by Blair, Tony
At the end of the conference I had another situation to handle. The previous year I had suffered arrhythmia for the first time, a heart condition that means that the top part of the heart can start to beat out of sync with the bottom part. It then causes an irregular heartbeat, breathlessness and a feeling of being tired. If untreated, it can cause a stroke (yes a stroke, strangely enough, rather than a heart attack). It had been treated by a process which essentially jump-starts the heart back into rhythm.
In the summer of 2004 I had noticed that the arrhythmia had come back. The recurrence had left me short of breath (it was most apparent in the gym and I realised something was wrong). This time the doctors said I should have a surgical procedure known as an ablation, which effectively burns off the bit of the heart that is short-circuiting. Anyway, don’t ask me to debate the medical details; I just asked for the advice, got it and took it. The date for the operation was set for straight after party conference.
Gordon was still in a highly dangerous mood. In his conference speech he had gone out of his way to extol the merits of ‘Real Labour’. It was, of course, a mistake, but it was also an ominous signal to the party. I felt I had to deal with the leadership issue.
Against much advice, I resolved to say I would fight the next election but not the one after. Many people thought it fatal ever to say when you may stand down. I pointed out that this was the view Margaret Thatcher took, and a fat lot of good it did her. Past a certain point, you’re damned either way. Say you are going, and they say: Why stay? Say you will carry on without limit, and they say: You intend to go on forever. There is no easy way.
I decided to throw so much at the media that they wouldn’t quite know what to make of it all, and I gave them three stories at once: I would fight the third election but not the fourth; I had bought a house; I was having a heart operation. It was the only way to do it and I was highly amused by the spluttering and reeling as they tried to work out the ‘true’ significance of the stories being released simultaneously, since of course it wouldn’t do simply to report the three things as they were. David Hill handled it brilliantly. I had my operation. The house was bought. And so was some time.
SEVENTEEN
2005: TB/GB
The 2005 election was ugly: fraught in its build-up; marred in its running by internal disputes; vicious in the nature of the campaign; and precarious in its aftermath. I didn’t look forward to it. I didn’t enjoy doing it. But we won. Looking back on a majority of more than sixty over all the other parties combined, it seems like a minor miracle. Which, in one sense, it was.
I had taken the country into an unpopular war with a very unpopular Republican American president. The war had finally allowed right and left opposition to find a point of unity. In terms of my personal political position, it gave the party a reason to think if we could only lose that albatross, we could renew with Gordon as leader.
All of it obscured what was actually a more fundamental and important truth: the basic position of New Labour was still the dominant and determining centre of gravity for British politics. We had won despite all the drawbacks, despite the war, the length of time I had been prime minister, tuition fees (which cost us dear), the internal wrangle with Gordon, and a fairly incessant drumbeat of negative and destructive criticism from right and left. This was an election we were never destined to win with enthusiasm, but as I tried to point out in the post-election dissection and analysis, the crucial thing was: we were never going to lose.
The Queen’s Speech of November 2004 had gone surprisingly well. The legislative programme – always a bit of a weird vehicle to describe what the government wants to do – had vigour and lift. We had a strong agenda in the election. The platform was indisputably New Labour and there were detailed plans in all main areas of policy: on schools, especially academies; on the next stages of NHS reform; on welfare, crime, ID cards; on housing and planning; on local government; and even on a new industrial strategy. Frankly, with the media climate as it was – and by then the BBC were more or less in a monotheme on Iraq – there was never going to be much coverage of policy, especially domestic policy. But here’s a curious thing about the public. Even without knowledge of the policy detail, they sensed that we were a government with a programme, a party that still retained a sense of mission, with a leader who could still lead. The ministers and party had something to carry with them, that kept them focused even as they struggled with the onslaught around Iraq, ‘Blair the liar’, ‘time for a change’ and the general static of a raw and nasty campaign. Though the Tories had a set of policies, they seemed more like a set of talking points designed to provoke anger or grievance, but not reflection or the mobilisation of a plan for the nation’s future.
George Bush had been re-elected US president. I am, of course, a Democrat, and I liked John Kerry and thought he would have made a good president. But the issue, whatever my own political tribe, was – in terms of perception – completely obvious: a defeat for Bush was a defeat for Blair.
Also, as I have said, I had come to like and admire George. I was asked recently which of the political leaders I had met had most integrity. I listed George near the top. In what was a fairly liberal audience, some people were aghast. Others even tittered, thinking I was joking. But I meant it. He had genuine integrity and as much political courage as any leader I ever met. I said to my audience: You can disagree with him on Iraq (which I didn’t) or on other issues (which I did), and still accept he sincerely believed in spreading freedom and democracy.
He was, in a bizarre sense (bizarre because it appears counter-intuitive), a true idealist. I remember at the time of the Palestinian elections in January 2005 when many people thought they should be postponed, George was all for them going ahead. He didn’t ignore or fail to comprehend the advice that this might give Hamas a victory; he simply said: ‘If that’s what people think, let’s find it out.’
It’s one of the oddest things about modern politics. The paradigm imposed, usually by a particular media view, completely disorients the proper analysis. I used to smile at the way the Obama/McCain election of 2008 was framed: Barack was the man of vision, John the old political hack. One seemed to call America to a new future, the other seemed a stale relic of the past. This was a paradigm that determined the mood and defined the election.
Actually, it was John who was articulating a foreign policy that could be called wildly idealistic for the cause of freedom. Barack was the supreme master of communicating a brilliant vision, but he was a practitioner of realism, advocating a cautious approach based on reaching out, arriving at compromises and striking deals to reduce tension. For these purposes, leave alone who is right. It’s just a really interesting feature of modern politics that the mood trumps the policy every time.
So it was with George. He was basically considered a right-wing Republican bastard for getting rid of hostile brutal dictatorships and insisting they be replaced not with friendly brutal dictatorships but with an attempt at liberal democracy. Of course, part of this feeling was an entirely natural dislike of war. Part was also the Republicans’ fault for allowing this ridiculous notion of ‘neoconservatives’ to take hold. I often warned George of this.
It meant that the war was presented as ideological in a right/left sense, instead of being presented in a manner that could unify, something which so easily and correctly could have been done. Even Guantánamo, a policy that was both understandable and, done in a different way, justifiable, came to be seen as a poke in the eye for all those who believed in the rule of law.
The truth is that the prisoners picked up in the war zone of Afghanistan were, in a sense, prisoners of war. In normal circumstances, the war ends, they are returned; we all live peacefully ever after. Except in this case, the war hadn’t ended and wasn’t a conventional war. There was no way of proving, as in a proper court of law, that they were ‘guilty’. On the other hand, many of them would undoubtedly be a threat if released. But the whole way it was handled wa
s done almost in the most provocative way possible, as if we deliberately sought to alienate liberal opinion rather than try to face up to the reality of the dilemma for our security.
But in any event, George’s re-election had deprived those inside and outside the party of another hammer to hit me with, and their profound disappointment was evident.
Other events came and went: the Queen opened the new and controversial (because expensive) Scottish Parliament building in Edinburgh in October 2004; Yasser Arafat died in November; in December I lost David Blunkett as Home Secretary, over accusations that he had fast-tracked a visa application for the nanny of his ex-partner.
I was really sorry for him. He had allowed himself to fall for someone who was wholly unsuitable and married, and who had also conceived their child. David had told me about it some months before, very honestly and with deep regret. He was long divorced himself, his boys were grown up, he got lonely; simple as that. However, this particular relationship was never going to work – he was devoted to the baby, but the mother was not going to leave her husband, and the situation was plainly destabilising for him and impossible either to maintain or to keep secret. When it came out, I stuck by him but the media were going to invent something to get him out. There was going to be a conflict of interest. One was duly found in the visa application. It didn’t actually amount to anything, but by then it no longer mattered. The pain and stress were making it hard for him to do his job. So he went.
We had an emotional farewell. I determined to try to bring him back after the election. I adored and deeply admired David, and also found his whole attitude over his child – he wouldn’t give up on access, despite the threat of publicity if he proceeded – very principled. He was a truly decent guy, a great political talent. He picked the wrong woman. Easy to do. Fatal in politics.
I was due to take a break in Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt over the new year. As I prepared to leave Chequers, I took a phone call about a tsunami in Asia on Boxing Day. I hesitated about leaving. It was likely that thousands had been killed, with British casualties bound to be among them.
I decided to go. I had been working flat out. Leo had barely seen me recently. I had just returned from yet another fairly gruelling European Council. I had an election coming. The fallout from the tsunami would in any event be handled on the phone. Sharm was nearer the relevant time zone. However, I knew I would be criticised for going. And I was.
The days in Sharm were divided between calls from early morning until late lunch and then relaxation later. We arranged for all the help we could. We got our foreign and consular services, and our forensics and police, to help the authorities in Indonesia and Thailand; and to look after the administrative challenge of helping families who were grieving or still forlornly searching for their loved ones. As it turned out, I knew the families of some of the victims, including Dickie and
Sheila Attenborough, who had lost their daughter, granddaughter and their daughter’s mother-in-law.
As ever in these situations, I was desperately sorry for the bereaved. When I spoke to Dickie – who is just a superlative human being – he was crying. I thought of how I would feel to lose Euan or Nicky or Kathryn – his granddaughter was fourteen – and realised the sense of devastation. My heart ached for him.
When I returned home, I had plenty to occupy me. One piece of excellent news was the defection of Robert Jackson, the Conservative MP for Wantage. Robert had been a don at All Souls College, Oxford and an education minister in the previous Tory government, and was totally onside with tuition fees, recognising them as an essential step forward for higher education. He had a rather upper-class air to him that hid what was, in fact, a warm and delightful personality. I put Alastair (with whom I remained in close contact) on handling duty, and it all went pretty well.
Interestingly, in the light of what I did later, I organised a conference in London to support capacity-building for the Palestinian Authority and its new leader President Mahmoud Abbas, or Abu Mazen as he was known.
The truth is, I was still absolutely set on a strategy that had a twin track – hard and soft. Hard: we see through Iraq and Afghanistan. Soft: we deliver Palestinian statehood. Whereas the international community, in its usual purblind way, saw disengagement from Gaza as a ‘unilateral’ Israeli act and therefore wrong, I was emphatic that it could be presented as lifting the occupation and removing settlements. For all the problems, therefore, we had no serious option but to go with it.
Ariel Sharon was an extraordinary man. He would drive you mad at meetings, just sitting there telling you about terrorism as if we in Britain had never heard of it; lecturing; hectoring; and above all, even when you agreed with him, continuing to talk as if you had just contradicted him. I used to walk out of meetings, saying to my officials, ‘Does he think I’m French?’
But at the same time as being utterly maddening, he was a real leader. A big man in every sense. Really tough, uncompromising, and if he didn’t want to be moved, unmovable. Someone who took no nonsense from anyone, including his own supporters. He made it as hard as possible to support his disengagement policy in Gaza. He did it in as alienating a way as could be imagined for international opinion. But as I pointed out in arguments with other leaders, so what? He has Israeli opinion to worry about, I used to say, and they’ve had four years of terrorism. They aren’t going to do it in a way that looks as if it is helping Palestine or appeasing Western sensibilities. There’s no disputing one simple fact: Israel has left Gaza, so let’s make the most of it.
The London conference was a success, but I wasn’t sure George’s heart was yet fully in it, and Condoleezza Rice, newly appointed as Secretary of State, was feeling her way. With everything else and the election, I scarcely had time to focus on Palestine anything other than intermittently.
(Later Condi came to focus on the Middle East and did so with vigour and an effect that, had it not been for the convulsions of 2008 in Israeli politics, may well have succeeded. She is a remarkable human being, extraordinarily clever, committed and, if she has a fault, probably too decent for the world of politics. She is also a classic example of the absurdity of people with experience and capacity at the highest level not having big political jobs after retirement from office. But that’s another point!)
The early months of 2005 were peppered with my internal notes, setting out election plans, going back over in minute detail the upcoming grid of statements, tearing my hair out at announcements from government departments at the most inconvenient moments. The Civil Service had really got into the groove of ‘transparency’ with the coming into effect, after several years’ legislating, of the Freedom of Information Act on 1 January 2005.
Freedom of Information. Three harmless words. I look at those words as I write them, and feel like shaking my head till it drops off my shoulders. You idiot. You naive, foolish, irresponsible nincompoop. There is really no description of stupidity, no matter how vivid, that is adequate. I quake at the imbecility of it.
Once I appreciated the full enormity of the blunder, I used to say – more than a little unfairly – to any civil servant who would listen: Where was Sir Humphrey when I needed him? We had legislated in the first throes of power. How could you, knowing what you know, have allowed us to do such a thing so utterly undermining of sensible government?
Some people might find this shocking. Oh, he wants secret government; he wants to hide the foul misdeeds of the politicians and keep from ‘the people’ their right to know what is being done in their name.
The truth is that the FOI Act isn’t used, for the most part, by ‘the people’. It’s used by journalists. For political leaders, it’s like saying to someone who is hitting you over the head with a stick, ‘Hey, try this instead’, and handing them a mallet. The information is neither sought because the journalist is curious to know, nor given to bestow knowledge on ‘the people’. It’s used as a weapon.
But another and much more important reason why it is a dangerous A
ct is that governments, like any other organisations, need to be able to debate, discuss and decide issues with a reasonable level of confidentiality. This is not mildly important. It is of the essence. Without the confidentiality, people are inhibited and the consideration of options is limited in a way that isn’t conducive to good decision-making. In every system that goes down this path, what happens is that people watch what they put in writing and talk without committing to paper. It’s a thoroughly bad way of analysing complex issues.
At that time, the consequences were still taking shape and it didn’t impact much in 2005. It was only later, far too late in the day, when the full folly of the legislation had become apparent, that I realised we had crossed a series of what should have been red lines, and strayed far beyond what it was sensible to disclose.
Meanwhile, we were busy getting the words right for the election. I decided eventually on the strapline ‘forward not back’. I knew our strength was that, despite it all, we had a future agenda. I knew the Tory weakness was that under Michael Howard they hadn’t really changed. ‘Forward not back’ was prosaic to the point of boring, but it was clear and a good banner under which to congregate the wide array of policy. All the way through, we were on a dual line: Iraq and the domestic agenda. Our opponents would try to focus it all on Iraq. We had to broaden it. I knew Iraq would make the public resentful and begrudging; but I also knew that they would be discomfited by an attempt to exploit Iraq as a reason for changing government. They knew the Tories had supported the war, and for the same reason as me. Michael’s attempt to use Iraq showed that, deep down, he lacked a true political instinct.
We had the usual Gordon problem about the election. I had asked Alan Milburn to come back to help coordinate the election. This had caused a flurry of briefings against him and an attempt to unnerve Ian McCartney, who was doing a valiant job as party chairman. Ian was a great party man, a good organiser and loyal, but he wasn’t a strategist. I tried to create a structure that enabled Alan to put together the right campaign, without undermining Ian. Alastair came back to help. Naturally Philip Gould was central. But it caused no end of bother with GB. Through Alastair and Philip we just about kept the show together, but I emphasise the ‘just about’.
