Friday, January 5, 1996

Tokyo. We had been advised before coming over to get lots of calling cards and the embassy explained it really was important, not just for us but for TB himself. The Japanese set huge store by calling cards, and the ambassador really felt that we should get some good ones for TB. As the day wore on, and he began to run out of his own cards, and get them mixed up with the cards he had been given, he ended up giving the German Ambassador’s card to a businessman from Sony. There was one tricky moment, when TB was introduced to someone and asked who he was, and the ambassador said ‘You know, the former prime minister,’ and TB said ‘Ah yes, I know the face.’ There was the odd schoolboy comic moment too, as when a Japanese businessman said ‘Ra whole of Japan is rookin fowad to your erection.’ I said we are hoping for a big one and TB spluttered while the Jap put his thumbs up and said ‘Big one, big one.’ The reality was that he was making a big impact though, and the Japanese saw in TB a very new and attractive kind of leader. I wondered if they would have felt the same if they had seen him later, sitting in his bedroom at the residence, wearing nothing but his underpants and an earthquake emergency helmet which we all had in our rooms, pretending to speak Japanese.

Sunday, January 7

Singapore. I had slept for about two hours when I was woken by a very alert cockerel. At breakfast, TB said I had to take more care of myself. ‘You’d be useless to me dead,’ he said. He said he played tennis, and kept in shape, and he was worried that I worked too hard without doing exercise. We had the makings of a very good speech on the theme of stakeholder economy, and the more I briefed it as our core economic argument, the more confident I became that it was a good description of our economic pitch. Locals from the Telegraph, Guardian and FT were there and I could tell when I started to brief the substance of the speech that they were really up for it. I think it was the Guardian guy who first said ‘Is this stakeholder economy the big idea?’ We were running late, and I went into the church to ask TB if he could leave the service early and he looked at me shocked, and said certainly not. TB felt he was on to something with the stakeholder economy idea. It was a way of conveying the economy is about more than money and jobs, it was also about what sort of country we wanted to be. It worked perfectly in tandem with One Nation. It was also a washing line from which to hang all the different parts of economic policy. David M was ecstatic about the speech, felt finally TB had found a left-of-centre message on the economy. TB said we now needed two things, the sense of the team and main players working in harmony, and the public feeling the Tories were no longer making the economy improve.

Thursday, January 11

The mood in the morning meeting was awful. Here we were, TB just back from a successful trip abroad, his speech setting the agenda, the Tories going through one of their internecine phases, we are way ahead in the polls, but a Martian landing in that meeting would have thought we were on the skids. GB was already moving against the stakeholder economy, suggesting we should broaden it to the stakeholder society. Philip and I argued strongly for sticking with it, saying stakeholder economy had more edge and was less easily dismissed as just warm words. That much was shown by the controversy since he made the speech. I said we finally had a sense of an economic message that set us apart. The trouble was a lack of any real team spirit. A few of us, mainly PG and I, and Donald [Dewar], tried to rub along with everyone, but it was getting more difficult. It was amazing, the way the press thought we ran this well-oiled machine, but inside the machine on days like this, it felt very rickety.

Monday, January 15

It was pretty clear that GB did not believe in the basic stakeholder economy message at all, or if he did, he was determined not to say so. TB was clearly anxious and very twitchy about all manner of things. What is missing most is a strategy that is agreed and understood by everyone. He said ‘I’ll have to take over strategy myself and run the whole show.’

Thursday, January 18

GB was on the Today programme and did OK, but anyone who knew him could tell that he was deliberately emphasising opportunity economy rather than stakeholder economy. Later TB and GB had a private session, GB complaining again that he was never consulted and that we had not thought through the consequences of the speech. He successfully troubled TB, who began to wonder whether we had the right definition of the stakeholder economy.

Friday, January 19

Harriet paged me to say the Mail on Sunday had been on to the grammar school that her son was going to. David Hill had advised her to brief the Independent and the Mirror in the hope the coverage would not be so grisly, and some of the sting taken out, and I said I agreed with that. I told her however she handled it, I thought she was mad to be doing it, and she should fasten her seat belt. TB then claimed we had never had a proper discussion about it and I said that was balls. We had discussed it ad nauseam and I had written her a letter advising against the move which he had refused to allow me to send. ‘Do you ever think you would be a better leader than me?’ he asked and I said no, because for a start I lacked his patience. He said the MPs wouldn’t mind, because I was more in tune with them. Ho ho.

Sunday, January 21

I was playing golf with David Mills [husband of Tessa Jowell] when Tim A paged me to say Clare had attacked Harriet on GMTV and it was running big. TB hit the roof when he heard about Clare. ‘Anyone would think Harriet had murdered the bloody child,’ he said. ‘The ability of the party to lose perspective is unbelievable.’ I said that on the contrary I felt she got off fairly lightly. But he was absolutely livid about Clare, said he was sick of her self-indulgence. I tried to put personal feelings about both of them to one side. In truth, they were both in the wrong. Harriet should have more regard for JP’s point about political consequences from personal actions, while Clare can never resist presenting herself as the conscience of a certain view of the party. But I pointed out to TB that he was in danger of getting damaged himself because he had one rule for some, e.g. Clare being slapped down over drugs when she stepped out of line a tiny bit, and another rule for the Harriets and Peters of this world. He said ‘It’s a personal decision’ is all we need to say. Clare, he said, was simply being unprofessional in doing what she’d done. If you’re in a hole, the job of a politician is to think how we get out of it, and help others out of it, not make things worse. I said surely you could see the damage – here we are in the middle of people v privilege, trying to get up equality of opportunity, and she comes and totally fucks it over. It is selfish and stupid, and she needs to understand how we feel.

Tuesday, January 23

PMQs was probably Major’s best 15 minutes since TB became leader. He absolutely savaged him over Harriet. TB looked desperate. JP, alongside, was grim-faced, fuelling the accurate speculation that he was deeply pissed off, both with Harriet and the support we were giving her. TB saw JP twice after questions. JP said he could never say he supported what she did, but he would always back TB. I told them that the press really smelled blood now. I had been mobbed after PMQs and the tone of the questions showed they were all convinced she would have to quit. I said she would not be quitting, end of story. That life was likely to get a lot tougher and we had to hold our nerve and not buckle under the pressure. I said the easy thing to do would be to sack her but TB, unlike JM, did not buckle. There was a real intensity to questioning, and an aggression, but I think I did fine. Even though I disliked what she had done, I knew it was now a battle of a different order and we had to win, so it was time to pull out the stops. We were still struggling to get anyone to defend her on TV, but eventually I persuaded Mo to do it, only half jokingly saying that if she didn’t I’d reveal her stepchildren were at a public school. Mike Brunson [ITN political editor] called to say the government whips were saying Harriet had private health insurance, which as she didn’t gave us the opportunity to say this was now becoming a Tory dirty tricks operation and we could start to turn it. I emphasised that TB would be toughing it out and urging the party to close ranks. It was all a bit depressing though. It’s one thing to work round the clock and work your balls off for things and people you believe in. I didn’t feel like that about Harriet or her decision.

Wednesday, January 24

We went to see TB, who was very pumped up about the whole thing by now. He said he wanted all hands to the pump. By the end of the day, I do not want anyone to be in any doubt that she is staying, and I want people to be saying we did the right thing in keeping her. There is no alternative to this whatever, he said. If she goes, I honestly believe we become unelectable in the eyes of the public. Not because the issue is so important, but because they would think we were stark staring mad to allow something like this to become a full-blown crisis. This has got to be seen as a test of our mettle and it is a test that we have to pass. TB went to the PLP and put up a passionate defence of her, and also spelled out the broader political consequences if she went. Peter M and David Hill came back raving, said he had been absolutely brilliant, and turned it. He said she’d done what she’d done, and whatever anyone thought about it, the only people who benefit from continuing division over it are our enemies and it is time to draw a line. He said what matters was the education of all kids, not a row about the education of one. David said you could see them responding and respecting the fact he had balls.

Monday, February 5

TB seemed to have had a bad weekend. He normally came in very bouncy and focused with a list of things for us all to do. But he was very unfocused, distracted. He said he could not see how we could get back on track. Everything we did was seen through the prism of difficulty and fightback, and though he knew that the Tories were posing more of a threat, he felt sure the public did not really want to see him going for the jugular. He felt, however, that they had a story to tell, and we didn’t. They were using all their intellectual arguments on rail, economy, health, education. They had simple stories, access to media that would tell them, and it was hurting us. He was in one of his total mithering moods, which was driving me mad, so I left him and said please don’t call me back if it is to have the same conversation again. It was striking today how TB was almost deferential to GB. He so much didn’t want to upset him or push him offside that he let him make the running. I could sense others noticing it, and TB’s authority weakening as a result. I said to him afterwards this was exactly the time when he should be laying down the law, telling not asking, making clear that the speech in Singapore was the core economic message and we all had to push it.

Tuesday, February 6

Philip called after the campaign strategy meeting. He said there had been an extraordinary moment when Chris Powell said to GB they had a script for the next broadcast and GB said ‘Show it to Alastair. It’s got stakeholding in it.’ PG said he made it sound like a disease.

Sunday, February 11

We went to dinner at the Foots, with Salman Rushdie [author, still under the threat of murder]. Jill [Craigie, wife of Michael Foot] was terrifie company, very funny, and full of terribly bitchy stories about Michael’s old colleagues. Michael said TB was a massive asset. He was young, exciting and clever. ‘He is a film star,’ said Jill, ‘a film star.’

Monday, February 19

Bumped into Heseltine. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘the gloss is coming off. You’ve had a good run, but now we have the measure of you.’ I said that was not how it felt to us, and I would rather be in our shoes than theirs. The Brit awards should have provided some light relief but I hated the whole thing. TB was tense, so was I, Cherie and Fiona were twittering and saying I was being boring and Northern and shouldn’t worry so much about things going wrong. TB was at John Preston’s [music industry executive, husband of Roz] table and kept looking round to share looks of ‘Is this wise?’ There was a little flurry of excitement earlier when Central Office complained that Virginia Bottomley [Conservative Cabinet minister] should have been given an award to present. They must be mad. Anji came to get us at 9.20 and then we had a long wait hanging around backstage, while TB paced up and down and, when outsiders left us alone, endlessly rehearsing the little speech we’d done about the importance of the music industry. I’ve rarely seen him so nervous. I suppose it was partly because this was not his usual environment, but also it was such a huge audience, live and on TV, and if something did go wrong, it would be high impact. David Bowie [musician] came in for a chat. They did a lot of small talk, and he gave his views on the various people who had been winning. He said he’d be happy to come out for Labour, but he was worried he would open himself to attacks because he was a tax exile. He didn’t exactly help TB’s nerves when he said this audience could be hellish and given that some of the musicians from Oasis and Pulp had already misbehaved, anything could happen. After he left, I said ‘Oh dearie dearie me’ and we went into a little black humour phase, imagining the worst-case scenarios, TB walking onto the stage, and doing a Neil at Sheffield,¹ then getting stormed by some of the druggies and the drunks at the front. After an hour or so, somebody came to take him up to the stage. Even in the time we had been away from the main action, the atmosphere had got a lot worse. I didn’t like it one bit. As he went on, there were a few cheers, a few boos, but generally, it was just a very pissed, very druggy atmosphere in which he neither looked nor sounded comfortable. Apparently it looked a lot better on TV than in the flesh. Even though it was one of the shortest speeches he had made, it was still fairly long for this kind of event, and maybe a bit too serious. I suppose we just about got away with it but as he came off he said thank God that’s done. I had a chat with Mick Hucknall [singer] who said there were going to be a lot of disappointed people if we lost.

Sunday, February 25

JP said he and Pauline had bumped into Major. JM said ‘I’ll keep the seat warm until you get rid of Blair.’ Pauline was seemingly bowled over by how witty and charming he was and said ‘He really is as tough as old boots.’ Fiona and I went to TB’s for dinner. Peter M, who’d done a good interview on On the Record today, was there. I said the real bane of TB’s life was GB and Peter’s inability to get on. Fiona said ‘You have to be tough on Gordon and tough on the causes of Gordon.’ Peter laughed, and said ‘I’m afraid I am the causes of Gordon.’

Monday, March 4

TB said we had to create some sense of excitement and interest in the policy debate. The press did not feel we were telling them an adequate enough story about what a Labour government would be like. He said he was confident in the policy positions but we had to get that debate going in the country. He then moved on to saying he wanted more party reform. ‘Why not go to 30% on the block vote?’ Sally [Morgan] rolled her eyes and sighed very loudly. ‘Please, Tony, let’s get through this year’s conference on 50–50 first.’ Sally, who had been a teacher, could sound and look very teacherish, and that was the manner on this – like a teacher telling a naughty boy not to push his luck. She also had this habit, when she’d made a point, of then looking very closely at her fingernails and stroking them with her other hand, which added to the sense that she had made the only point that mattered, now can we move on. It was all the more effective for being understated. ‘Oh all right then,’ he said, grumpily, and Sally looked at me and allowed herself a triumphal little wink.

Wednesday, March 6

TB went through what he wanted from Partnership with the People. Tom Sawyer had produced a fascinating diagram analysing our problem areas. He had written inside a circle ‘winning the general election and staying in office’. Orbiting the circle were six boxes. 1. Shadow Cabinet pulling in different directions. 2. PLP not fully on board. 3. Unions preparing to make unreasonable demands. 4. Isolation of party activists. 5. NEC not focused on future. 6. Campaign and media – politicians not in harmony with party machine. It was a good summary. He said ‘You don’t realise how isolated you are.’ And he said JP was a common theme in the six problem areas. We had to address the weakness of the links between the leader’s office and the party.

Thursday, March 7

Pat McFadden and I went through the speech for Scotland tomorrow with TB and he suddenly piped up that he had plans for major change to our devolution policy. He wanted to limit the tax-raising powers. He wanted to promise a referendum before the Parliament is established. And he wanted to be explicit that power devolved is power retained at Westminster. That, he said, is the answer to the West Lothian Question.¹ He said it in that way he has of making clear he has thought it through and it will be very hard to dissuade him. I had no problem with any of it, and thought it was both sensible and right. But Scottish politics is a nightmare and Pat rightly said there would be hell to pay in the party, not least from GB, but TB said they’ll just have to live with it. He said he had been reading Roy Jenkins’ book on Gladstone, and the reason he didn’t do home rule was because these same kinds of arguments were being put to him, and they were nonsense. He said he was absolutely clear about this. He intended at some point in the not too distant future to make a big speech on it, then stay for a few days and take all the shit that was flying, and win the argument. ‘We would fall 10 points in the polls because of all the noise and then do you know what will happen? The party will breathe a sigh of relief and the public will think we have seen sense and we will finally have a defensible position.’ He was terrific when he was like this. I could forgive him all the circular conversations and the weakness with some of his key relationships when he was like this: clear, principled, determined and set to lead from the front. The Scottish media would go into one of their frenzies but he was right – it was the sensible thing to do and only he really had the balls to say and then do it.

Friday, March 8

TB did a new Tory attack section for the Scotland speech and I redid the bit on TB telling the Shadow Cabinet to spell out legislative priorities. It was a perfectly good speech and its New Labour tone all the stronger for the fact he was doing it in Scotland. On the plane to Edinburgh we had the usual last-minute scramble for jokes, which was always a pain because basically he expected me to do them. ‘I am not a fucking comedian.’ I said. I stopped the air steward and asked if he would ask the pilot to tannoy an appeal for jokes for TB’s speech. ‘Don’t worry,’ said TB. ‘He’s mad.’ I came up with a line on Dennis Canavan,¹ who had said TB was autocratic. ‘I’m surprised you said I am autocratic, as I expressly told you not to.’ TB’s speech went down fine and the press all went for the right line – warning on priorities, hard choices, no tax and spend. The Scots media were intrigued by him saying there were ‘no plans’ to change the number of Scottish Westminster MPs. They were right to be. On the plane down, we discussed Israel. I said he should be careful about Michael Levy. He may be a great fund-raiser and a good bloke, but the press were determined to get their teeth into him big time and even if he has done nothing wrong his whole life, you can see how they’ll try to portray him and it could be damaging. TB was sure Michael was straight, and a good thing.

Wednesday, March 13

Clare Short was on the Today programme at 7.10 on transport, and was barely comprehensible at points, constantly wittering about the policy being one of ‘breathe and move’. Later I played the tape to TB and he sat there, groaning. At the Big Four, JP came bounding in in a great mood for once and boomed out ‘Hello, Gordon, how are you?’ and GB just stared at his papers and said nothing. JP tried again. How are you, Gordon? And he ignored him. During the meeting, Kate Garvey came in and said there had been a dreadful shooting in Dunblane² and a large number of children had been killed. George Robertson was up there, and TB spoke to him. It was one of those events that made everything else stop.

Thursday, March 14

The media was totally overwhelmed by Dunblane and a real sense of national grief. TB said George had told him there was a strong feeling he ought to go to Dunblane. Major was due to go tomorrow, because he had a fund-raising dinner in Glasgow, and obviously could not go to Scotland without going to Dunblane. TB said if Major asked him to go as an all-party visit he would, but George was very insistent. Back at the House, George came to see TB and said it was his and Michael Forsyth’s [Conservative Secretary of State for Scotland] view that both TB and Major should go to Dunblane together. TB said he really did not want to push his way into this, and only wanted to do what was right. George spoke to Forsyth, and they agreed Forsyth should speak to Major and suggest they go together. As we heard nothing, and time was marching on, Anji called Alex Allan [principal private secretary] at Number 10 about 2pm. She said he sounded very nervous and said that the Prime Minister felt it would be tasteless for them to go together. On the contrary, she said, if it was true, as George and Forsyth were saying, that the community wanted TB to go there, the most tasteful thing would be for them to go together. It would be very odd if Major wanted somehow to veto this. TB did not want to be pushy. On the other hand, we did not want to end up in a situation where he was criticised for not going. And Major would surely not want to be criticised for stopping him. I could sense a big row story coming on, which would help nobody. PMQs was of course very subdued and very moving, and during George’s statement, which I felt captured the mood best, I found myself with tears rolling down my face. Major said he would be going there tomorrow for the whole House. TB saw him afterwards, just the two of them for part of it, and came back saying ‘He really doesn’t want me to go, that much is clear.’ He said he didn’t want to push this, but if GR and Forsyth felt as strongly as they did, they should see Major, which they did. TB said Major had said Thatcher always wanted to do these tragedy visits but he hated it and he felt it would be wrong if there was a big circus there. TB said that was not Forsyth’s view, that the community wanted political support. If the community felt they should go together, that will be the best thing to do. Forsyth and George discussed it with Major, and then, with Rachel Reynolds from Number 10, they came through to see TB. Forsyth and I had a perfectly good relationship and as we went in, to lighten the mood, I said ‘One day this will all be yours.’ It was his view that rather than have two VIP visits, they should do it together. They told Major that the entire community would appreciate it if they both went. He said he had said to Major ‘If my judgement is proved wrong, you can sack me,’ to which Major had pointed at George and said ‘Yes, but I can’t sack him.’ He finally agreed they should go together. Forsyth said it was very important there was nothing in the press about the discussions about this, and we agreed that he should tell people at his briefing later, that TB was also going with JM. JM, having first been over the top against, now appeared to be over the top for and he asked TB to have dinner with him at the Hilton in Glasgow. TB felt not, not least because we were going to stay at George’s. There was an enormous amount of pissing around, before finally getting away in the Number 10 convoy to the airport. On the flight, I had a chat with Jonathan Haslam, but all pretty inconsequential. TB was fretting that they would brief the press that he had barged his way in when in fact he just wanted to do what everyone else thought was right. Major and Norma were chilly with TB, and as for me, I might as well not have existed. It was odd considering we used to be quite friendly but JM, and I suppose she, had never understood that once he became PM, it was a different game. I had built him up in print in part to help undermine Thatcher, but he never saw that. At Glasgow, we split off and headed to Dunblane and George’s place. Forsyth was very solicitous and kind. George introduced me to Forsyth’s wife, who said she hadn’t realised that I was tall and handsome as well as famous! She was very friendly, and I saw a very different side to Forsyth. Later TB started to tell George about his plans on devolution, and I could see George was getting more and more nervous. I watched the Scottish news and it was perfectly obvious that it had been the right thing to do to go together.

Friday, March 15

I called Jonathan Haslam to check whether Major would be wearing a black tie. We had a few hours to spare, and TB used it for a discussion with George about devolution. TB was insistent that our policy was flawed, that the Tories could use the issue both for their tax campaign, and their campaign on the break-up of the UK. He was absolutely sure we would have to pledge a referendum, and make clear that power devolved would be power retained. George feared it would mean tearing up a deal with the Lib Dems, which had given him thus far political cover. Then when George had to go out for a call, TB said I know I am absolutely right on this. This is the reason why every home-rule bid has failed, because they have not had the guts to answer the real questions. He said to George, they would have to make changes in government anyway, to which George said yes, but then we will be in government. What if this stops us getting there, because of the outcry in Scotland? TB said there would be no reason for an outcry. Why shouldn’t there be a referendum? If people want it, they should make it clear. Why shouldn’t we make clear that power devolved is power retained, because that is the reality? Westminster will always be a superior body.

The Chief Constable and his assistant were both very shaken up. A lot of cigarettes were being smoked. The Prime Minister arrived shortly afterwards, and the Chief Constable gave a presentation of what happened, which was absolutely chilling. He took them through events very factually, very quietly, Hamilton killed them systematically, one by one. It was not clear why he stopped. I felt a bit sorry for Major, who clearly felt he had to respond in some way, but couldn’t really find anything to match the enormity of what they’d just heard, and so made an odd-sounding enquiry about whether Hamilton watched videos. ‘I know a lot of my colleagues are worried about videos,’ he said. The Chief Constable said there was no evidence. TB said very little, simply that the police and the community had the support of everyone. John and Norma totally cut me dead again, which I thought was incredibly petty. Norma had also had a chat with Sandra Robertson [George’s wife] who said she found her very cold. The reality was they didn’t want us there. We left for the hospital, where there was a huge media scrum. TB first saw a child, then two teachers who were recovering. The hospital was so quiet, very little of the usual hustle and bustle, just very very quiet. TB was as upset as I’ve seen him. He and Major were then taken into a room filled with groups of doctors, nurses, paramedics, ambulance people, all the different people who had been involved. Again, you were struck by the quiet, the cold sadness that everyone felt, and the trauma those who saw it all were going through. JM was better at this private event than he was speaking publicly. TB and he did a short doorstep, no questions. We headed to the school. This was grim beyond belief. We drove up past an enormous media presence to the school gates. ‘Welcome to our school.’ Little bags hanging from pegs through the windows. Major, Norma and TB were taken to see a parent who had lost a child. George and Forsyth and their wives were taken through to a room with seven round tables around which parents were being comforted by friends and experts and volunteers. Some were grieving openly, weeping uncontrollably, beyond comfort. There was some trying to raise spirits, but it was impossible. TB came in, and then started to go round table by table. I chatted to the headmaster, Ron Taylor, who told me what it was like going to the gym on Wednesday. There was so little I could do, he said, get the children out, then just plugging wounds with paper towels, anything we could find. TB was taken to see the gym, and there was a large pool of blood where they thought the teacher was trying to shield one of the children. Ron said the man chased them around the room systematically, apparently even following one of them into a cupboard. Ron could not stop talking. His compassion was very powerful and he was clearly a strong character. He said the images just kept coming into his head, he doubted they would ever go away. He said the most chilling moment was when he was stuffing paper towels into a little girl’s back wound, and as she rolled over there were two bullet holes in the front too. TB said the woman they had been to see had lost her husband last year and was pregnant. I asked him later what his God thought of all this. How could he see something like this and still believe in some great divine being who offers nothing but good? He said just because the killer is bad, does not mean that God is not good. He and Major then laid a wreath, and did another short doorstep. Though he was as moved as I have ever seen him, part of him was always the professional politician, and he wanted assurance that nobody could say he barged in and that he had handled himself well. Finally, Major spoke to me. ‘There are no words for this, are there?’ he said. ‘Grim,’ was all I could mutter. All day, I found it very hard not to cry. You looked at the class pictures and they could have been kids at our school, any school, anywhere. There was a little crowd of local people who TB spoke to, others were watching silently from their homes across the way. It was hard to imagine that this town could ever get back to normal.

In the car to the airport, we were silent. Ron Taylor said he couldn’t get the images out of his mind and no wonder. Both George and Forsyth said how plausible many people had found Hamilton. George said that when he took his sons out of Hamilton’s boys’ club he was attacked by middle-class parents, who defended Hamilton. The whole day was incredibly harrowing and it was wonderful to get home and see the kids. I felt guilty when I watched the news and found myself thinking as the pressmen had done, seeing who came across better, TB or Major. It was TB. Both he and George had handled themselves well. The man who had made the deepest impression was Ron Taylor though. He had a huge task ahead of him and I wanted somehow to help, but knew it was unlikely that I would, or could.

Monday, March 18

Dunblane was still enormous, and the sense of grief around the place, even in London, was palpable. The Queen had gone yesterday and pictures that looked like she had been crying were big everywhere. The community was now making calls to scale down the coverage and let them grieve in peace. David Mellor [Conservative MP] was doing a big number on gun law. I thought we were terribly weak. I felt we should be calling for a ban on guns. It was the right thing to do anyway but after Dunblane even more so. I was pointing people to George Robertson’s remarks at the weekend that it should be necessary to prove the need to own a gun, rather than the police prove unfitness to hold one. Otherwise Mellor was making the running on this.

Wednesday, March 20

TB had agreed with Matthew D’Ancona to do a piece on his religious beliefs for the Easter edition of the Sunday Telegraph. People knew he believed in God, if not perhaps how important it all was to him, but I could see nothing but trouble in talking about it. British people are not like Americans, who seem to want their politicians banging the Bible the whole time. They hated it, I was sure of that. The ones who didn’t believe didn’t want to hear it; and the ones who did felt the politicians who went on about it were doing it for the wrong reasons. We had lunch at the Sun, which was pretty tough because by and large this was a group of very right-wing people. In the end, they would do what they were told but TB left in no doubt that if it was up to the people in that room, they would not want the paper to back us. Where they were basically coming from was that the party deep down hadn’t changed. Afterwards TB said that was not a good meeting and they are not very nice people, with one or two exceptions. I said did you notice the portrait of Murdoch in the room where we had lunch? It was one of those in which the eyes followed you round the room. Hilarious. But they were all a bit Moonie-fied. As I said to Stuart Higgins afterwards, are you telling me all those people independently came to identical views on Europe?

Thursday, March 21

On the train north, TB was in one of those agonising and demanding moods, complaining that he had to do so much himself to get anything done at all. We had a spat and he just stared out of the window. The journey was one of the worst, because he was fretful, indecisive, and Anji and I were both in foul humour too. At Manchester, I’m afraid my rudeness got the better of me again. During the dinner, a woman came out and said that they bought their tickets a long time before they knew it was going to be hijacked by a politician. I said if you have a problem speak to the organisers. What sort of speech do you expect from a politician but a political one? She said you are just as rude as everyone says you are. I said ruder, because I couldn’t stand fools and there were lots of them around. TB said I had to watch my rudeness. He said I know you’re in a bad mood but don’t take it out on these people. He said I don’t mind Anji clearing up afterwards for you but I don’t want to have to do it myself as well.

Friday, March 22

There was the usual pandemonium getting ready in the morning, Cherie getting her make-up done; she had lost the boots she wanted for her rather over the top turquoise suit. I was winding TB up all day re the Oratory and the fact that he was getting a bit thinner at the front – ‘Chapter 27 – I’m not going bald and it really is a comprehensive.’

Saturday, April 6

The Sunday Telegraph was splashing on the row engendered by TB’s piece on God. I felt fully vindicated. As I said to TB, 1. Never believe journalists when they say they are doing you a favour or giving you a free hit, 2. Never do an interview without someone else in the room, and 3. Never talk about God. Hilary [Coffman] and David [Hill] felt it wouldn’t play too badly but I sensed a mini-disaster, as it was Easter, and they were trying to spin this as Blair allying Labour to God. When you looked at the words, he didn’t say that, but he said enough to let them do the story and get Tories piling in saying he was using his faith for politics, and saying you couldn’t be a Tory and a Christian. This was the permanent risk with UK politicians talking about God.

Monday, April 8

GB called and we agreed God was a disaster area. TB had called him from Spain because he had not been able to get hold of me. We joked about TB going to Tamworth tomorrow to say he had been resurrected. The papers were pretty mega on TB and God, the splash almost everywhere with several bad editorials saying he was playing politics with God. Fiona and David Hill were still of the view that it was basically OK. When I spoke to TB he admitted it was an own goal, totally unnecessary. ‘I should never have agreed to do it and I won’t do it again.’

Tuesday, April 9

The US build-up was going well, People mag was out, US News and World Report. Jonathan called to ask what we wanted Mike McCurry [Clinton’s press secretary] to say. I said our media would judge things on the length of the meeting,¹ and the way he was treated, not least the media arrangements. He suggested a joint press call, which might be too optimistic but that was what we should aim for. I said they should also say that TB’s stance had been helpful on Ireland. Jonathan called again later to say he had seen Mike and Tony Lake [National Security Adviser], that they said the Tories were pissed off at all the advance hype but they were perfectly happy and would help us all they could. The meeting would certainly overrun, they would do a walk through the garden, and would certainly allow the media in. Also Mike was up for doing a joint briefing with me just for the UK press. They were certainly pulling out a few stops. I had a bet with Bruce that I could get Clinton to say ‘Brian Jenkins’² in the White House, without just asking him to say it. More good news from Washington, that Colin Powell wanted to come to the dinner at the residence. On the drive back, we got into mildly hysterical mode. We were looking ahead to the US and tomorrow’s meeting with Boutros Boutros-Ghali [UN Secretary-General] and I started to imagine what the world would be like if everyone had to have three names, à la Boutros Boutros-Ghali. I said to Fiona Gordon [Labour Party official] that if she married GB, she could call herself Fiona Gordon Brown, which for some reason TB found ludicrously funny, and kept repeating it and laughing.

Thursday, April 11

On arrival, TB disappeared off with the ambassador in the Rolls-Royce to see Alan Greenspan [chairman of the US Federal Reserve], while I left to find the bar where Mike McCurry was coming to meet me and our press. It was a really nice thing for him to do and an excellent meeting. He talked up TB while lowering expectations. He said it had been very odd in the November meeting, because someone in the room had said it was almost as if TB was the senior figure at times. He said Clinton wanted to carry on basically where it left off last time. Mike and I had a chat about how to handle things. He said Clinton wanted to do a walk through the garden, but they were coming under pressure from the embassy not do anything that would wind up the story that Major was being punished. Mike and I agreed he would give a very positive readout. They would talk up TB on Northern Ireland, and TB’s role in left-of-centre politics. He was clever and funny and had a light touch. He was obviously going to help us make it a success. TB said earlier that we should underline after the by-election that the Tories had no friends at home and no friends abroad. Some of our press assumed the White House was pushing the boat out because of Major’s lot helping Bush. TB was really motoring, winning everyone over. I was meanwhile getting the cuttings and speaking to Tamworth. The reception was fine, they had put together a good list of people. I was seated between Tina Brown [editor of the New Yorker] and Ben Bradlee’s [former editor of the Washington Post] wife but I was like a cat on a hot tin roof waiting for the by-election result. I had an interesting chat with Tina and Harry Evans [former editor of The Times] about how awful the modern press was. I gave them my usual scenario on how we could lose. It was almost 3am when I finally got the result from Fiona Gordon. 13,700 majority. I felt like bursting into tears. In fact I almost did and later, in the privacy of my room, I did. Fiona G was as cool as a cucumber. I went through to tell TB straight away, and though he knew he shouldn’t overreact in public, I could tell he was ecstatic, especially as in the last couple of hours, I’d been winding him up by saying it could be as low as 1,500.1 wanted him to be the first on and we had got things lined up so that he could go straight into the [David] Dimbleby programme. We went down to do it and I could only hear TB, not the questions, and I could tell Dimbleby was straight onto tax as his second question. I could see TB was going strong, staying cool and dismissive. The lines on the by-election were easy, fantastic victory for us, humiliation for them, contrast between us with a positive programme for government, them drifting and directionless. I got him to speak to Fiona G and thank her and the team. ‘This is unbelievable,’ he said. They are in real trouble now. ‘I can even see them moving to Heseltine.’ No problem, I said.

Friday, April 12

We had breakfast at the Washington Post with a very right-wing editorial board who gave him a bit of a kicking but he handled it well. Kay Graham [publisher of the Washington Post] was impressive. She showed inordinate interest in his article on God, and wanted a copy faxed to her. We fixed up pictures of TB calling JP and Brian Jenkins, with cameras both ends. TB had spoken earlier to John to say well done. I’d spoken to him and he said to tell people ‘I’m not a class warrior, but a class act.’ JP was getting huge coverage by saying he was middle class and prompting lots of coverage about class divides. Then we left for the White House. TB was more nervous than I’d seen in a long time. Several times he took me to the corner of the waiting room to ask about minor details, some not so minor. ‘Do I call him Bill or Mr President?’ Clinton was waiting just inside the door and greeted everyone individually, then introduced TB to the rest of the US side. There was a fair bit of small talk, Clinton explaining some of the paintings and artefacts, asking about New York, putting people at ease. I was surprised at the level of turnout on their side. Clinton, Warren Christopher [Secretary of State], [Robert] Rubin [Secretary of the Treasury], [Tony] Lake, [Leon] Panetta [Chief of Staff], Nancy Soderberg [US policy official on Ireland], McCurry. The American pool came in and threw one or two domestic questions, and then the next pool, with lots of eager Brits. Peter Riddell from The Times broke the silence. ‘Do you think you’re sitting next to the next Prime Minister?’ There was a pause, both smiled and you could feel Clinton’s mind whirring, thinking carefully what to say. ‘I just hope he’s sitting next to the next President,’ he said. TB looked nervous, though he got into it. Clinton praised our statesmanlike stance on Ireland, as Mike said he would. The last time I was in this room was as part of the press pool and I can remember thinking how little time you had to ask questions or absorb the atmosphere, and how quickly they bundled you out. It was strange to see them being parcelled out, much the same people I used to be with, and I stayed behind, and then listened to and took part in discussions about the big issues of the day. Clinton surprised me in several regards. His enormous feet were all the more noticeable because his shoes were even shinier than TB’s. His suit and tie were immaculate, as was his hair. He had huge hands, long thin fingers, nails clearly manicured and he used his hands a great deal as he spoke, usually to emphasise the point just before he made it. I was also struck at the amount of detail he carried in his head. Like TB, he was good on the big picture, but he backed it up with phenomenal detail. He was a people person, terrific at illustrating policy points by talking about real people, real places. He was also tremendous at working a room. He was more relaxed than at the meeting in London, presumably because this was his territory and he was less tired, but if he made a long intervention, he found a way of addressing part of it to all the different people in the room. It’s a great talent in a politician, and in his manner and his speaking style, he engages you, makes you feel warmly disposed towards him. I guess that wasn’t a surprise, and it shouldn’t have been a surprise that he was so big on detail, but it was. Also like TB, he came alive talking about strategy, campaigns, message. He got it instinctively, more than probably any political leader in the world. There was one revealing moment when Clinton said of our stance on Northern Ireland, ‘It’s smart,’ then a pause, then he added, ‘and morally right.’ I won my bet with Bruce. The deal was I had to get Clinton to say the words Brian Jenkins, and I couldn’t just say ‘Say Brian Jenkins.’ Knowing as I did how big he was on campaigns and campaign methods, I put a few ‘Vote Brian Jenkins’ stickers on my notebook and whenever I spoke held it tight against my chest, stickers showing. I could see he was looking at the stickers and after a while he said ‘Who’s Brian Jenkins?’ Our side fell about, and I explained the bet, and he said he was glad to help. TB said straight out: how do you win support for more equity and justice without it meaning more tax? Clinton said the private sector was the key, that we must not be defined simply as a public sector government, but bind in the private sector, emphasise their role in wealth creation. There was a clock just to Clinton’s left by the door and after 25 minutes a tall young blonde woman, beautifully dressed all in black, came in, gave him a nod, smiled at the room and then closed the door behind her. It was time to go, but Clinton kept talking, more talking and eventually got up and he carried on talking. Mike and I disappeared into the corner to agree we would say they met for 35 minutes, more than scheduled, very friendly, useful, productive, go over the issues they ranged over. Mike then took us through to the Cabinet room, TB included, and he said he would say it was a 40-minute meeting which covered Bosnia, Ireland, world economy, Europe, mad cow, etc. He had been a terrific help. We then collected our thoughts and went through what TB should say at the stakeout spot. Again, I found myself thinking of previous visits here, on the other side of the fence. In particular when Neil [Kinnock] was stitched up here by a combination of the White House, Number 10 and our disgusting right-wing press. I got a certain satisfaction from seeing them straining to hear his every word, and knowing that this time, because the White House had been so helpful, there was no way they could write this as anything but a success. We then went for a meeting with Al Gore [Vice President], which was fine. I was surprised how heavy he was and how much he relied on cue cards to speak. I was sitting next to someone who was literally ticking off the lines as Gore delivered them.

Sunday, April 14

Charlie Whelan woke me up to say that Clare Short had fucked up on GMTV by saying that she thought people like her should pay more tax. She cannot be trusted to behave in a professional or competent way. TB was at Michael [Levy]’s and called several times purely to say how exasperated he was about people like her. It would be so much easier if I did not have the party around my ankles the whole time, he said.

Monday, April 15

I woke to Clare Short all over the papers, being lauded by the Tory press for ‘letting the cat out of the bag’ on tax, and as if that wasn’t bad enough, then she came on the Today programme. None of us knew she was going to be on, ostensibly about the Railtrack prospectus being published today. Of course she was asked about tax, and not only defended what she said yesterday, but then launched into an attack on the anonymous sources attacking her. Her language was loose and intellectually lazy as ever, and she made it sound like a principled position when in truth she had simply fucked up. TB and JP both called straight away. TB said the problem was that she was out of her depth. JP said simply ‘That woman is fucking mad.’

Tuesday, April 16

Donald [Dewar] and I went to talk it over with TB. He said even though we were all angry, it was important to stay objective about Clare. He said I should remember what Machiavelli said, if you are not going to kill, don’t wound. We are not going to kill her, so leave it, he said. I said she was going to continue to build herself up as the great heroine of the left, and it was unacceptable. But TB said there was no real support for her in the party, it was a media thing, which is what made it different from the Harriet situation. There, the party felt I was in the wrong. Here, they think I’m in the right.

Sunday, May 5

I spoke to Michael Levy, who said Cherie had been really low on Friday, and she was convinced I was against her. I said to Michael that I was very sympathetic to her position, but that because she and TB didn’t always discuss these things in detail, sometimes we didn’t know what line to project and develop. I felt that she believed that when we pointed out what the press might do or say, we were expressing OUR view. For example, when I said she could be portrayed as Glenys or Hillary Clinton, or as a crap mother, or as Islington woman with all the homoeopathy stuff, she felt that was me expressing my view. In truth, that was me trying to explain where I felt our enemies were trying to take her profile. The public saw her as a mother, wife and career woman and because she avoided the overtly political profile, she had a strong image, which could easily be threatened. She said to Michael that she thought I would prefer her to be Norma [Major] Mark 2.1 said that was absurd. I just need to know how she and Tony want her to be, in terms of the public image, and we could help get her there. Michael clearly saw himself as a main man. He emphasised again and again how close they were. We are family, he said. He said he could be a conduit with Cherie. I said it was not necessary to complicate things further. Cherie knew what the real problem was between us: I thought Carole [Caplin] was a problem and she didn’t.

Monday, May 6

I was woken by GB in a flap because of the papers, which I hadn’t seen. ‘Child benefit rift’ in various forms was leading most of the broadsheets. He clearly felt we hadn’t been tough enough in backing him up even though the Express, for example, reported that TB had stepped in to back GB. The Guardian had another complicating story, namely that we were going to reverse decisions on jobseekers’ allowance and unemployment benefit in a victory for the soft left. GB said there had to be tougher briefing on this today, and that we had to get back on track with it. He said he would go on the World at One, and we needed a blitz of articles.

Thursday, May 9

The strategy meeting was not just about the speech, but also the campaign on the Lost Generation for next week. A huge amount of work and planning had gone on, at GB’s instigation, involving Blunkett, and Jack Straw’s people. Peter M therefore got very irritated when Gordon said he didn’t think we were ready for it on Monday. Peter and I both sighed volubly, given neither of us had been keen in the first place, but we had actually tried hard to make it happen. Peter got terribly defensive and said Gordon, this was entirely your idea, we have all been trying to make it work without proper direction from you or your office, and now you were rowing back. They started talking very loudly at each other, just a few decibels short of shouting. TB, who for once was sitting in the chair by the TV, rather than at his desk or in his usual place on the sofa, said for heaven’s sake keep this under control. Peter then stood up, said no, I won’t, I’m not taking any of this crap any longer, and he stormed out. TB just shook his head, while GB stared at his papers and then started scribbling. Then the meeting resumed as if nothing had happened. I said, looking at Charlie Whelan, that I didn’t think it would be helpful if that exchange was in any way communicated to the public. Peter came back later to collect his coat and TB said ‘You cannot talk to Gordon like that in a room full of people.’ Peter said ‘I have had enough. I am not going to put up with it any longer, being undermined and getting no support from here.’ He picked up his jacket, walked out again. I looked at TB and he looked at me, and we both stood there shaking heads. TB sat down and said ‘What am I supposed to do? It is impossible.’ It was so absurd that we ended up laughing, probably because we couldn’t think what else to do. To be fair to Peter, he’d endured a fair bit of provocation.

Monday, May 13

TB and I discussed what I should say to Andrew Marr [Independent journalist] who was writing about GB/PM. I briefed him and he was clearly very anti Peter and I stressed that the party would be unforgiving on both, but also that anyone who took on the Shadow Chancellor, so close to the leader, could not win. I probably went over the top. I see, I get the message, said Andrew. I stressed that there was no ideological difference, and it was all about personality. I said that they had to get their act together. The fact was the press were onto it and we had to try to shape the coverage. At the weekly strategy meeting, it was comical, the way that Peter was trying too hard being nice to and about GB.

Wednesday, May 15

GB was on Today and did pretty well, considering all the crap surrounding it, and managed to get up the Lost Generation. He did a very professional job, though God knows how he felt when he said Peter is brilliant. I arrived at TB’s full of anger that this is still going on, but TB said GB did a very good job, and showed why he still has faith in him. But he said he felt his relationship with both of them would never be the same again. I repeated endlessly that I felt there had to be some evidence of them being put in their place to draw a line under this, but he said you could not do that with the Shadow Chancellor. He was livid with JP over his speech yesterday, and called him in once we got to the office. JP said he only ever got listened to when he rocked the boat, and there had to be a real change in procedures and the way things were done. At the Big Four, TB said it had been a dreadful week. Robin said it was important we present whatever way forward we agree not as being about discipline but direction/policy. GB emphasised the need to get back onto the Road to the Manifesto. JP said this forum doesn’t work, we don’t meet enough, we don’t discuss things. This was meant to be a check on policy-making and it hasn’t worked. We exist because we do represent different views, and ours are not taken into account. There is no real forum for discussion. TB said if people think it is tough now, they should wait for government. JP asked if the Road to the Manifesto process was going to lead to policy changes and TB said straight out – yes. We went through to the Shadow Cabinet meeting in a really bad atmosphere. Again TB said it had been a dreadful week. There was anger in the party. The obligation on the leadership was to ensure proper consultation and that also meant those consulted had obligations too. He said there would be more involvement of the Shadow Cabinet but nothing justified the lack of discipline. The irony is that there is no great ideological split between us. Far from it. Hostile things make news. Comments about colleagues make news. I promise the broadest possible consultation but there must be reciprocal responsibility and history will pass a very cruel judgement if we fail now. Jack Cunningham was terrific. He said I’ve been here 26 years and 13 of them at this table in opposition, and that is more than enough. If we cannot have proper discussions in here, then the Shadow Cabinet becomes dysfunctional. He said he had also learned that parties that squabble about power before they get it, do not get it in the end. The public will not vote for divided parties and the Tories must be delighted at the ammunition we had given them. Jack Straw came in, said a lot of this is about political maturity. People are always willing to believe the worst of colleagues and it’s bad. We’re paying the price for complacency. Ann Taylor said the party was in a state of anxiety, anger and horror. We’re beginning to think that we could lose. Earlier TB had said to me I really had to try harder to deal with GB. Your trouble is that you’re like me, you cannot understand why people behave like this, but you have to understand we are the exceptions. He felt the Shadow Cabinet had been cathartic and would help us draw a line. The press sensed that TB’s leadership could be damaged by this and were going to push it as hard as they could. The inability to keep them in order looked pathetic and unprofessional.

Saturday, May 25 to Saturday, June 1 (holiday in Majorca)

I tried very hard to switch off while we were away. Not easy of course, because Philip [Gould] yaks constantly about the party, and never tires of discussing the main themes and the main players. He was nagging at me to come up with a fresh slogan for the next stage and into the Road to the Manifesto. We had a couple of brainstorming sessions at one of the little bars on the beach and eventually I came up with New Labour, New Life for Britain. I liked it. It took the basic slogan but gave it a sense of process and energy which would be illustrated by policy rather than strategy.

Friday, June 7

TB was calling so often, and usually about the same thing, that I ended up pretending to be an answering machine – if your call is for Alastair Campbell, and you are his boss, please leave a message after the tone, explaining whether you are saying something you have not already said ten times. At least it was possible to have a laugh with him, and he had no trouble being told when he was being irritating, as now.

Saturday, June 8

Alan Clark called and was in despair. ‘I think we’re probably fucked,’ he said. ‘It’s like the patient got ill, and the doctor prescribed antibiotics, but the patient didn’t improve, and if anything got worse, so we whacked in a few tons of cortisone but nothing, absolutely nothing, has happened to make things better. So that says to me the patient is enduring a slow and lingering death.’ I said you’ve quite cheered me up, Alan, and he said ‘Congratters, I have to say you guys have been playing a blinder, and our people just don’t know what to do.’ He was in excited, excitable form, emphasising every single word as he spoke – ‘AND OUR PEOPLE JUST DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DOOOOO’. I took the kids’ football class at school and then to TB’s for lunch before heading for Wembley for the England v Switzerland game. I had an unusually pleasant conversation with Cherie. When she wanted to be charming and friendly, that was exactly what she was and it reminded me of the impression she made when we first met. I could never quite fathom why she couldn’t maintain that most of the time. The truth was that on most of the occasions we met now, there was usually politeness but not the friendliness there used to be, but today she was full of warmth and good humour, asking after the kids and saying how grateful TB was for everything I did for him etc. The two of them were due to see Robin Butler [Cabinet Secretary] tonight and hopefully go over some of the questions that I don’t think they had really turned their minds to, like where and how they intended to live, and what she intended to do by way of balancing family, career and consort roles. I don’t think either of them had really got the measure of the scale of change that was coming if we won. At half-time, Denis Howell [former Labour Minister for Sport] said to me ‘If England win, expect a September election.’ TB told me about his last dinner with Roy Jenkins at Derry’s. He does a good impersonation of Woy. ‘I see you, Tony, as someone carrying an exquisite, beautiful, hand-painted vase over a slippery floor and as you proceed across the floor, vase in hand, you can see your destination, and you can see the likes of Harriet Harman and Clare Short lunging towards you, and you don’t know whether to run or to tiptoe.’

Saturday, June 15

Manchester bomb. We had to organise TB’s reaction on TV. I took the kids’ football class and then we set off for Wembley for England v Scotland. We had good seats, but apart from Gazza’s goal and Macallister’s missed penalty, it was all a bit flat and anticlimactic. However, on the way out, you got a sense of just how much of a feelgood factor you could get going on the back of all this. ‘Football’s coming home’ was being sung everywhere you went, plus the less melodious ‘Eng-er-lund.’ JP had gone with GB and the two of them were sitting together, and seemed to be getting on, which was progress. I bumped into Nigel Clarke [ex Mirror colleague /football reporter] who said he would not be voting Tory for the first time. The Manchester bomb was massive across all the media and yet there was no sense of fear in London, which was odd, and again presumably an effect of the football.

Sunday, June 16

JP called and said he wanted to speak to TB about the labour market paper that was going to the contact group tomorrow. A few weeks ago, that would have spelled disaster but he said he was determined to be onside and he just wanted to know how TB wanted to play it. He said he and GB had a good chat and they had made their peace. He said he had got a bit pissed at Geoffrey Robinson’s party but the upside was he bet GB a tenner England would win, and he paid up – ‘I must be the only one who’s ever got money out of him.’

Monday, June 24

Tony had had dinner with GB last night and tried to get him more focused on economic rebuttal and RTTM [Road to the Manifesto], apparently without much success. TB had done some more work on our reworked RTTM draft and it was excellent. It was clearly written and for once we had a policy-heavy document that was fairly readable. There were still problems ahead though. We didn’t have long to go and we still had issues to sort on health, pensions, GB’s tax-and-spend argument, and we also had TB’s speech on devolution. The morning meeting was fairly straightforward but GB was worrying as ever about the tax-and-spend implications of the welfare paper, and pensions. We were working hard on him re the pledges but as ever with something that wasn’t his idea, he was taking a long time to come over. But I think he was moving now. TB had been working on the devolution argument and he said he was adamant he was going to make clear his view there should be no tax rise, there should certainly be a referendum and it should be made clear that Westminster was the ultimate constitutional authority – power devolved is power retained. George Robertson’s reaction was not dissimilar to Donald [Dewar]’s, that yet again TB was provoking unnecessary fights, though when you got onto the substance of the arguments, they were not far apart. TB said he could only promise what he intended to deliver, and this was the best way to do it. Referendum; make clear where our instincts on tax lay; and make the big constitutional point. He said every home-rule effort up to now had failed because of over-ambition or overemotionalism. We had to be hard-headed. GR said for some, it would be a political nuclear explosion. TB said I know I am right on this, and I know it has to be done sooner rather than later, as part of the RTTM. GR could see TB was not moving and he said he would have more trouble with the executive, the press, the MPs, and his team. He was sure John McAUion [Labour MP for Dundee East] would resign. He felt you could do the tax and referendum bit, but not the third element. TB said it was a statement of the obvious, power devolved, but power retained.

Wednesday, June 26

There was huge interest in the Scotland stuff now, even with the tabloids, and I spent a lot of time saying it was a mini version of Clause 4 – there was a big argument to be had and we were absolutely confident of winning it. I could tell GR and DD were still suspicious. But they were doing well. It was going so big we agreed GR should go up and do interviews, which he did fine. He was getting flak from the PLP but managing well, as was DD. Brian Wilson said you had to hand it to TB, he liked doing things the ballsy way. But we were not going to get through this without GR and DD. Anji said the news was strong, lots of comparisons with Clause 4, leading from the front, risk, etc. Michael Forsyth looked uncomfortable in the bits I saw. Major’s speech on the constitution was getting a fair bit of play but there was now more interest in us than them on this issue. We got to Wembley for the semi-final with Germany and the atmosphere all the way up towards the ground was extraordinary. I had never really supported England, and for political reasons I found myself rooting privately for Germany, though as I was sitting next to one of JM’s bodyguards, even though he was a Scot, I pretended to be backing England. It was one of the most incredible matches I’ve ever seen and to be fair to England, they could and should have won and there was a part of me willing them on. But by the end I felt relief. ‘There goes the feelgood factor,’ said Denis Howell. I then felt a total heel when I called home and the boys were crying their eyes out. JM looked a bit ashen. Just as we had been worrying, however irrationally, about the political benefits to him of England winning, so a part of him must have been banking on this. He looked pretty sick and the atmosphere at the back of the royal box was not great. I tried not to let my happiness show as we walked to the car. Once we got in, I said ‘Yesss,’ and shook my fist. TB said could you save any celebrations until you get home? I said don’t pretend you feel any different. When we dropped him off, I said Gute Nacht, mein Kapitän. Jetzt sind die Tories gefuckt.

Thursday, June 27

The Scottish press was a disaster area. U-turn. Betrayal etc. Very big and very difficult. Obviously the England defeat was massive down south but there was lots of play for the referendum stuff here too. TB was worried that the whole thing was coming over as an issue purely about Scotland.

Friday, June 28

The papers were grim, even worse in Scotland where it was all a betrayal and sell-out. Here too the headlines were all crisis, backlash, usual stuff. I was still confident it would be OK though George and Jack McConnell said it could be very tricky, and it was very important TB did not fly up and lecture them all. Pat McFadden was working on the speech for Scotland when I arrived at TB’s. I had inserted three new passages overnight. One, he will lead the yes campaign and he does not fight campaigns to lose them. Two, nice words about McAllion and George. Three, I do not intend to lead Britain like Major. The Tories’ line was to present strength as weakness, saying we were backing down under pressure from [Michael] Forsyth. ‘Are we in a mess on this?’ TB asked when I got there. There really was no argument against it. Why shouldn’t people have a say in their future? The real problem was that they didn’t like the way it was done, they didn’t like his style. All the way to the airport, Pat and I were changing the speech and TB was trying to get the Scottish executive on board for the decision this afternoon. TB was in combative form. What do they want these people, another Tory government? Jack McConnell was playing a blinder and was clearly confident. Every time I spoke to him, I felt more confident. We finished the speech on the plane and there was an awful moment when the screen went blank and I feared we had lost the whole thing. TB was now looking forward to this. He was always confident when he felt the argument was right. We were met by George and Jack, who gave me the unbelievably grim Scottish papers. We were organising union leaders and JP to make statements backing him. George said the executive was being very difficult. The real problem was lack of consultation. George was getting hammered in the press and it was largely about the fact they didn’t know in advance. I said to Jack McConnell it was amazing how Scottish I felt until I came up to Scotland and heard the Scottish media whingeing. The guy from the Sun was a total wanker. Then to see the chair of the Scottish Labour Party [Davie Stark]. TB was appealing for his help and it was clear he would not get it. He said the party felt they were being pushed too far, and this was one step too many TB said he was happy to apologise for how it all came out, but it was not going to be enough. He felt he was facing a purely emotional response. Also, as TB kept saying, the main objection appeared to be that if you gave people the option, they would not want it. That went for the Parliament, and for the tax powers. We left for the speech venue. The library where it was taking place was absolutely beautiful. TB was OK but at his best when he left the script and got passionate about winning. Bob Thomson of Unison was telling everyone TB was in real trouble, and could be finished on this. TB then did a series of excellent interviews, he was really pumped up and going for it. He wanted me to brief that it was all part of the wider pre-RTTM change. We were late for the Labour executive, which made what was always going to be a hostile atmosphere worse. There was lots of talk of betrayal. One of them said they had been lied to. TB stuck to his guns, made the argument as he had done before and it turned our way when he said you also need the referendum to make sure you have the clear consent of the people which will be needed to get it through the Lords. Bob Thomson said why not just create a thousand new peers? That was what did it for some who came to our side. TB was firm without being rude and gave them a few facts of life. We left for the airport, moderately confident, then Pat called to say we had won 20 to 4 on the new policy, and 16 to 12 on defeating the old one. TB said he never thought we would do as well as that. It was quite a triumph in its own way. On the plane, TB was going through his mail, including a letter from Basil Hume [Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster], saying that he would have to stop taking Communion in a Catholic church.¹ TB wrote back ‘I wonder what Our Lord will make of this.’

Tuesday, July 2

NEC. Clare [Short] making endless minor points. She said she objected to the new document describing ourselves as a party of the centre. [Dennis] Skinner, his timing excellent as ever, said ‘I’m just relieved it doesn’t say we’re a party of the right.’ Everyone laughed, but she was incapable of recalibrating to circumstances.

Wednesday, July 3

TB was worried about the Catholic Mass story, fearing it was doing us damage, but I honestly felt people would by and large not get the fuss. He was sitting there, in his dressing gown and underpants, his hair all over the place, with a slight look of the mad professor, and I knew it was going to be a long day. We had to have a top line for tomorrow. TB said we had to use tomorrow’s ‘New Labour, New Life for Britain’ launch for another general repositioning of New Labour, the radical centre, all that. I felt there was sufficient build-up. It was about a confident TB marking out the next bold steps.

Thursday, July 4

We got huge and largely positive coverage overnight. Terry [driver] collected me and I was met at TB’s by CB saying that the press said TB didn’t take his full salary two years ago and she didn’t want any more of that populist nonsense this time. TB said he agreed with me that the suggested rises [in MP’s pay] were so big that we could wave goodbye to ‘many not the few’ if we went for it. He was still in his pyjamas, and looked half asleep but he was already honing down the speech I had drafted, and nodding along as he imagined himself saying bits of it. The more aggressively he nodded, the more it meant he could hear himself saying it, and making an impact, and there were more nods than usual at this stage, so we were on the right track. He made a few scribbles, asked for the changes to be put in and then went upstairs to get dressed. It was a good strong statement and we had it done by the time we left. I’d arranged for a camera in the car from his place to the House. He was bounding up the stairs when we arrived and was obviously up for it. ‘God, nobody can say we have not done a lot in two years,’ he said to nobody in particular. He’d agreed GB should chair it with JP away nursing his injured foot. That meant Robin Cook should say something too, so I culled something on RTTM process and called him to say TB would like him to do that part at the launch. For some reason, RC, whose normal complaint would be that he was NOT being used at events like this, went off on one. ‘Can we ever plan something and just stick to it? I’m tired of all this last-minute stuff.’ I said I’m sure he could handle it and he did one of his long sighs and said ‘Well, yes, like a loyal soldier I will but I really must say blah, blah, blah.’ In the car to Millbank, TB was getting psyched up, nodding to himself and going over the points he wanted to emphasise. TB did well during the questions though he commented later that GB was trying too hard to look like he was leading rather than chairing the event. Panorama were there constantly filming me and Peter M as part of the new obsession they had. TB was pumped up afterwards and we stayed back for a cup of tea with RC, who felt the whole thing went well. The launch was deemed to have gone well upstairs and was still leading the news later on. Channel 4 News was awful. They vox-popped people who had no idea what we had announced. Maybe if the fuckers told them rather than playing their silly games.

Thursday, July 11

A truly dreadful day. TB was useless, I was tired and useless and fed up. I was worried it was all about my health, I could not get going. I was having one of my fed up with TB days. He could not make a decision whether to take his pay rise. We were being asked about it all day. I also had a fairly friendly but heavy-edged chat with CB, who of course was concerned that I was trying to persuade him not to take it, which is what he would be telling her. TB was in a real gloom by the time he came back from the Mandela lunch. He said sometimes I think this party doesn’t want to be led. To the gala dinner. The Cantona shirt Alex gave us raised £17,500.

Tuesday, July 16

TB and I had another circular conversation on where we were. He still felt the mood had not changed but certainly traditional Tory support was going back and also there was still an air of doubt about us. He said to me and Bruce G – it’s really quite simple. If it’s New Labour, they’ll go for us. If it’s not, they won’t. Later I ran into Francis Maude [Conservative MP for Warwickshire North]. He usually looked more downcast than probably he was, and he said that the Tory vote was coming back to them, and it was going to be close.

Wednesday, July 24

There was total agreement Clare had to be moved but no agreement as to where. After the Shadow Cabinet results, Anji paged her seven times saying TB wanted to speak to her, and she just ignored it. JP came to see TB and said the TV walkout¹ ought to be the final straw. The woman’s a liability, he said, and she doesn’t have a leg to stand on. Eventually, well after 10, Sue Jackson found her in a bar and she reluctantly saw TB. He saw her alone and after she left Anji and I went in and he said she had gone completely ballistic, couldn’t understand it and she was refusing to move anywhere. I said to TB if she fucked him around too much, he should just kick her out and see if anyone really cared. But even as I said it, I felt it was not sensible politics. That being said, a lot of people were saying to him, politicians and staff alike, that we worried about her far too much. She was not very good and not as popular as she or the press thought. TB said she’s crap as a friend but I think she could be even worse as an enemy. These reshuffles were always difficult and he was clearly talking himself into minimal change. I said he would just have to swallow hard, prepare himself for a dreadful day tomorrow and get on with it. It would all be forgotten in days.

Saturday, July 27

TB called from Sedgefield. He said even he could not quite believe the extent to which the left press was falling for the left-right alliance trap on Clare. It is the history of Labour down the years, he said. Inhale the right’s propaganda and spew it out in more noxious form. The right say we have ditched our principles, then the left say it with more venom because they talk of hurt and betrayal. He said the key to it all was keeping JP on board.

Tuesday, August 27

I didn’t feel very refreshed after the holiday and had mixed feelings about going back to work. Peter M and I went out to see TB at half four at Richmond Crescent. He was wearing shorts and a T-shirt with a big letter Q on it. He was tanned and seemed very chirpy, and moderately sympathetic when I told him we had had something of a holiday from hell, Fiona ill, the house not great. We went through all the various problem areas and he concluded that he needed to get out there more. He realised that he was being seen as all things to all men, a bit managerial even, and it had to be much clearer that he was a conviction politician. The problem was that New Labour was defined by our opponents as an electoral or political device. We had to show that he was New Labour out of conviction. I said the most important challenge of the coming months was for TB to connect with people, and for the party to see that happening, based upon his convictions as a left-of-centre political leader. Peter and I left at seven, having enjoyed a running private joke between us to see how long we would be there before we were offered a cup of tea. We got one just before we left.

Wednesday, August 28

Neil and Glenys came round and we went to the Camden Brasserie. To our and their amazement, Robin and Gaynor [Regan, his secretary] were two tables away. Robin went a weird pink colour, while Gaynor looked sick. RC came over. There was something I needed to fax to him, and could I fax to his office. It was probably a big charade to pretend he was not going to her place.

Tuesday, September 10

Things were hotting up at the TUC in Blackpool. Jon Cruddas called several times to say things were getting a bit hairy. The problem was that Blunkett seemed to be suggesting first compulsory arbitration and then new ballots if a new offer was made to workers. This was taken to mean new legislation on the issue and the unions were up in arms. As ever, the real problem was they didn’t know it was coming and felt bounced. John Monks was livid. He later spoke to TB and was only slightly more emollient. Then he spoke to me and said that only TB can kill this. ‘You’d better decide if you want it to be razor hot down here, because that’s the way you’re going on this.’ None of us could recall him ever losing his rag like this before and it bode ill. TB spoke to DB and said the worst thing now would be to back down. We got to Blackpool, and on the flight I could tell TB was getting his dander up about the unions and the way they thought they could gang up and dictate policy. We were met by Cruddas and Brendan Barber [TUC deputy general secretary] who wanted TB to rule out legislation, as DB was doing. TB refused and gave every impression that we might do it. There was a very intense and difficult conversation at the airport, where TB said the worst outcome for us was a flip-flop. He made clear he thought if they hadn’t overreacted, we could have managed it, but there was no way we could be seen to back down because they had got themselves up in arms. Cruddas and Barber looked really fed up. Brendan just shook his head and said I don’t think we’re in for a very nice evening. When we got to the hotel, Monks’s body language was awful, and the mood was sour. TB did a doorstep where he did not say what they wanted him to, and the mood got even worse. I had these wankers from Panorama following me around, and they said TB was resiling from stories planted by spin doctors. I engaged a bit but I’d decided the best approach was to get heavy if they talked real bollocks, but basically take the mick out of their sad little obsession. The line I pushed with the industrial hacks was that there were no plans for legislation but it had not been ruled out. TB was locked away with Monks for 20 minutes before the dinner. Monks looked crestfallen. He had one of those faces that tended to show sadness and vulnerability anyway, accentuated by his walk, which was slow and a bit unconfident, but tonight he looked really fed up. Pat [McFadden]’s view was that they all wound each other up, egged on by the labour correspondents, and they were prone to headless chickenry. I tried to explain this was cock-up not conspiracy. I warned TB the media would be full of chaos, confusion, etc, and he said that is better than backdown. I don’t want any sense of backdown. ‘Nil panicandum,’ he said. Brendan and others clearly thought TB was behind all this. They were going on strike again and he said it gave us the chance to say there should be a ballot and these people were showing why there needed to be new ways of looking at this. He said to me and Jon C ‘We have to look in control even when we clearly aren’t. What matters here is people realise we are serious about New Labour.’ He was politely received at the dinner, but I was in and out most of the time trying to get the press in a better place. Panorama around again, and I accused them of lying in front of other journalists. TB had a drink late on with Monks, Barber, John Healey [TUC campaigns director] and Jon C and the mood was a bit better but not much.

Tuesday, September 17

I called TB and he said he was writing an article in response to a cartoon in the Guardian. I said you’re doing what? Have you gone mad? He said that a lot of the critiques against us started in this way and we had to challenge them. Tony, I said, please don’t write an article in response to a cartoon. People will think you are bonkers.

Wednesday, September 18

Major was on Today and I thought was particularly poor. His new buzzword was the ‘morality’ of a low tax, small state. As Andy Marr said, it was a bog standard economic speech with the word morality in it. It was clearly a response to the idea of TB being a Christian Socialist, but it was not at all clear to me what he was talking about. Peter M persuaded TB to do the World at One to respond and engage in the debate. I was reluctant at first, but was won over and TB was really on form again. Everyone upstairs was commenting on how good he was at the moment. I called him and asked to be put through to the New Labour Cartoon Rebuttal Unit. He laughed but said we did have to tackle the underlying arguments because they were bollocks. The left was always a whisker away from making the charge of betrayal, which would then be used against us by the right.

Thursday, September 19

TB was doing an interview with Mary Riddell [journalist] and we discussed beforehand how he should try to open up a bit more on the personal front. People wanted to know more about what he was, where he came from as a person, who and what shaped him. He said I hate doing all that stuff, people hanging their lives out for others to stare at. I said it was important because some people out there would only connect with us through him and his personality, and until they had got that they would not even get near the whole policy area. He did his usual policy stuff with Mary, and was on good form and when she started to push him on the personal front, he started hesitantly on the kids. Then she asked him if he ever felt stalked by tragedy – dad’s stroke, mother’s death, John Smith’s death, and he went through each of them and how he felt and when he talked about his mum he really opened up, and I found it quite moving. I had never really heard him talk about his mother in such detail before and there was a real naturalness and warmth in his words, and a look in his eyes that was half fond, half sad, and when he had finished talking about her, he just did a little nod and a sigh and then looked out of the window. I said to him afterwards I’d never realised he was so close to his mum because he had never really opened up like that before, even in private. He said she was a wonderful woman and he still felt guided by her. What would she make of where you are now? I asked. Heaven knows, he said. I think she would be anxious for me, but proud. Dad is always saying I wish she was here to see this, she would be so proud. He said he hated talking about this kind of thing in interviews, because there were things he felt should stay personal. He said the thing that his mother’s death had given him above all was a sense of urgency, the feeling that life is short, it can be cut even shorter, and you should pack in as much as you can while you’re here, and try to make a difference.

Friday, September 20

I spoke to Anji about the GB/JP/PM situation. I think one of the reasons TB is quite chipper at the moment is that he has just kind of reconciled that they are not going to work together very well and he’ll just have to work around the situation as best he can. He seems to have decided mentally that there is only so much he can do about it so there is no point losing sleep. JP is there, has huge strengths but can be really hard to work with, so let’s look to the strengths and manage the rest. GB is brilliant but difficult so let’s allow him to decide when he wants to be brilliant and work around him when he’s difficult. Peter M wants to be more engaged but feels rebuffed so let’s make him feel more involved and get him to take the same attitude to GB.

Sunday, September 22

I went for a long walk with Calum and got a few more lines. My favourite was ‘The first wonder of the world is the mind of a child.’ I was getting some good stuff on the concept of the team/community as well. And I was trying to play around with the ‘Give me the child at 7 and I’ll give you the man at 70’ with something like ‘Give me the education system that’s 35th in the world today, and I’ll give you the economy that’s 35th in the world tomorrow.’

Saturday, September 28

Grace was playing up because she knew both of us were going to be away for the week of conference, and she wasn’t happy. TB was in the bath when I got there, which was always a bad sign. It meant we’d be rushing. He then discovered that CB had sent to the dry-cleaner’s the suit that had in his pocket the ribbon Sam McCluskie [general secretary of the National Union of Seamen] gave to him, which he showed me on the day of Sam’s funeral [in 1995]. But he calmed down and said right, let’s get down to it. I had been up at six to draft his words for the youth event he was doing later and we agreed those. The problem was we didn’t have a strong story to take us through the Sundays and into the start of the week. Then David Blunkett called to say he’d heard the Observer were leading on Robin C saying New Labour was in danger of forgetting the poor – bang on message for Central Office and the betrayal thesis. Peter M was in Blackpool and I asked him to get on top of it while TB and I travelled up by train. Liz [Lloyd] and I were working late in Room 223 and after 11, all of a sudden TB storms in, livid, having caught the 11 o’clock news, and he says ‘What is wrong with these people? Do they have a death wish?’ He meant Robin, whose words were going fairly big. ‘It is all about how the party sees them as they strut around the conference, and got fuck all to do with whether we ever actually get the power needed to do anything for the country’ He said what drove him really mad was that it was all playing into a Tory strategy. ‘Their plan is to say I’m unprincipled and all I’m interested in is middle-class votes, so what does Robin do but come along and reinforce their message? It is weak and pathetic’ He was really storming and eventually I thought I should bring the mood back a little and did a big calm down, calm down number, some of us are trying to work on the speech. The storm passed very quickly and we chatted a bit more about the speech before he went off back to his room. I found Robin downstairs by the press office. ‘Another fine mess,’ I said. ‘Fuck off, Alastair, I have been totally traduced on this.’ Eventually we got a transcript and to be fair to Robin, he had been. The words had been distorted through selective use. He was genuinely pissed off so we went upstairs and together knocked out a statement for instant release, along with the transcript showing he had been traduced. RC was in full ‘pause and sigh’ mode, and playing really hurt. But of course on one level it wouldn’t harm his street cred for the week. TB had been to a couple of functions with JP and Cherie said there was a lot more warmth for JP and he was of course milking it. I said to TB that the worst-case scenario was a sense at the end of the week that the Big Three were offside to greater or lesser degrees and he was isolated and therefore New Labour weakened. It was not hard to see how that might happen. JP was always just one moment away from explosion, which is why we had to build him up through the week. RC was clearly in a position to be identified as being offside, whatever the denials. And if GB combined continued disengagement with an old Labour speech on Monday, it could all get tricky for TB. I also learned second-hand via Liz that GB had done a ‘Labour’s coming home’ section in his speech for Monday. It was a bit of a coincidence that within a day of them seeing a full draft, we then hear that. I suppose it’s possible they thought of it, in that it is a fairly obvious thing with all the football hype we’ve been having, but we would have to get it removed from GB’s speech. Ed Miliband said GB was very loath not to use that section. I said I saw our Labour’s coming home section as possibly the single most important passage for the tabloids and there was no way GB could pre-empt it. I could tell we were in for a battle over it. I suggested to TB that he invite RC up to his room for a drink, not least to remind him it was there that RC told him a couple of years ago this week that getting rid of Clause 4 would split the party and possibly destroy his leadership. He should tell him he was wrong then and he was wrong again now in saying that pursuit of middle-class support meant any weakening of commitment to the poor. Sally said she spent two hours with Clare who was totally offside, not least when she was held up by security and her ‘don’t you know who I am?’ act didn’t appear to impress.

Sunday, September 29

Still arguing with GB over Labour’s Coming Home, and he said he was really pissed off about it. I said it was central to TB’s speech and I saw it as probably one of the main headlines out of it, whereas in GB’s speech it would not have the same impact. I didn’t mean it to come out like it did and I could tell that he hated it. It was as if I was saying because TB was leader he would get more out of it than GB, which was of course true but he didn’t like it. I said that the line was more central to the overall strategy of TB’s speech than it was to GB’s, which should surely be getting the focus on economy/social justice, rather than an overall political positioning. I don’t think he liked that point either but eventually he reluctantly agreed, and made clear we owed him one.

Monday, September 30

The BBC were in full hype mode on Panorama’s programme on spin doctors but they made a classic mistake, responding to our pre-emptive stuff by saying they had a big surprise in there which would justify the whole idea, but it never came. We had basically fucked them over, and won the battle of expectations, so that when the programme came to be shown, the overwhelming reaction was ‘What was the point of that?’ When I went back upstairs the office said it was crap. I started to watch a video and gave up after five minutes. It was a not very well-executed hatchet job but I couldn’t be bothered with it. TB was not very happy about GB’s speech. Robin C asked me what I thought of it. I said I never say anything bad about Labour MPs. ‘Ah, that bad, eh?’ he said, looking very happy. TB was doing a few receptions and when he came back he suddenly said he wasn’t happy with the speech and we would have to start from scratch. Oh don’t be so ridiculous. He tore off his clothes, got himself a dressing gown, then sat down on the sofa with the look of a man who had just been told the world was about to end, and it was his fault. I said the speech was fine. ‘I’ll have to do it myself,’ he said. ‘Leave me now and I’ll call you when I’ve done it.’ One year, we’ll get a decent speech without all this nonsense. He called us in at half two. He hadn’t changed that much.

Tuesday, October 1

Up by 6 and in to see TB who was already at the table in the window, and in full flight. He had decided on the ‘age of progress’ and ‘achievement’ as a driving theme, which everyone but him thought was crap, and the first thing to do was persuade him to go for one or the other, and achievement it was. It was more aspirational and more in tune with the way the policy sections were done. We had to get the speech pretty much done by 11 so that he could do autocue rehearsal and we just about did it. I could tell TB was emotional and so was I. I felt emotionally drained and went to my room, sat down and started crying. Fiona came in and was worried something terrible had happened. I said it’s fine, I’m just totally drained. A lot hung on the speech and it really had to be good. The ending was better now, as long as he paced it right. TB started slowly, and I was trying to work out whether people would be able to spot how nervous he was. The jokes went fine and it was clear the audience was with him. The middle section flagged a bit. He got a huge cheer for Dunblane. He did the commitments well. ‘Labour’s Coming Home’ got such a good reception first time, better than I thought it would, which meant that the crescendo effect never happened. And the ending became a bit complicated, like there were too many endings within the ending. But the mood was good and they were with him. Some people thought it was tacky to use Dunblane in the film but as a performance it went down a storm.

Friday, October 4

The office in the hotel was a total tip. Smelly and dirty, and everyone seemed to have a hangover. It was definitely time to get home, but I was still working with JP, which was pretty exhausting. Late last night, with Pauline asleep next door, he had been literally bellowing the speech out to me, Rosie, Brian Wilson, Rodney Bickerstaffe and one or two others, as if we were a real conference audience.

Friday, October 11

Cape Town. I woke at 5, the plane landed at 6, and TB was fairly chipper about the work we’d done on the way out, and thought we had the makings of a decent speech for the business event. We went off to the Residence, which was in a beautiful setting, and like a very comfortable Home Counties six-bedroomed house. TB had a kip while Jonathan [Powell] and I worked on knocking what we had done on the plane into shape. We then headed into town to see Mandela, who for most of the meeting was on his own. His eyes were still as clear as ever, big smile, bright shirt, and firm, firm handshake. There was something almost mesmeric about the lilt as he spoke. You wanted the next sentence to begin as soon as one had ended. He was a lovely man. His office was immaculate, and that was more than the fact that someone kept it tidy. Everything was in its place, and I guessed it was the order and the discipline of his decades in jail that made him as tidy as he was. He said as much. He told a couple of Thatcher stories which showed her in rather a good light. But he said he was happy to go out and say Labour were his friends. He would have to be careful not to stand accused of getting involved in UK politics, but it would be clear where his heart lay. And it was. TB raised the idea put to us by Rick Parry of the Premier League of a PL team going out to play in South Africa. Mandela took a pen and paper and made detailed notes, and said he was really keen on it. TB asked him to sign a book for Michael and Gilda Levy, which I thought was a bit naff. He wrote in an immaculate, old-fashioned style, very, very slowly, then looked at the ink drying before closing the book and handing it back. He did everything slowly, thoughtfully, and with impact. We had lunch in the room where [Harold] Macmillan [Conservative Prime Minister, 1957–63] made his ‘Winds of Change’ speech [in 1960]. I feared we were not going to be making quite the same impact but we were nonetheless in OK shape.

Thursday, October 24

In his discussion with GB yesterday, TB had gone on about the need for a clear economic message and GB was insistent that there had to be a different way of doing this, through policy rather than message. This was a total non-argument, as the two had to go together. All we were saying was that people doing interviews and speeches need a clear and basic economic message. GB felt we should be trying to get sleaze up at the weekend. He appeared more engaged today. I walked back with Donald Dewar. We both felt the rift between Peter M and GB was so deep that it was impossible to do anything much about it. Major was vitriolic about TB, saying that he could not be trusted and we stitched him up on Dunblane. I told TB, and I knew that when it came to Major, the iron was entering his soul, but still he said he didn’t want me to go too hard on him. We agreed that re JM the basic line was weakness, damage and drift. I later put out some vicious words from JP, including a jokey reference to Major being rejected by GMTV for an item on Tom and Jerry. Express and Sun were doing tax, saying TB had won the battle to rule out a new top rate. Fuck knows where these things came from.

Friday, October 25

Carole Walker of the BBC called and read me an Everyman interview with Cardinal Winning in which he said our handling of the pro-life conference stall issue two years ago was ‘fascist’ and that TB’s refusal to condemn abortion meant his Christian faith was a sham. The guy was unbelievable. My instinct was really to go for him, but TB calmed me down and was instead blathering on about why the BBC were running it. I said it was a perfectly legitimate story if Scotland’s top Catholic Church man was calling the would-be Labour Prime Minister fascist and saying his religious beliefs were fake. We agreed a statement in which we simply said he disagreed with Winning on abortion and it had always been a matter of conscience for MPs. It was a good measured statement, which we hoped people would contrast with the over the top way in which Winning had expressed himself.

Tuesday, November 5

I had a good meeting with Alan McGee and Tony Saunders of Creation Records. They could get Noel Gallagher [from Oasis] to do stuff for us, but also wanted us to take the music industry seriously as an industry, and agreed to organise a business meeting on that theme. They felt it was better to ‘keep Liam [Gallagher] away from Tony, but Noel has got his shit together’. There was a real buzz about Clinton winning again and he was on great form. Pager message saying the FT and the Sun had run a story saying TB had changed his hairstyle to woo women voters. I got Tim [Allan] to put out a line saying it was a black day in the history of FT journalism, but it was one of those pieces of nonsense that would run. The FT of all people, for crying out loud.

Wednesday, November 6

The phone went early and I knew it would be TB and I knew it would be about the hair. I said we just had to make light of it. But it was one of those irritating little stories with the power to connect and damage. I guess what had happened was that someone who was aware we were looking at the gender gap stuff had noticed a new hairstyle and put two and two together and made seven. More likely, a journalist had done the sums for them. Our suspicion fell on Harriet, Tessa or Margaret Hodge [Labour MP for Barking], because people had been talking to them about the strategy. Then we learned Margaret had recently had lunch with the FT and the Sun, so probably from that. So there I am, having to deal with some nonsense about TB’s fucking haircut. He and CB were due to visit Great Ormond Street hospital so I went over there and he was seething. He said all anyone will want to ask me about is my bloody hair. ‘I cannot believe the FT can run a story like that.’ I said the last thing we should suggest is that we were remotely fazed by it. But all the way there, in the car, he was fuming. By the time we got to the office, the hair story was all anyone was interested in. I said humour was the only way out of this and we put together a press release saying the FT had gone mad. We put the same picture of TB on twice and did a ‘before’ and ‘after’ heading. We did quotes from friends of the reporter who wrote it saying they were worried about it and then changed everyone’s name to have a hair connection – Trim Allan, Hilary Cropman, Tony Hair, etc. It went down well upstairs but of course what it all meant was on the day the US President was re-elected, the focus on TB was on his wretched hair. TB agreed to a quote saying his problem was not changing his hair, but keeping it, which by my reckoning was his first admission that he was beginning to lose it.

Friday, November 8

CB and I were getting on a lot better. TB was asking why he was having to do the Brixton thing.¹ Because it’s a good idea and because you agreed to it. It was held in a pretty grim community centre but run by terrific people. Julie Fawcett [south London tenants campaigner and anti-drugs activist] was chairing it, and afterwards she told me she thought TB had been a bit patronising, didn’t speak their language or answer their questions. The problem was there were too many media there, it felt stage-managed and he hated it. He had not been on form and it was a bit of a wasted opportunity. Some days he just wasn’t up for these kind of things. I felt the people felt a bit used. Most of the questions were about education but one boy asked about sport and TB gave a real politician’s answer – no connection at all.

Friday, November 15

Paris. The Elysée entrance was less grand than I expected, the rest of it more so. [President] Chirac was friendly, personable, and fond of looking around himself the whole time, smiles mixed with occasional angry flashes for no apparent reason. He did a wonderful diatribe against the US, saying the most outrageous things as though they were statements of fact blindingly obvious to anyone. Chirac pressed on the euro, and if we met the Maastricht conditions, and Robin C stepped in very quickly – no, not on the deficit – and Chirac raised an eye at him. He had a wonderfully expressive face. He was either saying that is interesting and surprising, or he might have been saying ‘I’m surprised that you should answer a question I asked of your leader.’ Either way, he made RC feel uneasy. TB did a good doorstep, quite sceptical on the single currency. At the lunch, I was sitting next to some French guy who said he thought TB was brilliant. ‘You’re going to win by a landslide.’ Maybe. TB was doing the rounds of the politicians and then did Le Nouvel Observateur in the back of the car and they were trying to set him at odds with [Lionel] Jospin [First Secretary of the Socialist Party], who had just launched very different ideas, e.g. 35-hour week. Jospin was very old Labour and the body language between them wasn’t great. I could remember him being quite a big fish when I lived in France, and yet there was something non-politician about him, quite cerebral, a bit prone to depression I would reckon. He was a big football fan, and knew what he was talking about. Robin was clearly a lot more at home here, whereas TB looked a bit uncomfortable. RC was on good form, and clearly enjoyed being with TB. He was not averse to a bit of decent banter.

Tuesday, November 26

TB was regaling us with stories about Robin and the Queen at the Speaker’s Dinner. He said even with the Queen, Robin was ‘Robinesque’. She said she was due to speak to a Church conference but couldn’t seem to get the media interested. ‘I can’t say I’m Surprised,’ said Robin. Then the Queen said she was amazed the Speaker could remember all the names and seats of all the MPs, and Robin said ‘Oh, I don’t think it’s that difficult.’ All in all, a good day. The Budget didn’t give them the bounce they wanted, our response was good and we could lock horns on the economy with confidence. I went for a meeting with GB to plan the follow-through for the next few days. We agreed we needed to work up to ‘better off with Labour’. If we establish this as a tax-raising government, taking with one hand and giving with another, then do the VAT cut ourselves, we will be in a strong position.

Thursday, December 5

Very little coverage for the speech to Shelter. The leak of Scottish focus group reports, and negative remarks re TB, was massive up there, but apart from a piece on the front of The Times, it didn’t fly much in the London media. TB was livid at the leak. He said only the Labour Party could whack the ball into its own net like this. Donald [Dewar] clearly thought TB was just looking for things that showed him to be strong. TB said ‘I’m not doing this to be strong. I’m doing it because I believe these people could cripple a Labour Government.’ TB did STV, which was all about his so-called ‘smarm’ post the focus group leak, and he was getting nicely boiled up re the Scottish media. He did a very good ‘I am what I am’ passage, and indicated a lot of scorn and a bit of steel, and gave as good as he got. Jon Sopel [BBC journalist] was saying [Kenneth] Clarke [Chancellor of the Exchequer] had threatened to quit, had also said to Major others would quit if the Europe policy changed, and that he might even defect to us. Dobbo [Frank Dobson] called me and said he was at Café Nico yesterday and Clarke was having lunch with Sopel so the source for this stuff was probably Ken himself. We moved into overdrive on it just before PMQs. Clarke put out a statement denying he’d threatened to resign. TB was terrific at PMQs, best ever, and he got JM on the rack, asking detailed questions which JM answered with waffle. TB was cheered massively twice and our side was really up and buoyant at the end, shouting at Major ‘GO, RESIGN,’ etc. As we came out, I was engulfed and they were desperate for any detail re Clarke – who saw him with Sopel, how did we know, blah. I went with TB and CB to the airport, DD in car 2 with Pat [McFadden] and Roz Preston. The flight was delayed so TB and I wound up Pat re the Scottish press and party. TB said our entire programme could be fucked because of the commitment to the Scottish Parliament and still they whine that we’re not doing enough for them. ‘I fully understand why Thatcher got to the moaning minnie stage.’ We got to the Hilton, Tim [Allan] called to say there was a real sense of disintegration around the Tories re pensions and Clarke and he thought we needed new TB words to push it on. I knocked out a short passage which we got out in time for C4 News. I had a very nice chat with GB. Maybe it was because we were on his home turf, and at a jolly Labour event, but he was a lot more relaxed than usual and we talked to each other rather than at each other. Donald [AC’s brother] came up and met TB. I met Billy McNeill and Jim Baxter [ex-footballers], which was nice. DD did a great warm-up, and then after a slow start TB did a good job too.

Thursday, December 12

We arrived in Dublin and straight out to meet President Mary Robinson, a really impressive woman who seemed to mix a genuine warmth with a hard-headed assessment of issues. Lunch with Dick Spring [Minister for Foreign Affairs]. Neil had said he was one of the loveliest men in politics and he was, but he gave a very gloomy prognosis of the peace process, and he was pretty sure violence would resume before the election. His finance guy, Ruari Quinn, came up with the quote of the day at lunch. ‘Every Labour government has foundered on the issue of a sterling crisis – so why not just get rid of sterling?’ TB said he was determined to be pro-single currency but they had to understand just how awful our press were. Then bad news – the Mirror called to say the BBC had said someone had been trying to rig the Today programme ‘personality of the year’ for TB. Peter M and David Hill had known all day and decided to be robust, say it was what the Tories did last year, big deal etc. I was not so sure and TB was in a real spin about it. I spoke to GB, who felt we should admit someone had done something wrong and apologise. PM and DH didn’t agree and said it was a case of the BBC making a huge fuss about nothing to get some publicity for their poll. I was moving towards agreement with GB as it became clear some of the papers were going big on it and I felt we had to have some humble pie /apology in the mix.

Friday, December 13

A new record was set for a TB call waking me up. 5am. He said he woke bolt upright, worrying whether he had been too dismissive about John Sergeant’s [BBC’s chief political correspondent] question on the poll-rigging. I said Tony, it is 5am and even if you were, which I can’t remember, there is nothing I can do about it, so go back to sleep. OK, he said, and put the phone down. Then I couldn’t get back to sleep. The papers arrived and several had splashed on the wretched Today poll. It was a sign of how they would get into us if they could. We set off for the border. We met up with Jonathan Powell and Mo, who although she could be a bit OTT was incredibly good at the touchy-feely, chatty, meeting and greeting. To Portadown to meet the troops and a briefing from the RUC [Royal Ulster Constabulary] deputy chief constable, who was very gloomy and said he expected a major IRA bomb before Christmas. Then to meet David Trimble [Ulster Unionist Party leader] on a farm. There was huge media interest and they did a joint doorstep standing in front of the cows. TB drove with him to his office and said afterwards he was a difficult guy to talk to, very internalised and hard to probe. We had a rather more rumbustious meeting with Peter Robinson [Democratic Unionist Party] in Belfast, lunch, then to his speech at Queen’s. It was striking how few women there were wherever we went compared with audiences in England.

Tuesday, December 17

We agreed early on we should do beef for PMQs. TB was running late and in a bad mood. He was virtually silent on the way in and when we got into the office I said for God’s sake get a grip and stop behaving like a two-year-old. I don’t know if he had had a big scene with CB or whether it was just general grumpiness but when he did speak it was to complain that he was doing Des O’Connor’s [singer and chat-show host] show and I had to start the whole process again of explaining why it was a good thing to do. We had had very friendly conversations with Des’s people and the aim was to ask friendly questions and get TB to deliver a few anecdotes, e.g. running away from school, about the time when he failed to recognise Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands talking to him in a queue, etc. I said I could not believe he could not lift himself into a positive mindset about it but by now he had the hump with me. I had a row with Anji about it too, but that was probably more because she thought I was taking CB/Fiona’s side in their argument. She said I was mishandling him. He was nervous about it because it was out of the usual interview zone and I had to understand that. I said it had gone beyond that, he was behaving like a child about it. I stayed out of his hair for a while then we started talking again in the car to the studio, first re Major, then trying to get him to focus positively re Des. We met Barbra Streisand in make-up, which cheered him up a bit, then Des came through. He was much more charismatic than I imagined, had real presence. In the end, TB did fine, well even, and the audience really went for it. I said to him in the car it would connect with more people for longer than anything else he had done in ages. We left on better terms after a pretty fractious day.

Friday, December 20

A historic first. At the end of today, TB called to APOLOGISE. He said everywhere he had been today, people had come up to him and said they’d seen him on Des O’Connor and he was terrific. ‘I owe you a big apology,’ he said ‘for doubting your judgement and being a pain in the run-up to it.’ It had definitely cut through. Grace Gould [PG’s daughter] said some of her friends had been talking about it. Victoria [Bridge, neighbour] said he was brilliant in it.

¹ The Labour Party (which was ahead of the Conservatives in opinion polls) held a ‘US-style’ political rally at the Sheffield Arena on April 1, 1992, a week before the general election. Neil Kinnock’s ‘triumphalist’ display was subsequently widely criticised.

¹ West Lothian Question. First raised in November 1977 by Tarn Dalyell, Labour MP for West Lothian, a dilemma raised by Scottish devolution. Dalyell asked how it could be right for Westminster MPs from Scotland to have no power to affect issues of their constituents taken over by the Scottish Parliament, yet be able to have the power to vote on issues affecting England.

¹ Labour MP for West Stirlingshire/Falkirk West 1984–2000. Independent MSP (member of the Scottish Parliament) 2000–07. Expelled from the Labour Party in 2000.

² Thomas Hamilton, a rejected and unbalanced youth worker, massacred 16 children and a teacher in the gym at Dunblane primary school near Stirling.

¹ The trip had to be closely choreographed because of the visit made by Neil Kinnock when he was snubbed by Mrs Thatcher’s great friend, Ronald Reagan. Kinnock was given less than the half-hour put aside for his interview with Reagan, who had failed to recognise Denis Healey – sent with Kinnock to add weight and experience – referred to the former Chancellor throughout as ‘Mr Ambassador’. The snub was rubbed in by a dismissive White House briefing.

² Labour candidate, eventual victor in the Tamworth by-election, April 11, 1996.

¹ Although an Anglican, Blair often took Communion at a Catholic church in Islington. Hume conceded that it was permissible for him to attend a Catholic church while on holiday in Tuscany.

¹ Short had refused to discuss the London Underground strike in a live BBC news interview. She took off her microphone and left.

¹ Meeting young people in Brixton. Major had been raised in Brixton and had attacked Blair for his public school background.

A collection of Labour leaders: Gordon Brown, John Smith, Neil Kinnock, Margaret Beckett (who led the party briefly after Smith’s death) and Tony Blair, in 1992 (photo credit 3.1)

Decision time: on holiday in the Provençal village of Flassan in 1994, Tony Blair persuaded Campbell to work for him despite opposition from family and friends such as Neil Kinnock. Left to right, Cherie Blair, Kinnock, Blair pushing Campbell’s daughter Grace in pram, Campbell with son Calum on his shoulders

Three Labour leaders: Kinnock, Jim Callaghan and Blair joined Campbell for his farewell party as he left Today newspaper to work for Blair in 1994

Domestic politics: John Prescott and Blair finalising the wording of the ‘new Clause 4’ in March 1995. Prescott was important in securing the support of the left for change (photo credit 3.2)

Campbell tries to combine babysitting his daughter Grace with watching a Blair interview on television

Fit for office: in Brighton for the party conference in 1995, Blair shows off his heading skills with Kevin Keegan

The defection in October 1995 of Alan Howarth MP (centre) from Tory to Labour was a big moment in the development of New Labour, and a huge blow to the Tories on the eve of their party conference

March 1996: Blair follows Prime Minister John Major (left, with his wife Norma) in laying flowers at the scene of the Dunblane massacre. Scottish Secretary Michael Forsyth (right) had to persuade Major to take Blair with him (photo credit 3.3)

Moving onto the international stage: Blair in 1996 with Nelson Mandela, a political leader in a league of his own

Campbell works with Peter Mandelson on the latter’s newspaper column

Peter Mandelson, Campbell, Blair and Brown, often described as the four people who created New Labour
First day of the 1997 election campaign, and the Blair team get a welcome front page
Blair sets off for a nationwide tour after launching the 1997 manifesto (photo credit 3.4)

Campbell on his mobile. Mirror journalist John Williams observed that if mobile phone use caused ill health, Campbell was a goner (photo credit 3.5)

Blair on the campaign battlebus in 1997 with Cherie …

… and with Campbell. Both Blair and Campbell hated the bus

Getting the message out in Blair’s Sedgefield constituency

Disgraced Tory MP Neil Hamilton and his ‘anti-sleaze’ rival candidate Martin Bell face each other at Knutsford, April 1997 (photo credit 3.6)

The last weekend of the 1997 campaign. Blair talks to education adviser Conor Ryan, David Miliband and Campbell

The press record a landslide win

May 2, 1997, and after 18 years in Opposition, Tony Blair leads Labour into Downing Street (photo credit 3.7)

Public enthusiasm was unprecedented

Blair speaking outside No 10, May 2, 1997. Campbell’s sons Calum (left) and Rory get a front-row place

Fiona Millar and Carole Caplin with Cherie and Blair (photo credit 3.8)

Cartoonist Charles Griffm had a habit of putting bolts in the neck of his former Mirror colleague, here with Peter Mandelson (left) dealing with Humphrey the Downing Street cat

Anji Hunter with Campbell. Blair confessed to feeling destabilised when, prior to the 2001 election, each separately told him they were thinking of leaving