Authors: Tom Bower
At that moment, Nick Brown, the minister for agriculture and an ally of the chancellor, told David Frost on his television programme, ‘I’m absolutely certain we have it under control.’ Simultaneously, David King, the government’s chief scientific officer, was offering data to Downing Street showing that ‘It’s all out of control.’ The culling of animals, recommended King, would need to be intensified. Notably indecisive, Nick Brown failed to respond. Relations among fearful civil servants became tense and the machinery of government stagnated. Critics, especially in rural areas, accused the government of dithering, while farmers accused metropolitan politicians of disliking the countryside. The public’s confidence, as well as Blair’s, disappeared as newspapers reported irrational decisions to cull healthy animals.
During visits to infected areas, Blair encountered incompetence, mismanagement and a shortage of trained experts. In London, his principal private secretary, Jeremy Heywood, told Bender to employ sixteen Spanish vets.
‘They don’t speak English,’ Bender replied.
‘They can use translators,’ said Heywood.
‘No,’ ruled Bender. ‘I can’t have a Spaniard telling an English farmer that all his animals must be killed. This is all nasty work.’
The Department of Agriculture, Blair saw, was irretrievably broken.
Healthy animals could have been saved by vaccination, but because of opposition by the farmers’ union, King’s cull was transforming the countryside into a killing zone. Six and a half million animals were being slaughtered, meat exports were banned and the rural economy was being crippled. The government was spending £8 billion to save the farming industry at the expense of tourism.
This was not an ideal backdrop for an election, even though Labour was still some fifteen points ahead in the polls. Despite the lead, Blair was sufficiently nervous that he postponed the election from May until June.
William Hague calmed the public’s anger. The army, he suggested, should take over. In a video conference, Blair’s face visibly eased as Brigadier Malcolm Wood provided the solution. Nick Brown was pushed aside in favour of Geoff Hoon but, though the army was critical to the nation’s salvation, Gordon Brown was infuriated that his ally had been sidelined. Alternating between sulking and verbally assaulting Blair with demands for his resignation, he refused to allocate additional money for the public services.
‘Life is a living hell,’ Blair told Powell, and questioned why he would even want to be re-elected. Organising the campaign had become fraught. None of his Downing Street advisers, Blair admitted, including David Miliband and Andrew Adonis, could invent ‘a sufficiently compelling vision of a second-term government to engage the electorate’. He summoned Mandelson as the one person with the ingenuity to express ‘Blairism’ in slogans and ideas.
During his visit to Downing Street, Mandelson found Blair isolated and distracted, ‘unsure exactly what his message should be’. One proposed slogan – ‘A lot done. A lot still to do’ – barely disguised the Labour leader’s disappointment about his achievements so far. Blair mentioned his desire for his next government to be ‘more radical, more ambitious’, especially when it came to health and education. Too often over the previous four years, he volunteered, he had approved government by assertion: spokesmen uttered seat-of-the-pants announcements in the
hope that the facts would catch up. Mandelson, on whom Blair relied despite his dismissal from the government, offered reassurance. The theme, he suggested, was New Labour as ‘a party of aspiration and compassion’. Blair was relieved, but the respite was brief.
In the midst of their brainstorming, Anthony Hammond, a former Treasury solicitor asked to investigate the saga, delivered his report about Mandelson, who, he concluded, was not dishonest, although a call probably had taken place about Hinduja’s application for British nationality. Briefed by Mandelson, Andrew Marr announced on BBC TV that the minister had been cleared. That was untrue, Blair said, and an argument erupted between the two men. Blair drew the line: Mandelson would never return to government.
In the midst of this recrimination, Gordon Brown told a sympathetic journalist that Blair was about to resign. ‘You’re a crap prime minister,’ he raged at Blair to his face, ‘and it’s time you moved over and let someone better do the job.’ Egged on by two aggressive advisers, Ed Miliband and Damian McBride, Brown encouraged Ed Balls to speak to Blair ‘like something on a shoe’.
Not discussed amid all the abuse was Hammond’s description of the absence of checks on Hinduja by the Home Office. Despite warnings by MI5, the ministry did not ask the police, Inland Revenue or other agencies about the probity of a man who was under investigation in India. Suspicion now fell on Keith Vaz, a junior minister for Europe. His wife ran a company that advised on applications for British citizenship, and it had received money from the Hinduja Foundation. But Blair’s self-interest guaranteed that they all survived – except Mandelson.
‘I love his deviousness,’ sighed Blair’s loyal friend, ‘the way he is able to turn everything to his own advantage. His genius as a politician is his understanding of people, but also the fact that he is totally selfish and people either don’t see it or, if they do, they don’t seem to mind because of what he brings to them and the job.’
In the final weeks before the election, outsiders rarely witnessed Blair’s doubts. At the launch of the campaign on 8 May in a London
school, he appealed to his audience in a relaxed speech, portraying himself as a middle-class evangelist, ‘still basically someone who believes in the power of politics to change things’. The opening campaign advertisement was negative: ‘The Tories Present “Economic Disaster II”. Coming to a home, hospital, school, business near you.’
‘Last chance to save the pound,’ shouted Hague, leading a faltering party. Oliver Letwin, the shadow chancellor, revealed a proposal to cut taxes by £20 billion, then disappeared in order to avoid the merciless media hounding him to explain which public services he proposed to cut. Mocking the invisible Tory was the ideal backdrop for Brown to warn the country about the impending disaster of the Tories’ ‘Mr Boom and Mr Bust’.
Yet victory could have been jeopardised on 16 May, the day the Labour manifesto was launched, when Straw was slow-handclapped by the Police Federation, John Prescott was photographed punching a protester, for which he refused to apologise, and Blair was harangued at a Birmingham hospital for two minutes by Sharon Storer about her partner’s inability to get a bed the previous night for cancer treatment. ‘He suffered terribly,’ she told the prime minister in front of the TV cameras, blaming the government and not the hospital. ‘You are not giving them the money to give them the facilities. All you do is walk around and make yourself known, but you don’t do anything to help anybody.’ Supremely polite, Blair did not let his mask slip. Even the succession of disasters did not dent Labour’s poll ratings, which showed them up to 26 per cent ahead of the Tories. Blair had faith that Campbell, plying his trade, would drown out the negatives.
True to form, his
consigliere
revealed to the
Mirror
that Blair’s hidden strength was his Calvin Klein underpants, and that at the Blackpool party conference in 1996 he had worn a pair specially adorned with a red rose. He even supplied the words for his old newspaper: ‘cool men’ who wore CKs were men of ‘confidence, poise, good sense, sound judgement and style. CKs oozed class and statesmanship.’ The following morning, Campbell attacked the tabloid for ‘trivialising’ politics.
By election day, 7 June, the result was not in doubt. Labour were at least 11 per cent ahead of the Conservatives in the polls, and would win by a margin of 9 per cent. Blair’s new majority of 167, losing just six seats thanks to the weak opposition, a sound economy and his own personal magnetism, provided another blank cheque to re-energise his revolution.
At Myrobella, his home in Sedgefield, Blair appeared exhausted and not noticeably joyous. He felt misunderstood and isolated within his own Cabinet. There was a human limit, he decided, to anxiety and responsibility. Political life was not always a pleasure, and he anticipated resigning before the next election. In explaining his moodiness at the moment of glory, he would write, ‘I did lack courage.’
In London the following day, the public accolades failed to lift the feeling of anticlimax. Neither his party nor many Cabinet ministers showed genuine gratitude for his achievement. The Brownites scowled and Blair’s confidants in Downing Street were at war. Cherie and Fiona Millar renewed their demand that Anji Hunter be dismissed. While Hunter remained, said Cherie, she would feel sidelined. Her jealousy may have been irrational but it was ineradicable. Cherie was ‘being ridiculous’, declared Blair, startled by the vehemence of the ultimatum. Millar sent a ‘vile’ email to a friend about Hunter, before Hunter finally offered to go. Only his praetorian guard – including Estelle Morris at education, Stephen Byers at transport and Patricia Hewitt, a former civil rights campaigner sent as the senior minister to the DTI – were unconditionally loyal. He sent them a message radiating positivity. With age and experience, he said, he had learned how to focus on important matters and work the system. New Labour would be reincarnated.
During the upheaval, Blair delayed calling Brown, spending four days hoping to summon up the courage to send him to the Foreign Office. He knew the ensuing argument would be ferocious – not only with Brown, but with John Prescott, Neil Kinnock and other old Labour supporters. ‘The decision I didn’t take’, he would write, ‘was to move Gordon … the combination of the brilliant and the impossible.’ Without the benefit of having studied how predecessors such as Robert Peel, Benjamin
Disraeli, Harold Macmillan and Harold Wilson had shrewdly sidelined their Cabinet rivals, Blair lacked the imagination to exploit his landslide victory. On Monday 11 June, he finally called Brown.
‘I assume you want to carry on as chancellor.’
‘Yes,’ replied Brown stiffly.
Nothing more was said.
The day after Labour’s re-election, David Blunkett arrived for dinner in the private room of Shepherd’s restaurant in Westminster, where he would be briefed by his senior Home Office officials. His two priorities were to reduce crime and stop the rising tide of asylum-seekers. Television pictures from Calais regularly showed men from Iraq, Afghanistan and Zimbabwe plotting to hide on lorries destined for Britain. Their success was highlighted by there being 97,000 applications for asylum in 2000, another record number, only 10,185 of which were recognised as genuine. ‘My inheritance from Jack [Straw]’, cursed Blunkett, ‘is a mess.’
Stephen Boys-Smith confirmed that judgement. ‘We are not going to meet our targets for removing failed asylum-seekers,’ he told the home secretary, referring to the bogus asylum-seekers from Albania, ‘even though we are chartering planes to the Balkans.’ Only 4,870 had been deported, half the previous year’s number, against a target of 30,000.
‘I’ll have to clear it up,’ Blunkett replied. Labour’s liberalism, he added, would not change. Immigration from the Indian subcontinent would not be reduced or even discussed. In 2000, 210,000 immigrants had arrived as ‘family members’, compared to 70,000 in 1998. He supported more migration, but the controls on bogus asylum-seekers ‘need to show we were getting a grip’.
During those days after his victory, Blair focused on the problem – for the first time, Boys-Smith would say – after witnessing Labour’s vulnerability during the election. At an early crisis meeting in Downing
Street, Blunkett arrived with John Gieve, his permanent secretary, and Boys-Smith. Blair’s ‘big issue’, Blunkett knew, was the quick removal of anyone with an unfounded claim. His anger was directed at the unjustified welfare demands by the Roma and other benefit tourists.
Blunkett waved that aside as a minor issue. ‘Our real problem’, he said, ‘is that controls over immigration into Britain have broken down. The asylum-seekers are economic migrants who want to work and live here.’
‘I understand why they want to come,’ came the reply, ‘but they can’t come as asylum-seekers.’
Knowing that Blair supported managed migration, Blunkett summarised Sarah Spencer’s opinion. ‘You can’t shut the door,’ the academic had explained. ‘No government can control the number of economic migrants, neither by keeping people out nor by removing them. The government’s strategy is wrong because it’s failing to manage the public’s expectations.’ The general hostility to asylum-seekers, Blunkett was persuaded, could be reduced by admitting them as skilled migrants and giving them work permits.
Obeying his political director Sally Morgan’s advice that he should not upset Labour supporters, Blair approved the ruse. ‘Right, this is what we’ll do,’ he said, his eyes tightening to suggest his determination. Blunkett would issue 150,000 work permits in 2002. Most of those migrants, including the unskilled, would become British citizens.
As usual, the rising number of legal immigrants arriving every year from the Indian subcontinent was not mentioned. ‘Lifting the primary purpose rule’, Blair admitted to Blunkett, ‘was a mistake. It seemed the right thing to do in opposition, but I never thought that Afghanis, Iraqis and Somalis would take advantage of the change.’
‘Nothing can be done any more,’ replied Blunkett, who had also supported removing the rule. Neither politician, their civil servants and special assistants knew, wanted to discuss the new problems of polygamy, phoney marriages and the thousands entering Britain using invented relationships.
Convinced that his first term had been damaged by ineffectual
officials, Blair appointed the educationalist Michael Barber to head a new Delivery Unit. Civil servants would be directed to meet specific targets on 160 policies. With targets, Blair sensed, would come results.
One month later, Blunkett and Gieve returned to Downing Street for Barber’s stock-take. Applications for asylum, Barber reported, were still rising. In reply, Gieve assured Blair that IND officials were making quicker decisions. Blair nodded. He was aware that these quicker decisions were not hastening the removal of failed asylum-seekers or halting the numbers. On the contrary, Boys-Smith had made the decision-making process faster in order to allow asylum-seekers to remain in Britain. No one volunteered to tell Blair that the new regulations were encouraging migrants. As Matt Cavanagh, a special adviser in the Home Office, would confirm, Blair ‘shared a conviction that immigration was good for Britain and the British economy’. The Cabinet was still not asked to discuss the principle.
As the weeks passed, Blunkett failed to get to grips with the IND. ‘God knows what Jack did for four years,’ he complained, adding later, ‘I am simply unable to comprehend how he could have left it as it was.’ His spleen was directed at his staff in particular. Despite more officials having been recruited, the organisation was not improving. Blunkett blamed Gieve, whom he viewed as aloof and no better than the ‘hopeless’ Richard Wilson. He also condemned Boys-Smith as ‘incompetent’. For their part, Boys-Smith and his colleagues were not enamoured of Blunkett’s ‘bullying and aggressive style’.
‘It’s abysmal,’ Blunkett told Blair. ‘Nothing had prepared us for this. It’s worse than any of us imagined possible.’ He wanted Blair to approve Gieve’s dismissal. ‘We made a mistake of not reforming the civil service in 1997,’ he cursed. Blair’s response was more diffident than during the old days when they had discussed education. Now, he urged Blunkett to find a solution but offered no ideas of his own. Their discussions, Blunkett lamented, had become ‘always fraught’.
By the time of Barber’s next stock-take, in early September, IND officials had already come up with a ruse to win approval. By ticking
the right boxes in Barber’s questionnaire, Gieve could give the impression of ‘limited progress’. Blair and Blunkett were not convinced. To secure some political advantage, they directed Gieve to draft new legislation. ‘We need to show that we have the numbers under control,’ repeated Blair.
After the meeting, rather than introducing new laws to strip asylum-seekers of their legal rights and welfare benefits, Blunkett agreed that Nick Pearce, his special assistant, should write a White Paper to be called ‘Secure Borders, Safe Haven – Integration with Diversity’. Pearce’s intention was to improve foreigners’ conditions in Britain. The fevered media reports from Sangatte, he believed, were inciting anti-immigration sentiment. Asylum-seekers, he agreed with Spencer, deserved the benefit of new citizenship rules to help their settlement. They knew that Blair supported the principle. If only, Pearce lamented, they could get rid of the poisonous headlines.