartbeat, which was usually cured by an electric shock. The procedure would take seconds, so we didn’t need to involve John Prescott, whose job, as Tony’s deputy, was to take charge if Tony couldn’t. Tony immediately felt a lot better.

Although he’d been advised to take a daily aspirin as a precaution, he thereafter made no effort to do so. Not surprisingly, the pain came back a year later. Now it was decided that an operation was necessary. Again it was something quite simple, though he would need to have a general anesthetic, albeit for a matter of minutes. This time John would have to be involved.

The 2004 Labour Party Conference was coming up, and Tony was determined to wait to have surgery until it was over. In my view, the stress of having to write that speech was unlikely to improve matters, and I told him I’d rather they did it straightaway. Again he took no notice. I took matters into my own hands and fixed for him to go into the hospital on the Friday after conference ended, which is usually a very quiet day.

In 1997, at his first Labour Party Conference as Prime Minister, Tony both promised and warned that his tenure would be a time of “high ideals and hard choices.” Never was that truer than in Iraq. There were times when I faltered, when I was worried about the direction that things were taking in Iraq, and I would have to remind myself that I did not have the overall picture that Tony did. But because I believed in his judgment, I was prepared to put aside the doubts; I knew him and knew he would never do the wrong thing. He had enormous strength of conviction, a quality I had recognized very early on, and my job as his wife was to support him.

Although in 2004 conference had voted four to one against pulling our troops out of Iraq, over the previous year the pressure on Tony had became increasingly intense. There was Iraq, and there was Gordon. Gordon wanted to become Prime Minister so much that he failed to understand that had he merely been prepared to implement Tony’s programs involving education, health care, and pensions, Tony would have stood down, no question. Instead Tony felt that he had no option but to stay on and fight for the things he believed in.

As the tension began to mount inside Number 10, Tony once again began to consider standing down, and I felt helpless to do anything. Of course such a close relationship in the hothouse atmosphere of politics was always going to be difficult. Gordon wanted to be leader, and he had a perfect right to want that. Yet my sympathies inevitably lay with Tony, and I wanted him to go on his own terms. The effect that the constant friction had on my husband colored my feelings. I accept that I am not objective on this — and, frankly, it would be odd if I were. Nor am I blind to the many good qualities Gordon has. But I am intensely loyal to Tony and resented any pressure that was put on him.