Broken Vows

by Tom Bower

  A week after their confrontation in Islington, Butler and Blair met again in the Cabinet room in Downing Street. Millions of television viewers were watching reruns showing the smiling victor greeting Labour supporters at an all-night party in the Royal Festival Hall and, later, as the century’s youngest prime minister, walking in the sunshine along Downing Street to witness the beginning of his eulogy that ‘a new dawn has broken’. ‘This is a dream come true,’ the playwright Colin Welland was saying on TV. ‘I’m going to be able to pick up my four-year-old grandson and tell him he has got a future.’

  Exhausted by the campaign, Blair had been re-energised by the excitement he had witnessed on the pavements as he had been driven from Islington towards Westminster. The clapping crowds, he would accurately say, were ‘liberated, yearning for change in their country’. His message was addressed to those in the middle ground, voicing their hopes and fears and giving reassurance about taxes and the economy. Yet none of the jubilant supporters spraying the media with guffaws about ‘a new era’ and ‘history is changing’ could have imagined the strained atmosphere inside 10 Downing Street.

  After welcoming Blair, Butler told him, ‘We have studied your manifesto and are ready to help you implement it.’ Blair smiled, concealing his disbelief. Thirteen years later, he would write that he found those words strangely disturbing. In his punctilious manner, Butler went through the routine housekeeping list: the senior appointments that Blair would make that day; the seniority of ministers and the seating plan in Cabinet meetings; and the allocation of government houses for ministers. The final item covered the process by which Britain’s nuclear weapons were activated.

  Blair was then presented with a bundle of files. In the traditional manner, the civil service had prepared a detailed schedule for implementing Labour’s manifesto. Butler was proud of the achievement, but the reaction unsettled him. Glowering at Butler from the side, Powell interpreted the files as an attempt to overawe Blair. Butler, he thought, was ‘an old-school Cabinet Secretary who was anxious to assert control over a new and inexperienced prime minister’.

  ‘Butleshanks’, as the Blairites demeaningly called the Cabinet secretary, was puzzled by Powell’s hostility. ‘I never saw it as putting the frighteners on him at all,’ Butler would say, mystified. The first sign of his reduced status was his exclusion from Blair’s Monday-morning discussion with his confidants about the upcoming week’s agenda. Powell’s attitude, Butler lamented privately, was ‘quite ridiculous and ludicrous’.

  Butler’s humiliation was repeated over the following hours across Whitehall. Freshly appointed ministers arrived in their departments expecting their civil servants to be untrustworthy Tories. During their brief moments with Blair to receive their appointments, any suspicions they may have built up over eighteen years of opposition had not been discouraged. For many, the only surprise was their new responsibility. With some exceptions, Blair had jettisoned his pre-election plans.

  George Robertson, a jocular fifty-one-year-old career politician, arrived in Downing Street believing that he would emerge with the Scottish portfolio. The man who Blair feared talked too much was unprepared for his appointment as defence secretary, a brief he had never considered. Chris Smith, a former charity worker, had spent two years developing Labour’s health policy but at the last moment Gordon Brown had taken offence at Smith’s ideas, so, bowing to his chancellor’s objections, Blair made Smith culture secretary. Health he entrusted to Frank Dobson, a mainstay of old Labour. The NHS had never aroused Blair’s interest. ‘24 hours to save the NHS’ had been one of several key election pledges made up on the spur of the moment by a Labour speechwriter. ‘Tony didn’t discuss health when we met in Downing Street,’ recalled Dobson. ‘He only mentioned my daughter Sally, who was part of his election team.’

  While Blair decided on the remaining 191 appointments, Dobson made his way across Whitehall to the health department’s headquarters and stepped into a government departmental building for the first time. ‘He looked aghast to have been appointed,’ recalled the senior civil servant who welcomed him. On Dobson’s desk was a thick folder prepared over the previous months. In simple terms, Graham Hart, the permanent secretary, and his officials outlined the problems and alternative policies for the national health service. ‘I won’t need that,’ said Dobson, pushing the file to one side. ‘I’ll read the manifesto and we’ll do that.’ He gazed suspiciously at the perplexed officials. ‘Everything’s OK,’ he said as he leaned back in his upholstered chair. ‘Labour will save the NHS.’ His audience suppressed their unanimous opinion that their new boss knew nothing about the health service.

  Two hundred yards away, Margaret Beckett, a former deputy leader of the party and, in 1994, one of Blair’s rivals for the leadership alongside John Prescott, had just entered the Department of Trade and Industry. To her surprise, she was greeted by hundreds of clapping civil servants. Without a word, she walked unsmiling into the waiting lift. ‘I never expected such a welcome,’ she told Michael Scholar, her permanent secretary. Scholar, a principled public servant, had organised the reception to win Beckett’s trust. Her hostility suggested that he would fail.

  As in other parts of the civil service, the department had compiled a five-hundred-page plan based on Labour’s manifesto, speeches and policy documents. ‘This is to achieve your objectives,’ said Scholar, offering Beckett a timetable for briefings. ‘Nice to be here,’ she replied, pushing the thick brief aside. Either hostile or lazy, she would never open the file and refused to meet civil servants for briefings.

  Below her in the same building John Battle, a former councillor, would enter his office as the new energy minister. During a two-minute telephone conversation with Blair, Battle was told: ‘Stick to the party’s election manifesto and look after the coal mines.’ In fact, Labour had no energy plan other than to follow the Tories’ policies. On his first day, Battle denounced his officials to their faces. ‘He was’, noted a hurt Scholar, ‘strangely blinkered and distrustful.’

  Officials in other buildings were not as downhearted. General Charles Guthrie, the chief of the defence staff, had been delighted by George Robertson’s appointment. Some weeks before the election, over breakfast with Blair in a private room at Claridge’s hotel, Guthrie had stacked the odds in Robertson’s favour. ‘David Clark’, said the general, referring to Labour’s shadow defence spokesman, ‘is not the right man for the department.’ Blair accepted the advice with a trace of gratitude. Compared to the lawyers, academics and dissolute parliamentarians vying to be ministers in the new government, the general’s openness was disarming. On 2 May, Robertson crossed Whitehall and received a rousing welcome in the ministry’s main building, not least from Guthrie.

  Gordon Brown had been similarly cheered as he entered the Treasury. ‘Thank you,’ he said, before walking up a staircase lined with portraits of his predecessors. His smile disappeared once he sat behind his desk in the large chancellor’s office. Speaking without warmth, he issued instructions regarding where to seat his closest advisers – Ed Balls, Geoffrey Robinson and Charlie Whelan – and gave orders that would revolutionise the Bank of England by enshrining its independence. Terry Burns, the permanent secretary, suggested slight modifications, in so doing confirming Brown’s suspicions that Burns was untrustworthy. He resolved to neutralise him at once.

  By contrast, Jack Straw had appreciated the applause of hundreds of civil servants as he arrived at the Home Office in Queen Anne’s Gate. Like most government officials, they had become weary of John Major’s fractious administration, and were drained by the previous home secretary Michael Howard’s abrasive complaints about their obstruction of his demands. In his brief speech of thanks, Straw praised his audience, promised to listen to their advice and expressed his intention to work ‘within the system’. His list of priorities included human rights and crime, the territory that the new prime minister had memorably captured from the Tories during the election with the slogan ‘Tough on
crime, tough on the causes of crime’.

  Shortly afterwards, Straw was closeted in a conference room with Richard Wilson, his permanent secretary, and other senior officials. ‘Implement our manifesto,’ said Straw. ‘That will take us through the next two years, and then we’ll look to you for ideas.’

  The officials smiled. ‘This is refreshing,’ thought one. ‘He’s got emotional intelligence. He’s more open than Michael Howard. We can work for him.’ Everyone suppressed their surprise as Straw then revealed that he had not discussed Labour’s policies for the Home Office with Blair. ‘I’m not interested in immigration,’ Straw told Tim Walker, head of the Immigration and Nationality Department (IND).

  ‘Howard had played up immigration,’ thought Walker, ‘Straw wants to play it down.’ Straw believed immigration had become toxic under Howard, a situation that he intended to defuse.

  Many of the new ministers, Robin Butler assumed, would want to discuss their responsibilities at the first Cabinet meeting. To restore good relations with Blair, he diligently offered a draft agenda. The reply was jolting. ‘I’ve decided to make the Bank of England independent,’ Blair revealed.

  ‘The Cabinet will want to discuss and decide that,’ replied Butler.

  ‘Oh, they won’t mind,’ said Blair. ‘We’ll ring round and they’ll agree.’

  ‘It was my idea,’ he would later write. ‘I kept control of the economy but was pleased to let Brown take the credit.’

  Butler was surprised that a tradition established three hundred years earlier was being jettisoned so casually. Since Robert Walpole became Britain’s first prime minister in 1721, his successors had abided by the custom that the Cabinet would be consulted on major decisions. In Blair’s vision, all traditions needed to be re-justified in order to survive. Collective government, ranking the prime minister as first among equals, reflected weakness. With presidential powers, he would govern with a handful of like-minded friends who, united by ambition and a desire for secrecy, would meet in his small office. ‘My core staff’, wrote Blair, ‘were knitted together like a regiment, imbued with a common purpose and with a camaraderie that had a spirit of steel running through it.’ Members of the Cabinet were not included. In addition to Powell and Campbell, there was Anji Hunter, his confidante since his teens, who acted as gatekeeper, his pollster Philip Gould and Peter Mandelson, the political genius who invented New Labour and fashioned Blair’s image. During those early days, few outsiders could accurately measure Blair’s disdain for the Labour Party members, especially those appointed as ministers. Their appointment was secured on condition that his orders were unquestioningly obeyed.

  Although before the weekly meetings Cabinet ministers would receive the traditional agenda covering parliamentary, foreign and home affairs, Blair continued to ignore Butler’s drafts. Powell took over that task, thus denying any dissidents an opportunity to launch complaints. The discipline Blair had imposed since becoming party leader would continue in government. He was a man in a hurry, and Cabinet meetings would be limited to forty minutes, during which he would address his government, expecting complete loyalty. That, he mistakenly assumed, had been Margaret Thatcher’s method.

  The change in approach surprised other leading civil servants besides Butler – Brian Bender, for instance, the senior Cabinet Office official responsible for Europe. In a conversation with Robin Cook after the new foreign secretary’s meeting with Blair three days after the election, Bender listened to an unusual complaint.

  ‘I’m chairing the committee about joining the euro but no one has given me the key documents,’ said Cook.

  ‘Well, I’ll see what I can do in the future,’ replied Bender.

  Bender approached Jonathan Powell and asked, ‘Will the single currency be discussed in the first Cabinet?’

  ‘Don’t worry about that,’ replied Powell with noticeable impatience. ‘We’ll tell them what the line is.’

  Perplexed, Bender asked Peter Mandelson how the new prime minister would operate before making major decisions. ‘You’ll find’, replied the minister without portfolio, ‘that he will helicopter in and then focus.’

  Still uncertain, Bender addressed Blair directly. ‘I assume you will want to implement the manifesto pledges?’

  ‘Don’t feel spellbound by every word we used,’ came the reply, implying that the manifesto should be ignored.

  ‘Blair doesn’t trust anyone,’ Bender silently concluded.

  On 8 May, as twenty-one ministers arrived in Downing Street for their first Cabinet meeting, Blair asked Butler, ‘What do people call each other in the Cabinet?’

  ‘The Conservatives were formal,’ replied Butler, ‘but Labour governments have used first names.’

  ‘Call me Tony,’ Blair told his ministers, with a flash of the familiar smile. His audience was rapt. Thanks to his emotional appeal, their leader had delivered an unimaginable 179-seat majority in the Commons. Even his critics in the room acknowledged their leader’s talent as a communicator who gave the impression of enjoying everyone’s company.

  Blair started as he intended to continue: the chief executive imposing his will on former lawyers, TV producers, councillors and teachers with no experience of managing large organisations. ‘The Bank of England will be made independent,’ he announced. There were no comments. Everyone knew the form from their years in opposition: decisions were presented and voicing an opinion would not be looked on kindly. Next, Blair spoke about ‘the line to take’, focusing on how policies should be presented.

  During the election campaign, simple phrases had spread Blair’s promise to Britain: ‘the future not the past’; ‘the many and not the few’; ‘duty to others’; and ‘Britain deserves better’. He described his country as a community working together in ‘a fair society’. His vision for Britain promised ‘progressive’ politics to ‘modernise the nation’. The campaign song, ‘Things Can Only Get Better’, played over captions promising renewal, recovery and change, had energised voters to believe Blair’s vision to ‘end the crisis of faith’ because, under New Labour, ‘we will be a beacon to the world if people unite behind our mission to modernise our country’. And, finally, ‘The future then, not the past.’

  His ministers embraced every word. Even the left-wing Clare Short, responsible for international development, believed his declaration that ‘The Britain of the elite is over. The new Britain is a meritocracy.’ In the very first Cabinet meeting, she offered to give up her official car. ‘You can keep it, Clare,’ Blair said soothingly.

  Sitting against the wall, Alastair Campbell epitomised the enigma of Tony Blair. The trusted propagandist had been employed as a political writer on Robert Maxwell’s Daily Mirror. Without complaint, he had ignored journalism’s duty towards objectivity and loyally served the infamous fraudster until Maxwell’s sudden death. In serving Blair, similar nuances had been embraced to establish New Labour as the natural party of government. Blurring the distinction between left and right had been one reason for the party’s landslide victory. In a pre-election film, Blair had offered a ‘different type of politics rooted in values and convictions but not quite left or right’, adding with sincerity, ‘I will not promise anything I can’t deliver.’

  Much of that message had been crafted by Campbell and was endorsed by Blair’s belief that ‘communication is fifty per cent of the battle in the information age’. Ensuring that Labour supporters in the media repeated the message had paved the way to victory. The most important ally had been John Birt, the BBC’s director general, who had contributed money to Blair’s campaign to become party leader while still employed by the corporation.

  Like Jonathan Powell, Campbell had been given special powers by an order-in-council and had taken control of the government’s media officials. Immediately, he dominated the Cabinet room. The weak feared his wrath, while the strong basked in his admiration. Campbell’s skulduggery complemented Blair’s apparent purity. Quite simply, he was indispensable to Blair’s succe
ss.

  His one rival as the dominant force in the new administration (besides Blair himself) was Peter Mandelson. Ever since Blair had become the party’s leader, together the three men had focused on winning the upcoming election. During the three years after 1994, Blair was to rewrite Labour’s constitution and utter slogans in verbless tirades aimed at crushing the Tories: ‘New Labour. New Britain. The party renewed. The country reborn.’ The language, the spectacle and the tactics had awakened the imagination of the electorate, but beyond the words there had been limited preparation in terms of realising Blair’s ambitions. Now it was time for the hard work to begin.

  One obstacle, the cabal knew, would be John Prescott, the obdurate representative of traditional Labour, a man burdened by a chip on his shoulder. To keep him onside, Blair had acceded to his demand to be both deputy prime minister and the supremo of a massive department embracing the environment, the regions and transport. The former waiter, Blair anticipated, would not interfere in running the government.

  Blair ended his homily in the Cabinet room with a smile. Shortly after, he summoned Butler and furiously denounced the two ministers who had raised questions. ‘From now on’, he ordered, ‘I want to know in advance about anything they want to bring up.’