A Journey_ My Political Life Part 4

'But it should be,' I insisted.

'Should be and is are two very different things, my friend,' he replied, laughing at my innocence.

The fourth person was Olara Otunnu, a Ugandan. He had been president of the Students' Guild at university in Kampala and had to flee from Idi Amin. St John's took him in. He was a gifted speaker, really quite brilliant, and a lovely, spiritual human being. I think he regarded the student leftists enthusing about Marxism in the cloisters of privilege at Oxford with a degree of amused detachment. His politics were all about development and the burden of corrupt and appalling government ruining the prospects of the people. He taught me to look beyond the confines of Western student debate and think about the world that was not debating 'capitalism versus socialism', but life, hope and health versus death due to the ravages of poverty, conflict and disease.

It was an unusual group of people diverse, unconventional, freethinking who, at a moment when my mind was open, willing and eager to learn, shaped the structure of my thinking for the years to come.

When I was talking through my thoughts on Clause IV with Alastair in France, I could tell he loved the bra.s.siness of it, and by the time I left I could see his mind whirring away on how to sell it. During the course of the conversation I also discovered something I hadn't been a hundred per cent sure of previously: he had clanking great b.a.l.l.s. This was someone you would have to pull back, not push forward. In a world dominated by the timid, cautious and the overcalculating, I liked that. He and Peter Mandelson might fight (and my goodness they did, occasionally literally), but in tandem they would be as formidable a political force as could be imagined. Peter would slip into the castle through a secret pa.s.sageway and, by nimble footwork and sharp and incisive thrusts of the rapier, cleave his way through to the throne room. Meanwhile, Alastair would be a very large oak battering ram destroying the castle gates, and neither boiling pitch nor reinforced doors would keep him out. With the two of them in harness, the battle would be fought with a boldness just short of madness; but it would be won, and, what's more, won in style.

As I often did in those days, I had split the holiday between France and Italy. The first part had been near Toulouse and then we caught a train to Ma.r.s.eilles to see Alastair, and thence to the very north of Liguria where Tim Allan's parents had a house in the hills near Crespiano. It was one of the last really free-and-easy holidays I had. No one in the village had a clue who I was. There was no protection back then, no security or staff, just us as a family together. Bliss. We would go up to the village restaurant where you just sat at a table with everyone else. The food was simple but the pasta was home-made with great sauces, and for variety, you could go and partic.i.p.ate in any number of August fetes, where in surroundings of extraordinary rustic beauty, each old village would put on entertainment in the square, including a wonderfully cooked local meal.

It was possibly the last time when I could travel abroad normally (I was already a marked man in Britain) without a glimmer of recognition from anyone. One night we visited La Gavarina d'Oro restaurant in the village of Podenzana to sample the special local pizza called panigacci panigacci, only to be turned away since there had been a mix-up in the booking (my poor Italian), and there was no table for us. We dutifully rebooked and went there two nights later. I don't think that ever happened to me again.

While there, I got news of the latest opinion poll, showing we had achieved the highest rating of any political party ever, and had something ridiculous like a thirty-point lead. I didn't set much store by it as those leads can come and go, but it was an indicator that my election as leader had been well received by the public. And that would help me with the party. I was under no illusions. Many, perhaps even a majority, who had voted for me had done so not because they shared my vision for the party, but because they thought I was a winner. For now, that was enough. I would use the public to change the party. Only later did I learn that it was a lot tougher the other way round.

Over the holiday period, I reflected on Clause IV and my thinking hardened. I now knew it had to be the first essential step. On my return, I began to consult close and senior people. My own a.s.sociates were either already in the loop or easily convinced. Anji was enthusiastic of course, as was Peter. Philip was in favour but reckoned it was a really big thing that would mean serious, possibly terminal damage if it went wrong. But my staff, who shared my vision, were never going to be the problem.

I spoke to Gordon. He advised me that I had to 'get Prescott on board'. It was good advice; though he was very non-committal on his own account, not anti, but I thought it a trifle ominous that he dodged the direct question of whether he thought it was a good idea. However, he clearly wouldn't oppose it.

I had made up my mind to change the party General Secretary, Larry Whitty. It would be a key position in any party fight. I liked Larry, but our politics were different. I had begun to think that Tom Sawyer would be the ideal choice: a trade union man, but smart, loyal, modernising, and with the reach and authority to help me get things through. This fence had to be leapt at the gallop and there could be no excess baggage weighing us down as we jumped.

John Prescott was indeed critical, as Gordon had said. I knew this had to be approached with care. I saw him at my house, a gentle, rea.s.suring and intimate environment. He was less taken aback than I thought he would be. As wily and perceptive on such matters as ever, he had already worked out that I wasn't going to be an easy ride and that my desire to change the party and take it not just to government but to a different frame of mind was real and indivertible. Right at the outset, his basic line had been: I will argue in private although if your mind is made up, I will come with you; or, if I feel so strongly, I will go, but I won't stay and undermine from within. It was not, of course, a pledge of unconditional support; but it was a promise of straight dealing, which was important and, as it transpired, one that was largely kept.

John made it clear that although he thought the project was altogether unwise, he would reflect and consider it. He had a plethora of questions how, when, replaced with what, drafted by whom, endorsed in what manner some of which I could answer. I got him to the point where he at least accepted that a debate around what the party really stood for was necessary, and that Clause IV provided the vehicle. He favoured a delay to see how things went with the public after all, we were so far ahead of the Tories but I knew in my own mind that it was precisely at this moment, almost for that reason, that we had to act. We had to show that even with this lead in the polls we were going to take a risk because it was right to do so, and demonstrate through taking it that we knew our lead was conditional. Yes, the people were saying, we like the look of this guy and where he wants to take the Labour Party, but now prove it. Any sense of either complacency or caution and I knew the lead would melt under the hot sun of scrutiny.

When eventually party conference came round in October 1994, the public mood was still strong, but I was sure there lurked major doubts underneath. When a party has defined itself in a particular way which is not to the public's liking, the definition has an uncomfortable habit of sticking around, like the smell of decay in an old house. You can use some air freshener, you can throw open a few windows and you can jolly people up a little with some positive description of how it's going to be better; but the only thing that works, in the end, is to say: this place stinks, we're going to make it over, i.e. keep the structure, revolutionise the rest.

I a.s.sessed that there were three types of Labour: old-fashioned Labour, which could never win; modernised Labour, which could win and keep winning, which was my ambition from the outset; and plain Labour, which could win once, but essentially as a reaction to an unpopular Conservative government. The last couldn't win on its own terms with sufficient clarity, breadth and depth of support to be capable of sustaining victory through the inevitable troubled times of government. My favourite parable of the Gospel, the parable of the sower, always served as an example: the difference between plain Labour and modernised Labour was the difference between the seed that sprouted but never took real root, and the seed that yielded thirty, sixty, a hundredfold.

In order to keep winning, we needed to create a core of ideas, att.i.tudes and policy that was solid, sustainable, strong; a sea wall that when the waves beat upon it was impregnable, that gathered friends to it and repelled foes. I knew that to do this meant confronting the old att.i.tudes of the party not from time to time but every day, at every moment, on each occasion when they tried to rea.s.sert themselves. Conceding to them would matter not only in itself, but far more as a sign that the old house remained essentially untransformed.

I tried to see Labour as an ordinary, non-political member of the public saw us. I had many friends outside politics who thought the Tories were tired and should be put out. And what did they think of us? They thought we were for the poor; for the downtrodden; for the union men; for the accused and the dispossessed. They thought we were liberals on law and order and peaceniks on defence. Herein lay the problem: all of these sentiments, in their place, are good and worthy they are why I'm Labour but only in their place in their place. As dominant, complete definitions of where Labour stood and who it represented, there was no earthly way they formed a broad enough, deep enough or popular enough coalition. Defined in this way, we were a party of protest, not of government.

Moreover, these were the kindest ways of describing these att.i.tudes. In fact, not in their place, such sentiments could be counterproductive for the country: union interests before public interest; a refusal to accept change where it was necessary; weakness on law and order and defence; att.i.tudes that might be principled but could also be naive.

Under Neil Kinnock and John Smith we had of course broadened, deepened and become more popular, but it felt to me and more importantly to the public like a negotiation between us and our past. We were talking in an upbeat way, but there was a tinge of reluctance about it, a reverence for the old days that smacked of denial about how bad it had been. There was a care in speaking about the way things were that indicated an uncertainty, a lack of thorough conviction about the way things would be in the future.

I wanted us to be emphatic, to be in the centre ground from belief, with pa.s.sion, and with the total clarity that left our past behind, not in the sense that we didn't keep the structure of our traditional beliefs, including their central foundation the commitment to social justice but rather that new ways of developing such foundations were needed in the modern world. From the very beginning, I was determined to be the architect of something revolutionary, transformative and undeniable. I had kept the plan on Clause IV very tight. On the opening weekend of party conference, just before it began, I started the consultations with other key people.

Jack Straw, who had written a pamphlet on the subject, was delighted. So was Neil Kinnock. Robin Cook thought it was crazy because it would split the party, and warned it might be the end of me. Margaret Beckett raised an eyebrow. Donald Dewar said, 'This should be interesting' in that funny Donaldish way. George Robertson, always sound, was supportive. On the whole, opinion was mixed and apprehensive. I spoke to Gordon several times but was careful not to disclose how it was to be announced. I'm afraid distrust was already present, like a shadow between us.

I had wanted to do it right at the end of my conference speech, and so inflammatory was it certain to be that we decided not to say it in the bald terms: 'Clause IV is going to be abandoned.' This was not because we didn't dare to say it outside of the hall, but to say it in the hall itself could provoke a really adverse reaction which might mar the whole event. I was going to say we needed to decide what our aims and values really were for the modern world, and a debate would start soon (this took on John Prescott's point about the necessity of a proper discussion). Then we would wait for the purport to sink in. It was a device, but my consultations had shown we needed one.

Late on the Sat.u.r.day we had a final vigorous debate about the slogan for it, and the use of the phrase 'New Labour'. Alastair invented the phrase 'New Labour, New Britain'. He said we should put it up in the hall as the strapline for the conference. Looking back now, it seems obvious that we should have done, but at the time there was a furious dispute, I can tell you. At one point there was even talk of a compromise, 'new Labour', i.e. no capital N. And it wasn't as trivial a point as you might think: New Labour with a capital N was indeed like renaming the party. Some of my inner circle warned there would be a dangerous reaction. Even Peter was worried. Finally, I thought, Let's go for it. There was indeed a reaction but it was containable, and the impact was ma.s.sive, an emphatic signal that this was not going to be a minor refurbishment but a wholesale renovation.

When, at the conclusion of my speech, I spoke of the need to redraw the party's aims and values in its const.i.tution (as George Robertson remarked, the hall was silent for a while, until the silence was broken by the sound of pennies dropping), and it was clear we were going to risk a vast internal party fight, the idea took hold that this leadership truly was different. This was red meat.

As if to underscore how difficult it was all going to be, the next day the party, at the insistence of the unions, pa.s.sed a resolution reaffirming Clause IV. It was, ironically, helpful: it showed this was not a false wrestle put on for the cameras but a genuine fight, with real opponents and real pain. However, it also meant we had to win it or we were finished.

For me, I was absolutely clear: if the change was rejected, I was off. As we approached the twenty-first century, five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and with even Communist China embracing the 'socialist market' economy, if the British Labour Party was going to a.s.sert that it believed in state ownership of 'the means of production, distribution and exchange', it meant we weren't serious. Such a position would confirm all the public's worst fears.

Of course opponents quickly shifted to asking: why have the internal row? This put opposition on a tactical, lower-ground basis. I retorted: there is a row only because you oppose the change. Either say you really do agree with the existing const.i.tution, or accept the change.

The debate took six months. John Prescott finally came fully on board and that helped settle down the traditional wing of the party enormously. The Scottish Conference which might have been tricky pa.s.sed a resolution in support of change, the first really big victory inside the party, setting the tone for the other swing voters to follow. If we could win in the heartland of the party, in Scotland where traditional thought was strong and where we might have antic.i.p.ated resistance to such 'middle-cla.s.s' thinking, then we could win in most places, and even in the unions. The opponents tried to rally and rail, but they were hamstrung by the overwhelming support for change among the public, who didn't follow the detail but, as I antic.i.p.ated, knew that it was really about whether the old Labour Party had changed or not.

The actual drafting was the product of an unusual collaboration between myself, Derry and Peter Hyman, with others providing commentary and suggestions. The initial draft was done sitting alone in Inverness in the family house of an old friend of mine, Mairi Stuart, just before the Scottish Conference. The final touches were put in place in our house in Islington, sitting in the bedroom with Peter Hyman, as downstairs our daughter Kathryn was having a birthday party. So I would go between games of pa.s.s-the-parcel and rewriting British social democracy.

The words mattered, to both party and public. For the party they had to convey genuine conviction. For the public, they couldn't be a fudge. They had to represent a clear move into the modern world.

So, we kept at the beginning the phrase 'democratic socialism', but what came after was a plain statement of values which rejected any a.s.sociation of those values with the state as the princ.i.p.al economic actor: The Labour Party is a democratic socialist party. It believes that by the strength of our common endeavour, we achieve more than we achieve alone so as to create for each of us the means to realise our true potential and for all of us a community in which power, wealth and opportunity are in the hands of the many not the few, where the rights we enjoy reflect the duties we owe, and where we live together, freely, in a spirit of solidarity, tolerance and respect.

In the strange telepathic way they do things, the public had ranked in order of preference the outcome for my leadership: the best result was that I was in control of a party that agreed with me; the worst was that I was not in control of a party which disagreed with me; the acceptable outcome was that the party was prepared to go along with me. In the end we settled somewhere between the best and the acceptable. Although we were only a small group of co-conspirators, as time went on we drew significant numbers of people to us. A new generation of young supporters bought fully into the change. They were the true believers and are the only hope for the party's future today.

The battle over Clause IV more or less set the scene for the style and content of leadership in the years up to 1997. We hadn't anything like a fully formed corpus of policy. We were much less prepared for government than we should have been, given the eighteen years of Opposition, though actually it can be dangerous to formulate precise policy in Opposition that is uninformed by the experience and expertise that comes with government. How we would overcome the many obstacles, diversions, treacherous shoals and unknown terrain was not known. On the other hand, our compa.s.s was set in a firm direction, and the manner and att.i.tude with which we would approach the challenges was clear. New Labour was not just a slogan. It was an att.i.tude of mind. It would serve us well when we were tested in the next two years, allowing us to develop the harder-edged policy and make the tough decisions.

Sometimes the tests arose as the issues arose. In January 1995, we had to knock back any suggestion of taxing private schools. Indeed, schools were a constant object of controversy in those early days as I tried to wean the party off its old prejudices (though I think they may have called them beliefs). Ironically, in the light of her later defection from my supporters, it was over Harriet Harman that the issue got hottest in January 1996.

When I had chosen to send my own children to the Oratory a Catholic state school that had been grant-maintained it was a difficult enough moment. Alastair and I had a real set-to over it since he, and most especially his partner Fiona, who was a campaigner for comprehensive schools, really disapproved. But I was determined that I couldn't let the kids down. Their education was important. They had enough to put up with as it was. To send them to a bad or average state school, when under the then rules governing admissions to Catholic schools we could have sent them to a good one, would be really quite wickedly irresponsible. As I said to Alastair: you and Fiona took hold of your children's secondary school, and changed it; I don't have that option. Also, there was always this somewhat absurd charge that we should have chosen Islington secondary schools for our children (they had been to primary school there) because that's where we lived. Without seeming complacent or taking things for granted, I couldn't point out the reality, which was that come the election we might well be living in Westminster. And, to be frank, with the state of Islington schools at that time, it is something that we would have tried to avoid anyway.

However, our situation paled into insignificance when Harriet, having sent one child also to the Oratory, decided to send the other to a grammar school. This really was something. The whole of the Labour Party programme since the 1960s had been to abolish academic selection and bring in comprehensive, non-selective schooling. Grammar schools were by and large cordially detested by the party. Harriet's decision was therefore a real shocker.

Alastair wanted to send her a letter denouncing her decision. Bruce Grocott, my PPS, was appalled. Even my nearest and dearest in the office thought it pretty indefensible. Only Cherie came close to sticking up for her, since she always put the family first. As the news leaked, the party went into turmoil after all, Harriet was a member of the Shadow Cabinet. Major slaughtered me on it at PMQs, finally having something he could really twist the knife on.

Alastair, as ever, held the line despite his own opinion, which was loudly communicated with much vigour. My view was absolutely crystal clear: it was her choice as a parent. On this, I was in a minority of one. The press smelt blood. It seems strange now but people really did tell me my leadership was on the line. No one could quite understand why I felt the need to defend her so vigorously.

To be honest, at first I wasn't sure why either, but as I licked my wounds over PMQs and reflected, I realised why the instinct was so strong: although Labour people would understand why Harriet might have to resign over this, no ordinary person would. Some woman politician decides to send her kid to a grammar school. She thinks it gives him the best chance of a good education. Her party forces her to resign. What do you think? You think that's a bit extreme; and not very nice; and a bit worrying; and is that what still makes me a bit anxious about those Labour people? Before we know where we are, we've really unsettled sensible middle-ground opinion.

I dug in. I went to the PLP the day after the Tuesday PMQs and defended her pa.s.sionately. I also learned a great lesson: the row pa.s.sed. Yes, it had been ugly for a while and as ever in the Westminster bubble everything seems so extraordinarily hyper, but in reality the world kept turning and the news moved on.

We were continuing to develop the orientation for policy across a range of issues. In May 1995, we had had the first of a series of discussions, internally in the office, about Bank of England independence. I was already firmly of the view we should do it. It was also part of the bigger a.n.a.lysis for business, unions, public service and welfare policy that I wanted to develop which would be plainly New Labour, and even if the most we could do was establish a direction, the direction should be clear.

In part this was about att.i.tude; in part about policy; in part about reconstructing a different link between the party and the people. The att.i.tude was clear: no compromise on the essentials, and making New Labour an indisputable fact of the political landscape; in policy, to figure out not the granular details but the guiding principles of policy positions; in the link between party and people, getting the former to behave like normal people and the latter to feel that, thus normalised, Labour people were their type of people.

All of this today sounds almost comically obvious, but not back then. We had become separated from 'normal' people. For several decades, even before the eighteen years in the wilderness, Labour was more like a cult than a party. If you were to progress in it, you had to speak the language and press the right b.u.t.tons. It went on so long it became natural to those in the party. Even I had to learn to do it not that well, I may say but without doing some of it, you got nowhere.

The SDP had been formed mainly for policy reasons, but they also masked a cultural disjunction between them and traditional Labour. I always remember in 1981 seeing on TV the Limehouse Declaration by the 'Gang of Four' Roy Jenkins, Shirley Williams, David Owen and Bill Rodgers in which they spoke of their intention to leave the Labour Party. The actual declaration was important, of course, but what intrigued me was the photograph of the meeting. On the table was a bottle of wine. You may think this ridiculous, but I remember being shocked that they allowed themselves to be pictured with a bottle of claret. Then I became shocked at my shocked reaction. Didn't I have a bottle of wine on my table? Didn't many people? Yet I kid you not, at that time Labour members would have been aghast at such a picture. Beer, possibly; wine, no.

There was, in a sense, a cultural as well as a political divide between the party and the people. Normal young people went out on a Sat.u.r.day night, had a few drinks and partied. Labour young people sat and talked seriously about the iniquities of the Tory government and the inevitable long-term decline of capitalism. I wanted us to reconnect completely at the cultural level. I wanted us to take the good bits of the Labour Party in the 1970s and 80s proper progressive att.i.tudes such as equality for women, gays, blacks and Asians and ally them to normality, bring them into the mainstream and out of the suffocating strictures of political correctness. So a woman should be able to be a woman and still be political. She didn't have to behave or seem like a man. That sense of ourselves as individuals has a very important political spirit attached to it.

The essential problem of Labour in the post-war period was that it had lost touch with its basic purpose. That purpose was always, at heart, about the individual. A more powerful state, unions, social action, collective bargaining all of these were means to an end: to help the individual gain opportunity, to let him or her overcome limitations unfairly imposed by poverty, poor education, poor health, housing and welfare. It was all about opportunity not in general but in particular: for you, as an individual. That echoed and captured something deep within human nature: the desire to be free, to be the best you can be.

The problem for all progressive parties was that by the 1960s, the first generation of those helped in such a way had been liberated. Thus on the ladder of opportunity, they didn't want more state help; they wanted choice, freedom to earn more money and spend it. They fractured the h.o.m.ogeneous cla.s.s base. They started to resent the freeloaders they paid for. Above all, they wanted a different relationship with the state: as partners or citizens, not as beneficiaries or clients. The private sector, driven by the market, shifted fast under such social pressures. The public sector got stuck. This is why by the end of the 1970s, Thatcher and Reagan were able to push forward major change.

For me, New Labour was all about understanding this social evolution. It wasn't at all about changing the basic values or purpose of progressive politics; on the contrary, it was about retrieving them from the deadweight of political and cultural dogma that didn't merely obscure those values and that purpose, but also defeated them.

What is more, it wasn't about 'coming to terms' with such an evolution. It was about rejoicing in it, recognising that this was not an unfortunate reality that we had to learn to acknowledge in order to make progress; it was was progress. progress.

All of this may seem a long way back from Clause IV, policy changes and manifestos, but it was a critical part of orientation. I wanted Labour people to be ambitious and compa.s.sionate at the same time, and feel neither guilty about the first nor anxious about the second. We were normal human beings. We should be motivated and fascinated by the prospect of being agents of political change. We should be striving for happiness and fulfilment also in our chosen careers, in our personal life, in our enjoyment of art and culture.

Again I know it sounds a little bizarre, but back in the late 1980s there was a group of rock musicians called Red Wedge, fronted by people like Paul Weller and Billy Bragg, who came out and campaigned for us. It was great. But I remember saying after one of their gigs and, by the way, Billy Bragg was someone I got to know later and really liked 'We need to reach the people listening to Duran Duran and Madonna' (a comment which went down like a cup of sick). I felt, in art and culture, we should represent all strands, avant-garde through to basic popular art that our voters might go to watch or listen to.

So, in a sense, for me, politics started with that very ground-level human reconnection of party and people. In late 1996, Alastair, who got all this completely, persuaded me to appear on the Des O'Connor Des O'Connor Show Show. At that time, it was a very unusual thing for a politician to do. I was incredibly nervous. I had to prepare certain anecdotes, and get myself in a totally different frame of mind. It would be utterly unlike PMQs or a party conference speech. I didn't have to prove 'fitness to govern' in terms of economic or social or foreign policy; I had to prove I was normal and could talk normally about the things people like to chat about. It was a risk, and I fear I made Alastair's life h.e.l.l in the lead-up to it, but it worked. What astonished me, however, was that from then on, people sublimely uninterested in politics would feel I was accessible to them.

It meant we were back in touch, that this rather frightening cultural disjunction of the 1970s and 80s had been realigned. People were focused and prepared to listen. However and this is also crucial such a reconnection was only a beginning. Sometimes, political leaders make the mistake of thinking: That's enough, I've done it, they like me. That is gravely to underestimate people. That is actually just first base, no more than that.

Then they want answers. If you are in Opposition, people don't expect you to know it all. They're not asking for reams of detail, they just want to know where you stand on spending and tax; on law and order; on defence; on Europe; on public services. Here two things are vital for an Opposition: keep it simple; and keep it coherent. By keeping it simple, I mean not surface only. I mean: clear.

For example, are you in favour of a tough approach on law and order or not? Do you support the war in Afghanistan fully or not? Are you for reform or status quo in public services? Do we need less, more or the same amount of public spending? Are you in favour of tax cuts, and if so, for whom? Big state, smaller state, different state?

Politicians, in one way rightly mistrusting the crudity of such simple positioning, don't like this, because once defined you are limited, and their instinct is to keep all options open. The holy grail is to have everyone onside; and I'm not saying I didn't pursue it fairly vigorously and, at points, more successfully than most.

However, you have to be able to answer those questions plainly and clearly. There can be qualifications and 'get-outs', but the answers must remain comprehensible, because they define you. They add up to a political, not merely personal, character. This requires thought, detailed a.n.a.lysis and intellectual rigour. Politics is a far more intellectual business than is often realised. You may think: Well, if it's simplicity that's required, you don't need a whole lot of detail. Wrong. The simplicity is not born of superficial a.n.a.lysis. It is simple precisely because it is the product of being worked through.

It was here in the long period of Opposition, when every day, week and month had to be filled with something new or diverting, that the work I had done with Gordon and a range of other policy thinkers paid off. We had burrowed down; we had devilled; we had iterated and reiterated in order to get to grips with the governing principles in each area. So we needed more investment in public services. Fine. But how to pay for it? Growth? Tax rises? Are we against tax cuts or in favour of some? And how does that impact on spending? Is it investment first, then tax cuts? Or can you do both, maybe redistributing? If redistribution, of what sort? On the higher rate, or in other more covert ways?

I can't tell you how many times we went back and forth on these issues, so that by 1994, when we became more busy and the relationship more tense, we were already orientated. The pathfinder was already switched on: growth was key; investment not tax cuts; redistribute, but carefully and not touching income tax; keep the middle cla.s.s onside, but where growth and some redistribution allowed, focus on the poorest; then, in time, you could balance tax cuts and spending.

Likewise on welfare. Throughout 1995 and 1996, we toyed with a jobs programme. In the end, we came up with the 'New Deal' for the unemployed. The phrase was Gordon's, borrowed from Franklin D. Roosevelt's economic programmes in the 1930s. He always liked that sort of thing. We chose a windfall tax on the privatised utilities as the means of paying for it (being often in a monopoly position, the utilities had ended up with b.u.mper profits). Gordon pushed for the tax, but I was a little reluctant, fearful of alienating business opinion. In early January 1997, I had a set-to with him about it, mainly because his adviser Ed b.a.l.l.s had gone over the top in briefing it. In the end, we settled on a compromise which was less than he wanted, but still a hefty sum.

However, the real crunch came in the programme itself, where Gordon and I were on the same page precisely: along with the job opportunities for the unemployed, we insisted on a responsibility on the part of the unemployed person to take them i.e. modern, not old-fashioned welfare. This was very controversial ground with a lot of the party. There was a huge outcry from union leaders and others (including Robin Cook) accusing us of introducing a type of workfare, though Robin's comments were in Shadow Cabinet and aimed at Gordon (with whom he had a long-standing feud that had begun deep in the history of 1970s Scottish politics). We stuck to our guns and saw the rebellion off.

But here's the point: each decision to have a tax, to put it on the utilities, to use it for a new type of jobs programme was born of a set of thoroughly worked-out positions on tax, on business, on welfare. Our thinking had been painstakingly orientated so that when we came to the policy, it was not only clear but also coherent. The position on welfare didn't contradict the business position. It could have done we might have raised general corporation tax and funded a new type of jobs programme, but that would have been anti-business. We might have had a windfall tax on utilities and had an old-fashioned, traditional jobs programme, but that would have contradicted our message on welfare, namely that it was about a partnership between state and individual, not a handout. Instead, we chose carefully so that the policy was in balance and consistent with the overall New Labour position and message. In this way, it had broad appeal. Compet.i.tive business resented the utility windfall profits from privatisation, while people wanted action on unemployment but thought unemployed people also had a duty to help themselves.

I was obsessed by the thought that this Labour government had to be different; had to be able to govern for a lengthy term, as Tory governments seemed habitually capable of doing. In order to achieve this, there was no room for compromise on essentials. That is emphatically not to say we didn't compromise. We did. In 1995, I came out for a publicly owned railway system. I never had much faith in this particular privatisation of the Tories and felt it would lead to a hugely complex and possibly uncompet.i.tive system; but on the other hand, I wasn't going to waste money renationalising it. On the NHS and schools we also compromised, sometimes more than I liked. However, when it came to those issues fundamental to New Labour to its rationale, its heart, its political soul, if you will there was no compromise at all. Often this was posed less in terms of what we would do than in what we wouldn't. But that was natural for Opposition; and in any event, it created the right political s.p.a.ce for those things I was determined to move forward on, if and when prime minister.

So: no return to the old union laws; no renationalisation of the privatised utilities; no raising of the top rate of tax; no unilateralism; no abolition of grammar schools. And there were certain clear pointers to future policy: a tough line on antisocial behaviour; investment and reform in public services; pro-Europe and pro-US; opportunity and responsibility together in welfare; encouragement for small- and medium-sized enterprises and even-handedness between business and labour (employees might have additional individual rights, but not collective ones).

At every stage of this (and the decisions came pretty fast and furious), I was reconciled to fighting, and to leaving if I lost. The party had to know I was not bluffing. If they didn't want New Labour, they could get someone else. The country had to know that if I was going to be their prime minister, I would be 'of the party' but also removed from it.

At times and this was a muted criticism from GB also it seemed as if I was deliberately provoking the party. Genuinely I wasn't; but I was not going to defer. I was going to speak the same language to party and country. In so doing, I was going to encourage the sensible and modernising people in the party to step up and step out. Party leaders have a symbiotic impact on their activists. There is a subtle cloning process that goes on which, in turn, gives more strength to the leader.

Speeches I gave back then were different in content to the speeches in the early part of the twenty-first century, to be sure, but in tone they remained the same. Our understanding of what it meant to modernise changed with the experience of governing, but the will and determination to modernise never wavered. Of course, the other point to underline is that this will was born of belief. My settled conviction was that twentieth-century politics was coming to an end not only in time but also in substance. The old left/right distinctions remained, but needed amendment, confinement and definition.

So there it was: a basic belief recovering Labour values from outdated tradition and dogma and reconnecting the party to the modern world; a set of intellectual policy orientations coming from those values reapplied in the light of modernity; and finally a set of policy positions or decisions that reflected those earlier orientations and that basic belief. The commitment remained. The means of implementing it radically altered. The state and social action were a means of advancing the individual, not subsuming them. The objective was for the individual to fulfil their potential and ambition; our role was as the enabler of this, not the controller of it, aiming not to limit that ambition or those goals but to open up their possibility to all. 'For the many not the few', as the new Clause IV put it.

Every step, every declaration, every interview was dedicated to that coherent framework. The coherence itself is an essential component. Take the Tory Party of today. They wanted a modernising message. To an extent, they followed the New Labour handbook. They changed their position on gays, on investment in public services, on the importance of society. They put away some of the old Thatcherite rhetoric, but the seed didn't take root. So when they thought it was in the bag, they relaxed. Suddenly the Eurosceptics were let out of the cage and indulged, and the Tories did less well in the 2010 election than expected. Now, of course, as a result of the coalition the Eurosceptics are conveniently, for the Tory leadership, back behind bars. Why is Euroscepticism a mistake for a Tory Party trying to modernise? At first blush you may think: No, that's fine after all, the polls show that's where the British people are. But it is a mistake because it immediately breaks the coherence of the modernising message. To a 2545-year-old audience, Europe is a fact. Live with it. (Whether you like it or not is another matter.) Let slightly wild-eyed anti-Europeans start talking about it with a pa.s.sion that people instinctively distrust, and in a flash, the question mark over the party and its leader returns in bold print. Add into that any wavering on the economy, and the incoherence starts to worry the very voters you need to rea.s.sure. So, in a sense the final move towards modernisation was less a decision that could have ended with a conclusive election victory, and more the product of an election whose result was inconclusive. Having said that, they now have the chance to make it work, and to do in government what they did not do fully in Opposition.

Between 1995 and 1997, even after Clause IV, I was in a perpetual motion of rea.s.surance. The more the poll lead went up, the more I did it. Members of the Shadow Cabinet would frequently say: Come on, enough, we are miles ahead. Each time they said it, I would get hyper-anxious, determined not for a single instant to stop the modernising drive. If I seemed obsessive, it was because I was. Reconnection was great and policy change was essential, but above all, people needed to know that when I was tested, I would stay true to that modernising appeal. Our opponents would say: it's all clever spin and PR. Day in and day out, with the party's reactionary elements as my foil, I would prove them wrong with a raft of modernising moves.

In June 1995 we had further outraged sensibilities by accepting an invitation, conveyed through the then editor of The Times The Times, Peter Stothard, to address Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation conference on Hayman Island in Australia the next month. Again, now, it seems obvious: the country's most powerful newspaper proprietor, whose publications have hitherto been rancorous in their opposition to the Labour Party, invites us into the lion's den. You go, don't you?

We kept the invitation and my desire to go very quiet indeed. Poor Bruce Grocott was aghast. He was and is a wonderful guy really sincere, decent and absolutely Labour to the innermost part of his being. In fact, the best of traditional Labour. He had been Mo Mowlam's inspired suggestion for my PPS. It was a great choice. (Bruce was succeeded by two equally great choices, David Hanson and Keith Hill. David was a great networker, respected even by those who disagreed pa.s.sionately with me; and also a very tuned-in politician in his own right. Keith was a witty, lovable and really tough operator who hid his toughness beneath the wit; but the toughness was there when you needed it. Keith's great joke, which I found more amusing after I had left office, was to come and get me for PMQs at 11.57 precisely, throwing the door open and saying like a town crier: 'Prime Minister, a grateful nation now awaits.') One enormous benefit was that I always knew what the party was thinking by reference to what Bruce thought. All the numerous volte-faces were pretty shocking to his system. He used to sit there as I explained my latest change to the party's theology and ritual, and his eyes would wander and he would shake his head or occasionally laugh and say: No, come on, this time you really are joking.

On this one, if I had told him I had a friend called Faust and he had cut this really great deal with some bloke called Satan, it couldn't have gone down worse. I also knew Neil Kinnock would hate it and feel, understandably, betrayed. The Sun Sun had been vicious beyond vicious to him, and as a result really had achieved demon status for party activists. People would be horrified. On the other hand, as I said to Alastair, not to go was to say carry on and do your worst, and we knew their worst was very bad indeed. No, you sat down to sup; or not. So we did. had been vicious beyond vicious to him, and as a result really had achieved demon status for party activists. People would be horrified. On the other hand, as I said to Alastair, not to go was to say carry on and do your worst, and we knew their worst was very bad indeed. No, you sat down to sup; or not. So we did.

The long journey allowed me to craft the speech carefully. It had to be a speech that didn't pander. It had its pro-European part and commitments on poverty and the environment, but was also a clear articulation of New Labour from the point of principle not simply electability. Paul Keating, then Australian prime minister, went with us and as ever he was great company and a huge source of sensible advice delivered in the inimitable Keating manner. ('Don't ever put up income tax, mate,' he used to say to me. 'Take it off them anyhow you please, but do that and they'll rip your f***ing guts out.') He thought Rupert a b.a.s.t.a.r.d, but one you could deal with.

I thought Rupert an enigma, and the more I got to know him, the more I thought so. In the end and I am aware of the shrieks of disbelief as I write this I came to have a grudging respect and even liking for him. He was hard, no doubt. He was right wing. I did not share or like his att.i.tudes on Europe, social policy or on issues such as gay rights, but there were two points of connection: he was an outsider, and he had b.a.l.l.s. The 'outsider' thing was crucial to understanding him. He remained both immensely powerful and, at certain quite elemental points, anti-Establishment. He would admire Mrs Thatcher, but not necessarily the Tory Party with all its baggage, airs and graces. That gave me something to work with.

We had flown to Sydney after PMQs on the Thursday, and stayed overnight at Kirribilli House, the prime minister's place down by the harbour. We then flew up with Paul to Hayman Island on the Sunday, gave the speech the following day, and left an hour later to fly all the way back. We got to London in time to make a speech with Chris Smith, the Shadow Heritage Secretary, on the technology revolution on the Tuesday morning, and then did PMQs that afternoon.

The speech on Hayman Island went down well. I could see the executives were in awe (and a little fearful) of Rupert. Once he had introduced me in glowing terms (having given me credit, privately I think, for having the bra.s.s nerve to come), they all rallied and I could feel we were in with a chance of winning the Sun Sun's support.

The party were half appalled and half excited by the sheer vim of it all. Indeed, back then we were moving at such a pace that they hardly had the chance to recover from one shock to the system before another came in its wake. It took their breath away, and though some of the criticism was strong, the mainstream of the party loved the fact we were wrong-footing, disorientating and generally outfoxing the Tories. After years of feeling like a whipped underdog, they rather liked the idea of a bit of the swagger of a top dog.

At around that time in mid-1995, I set out a template for the Labour Party approach to policy in a series of articles. Looking back, what is interesting is that although the actual policies shifted significantly with the experience of government, the basic philosophical positions remained. In June, I wrote in an article in The Times The Times that: that: The truth is that the electorate now sees Labour as the sensible mainstream party. We have changed. We admit the changes. But far from simply ditching our past, we are proclaiming a positive message for the future. The new Clause IV is the most visible symbol of that change but it is not the only one. We have changed, too, the way we make policy. The education policy launched last week was not devised to please the National Union of Teachers. It was devised to meet the concerns of parents. The health policy we launched yesterday drew on the expertise of professional bodies and other experts in the NHS. But uppermost in our minds, all the time, was the patient.

We were constantly operating on two levels. One concerned the campaigning genius of Alastair, Peter and the political team. They were, of course, putting over the New Labour case, but they were also whacking the Tories very hard, exploiting their divisions, underscoring their weaknesses, using a devastating mixture of critique, ridicule and bombast. It was fun, effective and professionally delivered. It carried us through the by-elections which we were now regularly winning from the Tories, even in the most unlikely places. As a machine, it was close to unbeatable, like Manchester United at their best: exciting to watch, unnerving for opponents and pretty much unstoppable. This was complemented by the rigorous attention to the need for policy positions that were centrist, credible and coherent, so that differences with the Tories didn't lead to vulnerability and so that the key message Labour has genuinely changed, and not out of electoral calculation would be reinforced.

Most of the articles about our position were written personally, crafted out of detailed policy discussion with David Miliband, Michael Barber, Jonathan and others. In what caused much jarring and tutting within the party, I even decided to own up to supporting changes Margaret Thatcher had made. I knew the credibility of the whole New Labour project rested on accepting that much of what she wanted to do in the 1980s was inevitable, a consequence not of ideology but of social and economic change. The way she did it was often very ideological, sometimes unnecessarily so, but that didn't alter the basic fact: Britain needed the industrial and economic reforms of the Thatcher period. Saying this immediately opened the ears of many who had supported the Tories in that period not because they were instinctively or emotionally Conservative, but because Labour had seemed so old-fashioned and out of touch with individual aspiration. Our economic policy had appeared hopelessly collectivist; our social policy born of political correctness.

In another article for The Times The Times in July 1995, I explained why Labour should be the party of social order and security at home, and internationalism and free trade abroad: in July 1995, I explained why Labour should be the party of social order and security at home, and internationalism and free trade abroad: The only way to rebuild social order and stability is through strong values, socially shared, inculcated through individuals and families. This is not some lurch into authoritarianism or an attempt to impose a regressive personal morality. It is, in fact, about justice and fairness. The strong and powerful can protect themselves. Those who lose most through the absence of rules are the weak and the vulnerable. The first casualties of social breakdown are often the poor and disadvantaged. That is why the left should treat it seriously . . .The left of centre should be the meritocrats of the twenty-first century. The Conservatives are in danger of becoming narrowly and insularly nationalistic. There is no future for that in a world of change. I am not saying it does not have popular appeal. It does. But it is not serious politics . . . The Labour government I hope to lead will be outward-looking, internationalist and committed to free and open trade, not an outdated and misguided narrow nationalism. The Labour government I hope to lead will be outward-looking, internationalist and committed to free and open trade, not an outdated and misguided narrow nationalism.It is a rejuvenated and revitalised left of centre that is placed to respond to and shape this new world of change. If it can escape the constraints of its past, learning from history not living in it, it is best equipped intellectually and philosophically for the new century. It is precisely to do this that New Labour will continue to change.

My main worry was that the Tories would regain some political sense, change leader and rejuvenate. It wasn't that John Major was bad. However, he was plainly trying to keep together a party viscerally divided over Europe, stretching the skin as tight as it would go to conceal the break, rather than conduct surgery and mend it. In a move that could have worked, in 1995 he suddenly decided to hold a leadership election and force his opponents out in the open. It was a rather brilliant tactic and had me worried. John Redwood stepped forward, with the support of the Eurosceptic Tory press. 'Redwood vs Deadwood', as the Mail Mail put it. put it.

But then, fortunately for me, Major made the same error as Labour had in the 1980s: he appealed for unity rather than a mandate. So the bold tactic was not accompanied by a bold strategy. Redwood was defeated; but not for a cause. Michael Heseltine, who could have led the Tories, remained marginalised.

It's a strange thing, the power of the appeal to loyalty in respect of a leader. You have to be very wary of it. In particular, you have to define what it is and what it isn't, or rather what it should be and what it shouldn't. When prime minister, and in the darker days when I was under fairly much routine attack by Gordon's people, my close supporters would sometimes complain that his supporters were disloyal. I would always respond that they were perfectly ent.i.tled to challenge me, to put forward an alternative, and to say I should go. What they shouldn't do is undermine me. In other words and obviously not trivially or serially if you come to the conclusion the leader is not up to it or is taking the party fundamentally in the wrong direction, there is nothing disloyal in being open and mounting a challenge. If the criticism is right, the challenge comes out of loyalty to the bigger cause: the party itself and its purpose. That is why I never had a problem with Gordon's people wanting me out, provided it was for a purpose other than simply that of Gordon doing the job rather than me. And for some of them, hostile to New Labour, it was. What is always unacceptable is to chip away, to refuse the open challenge, to corrode. That is disloyal because it weakens the party; it doesn't change it or redirect it.

So I used to say: I don't mind the so-called disloyalty, I mind the fact that they want Labour to go back to election-losing ways. Major could have used the contest to a.s.sert leadership. Instead, the fight was messy and served to underline the fact that the Tories were unresolved in their essential direction.

In January 1996, we published the 'Party into Power' doc.u.ment, a seemingly innocuous exercise in party management, but ultimately a very important change in the way the party developed policy. When I had read up on previous Labour governments, I had noticed that a destabilising factor was the relationship between party and government. When the party was called upon to exercise real power, there immediately came about a dangerous tension between activists and ministers in which the two always ended up divided from each other. The party wanted true 'socialism' beloved of the activists; the government was focused on the people. They moved with remarkable speed into inhabiting separate political cultures. The result was an increasing disillusionment with the government from the party, which quickly communicated itself to the public.

The worst aspect was that this disillusionment then found easy expression in the party structures, notably the NEC and the party conference. The NEC became the equivalent of the government's moral inquisitor, trying to keep it to the straight and narrow; the party conference became the focal point for the dissension and a battleground for resolutions that usually asked the government to do something electorally suicidal. The 'Party into Power' doc.u.ment effectively altered the rules so as to ensure that the routine resolutions didn't happen just by tabling a motion, but instead grew out of a managed process that required long debate and discussion in policy groups; and the NEC powers were sharply curtailed. We had to get the unions on board for the changes, and it was here that Tom Sawyer was invaluable, as a former trade unionist. With some reluctance and opposition, the party conceded the changes at the 1996 conference. They were vital when the going got rough in government.

None of this meant we were immune to the usual party backbiting and gossip. Several times in 1996, I was counselling the Shadow Cabinet to avoid damaging briefings and leaks and to stop fighting each other and fight the Tories. At the same time, I was trying to ward off attacks from the left that we had already diluted our principles in the quest for power. I decided, as I put it, to own up to the charges of betrayal and sell-out before we ever got there. I thought the bane of the left the tendency to believe that the leadership is too right wing when usually the public worry is the opposite was best brought out, acknowledged and confronted. In a message both to them and to the country, I said in effect: Don't be under any misconception; we are New Labour, we are going to govern as New Labour; it is not a gimmick; it is real; it is born of belief. I knew it wouldn't stop the charges of betrayal, but it would limit their salience and reach.

Roy Jenkins used to describe me as like someone carrying an immensely valuable vase across a wide room with a very slippery floor. Not for one moment could I let myself relax, my gaze be unfixed on the precious cargo, my mind diverted from the task in hand. Vast amounts of care and hard work went into the conferences. In 1994, I announced the change to Clause IV. In 1995, we announced a deal with BT to promote skills, a connection with a major privatised utility sending the clear message that we would be good with business. In that speech, I also tried to reflect my wish for the country to modernise and to look outward and forward, and coined the phrase 'Britain as a Young Country' a phrase somewhat mocked, but ill.u.s.trating my pa.s.sion for Britain to capture some of the youthful optimism and energy of a country feeling confident of its future, not staring nostalgically into its past.

In 1996, I said our three priorities for government would be 'education, education, education' (a line the only one ever! given to me by Jonathan). The purpose of focusing on education was for its own sake, obviously, but it also served to emphasise how we saw the role of the state: enabling the fulfilment of potential, not controlling lives or business. In the 'New Labour, New Britain' guide we produced in 1996, we set out a clear compa.s.s in each area of policy. We had symbolic or token policies to ill.u.s.trate direction, but carefully avoided overpromising or too much detail.

In this regard, Gordon was an indispensable ally. His natural caution made him disapprove of any hostages to fortune. He had seen the appeal of New Labour. He was determined to be seen as economically prudent, pro-business and, while he was always off to the left of me, it was all within bounds. He gave our position on the economy credibility, and that in turn enormously enhanced the credibility of the party's aspiration to power. In the 1995 Mais Lecture to the banking and finance community, I had set out our approach to the economy in close collaboration with him, emphasising our commitment to stability. In writing it, I got help from key City people who I knew would understand that the core purpose was to be the embodiment of sane, steady common sense. It worked, and rea.s.sured further.

Meanwhile, I was learning to cope with fame. Suddenly, I was one of the best-known faces in the land. There was huge interest also in New Labour from abroad. We were written about widely as the coming thing. We were the fashion.

However, at that point, there was still a link to reality in my daily life. I had no security, I drove the kids to school most mornings, I could go out to eat, see friends, be alone with the family. I was busy, to be sure, and the responsibility I was carrying was great, but it sat with relative ease on my shoulders. I looked incredibly young. People would stop me in the street and chat. Looking back, I see the days were blessed then. At the time, of course, it didn't seem like that.

Cherie and the children coped magnificently, but it is easy to forget how much their lives had changed. The children were, of a sudden, looked on differently by their cla.s.smates. Fortunately, because they carried on going to the same school, and as a family we went to the same church St Joan of Arc in Highbury, just up from the then a.r.s.enal football ground the faces were familiar, and though evidently we were regarded in a new light, the families we were close to remained close. They provided much normality. Our friends tended to be non-political and it made a comforting change from the pressure cooker.

Cherie decided to remake her image: get fit, look good, carry herself like the well-known figure she was becoming. In this, Carole Caplin was a great support, as she was to me when fitness became more of a preoccupation. She did a superb job for Cherie, made her look and feel good when Cherie was suddenly transported from one world (professional Bar) to another (tabloid press).

Carole was monstered by the media later when she had an affair with Peter Foster, a con man. Whole reams of newsprint were devoted to her, including stories that were completely made up and then became standard fare, like the fable about Cherie and Carole having showers together.

My close office were, it is fair to say, intrigued but generally dismayed by Carole. Alastair, in particular, couldn't understand her role and strongly disapproved of it. He judged, in a sense rightly, that politics had no place for someone as exotic and apolitical as Carole. Personally, that's why I found her so refreshing.