Steve Richards - Whatever it Takes - The Real Story of Gordon Brown and New Labour

WHATEVER IT TAKES

The Real Story

of Gordon Brown

and New Labour

STEVE RICHARDS

First published in Great Britain in 2010 by

Fourth Estate

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF www.4thestate.co.uk

Copyright © Steve Richards 2010

The right of Steve Richards to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks

HarperCollins Publishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

Source ISBN: 9780007320325

Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2010 ISBN: 9780007352272

Version: 2018-06-18

To Barbara, Amy and Jake

Title Page WHATEVER IT TAKES The Real Story of Gordon Brown and New Labour STEVE RICHARDS

Copyright Copyright Copyright PREFACE INTRODUCTION ONE: Trust TWO: Dangerous Assumptions THREE: Cautiously Bold FOUR: Personalities and Policies FIVE: Second Term SIX: Ambition SEVEN: Coup EIGHT: Prime Minister NINE: Election Fever TEN: A Vacuum ELEVEN: Summer Holidays TWELVE: Revolts and Recovery THIRTEEN: Whatever It Takes FOURTEEN: New Labour to New Politics INDEX ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS About the Author About the Publisher First published in Great Britain in 2010 by Fourth Estate An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF www.4thestate.co.uk Copyright © Steve Richards 2010 The right of Steve Richards to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks HarperCollins Publishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication Source ISBN: 9780007320325 Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2010 ISBN: 9780007352272 Version: 2018-06-18

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

ONE: Trust

TWO: Dangerous Assumptions

THREE: Cautiously Bold

FOUR: Personalities and Policies

FIVE: Second Term

SIX: Ambition

SEVEN: Coup

EIGHT: Prime Minister

NINE: Election Fever

TEN: A Vacuum

ELEVEN: Summer Holidays

TWELVE: Revolts and Recovery

THIRTEEN: Whatever It Takes

FOURTEEN: New Labour to New Politics

INDEX

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

About the Author

About the Publisher

From the beginning the New Labour project was deliberately evasive. The term ‘new’, first used by Tony Blair on the day he became leader, was both an early clue to what was to follow and a red herring. Who could oppose a force that was new compared with one that was old? Most of us would prefer a new set of clothes to the older ones, at least until we find out more about what the clothes are like. But beyond a superficial attraction, where did the evasive adjective lead? The term was apolitical, like so many of the adjectives that were applied with such misleadingly feverish energy in the years that followed the emergence of New Labour.

The clue was the act of depoliticization. Newness was neither a quality on the left nor the right. The red herring was the notion that the adjective paraded with such a flourish conveyed clear direction, a party moving away from its past towards a ‘new’ future, forward not back, as the party put it in a slogan for the 2005 election. Blair relished the meaningless metaphor more than any other. ‘I do not have a reverse gear,’ he told his party conference in 2004. Actually he used that particular gear quite a lot, as all leaders do. But the image tells us nothing about the values of an individual or the party they lead.

The apolitical adjectives were not alone. Most of the rows that attracted so much intense attention for more than a decade were over issues relating to ‘integrity’, eruptions of ‘temper’ and personal rivalries. These were appropriately apolitical rows for the depoliticized decade. Debates about integrity can be staged about any public figure. They do not take us very far in discovering where these figures come from and are trying to get to, beyond an uneasy sense that their adoption of an apolitical adjective in the first place was partly because they were not entirely sure where they were going as a political force either.

The subsequent internal divide within New Labour blurred further the original evasion. Suddenly in the mid-1990s there were Blairites and Brownites springing up from nowhere in large numbers. The noun became an adjective, the adjective a noun. I would not have been surprised if I had heard a cue on an interview programme along the lines of: ‘Joining me now is the Blairite, Tony Blair.’ Both adjectives were applied a thousand a times a day in attempts to shed light. Most of the time they obscured while purporting to clarify. Was a Blairite someone who was merely loyal to Tony Blair? Was a Brownite someone who was personally loyal to Gordon Brown? Did a Blairite espouse a set of values and policies distinct from a Brownite’s? If so, what were they?

The lack of clarification enabled the creators of New Labour to build up a big tent of support in the early years, as David Cameron and Nick Clegg sought to do when they formed their coalition after the election in 2010. Cameron and Clegg proclaimed a ‘new politics’, the ubiquitous fresh-faced adjective in place once more. New Labour. New Politics. The coalition was not a break with the past, but its echo.