Peter Mandelson - The Third Man - Life at the Heart of New Labour

He did the opposite. By some distance, it was the most powerful performance, the most effective message, he had delivered since his descent had begun a year earlier. It was personal. It connected. It had touches of self-deprecating humour. It played to his strengths. Galvanised by the magnitude of the new economic and financial crisis, he managed to produce what he had so far been failing to do. He offered a coherent reply to questions left unanswered for so long: What were the challenges Britain faced? What were the policies, vision and leadership needed to rise above them? And why was he the man to provide them? His most effective line, aimed at David Cameron, was: ‘I’m all in favour of apprenticeships. But let me tell you that this is no time for a novice.’ It was clever, it was simple, and it was what people wanted to hear.

I was back in Brussels when Gordon gave his speech, and was preoccupied with preparing for a trip to China and a speech of my own when I got there. Especially with the economic crisis deepening, I was keen to encourage expanding business and trade ties between the EU and the Chinese. But I was determined to press Beijing on our concerns about protectionist barriers, and China’s lacklustre attitude to enforcing intellectual-property rights. I watched Gordon’s address on television, however, and saw that it had gone well. I got two text messages that evening. The first was from one of the team at Number 10, saying very kindly that I’d made a ‘profound difference’ to Gordon’s performance. The second was from Sue Nye. ‘Gordon,’ it read, ‘says “thank you” for your help.’ As always with big set-piece speeches, especially Gordon’s, I was just one of many who had contributed. But it had been worth the effort. I told Gordon I felt it had been a good speech, the right message, effectively delivered, at the right time. What I didn’t say, in part because I was sure Gordon already knew and feared it, was that he had cleared only the first hurdle on the road to recovery.

By the time we next spoke, I was in Singapore, on my way home from Beijing. The call came in the early hours of the morning. He was upset by continued signs of discontent among an assortment of backbenchers, echoed by several former Blair cabinet ministers. There was a ‘plot’ to drive him out, he insisted: ‘The plotters are the problem.’ He singled out three former ministers as the alleged culprits: Stephen Byers, Alan Milburn and John Reid. ‘They are steering it,’ he said. ‘They had a plan, it misfired, and they failed. They wanted to wreck the conference, and they didn’t succeed.’

In fact, as far as I could tell, neither they nor anyone else had had some grand plan for conference Armageddon. At least for now, Gordon was safe. ‘You’re getting this out of proportion,’ I told him. ‘I don’t know why you’re so wound up.’ He was not wound up, he replied. But he was obviously distracted, and if he stayed that way, his conference escape could turn out to be no more than a very brief respite. ‘What you have to focus on now is the fact that we don’t have a strategy to win the next election,’ I told him. ‘The other stuff doesn’t matter. New Labour 1997 is not going to win it for us in 2010. It has to be renewed, reinvented. Nobody is doing that, and you have to focus on it.’

‘Can’t you do that?’ he asked, returning to a theme I thought we had finally got beyond in the summer. ‘I’ve got it intellectually,’ he said. ‘I’ve got the policies. I accept it’s different from 1997, and that now we’ve got to say what we’re doing next. But I just can’t turn it into a strategy.’

I put it to him directly: ‘You need a government team to do this. Perhaps you should wonder whether you may have contributed to making people feel less of a team. You have to rebuild it.’

‘I realise some in the cabinet feel ambivalent about me,’ he replied. ‘But others have got to show a lot more maturity.’

Sensing that we had taken this as far as we could for now, I said: ‘I have to show some maturity, and go to sleep.’

‘Why? Where on earth are you?’ asked Gordon, genuinely surprised.

‘Singapore,’ I said. ‘And it’s after 2 a.m.’ Gordon, profusely apologetic, and I, very tired, agreed to talk the following day.

When he phoned he was, at least briefly, in a brighter mood. ‘If it’s not after midnight, I guess I’m calling too early,’ he joked. But he remained unsettled. He was some distance from getting a hold on the team effort I’d been urging him to make his priority.

‘You get wound up about the wrong things and the wrong people,’ I said. I advised him not to make a big mistake in the cabinet reshuffle the press was now anticipating. I was worried about reports that he was planning to replace Alistair Darling with Ed Balls, which in the gathering economic crisis struck me as perverse. No matter how upset Gordon had been over his Chancellor’s interview, a vote of no-confidence in the Treasury was hardly going to help. ‘Some may think it odd,’ I said.

‘We’ll have to talk on a landline,’ Gordon replied, with a sudden air of mystery. ‘But I have a bigger plan than that – one which everyone will eventually say is good.’

‘A tactical nuclear explosion?’ I asked. At which, for the first time in ages, he laughed. He would say nothing more, beyond a suggestion that we talk again.

I was worried. From my experience, Gordon’s ‘big plans’ had a habit of creating as many problems as they solved. His conference speech would not in itself ensure that he and the government could recover, but it was a start. He had had one last chance at survival, and he had taken it. One more ‘big plan’ gone wrong would risk not just ending his short and unhappy premiership, it could leave the government, and the party, in even deeper crisis.

The next call from Downing Street came two days later. It was not from Gordon, but Jeremy Heywood. It began encouragingly enough, with an assurance that I would have an opportunity to weigh in with my views before the reshuffle warheads were launched. ‘I think Gordon will want to see you to discuss the reshuffle,’ he said. But then he too added, ‘He wants to do something quite big.’

‘In what way big?’ I pressed. He said that was something I would have to discuss with the Prime Minister. Apparently, Gordon wanted to do something that would affect me. This was getting more puzzling, and more worrying. I took it to be a suggestion of some root-and-branch reworking of the cabinet, with my job in Brussels offered as consolation prize to one of the victims. The prospect of my entering a truly final political exile came as a shock. It also seemed an odd way for Gordon to recognise the help I had tried to give him in his darkest hours. I did take comfort from the fact that I was better equipped to deal with being cast into the wilderness this time round. With my EU term ending in barely a year, I had begun to adjust to the notion of life beyond politics. But it was unsettling, and I said so. ‘He’d better not muck around with my job,’ I told Jeremy. ‘If this “big plan” involves getting rid of someone with a promise of my job, you should know I’ll be furious.’

‘It’s not that,’ he said. ‘We’ll talk again.’

The next call, on Wednesday, 1 October, was no more illuminating. This time it was from Gordon. ‘I’m going to do this reshuffle,’ he began. ‘I need to talk to you about it. I want to put an idea to you – something I hope you’ll go along with.’ He asked if I could come to see him in Downing Street the following morning. I said I would be in London anyway, for a briefing at the Treasury on the financial crisis, and I could see him after that. He seemed satisfied, but before hanging up he added very sternly: ‘Do not discuss this with anyone.’