Of course the press did get to hear of it. Under the headline ‘Traitor Roy’s Lessons in Leadership: Labour’s most hated deserter is now teaching Blair how to run No. 10’, the Sunday Express splashed a big story by Peter Oborne alleging that ‘Twaiterous Woy, the pompous claret-sipping defector’ had been seen mingling easily with New Labour at the launch of Peter Mandelson’s book at the Reform Club. ‘So enamoured has Mr Blair become with Lord Jenkins that he is now privately taking lessons from him in how to run the country . . . regular classes in the art of government.’ An accompanying cartoon portrayed Jenkins as a schoolmaster (with mortar board and cane) and Blair as a schoolboy (in shorts and cap) in front of a blackboard saying: ‘1. Sign up to Single Currency. 2. Stamp on Unions. 3. Ditch the Left. 4. Drink Claret.’ Labour MPs were said to be ‘incredulous’. ‘It is absolutely wrong for the Labour leader to be having the sort of relationship with a politician from another party – and it stinks that he is talking to scum like Roy Jenkins.’ The number of double-defectors from the SDP like Liddle and Andrew Adonis now running Blair’s office was taken as further evidence that ‘Mr Blair plans to turn his party into an SDP Mark II’.101
The Permanent Secretaries’ dinner was not repeated, but the social contacts continued throughout 1996 and into 1997. Tony and Cherie dined again at Kensington Park Gardens on 24 April and brought the children to another family lunch at East Hendred on 1 September; Roy and Jennifer dined with the Blairs in Islington in January. At first Jenkins was ‘ebullient’, telling Ashdown after their April dinner that Blair had told him ‘three or four times’ that he intended to include two or three Liberal Democrats in the Cabinet even if Labour won an outright majority; and (again) that he was ‘moving towards PR’. While he acknowledged that selling it to the Labour Party might be difficult, ‘I think he means it.’102 In June he came up with a characteristic visual metaphor for Blair’s historic task:
He said he had formed an image of Blair, which he had described to him, that he was like a man with a very large, utterly priceless crystal bowl, condemned to walk miles and miles down slippery passageways, with events like the Harman affair [a controversy about Harriet Harman’s decision to send her children to private schools] bowling around blind corners to knock him over. His role in history was to get to the other end without dropping the bowl. Blair had apparently laughed at this and said it was very accurate.
‘I am not sure that he will make a great Prime Minister,’ Jenkins told Ashdown. ‘But I think of all the people I know in British politics I enjoy meeting and talking to him most . . . I can think of no other Prime Minister or possible Prime Minister who would be so self-deprecating – I find it rather attractive.’103
In August 1996 he sent Blair off to Tuscany with a pile of history books to read; and after their post-holiday lunch at East Hendred wrote to Ashdown that he had ‘no doubt at all about his [Blair’s] philosophical commitment to a radical centre strategy. It is the nuts and bolts which pose the problems, e.g. PR. But I think he will ultimately subordinate them to the wider strategy.’104 In an interview with the Glasgow Herald in September he tried to play down exaggerated expectations, but set out the four minimal objectives he hoped to see from a Blair government: a better deal for the poor; improved public services; improved relations with Europe; and an end to single-party government.105 By the New Year, however, the likelihood of the last was fading as Ashdown warned him that Blair was growing cool on the idea. Jenkins promised to talk to him – ‘I know Roy’s influence on Blair will be strong.’106 But the morning after his dinner in Islington Jenkins reported gloomily: ‘My brain did not seem to be working last night. Tony and I had a good dinner. But I am bound to agree with you that the project is not looking good. He feels he cannot now deliver what he promised you.’107
Others were coming to the same conclusion. Anthony Lester told Hugo Young that the Lib Dems were being ‘hoodwinked’ by the Cook–Maclennan commission, since Labour would give nothing on PR and was stubborn on House of Lords reform. ‘A general disillusionment. Shirley almost wants to break off all talks. Jenkins, Rodgers, Cornford etc. etc. are all disillusioned.’108, fn11 When Jenkins tried to break the deadlock by raising publicly the goal of eventual merger, Shirley Williams quickly disassociated herself on the ground that such talk destroyed both the case for PR and the Lib Dems’ bargaining power vis-à-vis Labour. He was entitled to his view, but she and Bill Rodgers should have been consulted. ‘I appreciate that you feel much more at ease with New Labour than I do, and you know Tony Blair and I don’t. I very much hope you are right. On the other hand, Labour’s recent stances on Home Office bills aren’t encouraging.’109
Blair, on the other hand, thanked Jenkins for his ‘excellent’ speech, keen to assure him that ‘the project’ was still on course:
I hope all is well on the Lab/LibDem front. But the next few weeks are bound to be difficult as the parties fight each other on the ground. But the launch of the document [the Cook–Maclennan report] went well, I thought. Let us stay in touch and if anything is happening which concerns you, don’t hesitate to call . . . Fingers crossed. I remain as committed as ever to what we both want to achieve.
Yours ever, Tony.110
Peter Mandelson wrote similarly a few days later: ‘We’ve started well but there’s a long way to carry our priceless vase across that slippery floor.’111
The same day Major finally called the General Election for 1 May. Jenkins again played little active part in the campaign. Richard Holme told Hugo Young that he would be used ‘sparingly, on grounds of image’ (whereas Shirley Williams would be used a lot); though Jenkins was going to do a rally in Harrogate – where Norman Lamont had sought refuge after his safe seat in Surrey was abolished – ‘with much relish’.112 He did one press conference with Ashdown and Steel two days before polling, where Ashdown thought him ‘on wonderful form . . . dismissive of Blair in a light-hearted way. He said he had been disappointed “by Blair’s timidity”.’113 Apart from that his main visibility (as in 1992) was appearing on BBC television three mornings a week during the campaign to comment as an ‘Elder Statesman’ with Norman Tebbit and Roy Hattersley (replacing Denis Healey) under the chairmanship of Robin Day. But his diary was as packed as ever with mainly non-political lunches, dinners, talks and meetings. In the penultimate week, for instance, he lunched with Nicko Henderson on Monday, Caroline Gilmour on Tuesday (followed by dinner at the Italian Embassy in the evening), Laura Phillips on Wednesday, Sir Robert Fellowes (the Queen’s private secretary) on Thursday (with a speech to the Institute of Directors in the evening) and Robert Harris (in Oxfordshire) on Friday, topped off with a recording of Any Questions? (from Northamptonshire) in the evening. That weekend he worked on his next book in the intervals between lunching with Max Hastings on the Saturday and entertaining the Goodharts and Tickells at East Hendred on the Sunday. On the Monday morning he was back in the ‘Elder Statesmen’ studio in London at 8 a.m., followed by lunch with Ronnie McIntosh and a talk at the Bath Literary Festival in the evening, before driving back to London. Tuesday morning was his press conference with Ashdown and Steel, followed by Nancy Seear’s funeral, lunch with Shirley Anglesey and a meeting of the Pilgrims’ Trust in the early evening. On Wednesday morning he did his last ‘Elder Statesmen’ programme, then took the train to Glasgow, where he did a number of meetings in Hillhead, then on to St Andrews for an eve-of-poll rally for Ming Campbell. Finally back to London on Thursday for lunch with Leslie Bonham Carter, before Bill and Sylvia Rodgers came to Kensington Park Gardens to dine and watch the election results (until 3.15 a.m.).114 And this was a man of seventy-six.
Like many others, he must have gone to bed immediately after the defeat of Michael Portillo in Enfield, which was announced at 3.10 – the moment that crowned the overwhelming rejection of the Conservatives after eighteen years. Labour won 418 seats (with 43 per cent of the poll), reducing the Tories to just 165 (from 31 per cent), while Ashdown’s Liberal Democrats more than doubled th
eir number to forty-six (from 17 per cent – though this was actually their lowest vote since 1979). The result clearly revealed an informal pact whereby Labour and Lib Dem supporters voted tactically for whichever was better placed to beat the Tory – just as Jenkins had hoped, but with no promises as to what should happen next. He was up again at 6.15 to write a quick piece for the Evening Standard and then meet Paddy Ashdown and Richard Holme to discuss what the Lib Dems should do in the new situation created by Blair’s huge majority, as he no longer had any need of their support. Jenkins suggested that if Blair still offered a full coalition agreement, with at least two Cabinet ministers plus some policy changes like independence for the Bank of England, they should accept it, ‘but if they didn’t we had better not. Broadly, he was in favour.’ But he later confessed that he would be relieved if Blair made no such offer – as of course he did not. He claimed to think that Labour’s big majority might actually make it easier to work with them.115 In his Evening Standard article he welcomed the scale of Blair’s victory, despite his vague manifesto, arguing from history that great reforming governments – the Liberals in 1906, or Franklin Roosevelt in 1932 – were often elected on vague mandates. Unlike Wilson in 1964, Blair was lucky to face no immediate crisis. But Jenkins urged him to seize his opportunity. ‘I would expect a cautious beginning with old Labour’s dogma left well behind, and the hope that some green shoots of boldness may fairly soon begin to show.’116
For a year the mutual flattery continued. Jenkins used his newspaper columns to praise the government’s first steps, while Blair kept on assuring Jenkins that he still wanted to bring their two parties closer together. They spoke on the telephone twice in the new government’s first three days; and three weeks after the election Blair wrote to thank Jenkins for his good wishes:
Of all the letters I have received, none has meant more to me. You have been an inspiration to me throughout. Yes, the vase arrived intact, but now I feel I am carrying a new one – altogether more valuable! Government beats Opposition. But I fear for when, as will inevitably happen, things get very rough. Incidentally we are proceeding on the Lib Dem front.117
What that meant was that a joint consultative committee was established to give the Lib Dems some unofficial input into the government’s proposed constitutional reforms. (It soon turned out to be little more than a sop, however: it met only quarterly, achieved little and was wound up in 2000.) Three weeks later Jenkins and Ashdown dined with the new Prime Minister and Peter Mandelson (now a minister in the Cabinet Office) in the flat at Number Eleven Downing Street to discuss the way forward.fn12 In another of his graphic images Jenkins compared the two parties to two teams of mountaineers on either side of the Alps, very close but separated by a formidable barrier. But on this occasion his talk of Labour and the Lib Dems forging a ‘permanent and ever closer’ relationship was too much for Ashdown, who was not interested in merging his party out of existence: he preferred the word ‘durable’. Blair still professed to want to bring the Lib Dems into coalition eventually, and Mandelson and Holme were charged with drawing up a timetable. But Ashdown’s immediate objective was still proportional representation. Before the election Blair had promised an inquiry into the possible options for electoral reform, and Ashdown now pressed him that Jenkins was the obvious person to chair it.118
In accepting this suggestion, Blair can have been in no doubt that Jenkins would recommend moving to some form of proportional system; while Jenkins made it clear that he would not accept the commission unless Blair practically promised him that he would act on his recommendation. Blair had some difficulty getting the commission’s remit agreed by Jack Straw, the Home Secretary, who was ‘opposed root and branch’ to PR and tried to get ‘proportionality’ removed from its brief.119 But eventually – in late October – he acceded to Jenkins’ blandishments and overruled his Home Secretary. Relaying this to Ashdown, Jenkins became ‘quite emotional’, telling him that ‘This is a very big event indeed’ and complimenting Ashdown on the way they had worked together to achieve it. ‘I think I can say that I have never enjoyed a closer or more constructive relationship in politics.’120 A week later in Number Ten, in the presence of three officials, they thought they had definitely pinned Blair down to an irreversible commitment. Jenkins denied having said he would only take the job if Blair promised to accept his recommendation:
I couldn’t conceivably ask that of a prime minister. However, I don’t want to take this on unless you have, at least, a strong disposition to accept what I recommend. Ultimately, if you feel you must reject it you must do so. But I will want to know at the start that you are at least minded to accept.
Blair assured him that he was. As they walked back down Whitehall, Ashdown and Jenkins agreed that they had ‘crossed a historic watershed’. ‘We have got what we want,’ Ashdown wrote in his diary. ‘Just a little work to be done tying up the loose ends.’121 When his chairmanship of an ‘Independent Commission on the Voting System’ was announced on 24 November, Jenkins believed that Blair would find it ‘almost impossible now to turn down the recommendations of the commission’.122
He really thought he had been handed the opportunity to redesign the electoral system according to his own prescription. He had a good idea of what he proposed to recommend before he started, but he was determined that it should be a thorough and authoritative piece of work, so he took it extremely seriously and made sure he carefully considered all the possible options. It was not a one-man job: Blair and Straw gave him four colleagues to share the load, representing all parties, but all broadly sympathetic to their ‘proportional’ remit. They were David Lipsey, once Tony Crosland’s political adviser, now an Economist journalist; Baroness (Joyce) Gould, until recently Labour’s director of organisation; Robert (‘Bob’) Alexander, a QC, former chairman of the Bar Council, now a Tory peer and chairman of the NatWest bank; and Sir John Chilcot, once Jenkins’ private secretary in the Home Office, recently retired Permanent Secretary in the Northern Ireland Office. Jenkins himself gave up the leadership of the Lib Dem peers (after ten years) to focus on his task. He used all his diplomatic skill to bring his four colleagues along with him; but there was never any doubt that it was going to be his report. They were provided with an office where they met and with secretarial and research support by the Home Office; they invited written submissions from the political parties and other interested bodies, held public consultations around the country and made a number of journeys to study different electoral systems in other countries, including Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, though Jenkins did not himself go on all of these. In fact the only overseas trip he went on was to Bonn to study the West German system, which, he later wrote, ‘had far more influence upon us than any other system’.123 The report occupied him for the first nine months of 1998. During that time David Lipsey thought his ‘stamina, humour, patience and drive would have been extraordinary in anyone; in a man of seventy-eight they were beyond belief’.124
Though they all contributed, Jenkins wrote most of the report himself: his first draft, completed in July 1998, comprised sixty-six closely handwritten pages. The result was exceptionally well written for a public document, enlivened by characteristic stylistic flourishes. (‘Vintage stuff,’ Andrew Rawnsley called it in the Observer, ‘Grand Cru Jenkins 1998.’)125 It opened with a lucid exposition of the four ‘not entirely compatible’ objectives the commission was required to take into account:
broad proportionality;
the need for stable government;
an extension of voter choice;
the maintenance of a link between MPs and geographical constituencies.
Fortunately none of these ‘requirements’ was absolute, so they had done their best to reconcile all four criteria. They were not, Jenkins insisted, ‘being asked to impose a new electoral system on the British public’:
What we are being asked to do is to recommend the best alternative system which will then be put to the British electorate in a
referendum . . . The one proposition which is guaranteed a place upon the referendum ballot paper is the maintenance of the status quo. Our role is merely to recommend what the alternative should be.
While no system was perfect, ‘some systems are nonetheless much better than others, and we have endeavoured to seek relative virtue in an imperfect world’.126
There followed a concise and readable account of the theory and purpose of representation and the virtues and increasingly glaring defects of first-past-the-post (FPTP), illuminated both from history and from Jenkins’ own experience of the past forty years, followed by a brief examination of other, more proportional, systems used in other countries, rejecting most of them. Turning to possible alternatives for Britain, the report considered first the Alternative Vote (AV) and other systems that allowed the retention of single-member constituencies; then the Single Transferable Vote (STV) in multi-member constituencies; before making the case for a mixed system by which the majority of MPs would be elected in single constituencies by AV, topped up by a proportion – not more than one-fifth – who should be elected on a regional basis to ensure a broad parity between votes and members. This, the Additional Member System (AMS), came to be known as AV Plus.fn13 The report was published with appendices providing dummy ballot papers and a map dividing the country into eighty large ‘top-up’ constituencies. It was not entirely unanimous: Bob Alexander insisted on including a reservation accepting the principle of AMS, but preferring that the constituency members should be elected by FPTP, not AV. But this was a detail.
Roy Jenkins Page 94
