A Very English Coup
Tony Blair was an Establishment figure, more so than Thatcher, Major or Smith. He had been a mild teenage rebel, worn his hair long, broken school rules and imitated Mick Jagger in a rock band. His father had been brought up by a Communist on Clydeside and had suffered an early and severe stroke which brought his children uncertainty and a bump down in the world. Far more importantly, though, Blair was the son of a Tory lawyer and went to a preparatory school in Durham, then the grand fee-paying boarding school Fettes in Edinburgh, then Oxford University, and then the Bar, before becoming an MP. There was more Gothic architecture in his early history than in most volumes of Pevsner’s architectural guide. Though he rebelled, the lessons of politeness, deference and a quiet knowledge about where power lay, were in place from the start. Gifted with a natural charm, infectious good humour and a great skill in acting, he was a young man whose seriousness and principle were also evident. His father’s stroke had happened when he was still young: he lost his adored Irish-born mother when he was a student and turned increasingly to religion, in its activist, not contemplative form.
Much ink has been spilled about why he joined the Labour Party rather than the Conservatives. It is not a ridiculous question. Falling for a young Liverpudlian socialist called Cherie Booth sharpened his politics but he had joined Labour before he met her. There is a widespread belief that it was mere calculation. In the early eighties, the Tories were awash with bright lawyers looking for seats and political careers while Labour seemed on its last legs. If you wanted to get into the Commons and then rise, Labour offered an easier if riskier route. While this is possible, joining Labour at its lowest ebb would show uncanny prescience for a pure careerist. The likeliest explanation is simply that he believed in political action and that, though flawed, Labour’s belief in social justice was nearest to the Christian social views he had formed. Once in the party, working his way through local branches in London, he displayed the full kit of soft-left beliefs of the time, being hostile to the European Community and privatization, pro-CND and high taxes, the rights of illegal immigrants and greater freedom for the press. He would ditch all of these views later but this does not mean they were insincerely held at the time; for the Labour Party of Foot’s time they were considered moderate, and Blair was always opposed to the hard-left Bennite and Militant groups.
After fighting a hopeless by-election, Blair won a safe Labour seat in the north-east of England with his combination of chutzpah and charm and, in the Commons from 1983, quickly fell in with another new MP. Gordon Brown was much that Blair was not. He was a tribal Labour Party man from a strongly political family, who had barely glimpsed the crenellated English Establishment which produced Blair. Brown had been Scotland’s best-known student politician and a player in Scottish Labour politics from the age of twenty-three, followed by a stint in television. Yet the two men had some things in common. They were both Christians and they were both deeply impatient with the condition of the Labour Party. For seven or eight years they seemed inseparable, working mostly from a tiny, windowless office they shared. Brown tutored Blair in the darker ways of politics, treating him like a sweetly naive kid brother. (He would learn.) Blair was also a vital sounding-board for Brown, however, teaching him what the mysterious English middle classes might be thinking. No working relationship in politics was closer. Brown summed it up in 1991: ‘I think Blair could well be leader of the party after me.’ Together, they made friends with Westminster journalists, together they matured as Commons performers, together they shared their frustration about older Labour politicians, together they worked their way up the ranks of the shadow cabinet.
Then Blair began to pull ahead. After the 1992 defeat he made a bleak public judgement about why Labour had lost so badly. The reason was not complicated, but simple: ‘Labour has not been trusted to fulfil the aspirations of the majority of people in a modern world.’ As shadow home secretary he began to try to put that right, promising (in words borrowed from Brown) to be ‘tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime’. His response to the horror of the 1993 murder of the toddler James Bulger by two young boys, which provoked a frenzy of national debate, was particularly resonant. In general Blair tried to return his party to the common-sense language of morality. He drank deep from the mix of socially conservative and economically liberal messages used by the great communicator Bill Clinton and his team of ‘New Democrats’.
So too did Brown. But he had a harder brief, since as shadow chancellor his job was to demolish cherished spending plans and say no to Labour MPs. Brown’s support for the ERM meant he was ineffective when Major and Lamont suffered their great defeat. The Brown and Blair relationship was less close than it had been earlier but it was still strong. Together they visited the United States to learn a new political style from the Democrats. Awkwardly for Brown, it relied heavily on leadership charisma. At home Blair pushed Smith aggressively over reforming the party rulebook, falling out with him badly. Watching media commentators and some Labour MPs began to tip him as the next leader, Brown’s team began to ask whether Blair was now manoeuvring and briefing against his old mentor. It was a grim time for Brown and he did not bother to reach out, or show a sunny side. Slowly but perceptibly, Brown-Blair was turning into Blair-Brown.
The days after John Smith died have produced more analysis and speculation than almost any other short period in modern British politics. But the basic story is clear. Blair decided almost immediately that he would run as leader. Brown, perhaps more grief-stricken than Blair or perhaps more cautious, hesitated. But he had assumed he would inherit and when he heard Blair’s plans, he was aghast. In at least ten face-to-face meetings in Edinburgh and London, the two men argued. On Blair’s side were opinion polls showing him much more popular, the support of greater numbers of Labour MPs and greater backing in the press. This was not all a plot by Peter Mandelson, as Brown people later claimed; it was a widespread assessment come to independently by many people who disagreed about other things. Crucial to the case for Blair was that he was a well-spoken Englishman who would reassure those parts of the country which were the main electoral battleground. On Brown’s side were his deeper knowledge of Labour, stronger support among the unions and his more thought-through policy agenda for change. Had the two fought each other, given Labour’s complicated electoral college it is impossible to say just what would have happened. Blairites say their man would have crushed and ‘humiliated’ Brown; Brown’s people reply that his formidable campaigning skills would have taken the metropolitan Blairites by surprise. On only one subject were they both agreed. For the two modernizers to fight would be disastrous. Personal attacks would be impossible to avoid. If Brown had any hope of winning, he would have to attack Blair from the left.
So Brown came to a deal, culminating in a notorious dinner at the chic, now defunct Islington restaurant Granita. (Some sense of the cultural gap between the two men can be drawn from the fact that Brown had to go and have a proper meal afterwards.) Again, the outcome is much disputed, except that Blair acknowledged Brown’s authority over a wide range of policy which he would direct from the Treasury, including the ‘social justice’ agenda. Did he also promise to limit his prime ministership to seven years and then make way? It would be an extraordinarily arrogant thing for one Opposition politician to say to another; the Conservatives would be in power for years yet. But probably some form of words about a transition in power was exchanged, if only to salve Brown’s hurt. Looking back many years later it can be seen that the true significance of the Granita deal and the meetings that preceded it, was that it gifted Britain’s mightiest government department, the Treasury, even more power than it had in the Conservative years. Blair would be, as Prime Minister, more concerned with foreign affairs than he could ever have guessed, and Brown’s Treasury would become a grand Department for British Affairs, beyond its mandarins’ wildest dreams. Gordon Brown would be the Treasury’s final victory over George Brown.