A Journey_ My Political Life Part 3

'Hmm,' I said.

'Hmm.' He looked back at me and smiled in that Peterish way. 'I'll have to reflect on this conversation.'

'I wouldn't worry,' I laughed, concerned that, even with him, I had given too much away.

'Oh, but I do,' he said, giving me an affectionate pat on the shoulder and getting into his car.

In truth, I didn't know what I thought. I wasn't really a.n.a.lysing, I was just letting my instinct roam. In fact, I feared to stop and think, because I felt with increasing clarity where my instinct was roaming. It was like I was waking each day feeling stronger, more certain. Each encounter with my own party, the other party, the media, the public, would be like another layer of steel bolted on to an already well-fortified casing. I could see the opportunity to take hold of the Labour Party, rework it into an electoral machine capable of winning over the people. I could see it like I suppose someone in business spots the next great opportunity, or an artist suddenly appreciates his own creative genius, or a coach or player knows that their moment for glory is about to come.

It is an extraordinary feeling, in the sense that you feel you can achieve something beyond the ordinary. And you know it. Maybe you won't do it, but you know at that time, in those circ.u.mstances, with those conditions, it can be done. Yes, it can be done. I can see it and I can do it.

I was fighting my feelings towards Gordon, which were still of great affection and loyalty, but I also felt the tectonic plates shifting. For ten years, my judgement had been that he should do it and I should be second in command. I liked the notion of counselling, advising, urging, directing behind the scenes, seeing my work flourish. So at that point, no, there was no overbearing desire to move centre stage, although I sensed the change within me and could almost watch my own metamorphosis. I felt on fire, with a pa.s.sion and a sense of mission. I was straining at the leash, and for the first time in our discussions, I noticed things about him I hadn't fully noticed before, an intellectual caution that was cleverly coated but didn't seem to me to match the strategic necessity of breaking emphatically with our past.

In our first years in Parliament, 19835, I had intermittently kept a diary. Rereading the entries now, it is so plain that from the outset Gordon had a tendency to look for a way of reframing the question rather than acknowledging the need for the hard answer. He was brilliant, had far more knowledge of the party than me, with an acute and, even then, well-honed tactical brain; but it operated essentially within familiar and conventional parameters. Within the box he was tremendous, but he didn't venture outside it.

By 1994, I was straying well outside the box in policy and party reform, and I began to realise, with dismay but then soberly, that something was missing. Something he lacked. Something I started to know inside I had.

Of course I had no knowledge that John would die prematurely. Except that, in a strange way, I began to think he might. I don't mean I had a premonition or anything odd like that, but if you had asked me, in some private contest with Providence, to stake my life on whether he would or not, I would have hesitated. I kept dismissing the thought. It kept intruding.

In April 1994, Cherie and I visited Paris. I was giving a speech to INSEAD, the business school at Fontainebleau. It was to be our last weekend of normal life. We left the kids at home. Derry recommended a little hotel near Montmartre. The rooms were tiny but pretty, and the hotel was central. I remember waking up the first morning and then waking Cherie. I said to her: 'If John dies, I will be leader, not Gordon. And somehow, I think this will happen. I just think it will.' Is that a premonition? Not in a strict sense; but it was strange all the same.

On Sat.u.r.day afternoon we went to see Schindler's List Schindler's List, the Steven Spielberg movie about the man who rescued Jews from the n.a.z.i concentration camps, saving thousands of lives.

In later life, when I had got to know Spielberg, I told him how the movie had affected me more than any I had ever seen. Steven, being actually a rather modest person, probably thought I was exaggerating in that way theatrical people do, but I wasn't. I was spellbound throughout the whole three and a quarter hours. We sat through it, missed our dinner and talked about it long into the night.

There was a scene in it I kept coming back to. The commandant, played by Ralph Fiennes, is in his bedroom arguing with his girlfriend. He gets up to urinate, they're still arguing and she is mocking him, just like any girlfriend might do. While in the bathroom, he spies an inmate of the camp. He takes up his rifle and shoots him. They carry on their argument. It's her I think of. She didn't shoot anyone; she was a bystander.

Except she wasn't. There were no bystanders in that situation. You partic.i.p.ate, like it or not. You take sides by inaction as much as by action. Why were the n.a.z.is able to do these things? Because of people like him? No, because of people like her.

She was in the next room. She was proximate. The responsibility seems therefore more proximate too. But what of the situations we know about, but we are not proximate to? What of the murder distant from us, the injustice we cannot see, the pain we cannot witness but which we nonetheless know is out there? We know what is happening, proximate or not. In that case, we are not bystanders either. If we know and we fail to act, we are responsible.

A few months later, Rwanda erupted in genocide. We knew. We failed to act. We were responsible.

Not very practical, is it, as a reaction? The trouble is it's how I feel. Whether such reactions are wise in someone charged with leading a country is another matter. But more of that later.

I returned from Paris exhilarated, and again, with this curious sensation of power, of antic.i.p.ation, of prescience.

Then John did die. As I began the first of my conversations with Gordon, I was mentally prepared. I felt I had been disingenuous with him, which in the light of later events was a mistake. Occasionally between April 1992 and May 1994, he would seek rea.s.surance and I would give it. Why not? I knew enough of him to know that had I withdrawn that a.s.surance, we would have been doing battle. And what the h.e.l.l. Probably it was just a dumb presentiment. Probably it would never happen. Probably John would go on and be prime minister and then who knows what the future would bring.

'We have to talk,' I said on that May morning in Aberdeen sitting in the party office, watching people walk by on the street outside, knowing their lives would go on as before and mine was about to change forever.

I had steeled myself. I knew he would press; probably bully; maybe even threaten. But I had crossed over.

'OK, let's talk when you're back down,' he said, a slight shift in the timbre of his voice already clear.

I did a brief visit in Aberdeen as planned, to some science and technology company I seem to remember. I gave a short statement to the press outside on John's death, expressing our sense of shock and grief. I caught the plane back down to London as soon as I decently could. I may even have spoken to Gordon again. I can't recall. As I stepped out on to the pa.s.senger tunnel at Heathrow, a cameraman was waiting to photograph me. It gave me a jolt. So this is what it's like, I thought.

I went into Parliament. Everyone was in a state of turmoil, genuinely shocked, genuinely sad, but of course the political wheels were turning. I b.u.mped into Mo Mowlam who, as unsentimental as ever (or appearing to be), came straight out with it: 'It's got to be you. Do not on any account succ.u.mb.' Cherie, who had driven me into London from Heathrow, had given me the same message, in even stronger terms. They hadn't needed to tell me. My mind was made up.

As I wandered through the lobby at the side of the House of Commons Chamber, I came across Peter Mandelson. We had spoken briefly on the phone, but in very guarded terms.

'Ah, I was hoping to see you,' he said. 'Now, let's not run away with all this. Gordon is still the front-runner, still the person with the claim.'

As ever with Peter in a situation like this, you could never be quite sure what he was saying; but I was sure what I wanted to say.

'Peter,' I said, 'you know I love you, but this is mine. I am sure of it. And you must help me to do it.'

'I wouldn't be too sure about that,' he said. For once, there was no playfulness; and for a moment we stood, looking at each other by the green leather-topped table at the north side of the Aye Lobby.

'Peter,' I said, putting a hand on each shoulder, 'don't cross me over this. This is mine. I know it and I will take it.'

'You can't be certain of that,' he replied.

'I understand.' I spoke gently this time, the friendship fully back in my voice. 'But just remember what I said.'

Someone entered the lobby. As if by telepathy, we moved apart and went in different directions.

THREE.

NEW LABOUR.

Later that night, the nation still shuddering at the loss of John Smith, Mo insisted I come to a meeting where she had a.s.sembled what she called 'the hard eggs' who would organise for me. They were a varied group of MPs, with some familiar and some surprising faces there natural supporters but also unnatural ones. They were all from the non-intellectual part of the PLP who had learned politics the hard way, and they were tough, fearless and disciplined. 'These are people who are going to work for you,' she said. 'This is to show you that you have the breadth and depth necessary to win.'

I can't even remember the exact time and place of the first meeting with Gordon. It may even be that I broached the critical conversation with him by phone. It was such a whirl of talking, thinking, speculating, and not so much plotting as just trying to figure it all out.

After the meeting, I went back to Richmond Crescent. There was a stack of photographers outside the house. From then on they stayed, in small or large number, ten feet or so from our bedroom window. It was a strange sensation. Even with the heavy curtains pulled, there was a sudden, disconcerting, but also at that time somewhat exciting feeling of being on show.

I kept a strong grip on myself, but the anxiety showed. For weeks after John died and this is the only time it ever happened to me I would wake in the morning with the hair on the back of my head damp with sweat. What I could control when awake was overpowering in sleep.

Cherie was an incredible strength during those months. She knew her own life was about to change and for her it was equally frightening, in some ways even more so. She, the intellectually gifted barrister and north London woman, was about to collide with the world of the tabloid paper and the unremitting glare of the spotlight. Her working-cla.s.s background meant that she was well up to mixing and getting on with anyone, but her only previous experience of that type of publicity had been with her father and it had not been happy.

However, that night she cradled me in her arms and soothed me; told me what I needed to be told; strengthened me; made me feel that what I was about to do was right. I had no doubt that I had to go for it, but I needed the rea.s.surance and, above all, the emotional ballast.

In many ways, I am very emotionally self-sufficient; in some ways, too much so. I make emotional commitment because it comes naturally to me. But I fear it also; fear the loss of control and the fact that the consequences of caring can be painful; fear the dependence; perhaps fear learning the lesson, from love that goes wrong, that human nature is frail and unreliable after all.

On that night of 12 May 1994, I needed that love Cherie gave me, selfishly. I devoured it to give me strength, I was an animal following my instinct, knowing I would need every ounce of emotional power and resilience to cope with what lay ahead. I was exhilarated, afraid and determined, in roughly equal quant.i.ties.

The fear, however, had a consequence that to this day I cannot be sure was benign or malevolent. I didn't want to fight Gordon in a leadership contest. There was a rational explanation to this: such a fight required us to differentiate, and inevitably he would pitch to the left of me. Indeed, in the next two days, a story duly appeared in The Times The Times possibly put there by Peter, who was still not committing to me but trying to manage the situation between the two of us which previewed a speech Gordon was going to make to the Welsh Labour Conference in Swansea. It was presented as a checking of the Blair bandwagon, and was also clearly designed to rally union support. A breach between the two main modernisers and him the Shadow Chancellor to boot was not a good thing. I would win; but what would be the cost? possibly put there by Peter, who was still not committing to me but trying to manage the situation between the two of us which previewed a speech Gordon was going to make to the Welsh Labour Conference in Swansea. It was presented as a checking of the Blair bandwagon, and was also clearly designed to rally union support. A breach between the two main modernisers and him the Shadow Chancellor to boot was not a good thing. I would win; but what would be the cost?

If I'm honest, there was another reason I did not want a head-to-head contest: I was scared of the unpleasantness, the possible brutality of it, the sadness, actually, of two friends becoming foes. I can't tell which feeling was predominant the political calculation or the emotional fear but the combination made me determined to try to cajole him out, not confront him.

Many times afterwards, and many rounds of pointless speculation later, I still am not sure if it was the right decision. To have defeated him would have been to have mastered him, at least temporarily, but it would not have removed him in any event we needed him and it would have soured and weakened the concept of New Labour which was already formed in my mind. However much we would have tried to keep the contest pretty, it would have been ugly. Anyway, my desire was to get him to leave the field voluntarily. Don't get me wrong, I was prepared to fight; but it wasn't my preference.

Of course, Gordon was not the only potential challenger. I tried in my first conversation with John Prescott to get him to see that he too should vacate the contest and simply stand for deputy. It was a friendly talk, but John was adamant he would stand. He perceived rightly that by standing for both, he enhanced his chances of the deputy leadership. By contrast, Margaret Beckett would have been wiser merely opting for deputy. Then, in recognition of the time immediately after John's death when she became leader until the leadership contest took place, she would have been given the consolation of the deputy position. I suppose pride made her unable to accept it, though I have to say that afterwards she was perfectly good towards me. John's willingness to have a contest, and also his wise remark to me that a coronation was a bad idea, put some more fight into me. I then realised I wouldn't and shouldn't just walk into it; I had to go out and win it.

Gordon partic.i.p.ating was another thing entirely, and so began a somewhat tortuous series of parlays, in a variety of secret locations, away from the House of Commons and prying eyes. We met at my sister-in-law's round the corner from Richmond Crescent; we met at my friend Nick Ryden's house in Edinburgh; and in the flat owned by the parents of my old girlfriend and first love, Amanda Mackenzie Stuart. It was right that such a dialogue was confidential for obvious reasons, while the outside world was rampant with speculation. It was only a contest to be Leader of the Opposition, of course, but there was a strong sentiment that Labour had good prospects in the next election. There was a genuine buzz of antic.i.p.ation; 'something in the air', in the words of the song. It was a moment in time; a change in generation; a presentiment, maybe, that the outcome would alter not just the party but the country, and not simply via a change of government, but also with a change in the zeitgeist.

It was strung out over several weeks, since there had been an agreement brokered by the National Executive Committee (NEC) that there would be no campaigning for the leadership until the European elections, scheduled for mid-June, were out of the way. There was another reason to be clandestine. Our respective supporters were anxious about what we might agree: his that he would agree to stand down, many of them urging him to fight; mine that I would concede something to him. Every time we met, there was a ripple of anxiety that spread out among the camp followers (already self-identifying fairly robustly) at what concessions either of us may have made. For that reason Anji and Sue Nye, Gordon's close aide, kept the arrangements to themselves. Also by then, paparazzi were in more or less constant pursuit of me. The venues were chosen with care, but I guess it was indicative that they were my friends' homes we were meeting in. I was making the running.

Cherie's sister Lyndsey and her husband Chris were completely safe and solid. Nick was one of my oldest friends, from Fettes; and just a completely reliable, smart and discreet person. And I loved the romance of meeting at Amanda's. You know the first person you ever fall in love with; you know that incredible outpouring of desire, the overwhelming sense of something unique, inexpressible, inexplicable and even at points incomprehensible, but so thrilling, uplifting, your heart pumping and soaring? I was eighteen, in my last year at Fettes. She was the only girl at the school the first, the experiment, and so chosen because she was the daughter of the chairman of the governors. They were an amazing family. He was Britain's judge at the European Court of Justice, her mother was a charming and delightful diplomat not professionally, but naturally.

They had four daughters, of whom Amanda was the oldest. I was utterly love-struck. They had a beautiful eighteenth-century stone house in New Town, whose terraces and crescents are architectural masterpieces. Edinburgh is perhaps as beautiful as any city in the world. I knew and adored every street around New Town. I walked it all, then and for years afterwards, finding security, comfort and repose in the familiarity of it, the sense of certainty and self-sufficiency of its design that seemed also to imbue the middle- and upper-cla.s.s folk of Edinburgh. I wasn't afraid there, and somehow in some slightly odd way, in Amanda's home, surrounded by evidence of her presence, I felt a confidence about the task in hand.

I consciously exerted every last impulse of charm and affection, not just persuading but wooing. Gordon and I had been well-nigh inseparable for over ten years. We were as close as two people ever are in politics. It was not simply a professional relationship, it was a friendship. Later, when things became difficult, then fraught, and finally dangerous, the wrench was all the harder because the intimacy had been so real. It was a political partnership, of course, but it was b.u.t.tressed, possibly even grounded, in a genuine and sincere liking for each other. Neither of us had met anyone like that before. I found him odd at points, to be sure: the introspection, the intensity, finding him in his flat in Edinburgh on a Sat.u.r.day morning in his suit trousers and white shirt, surrounded by a veritable avalanche of papers, but certainly, back then, it seemed an endearing eccentricity. He could be kind, generous, concerned, and often not just funny but with a rapier wit as well as intellect. The discussion wasn't just political there were exchanges of deep, personal confidences, laughter, debates about philosophy, religion, art and the day-to-day trivia that interests and excites us as human beings.

Likewise, I was a new type of person altogether for him. I was very non-political in my view of politics. There was more instinct than a.n.a.lysis; or perhaps more accurately, since I did a.n.a.lyse and rea.n.a.lyse politics, the starting point was instinct. At first, he taught me things all the time: how to read the games within the Labour Party; the lines not to cross with the unions; how to make a speech; when to shut up as well as when to speak up in an internal party discussion. With just a phrase, he taught me the business of politics in roughly the same way Derry had taught me the business of the Bar.

Over time, he derived from me a different perspective, a normal person's view of politics. The single hardest thing for a practising politician to understand is that most people, most of the time, don't give politics a first thought all day long. Or if they do, it is with a sigh or a harrumph or a raising of the eyebrows, before they go back to worrying about the kids, the parents, the mortgage, the boss, their friends, their weight, their health, s.e.x and rock 'n' roll.

David Blunkett, who was a remarkable example of someone who spent a lifetime in politics but could think like a human being, once told me that even at the height of his fame as Home Secretary, people would approach him and say, 'Seen you on telly, what do you do?', or more bizarrely would see him with his guide dog and would know who he was, but would say, 'I never knew you were blind.'

At points people switch on. Then they or at least a goodly proportion of them are focused and listening. These are defining moments. The trick is to spot them. Missing them is very bad news. To the professional politician, every waking moment is, in part or whole, defining. To them, the landscape of politics is perpetually illuminated, and a light which is often harsh shines on a terrain that bristles with highs and lows of ambition, risk and fulfilment. They are in a constant fret about what may befall them as they navigate it. For most normal people, politics is a distant, occasionally irritating fog. Failure to comprehend this is a fatal flaw in most politicians. It leads them to focus on the small not the big picture. It means they get things out of proportion, it breeds paranoia and it stops them from understanding what really moves and matters.

Our friendship was real and complemented by a political sum that was much more than its individual parts, and it worked; but it meant when the time came and only one of us could go forward, it was always going to be a whole lot more troubling.

Essentially my argument was this: I was the one who could best succeed with the country (the initial polls on the weekend after John's death had shown I was far ahead of every other contender, and in fact John Prescott was ahead of Gordon), but we shared the same agenda, we would work together, and in time he would be an obvious person, if not the the obvious person, to take over. There was a proviso, however, which later became the subject of much debate and acrimony: just as I would help him to succeed, so he would work properly with me, accepting that while leader, I would lead, so to speak. At that point, it didn't seem much to ask or hard to give, either way. Though there was never a deal in the sense that his standing down was contingent on my agreeing to help him come after me, nonetheless there was an understanding of mutual interest. Had you asked me then what I would do and what might happen, I would have said I would do two terms and then hand over. It seemed right and fair for party and country, not just the two of us. He was then head and shoulders above the others in ability, in weight, in skill. obvious person, to take over. There was a proviso, however, which later became the subject of much debate and acrimony: just as I would help him to succeed, so he would work properly with me, accepting that while leader, I would lead, so to speak. At that point, it didn't seem much to ask or hard to give, either way. Though there was never a deal in the sense that his standing down was contingent on my agreeing to help him come after me, nonetheless there was an understanding of mutual interest. Had you asked me then what I would do and what might happen, I would have said I would do two terms and then hand over. It seemed right and fair for party and country, not just the two of us. He was then head and shoulders above the others in ability, in weight, in skill.

But, once again, looking back, I was too eager to persuade and too ready to placate. The truth is I couldn't guarantee it; and it was irresponsible to suggest or imply I could. Most of all, it ignored the fact that it is only in government that the character to lead is clear or not. Opposition is a completely different matter. You don't know that at the time, but it is. It's not that there is no requirement to lead in Opposition, but the need is magnified a hundredfold in government. Foibles in Opposition become disabilities in government; weaknesses become terminal; things that can be glossed over remain like irremovable stains. Similarly, the impact of strengths is multiplied; decisions resonate not just across a party but through the country and even, on occasions, the world; leadership character, if it is there, stands up and stands out.

Neither of us should have tried to predict the future. I was anxious to sort him out and get on with it; he was anxious to extract the maximum at the maximum point of leverage. Anyway, not sensible really all ways round; understandable, but not sensible, with consequences down the line, though I am not sure to this day how much difference doing it another way would have made. The truth is I got the leadership and he wanted it. It was true then, and remained true. Probably it was always fated to be as it was, unless either of us had pressed the nuclear b.u.t.ton and decided to wage all-out war to destroy the other. It was always an option for both of us me sacking him, him resigning and standing against me but the enormity of the damage of such a course always drew us back from the brink.

The first occasion he actually broached acceptance that he would stand aside and support me was at Amanda's. Up to then, he maintained the fiction that he would fight me for it. I knew he wouldn't, but I knew, too, that protracted discussion was a prerequisite to steer him successfully to the correct conclusion. My worry was not his reason, but his pride.

There was also an interesting and again telling sidebar to the conversation, one that caused much speculation afterwards. He wanted a free rein on economic policy. At one point Peter who was by then trying to broker things in my favour even submitted a paper to me that effectively ceded control of economic policy. The paper unfortunately survived; my response, which was for me unusually brusque, didn't. Close interaction, yes. Partnership, yes. Dual leadership, absolutely not. It gave rise to the myth that I was uninterested in economic policy. On the contrary, I was very interested; and though it was always a tug of war and in time a fairly gruelling one, I always kept, at least up to the third term, a very tight grip on it, ready to pull back sharply if I needed to.

The conversations were of their nature difficult, but they were not hostile, bitter or even unfriendly. We were like a couple who loved each other, arguing whose career should come first. While there was a lot at stake, there was also a lot underpinning our relationship. There is no doubt, though, that he felt a sense of shock and betrayal. He never expected me to put myself forward. He thought he was the superior politician. He wasn't, by the way, self-conscious of intellectual superiority. Funnily enough, in the years of permanent debate that characterised our friendship up to that point, I was probably more like an a.n.a.lytical lawyer or professor trying to arrange the logic and reason of our positions on policy. He was the master politician. I don't mean he wasn't intellectually more able he was and is, in the sense of who would have got the best degree but in framing the intellectual case for what we were doing, I tended to have the idea and he tended then to translate it into practical politics. He was also a brilliant sounding board. He could instantly see the force of a point, give you six new angles on it and occasionally make you see something in a wholly different light. I often compare him to Derry in that way. I would always learn from a discussion and come away mentally refreshed, stimulated and enthusiastic. The conversations were long, but there were very few wasted moments. Our minds moved fast and at that point in sync. When others were present, we felt the pace and power diminish, until, a bit like lovers desperate to get to lovemaking but disturbed by old friends dropping round, we would try to bustle them out, steering them doorwards with a hearty slap on the back. Our friendship was not a sealed box exactly, but the sense of self-containment was strong, sometimes overpowering. Under the pressure of leadership it was not easy, therefore, to open it up to the influences good, bad or indifferent of the outside world. But of course this was what was happening.

It was doubly difficult for him. He had an expectation which was now to be snuffed out, to be relit in time possibly, but when, how or in what circ.u.mstances, he couldn't know or determine. For my part and you can believe this or not, I really don't mind I had been a reluctant convert to leadership. I remember that weekend after John died and being told of the Sunday Times Sunday Times poll about to appear, waiting for it with a bit of me still thinking how much easier things would be if it showed Gordon leading, and I would have the excuse to say to friends and supporters, 'Well, it's not me after all.' But it didn't, and probably if it had, I was too far gone by then. The point is that in so far as it is ever possible to disentangle motives at such a juncture, I did genuinely believe it was best that I took up the leadership. We were, at that point, fifteen years in Opposition and effectively pinned back in our heartlands the North, Scotland, Wales, the inner city. Though disillusioned with the Tories, Middle England was still anxious and distrustful of us. The situation was crying out for the party to take a revolutionary modernising leap, to break out of those heartlands, to show for the first time that it could win support anywhere, that it could cross the cla.s.s and employment divides, that it could unite the nation. I was the moderniser, in personality, in language, in time, feel and temperament. Split it any way you like, the d.a.m.n thing was obvious in the end. poll about to appear, waiting for it with a bit of me still thinking how much easier things would be if it showed Gordon leading, and I would have the excuse to say to friends and supporters, 'Well, it's not me after all.' But it didn't, and probably if it had, I was too far gone by then. The point is that in so far as it is ever possible to disentangle motives at such a juncture, I did genuinely believe it was best that I took up the leadership. We were, at that point, fifteen years in Opposition and effectively pinned back in our heartlands the North, Scotland, Wales, the inner city. Though disillusioned with the Tories, Middle England was still anxious and distrustful of us. The situation was crying out for the party to take a revolutionary modernising leap, to break out of those heartlands, to show for the first time that it could win support anywhere, that it could cross the cla.s.s and employment divides, that it could unite the nation. I was the moderniser, in personality, in language, in time, feel and temperament. Split it any way you like, the d.a.m.n thing was obvious in the end.

After the conversation at Amanda's parents' home, where they had moved as the family grew up, we sat in the kitchen looking out over the gardens and scrubland in the small indentation under Dean Bridge, near to where years ago I had done a spell on a voluntary project for the down-and-out in lieu of school corps. We were then simply managing how he could withdraw gracefully.

Later, there was a moment at Nick Ryden's which ill.u.s.trated the tenor of it all. Nick had just moved into a big old house and was doing the place up. He kindly agreed to go out and leave us alone to talk. After an hour or so Gordon got up to go to the loo. I waited downstairs. Five minutes pa.s.sed. Then ten. Then fifteen. I was getting a bit alarmed. Suddenly the phone went. As it wasn't my house, I left it. The answerphone clicked in, and Nick's voice asked the caller to leave a message. Suddenly, out of the machine boomed another voice: 'Tony, it's Gordon here.' Wow, I was really freaked out. What the h.e.l.l was going on? 'I am upstairs in the toilet,' he went on, 'and I can't get out.'

In the building works, the loo door had been replaced but had no handle on the inside yet. Gordon had spent a quarter of an hour on his mobile trying to track down Nick's number. The soundproofing in the house meant that I never heard him. I went up to the loo. 'Withdraw from the contest or I'm leaving you in there,' I said.

Finally, with Peter's guidance, we made the announcement that Gordon would support me, and did it walking rather self-consciously round Palace Garden underneath Big Ben. It worked well as a piece of media management. Very quickly, however, it worked less well as a relationship.

The root of the problem was that he thought I could be an empty vessel into which the liquid that was poured was manufactured and processed by him. I was never totally sure, and still am not, whether he really did buy the illusion that I was just a frontman, carefully tutored by Peter and then, in time, Alastair, but incapable on my own. It was of course nonsense; not because I am so good, but because it is utterly impossible for anyone in a position like that to be the product of someone else. It can't happen. There are a thousand decisions, large and small, that only the leader can take. You can't fake body language or manufacture it. No matter how good an actor you are, in the end it's not an act.

It's like when people say to me: 'Oh, so-and-so, they don't believe in anything, they're just a good communicator.' As a statement about politics, it's close to being an oxymoron, certainly for the top person. At the top, the scrutiny is microscopic. It is soul-penetrating. People see you like they do a person they see every day at work. For a time, maybe, they can be fooled or blinded, but soon, very soon in fact, they form a real judgement. Regardless of whether they agree or disagree with what you are doing, they can tell whether or not you believe in it. If you don't have core beliefs as a politician, real path-finding instincts groomed out of conviction, you will never be a good communicator because and this may seem corny, but it's true the best communication comes from the heart. To me, Bill Clinton was a cla.s.sic example of this. Regularly it would be written that although he was a wondrous communicator, he didn't believe in anything much. It was complete nonsense. It was true he didn't believe in being a traditional Democrat; but he didn't articulate the policy of the traditional Democrat. He was a new Democrat and that's how he spoke and sounded, because that is what he believed. That's why he was so good at communicating it.

Maybe Gordon thought the gla.s.s could be filled as he wished, but it was never going to be that way, and inevitably the rancour started to appear. We fell out over whether John Prescott should be deputy or not. I could live with Margaret Beckett in the position but, on balance, thought John gave something to the ticket which she didn't. We fell out over who should run my leadership campaign. I and my people (the distinction was already taking hold) thought it couldn't be Gordon; it was all too incestuous. I had to prepare now for the time when, as leader, I couldn't live in the sealed compartment. He could be the favoured, but not the only. On my side we thought Jack Straw a better fit since he was from neither camp and so broadened my appeal in the PLP, and I had to explain that to Gordon. He resented it deeply.

The leadership campaign itself pa.s.sed off without incident. Very few union leaders supported me, but their members did, and we won a majority of party members and MPs. A preoccupation throughout was to minimise stray comments, hostages to fortune or concessions to the left. Slowly I got used to the feeling I was going to become leader.

The sun used to shine in those days. I remember campaigning around the country, the weather hot, occasionally oppressively so. The mood was buoyant. No great breakthroughs at that point, and no particular mishaps, but it was clear I was a very different type of Labour leader. That in itself was generating interest, excitement and support. The Tories were trying to pretend it was all a chimera but, underneath the bravado, they were really worried. They knew if I turned out to possess the genuine article, with the ability to wear it so that it fitted, they were sunk.

After the nomination as leader, with John as deputy, I began to put the team in place. Peter was now fully on board, but his being so estranged him completely from Gordon, who had come to believe and such thoughts were never alien to his thinking that Peter had plotted my ascension all the way along. It was untrue, at least to my knowledge though the thing with Peter is that maybe it was true but he concealed it brilliantly from me! Actually, I am sure it wasn't. Peter always liked to play the Machiavelli figure, but in my experience he is one of the most transparent and open people I know.

In September 1994 we had had an away day at the Chewton Glen Hotel in the New Forest, then later in 1995 we held a second meeting just the inner circle of me, Peter, Gordon, Alastair, Philip, Anji, Jonathan, Sue at Fritham Lodge, also in the New Forest, and the home of Jonathan's brother. News of the second meeting caused no end of problems with John Prescott, who was not there. During the course of the day, Gordon privately took Peter aside and asked him to work under his design and tutelage. Peter pointedly said that he worked for the leader. From that moment there was an enmity between them, and neither was a good enemy to have.

I was supremely fixed on getting the right person to do the media. Peter and I considered the candidates Andy Grice of the Independent Independent, Peter McMahon of the Scotsman Scotsman, Patrick Wintour of the Guardian Guardian but though all were good, really good, I wanted a tabloid person, and thought Alastair Campbell would be best. I'm not sure if it was great for him, but it was certainly great for me. I wanted a hard nut and had thought he was good; what I got was a genius. It was a very lucky strike. but though all were good, really good, I wanted a tabloid person, and thought Alastair Campbell would be best. I'm not sure if it was great for him, but it was certainly great for me. I wanted a hard nut and had thought he was good; what I got was a genius. It was a very lucky strike.

Once we decided on Alastair I decided to pursue him immediately with fervour. I can be like that, when determined on an objective. I resolved not to take no for an answer. It was tricky at first. He had sorted his life out since his nervous breakdown and had given up the booze. His partner, Fiona Millar, was dubious about him taking the job, thinking correctly that it would change their lives. He was destined to go far in the media even then he had star quality so he would be giving up a lot. He admired and liked Peter, but also feared ending up in compet.i.tion with him. For all those reasons, he was hard to persuade.

Eventually in mid-August 1994 I just pitched up at his holiday house in the part of France where he went every summer. For reasons completely beyond me, he would stay near to where Neil and Glenys Kinnock and Philip Gould and his wife Gail were also vacationing. Personally, the thought of going on holiday with people active in politics appalled me. You would never get away from it. But he liked it and they all chatted and plotted away happily.

The house was in Fla.s.san in Provence, a departement departement studded with those near-perfect little French villages in beautiful countryside. The attempt by the British to reconquer France by peaceful acquisition isn't daft. studded with those near-perfect little French villages in beautiful countryside. The attempt by the British to reconquer France by peaceful acquisition isn't daft.

I arrived, stayed to dinner, got Neil on board, talked half the night alone with Alastair and did the deal. I gave what a.s.surances I could on Peter. He was already anxious about Gordon's people, but most of all, he wanted to know that I would back him to do what was necessary.

While there, I broached the subject of Clause IV, the core statement of the Labour Party credo in our const.i.tution. After the 1992 defeat, and without discussing it with anyone, not even Gordon, I had formed a clear view that if ever I was leader, the const.i.tution should be rewritten and the old commitments to nationalisation and state control would be dumped.

Clause IV was hallowed text repeated on every occasion by those on the left who wanted no truck with compromise or the fact that modern thinking had left its words intellectually redundant and politically calamitous. Among other things, it called for 'the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange'. When drafted in 1917 by Sidney Webb, a great Fabian of the party's intellectual wing, the words had actually been an attempt to avoid more Bolshevik language from the further left. Most of all, of course, it reflected prevailing international progressive thought that saw the abolition of private capital as something devoutly to be desired.

What was mainstream leftist thinking in the early twentieth century had become hopelessly unreal, even surreal, in the late-twentieth-century world in which, since 1989, even Russia had embraced the market. But could it be changed? Fortuitously, I had never been pressed on this during the leadership contest. The issue had been raised, but was never pushed to the point where I lost 'wiggle room'. I had closed it down without closing it off.

Of course, as opponents of the change immediately pointed out once it was announced, it was largely symbolic. No one except the far left ever really believed in Clause IV as it was written. In a sense, that was my point: no one believed in it, yet no one dared remove it. What this symbolised, therefore, was not just something redundant in our const.i.tution, but a refusal to confront reality, to change profoundly, to embrace the modern world wholeheartedly. In other words, this symbol mattered. It was a graven image, an idol. Breaking it would also change the psychology in the party that was damaging and reactionary and which was precisely what had kept us in Opposition for long periods. It had meant that although we were able erratically to do well against the Tories in response to their unpopularity, we could not govern consistently on our own merits. For me, therefore, removing Clause IV was not a gimmick or piece of good PR or a question of drafting; it was vital if Labour was to transform itself.

Progressive parties are always in love with their own emotional impulses. They have a feeling, however, that the electorate may not be of the same mind, so they are prepared to loosen them. Deep down, they wish it weren't so, and hope against hope that maybe one day, in one possibly unique circ.u.mstance, the public will share them. It's a delusion. They won't. But, though progressives know that, the longing is acute and the temptation to rebind themselves to such impulses strong. The most basic impulse is to believe that if power is delivered into their hands, they will use it for the benefit of the people; and the more power, the more benefit. Hence the affinity with the state and public sector.

It's not malignly motivated on the contrary, the impulse is grounded in real and genuine feelings of solidarity but history should have taught us to mitigate it in two crucial ways. First, the state and public sector can become great big vested interests that can be clumsy with, or even contradict, the public interest. Second, as people become better educated and more prosperous, they don't necessarily want someone else, anyone else, making their choices for them. If this impulse is kept in check i.e. active but constrained progressive government can be a fine and liberating alternative to conservative government; but if not, not, as it were.

By advocating public ownership of the entire means of production, distribution and exchange, Clause IV didn't represent a constraint but an invitation to unfettered indulgence. It was not healthy, wise or, unfortunately, meaningless. At a certain level, it meant a lot and the meaning was bad. Changing it was not a superficial thing; it implied a significant, deep and lasting change to the way the party thought, worked and would govern.

Part of the reason that I took so easily many thought far too easily to dismantling some of the sacred myths of the Labour ideology, was because of how I came to politics. As a student I had nothing to do with the Oxford Union, wasn't a member of the Labour Club, and took virtually no part or certainly no very focused part in student politics. My main political influences at university were two Australians, an Indian and a Ugandan. Each of these four people gave me an insight which stayed with me and shaped my approach to politics. All were of course on the left, but were very different people with very different experiences.

My fellow student Geoff Gallop was the most active politically, and indeed in later life became premier of Western Australia. He was brilliant, with an extraordinary intellect. He taught me all the right terms and phrases of leftist politics at the time, and was a member of the International Marxist Group, one of the numerous sects this one Trotskyist that abounded in the 1970s. Needless to say, anyone in the Labour Party was a sell-out. They were also bitter rivals with the Communist Party people, who tended to be far better organisers, with links to trade unions and the occasional normal person. Although Geoff adhered to the framework of the Marxist dialectic, his own spirit and intellectual curiosity refused to let him be imprisoned by it. He was constantly a.n.a.lysing and rea.n.a.lysing, breaking out with new thinking and fresh insights. He taught me how social conditions formed character; but he also taught me not to be an unthinking disciple of the left.

Peter Thomson reinforced this. He was an Australian Anglican priest, probably the most influential person in my life. He was a mature student in his mid-thirties when we were at Oxford. When he died in January 2010, I wrote this for his funeral: There are very few people of whom you can say: he changed my life. Peter changed mine. From the first moment I met him I was having a party in my room in St John's and had stepped out on to the battlements, swaying a little, and looking down saw Pete looking up: 'I'd be careful if I was you, mate' from that first moment, he shaped my life, gave it meaning and purpose; and set its course.He was my friend, teacher, mentor and guide. Any good that I have done, he inspired it. Whatever my manifold faults, he made me a better person for knowing him: better, stronger, more loyal, less frail, more thankful for what I have, more hopeful about life's possibilities, more joyful in fulfilling them, more courageous in accepting their limitations.We often say, of someone's pa.s.sing, that they will leave a void in my life. Peter's pa.s.sing leaves no void. His presence fills it still. He was there when I needed him most. He will be there for me always. The light that shone in Peter is too powerful to be diminished by death.That is how G.o.d worked through Peter. He was, after all, the most un-vicar-like of vicars. He and the adorable Helen kept open house for us all, but though much tea was drunk, along with many other things, a vicarage tea party it wasn't. Never have dog collar and manner of speaking been in such blissful disharmony.But that defined Peter: a curious mixture of the traditionalist and the iconoclast. His Christianity was muscular not limp. He was a doer not a spectator; and a thinker not just a preacher. Those thoughts were bold, groundbreaking and, for our twenty-first-century world, visionary.I have met many people, famous and successful people, whom the world would call great. I never met a greater man than Peter. I feel him with me now as I write. I will feel him beside me always. I know, even as I mourn his death, that the greatest achievement I could wish for is that at the hour of my death, he would think proudly of me.

All these years later, his influence remains like an insistent reminder that life has to be lived for a purpose. Politically, Pete was on the left, but religion came first. Therefore, so, in a sense, it did for me. Not that the two were separated by him, or me, but the frame within which you see the world is different if religion comes first. Religion starts with values that are born of a view of humankind. Politics starts with an examination of society and the means of changing it. Of course politics is about values; and religion is often about changing society. But you start from a different place.

This is vital in understanding my politics. I begin with an a.n.a.lysis of human beings as my compa.s.s; the politics is secondary. Later, when I became sure that the 'progressive problem' was an insufficiently clear separation between ends and means, this approach very much instilled by Peter was what allowed me to come to that conclusion freely.

Geoff would give me books on politics to read. Peter would give me the philosopher John Macmurray's works, such as Reason and Emotion Reason and Emotion and and Conditions of Freedom Conditions of Freedom. I developed a theory about the basis of socialism being about 'community' i.e. people owed obligations to each other and were social beings, not only individuals out for themselves which pushed me down the path of trying to retrieve Labour's true values from the jumble of ideological baggage that was piled on top of them, obscuring their meaning. For me, it was socialism, and wasn't about a particular type of economic organisation, anch.o.r.ed to a particular point in history.

The Indian was a postgraduate student called Anmol Vellani. One day, sitting in his room on the ground floor of the quadrangle at St John's College, he gave me an insight that stayed with me and had a curious but profound effect on the public sector reform programme of later years. I can still picture the moment.

Anmol, perhaps because of the experience of India, but also because he had more political maturity, was debating with me the new ideas I had received from Geoff. I was trying them out on him, prodding and pushing, hoping to get a better understanding of the new language I was learning to speak. We were talking about capitalism and the state. I was repeating the view that the state had to take over from the interests of capitalism, which only cared about profit the usual Marxist line!

Anmol shook his head. 'It is not as simple as that,' he said. 'The state, too, can be a vested interest. It's not the same as the public interest, you know, not in practice at least.'