A Journey_ My Political Life Part 15

The cla.s.sic was me and Gordon buying ice creams on a trip to a park and playground in the 2005 election. The conversation with Kate Garvey went something like this: 'Go and buy ice cream from that van there, one for you, one for Gordon, to show togetherness and being normal.'

'No,' I said, 'it's absurd. I don't like Mr Whippy ice cream, except with a chocolate flake stuck in it; and does Gordon look like your average ice cream buyer? Come on, it's ridiculous, we're two guys in suits, one is the prime minister, the other is the Chancellor of the Exchequer. What's normal about it?'

'Just do it,' she said menacingly, 'and don't get a flake; it'll make you look greedy.' (Advice I ignored.) Such visits usually would provide a proper quotient of amus.e.m.e.nt. As I wandered round the park that day, I met a working-cla.s.s mum, grandmother, and baby in a pram. 'You're better-looking than on TV,' the older woman remarked, sizing me up like a piece of meat.

'You can come again,' I said jauntily.

'I just 'ave,' she said, a story Kate regaled to an embarra.s.sed Gordon.

Before the rounds of interviews anywhere near election time, I would have to go through a list of the price of everyday things like a pint of milk, a pound of b.u.t.ter, a shoulder of lamb. Bread used to produce lengthy debate about which type of loaf, white or brown, nothing too wholemeal, nothing too unhealthy, all of it done in the belief that if I knew such a fact, it would mean I might be going down to the shop near Downing Street (not that there was one) and collecting the groceries, which of course I wasn't. But people have great faith in the power of such trips to 'connect' with the public, and who's to say they're wrong.

However, though I went along with it all, I always used to question the premise. The public aren't stupid; they know the prime minister doesn't really tootle off to the supermarket like they do. They don't want to know that he actually does live like one of them, but they want to know that he could; and more important, they want to know that he feels like them, that they could get on.

This is nothing to do with upbringing or cla.s.s or background. You can be an Old Etonian and get along with people; you can be from Trimdon Colliery and be hopeless with them. It's about temperament, character and att.i.tude. It's also about being authentic. To be sure, if you aren't naturally a bloke people would like to have a beer with and you're running for office, it is a problem. It may be irrational, but it's true. I always used to say to people about George Bush: don't underestimate his appeal as a normal guy. You might not agree with him, but if you're a voter, you would never think you would be uncomfortable or feel inadequate if you met him socially; you would think he would be nice and easy with you. And you'd be right.

You can just about get over a lack of such normality provided you don't pretend to be other than you are. Some politicians, and I'm one of them, enjoy chatting about things and meeting people. I am infinitely curious about them. (Clinton's great political strength was an endless capacity to be fascinated even by the most unfascinating people because he was always willing to learn from them.) But other politicians aren't. If you aren't, don't obsess about it. Serious-minded, severe even, can still win, provided it's authentic.

Though I always complained about doing these regional tours because of the questionable PR premise, and the time away from Number 10 and from pus.h.i.+ng forward on policy, and despite the unreality and occasional surreality of it all, I would always learn something from being out and about, in particular from talking to front-line staff or businesses. They were useful not so much as a barometer of opinion, but as a means of finding out whether what I was being told in Downing Street bore any resemblance to the facts on the ground. Very often it didn't.

At the beginning of September, just before we left to do this tour in the North, there were reports of fuel protests in France. The price of oil had been steadily rising to over $30 a barrel, the highest for more than ten years. Prices at the fuel pump began to rise sharply.

Fuel duty had been a bone of contention for years. In order to sort out the public finances, the previous government had established a 'fuel duty escalator', which meant that the duty would rise by a certain percentage above inflation. It was also given an environmental justification the first green tax but no one took that reasoning very seriously. It helped bring the borrowing requirement back under control, and while the price of crude oil remained low, the rise in duty could be effectively masked by the low price of the raw product. So it suited government fine. Of course, when the oil price began to spiral upwards and carried the price of petrol at the pump with it, it was a different matter.

The French tend to protest at anything and don't need much excuse to get out on the street, but in Britain it was not traditionally the done thing. Suddenly the anger at the rising price of petrol concentrated attention on the fact that UK fuel duty was the highest in Europe. On 8 September, the fuel protests from France, which we had been watching with a rather uninterested complacency, spread to the UK.

The fuel protesters were a motley bunch. There were farmers, hauliers, the self-employed and the anti-government. They were not from the usual protesting stock with which the left is familiar; these were what your Marxist would call the petty bourgeoisie, not that there was anything petty or pet.i.t about them. They had a genuine grievance. But they were strongly anti-Labour, I suspect.

They were also smart enough to target the Achilles heel of the fuel industry, and thus the economy, and thus the government. Oil comes into the country and is refined at vast refining plants, of which there are not many, before being transported by lorry to petrol stations. Without the refining plants, no blood flows to the arteries. Petrol stations don't have a lot of capacity, so they fill up every forty-eight hours or so. Day in, day out, this system gets the fuel out to the forecourt and hence to the customer, be they a farmer, a business or a member of the public.

The trouble is at the time when I had to know this, I didn't. And neither, it seems, did anyone else in a position of authority, so when we heard of some protests at two refineries Buncefield and Stanlow the enormity didn't sink in.

We went on our tour, the normal round of schools and hospitals and 'connections with ordinary people'. We stopped for lunch at a small country hotel just outside Hull, where we were due to talk at a party event and then go for a dinner to celebrate John Prescott's thirty years as a Hull MP. We ate a leisurely meal, as we had a bit of time to kill. There was a travelling media pack and I pa.s.sed some time with them discussing the upcoming presidential election in the US. I recall having an intriguing discussion about terrorism and its potential to grow into a worldwide threat.

The fuel protesters were using the good old trade union picket tactic which Mrs Thatcher had outlawed, and stopped the lorries leaving the refineries. Anji Hunter told me the protests were spreading. Sh.e.l.l, who had reported that some of the protests were violent, wanted police escorts for their drivers. I was beginning to get the first real stirrings of unease about forty-eight hours too late.

By the time we got to Hull, the thing had turned really ugly and protesters were ringing the place. Like a storm breaking out of nowhere, the media and the protesters suddenly came together in a great clap of thunder. You might think that employing Arthur Scargill-like tactics of picketing and intimidation in order to bring the nation to a halt would have called the media forth into a barrage of condemnation. Had it been Scargill, probably it would have, but since this was about the price of petrol something dear to their readers' hearts and the protests were aimed at a Labour government, the opposite happened and the protesters quickly became street heroes, fighting for the rights of ordinary people against an insensitive administration.

One of the hardest things at a time like this is to carry on and do all the things in the schedule, when you are desperate to stop it all, go into a quiet corner and think. Sitting in an anteroom to the main chamber in the magnificent Hull City Hall, I was really agitated. I knew I had messed up big time. My antennae should have been twitching. I should have realised that for your ordinary motorist, the rising cost of filling the car was a big, not an insignificant one (after all, the children's nanny, Jackie, had been complaining about it for weeks). I should have understood the total vulnerability of the system to the protest; and the attraction of the protest to the media. Sitting there with a twenty-point lead in the polls, I had just opened up a ma.s.sive breach in our defences.

The Chinese restaurant where the dinner for John Prescott was to be held was already thronging with protesters. The police advised me to call it off. I accepted gratefully. I had to think.

We got out of a side door of the City Hall, and after being pursued down the street by a mob, we got into the hotel. I was trying to get some sense of the seriousness of it all from Number 10. Alastair was in full crisis mode, but the rest of the machine seemed curiously paralysed, reacting to the scene as it was unfolding with a mixture of endless process and hand-wringing that was not pretty to behold.

You always have to know when to delegate and when to take the thing very purposefully and very clearly into your own two hands. Leaders.h.i.+p without delegation is usually a mess nothing gets done as people fret about whether they are doing what the leader wants them to do, and the leader has too many things on the go to concentrate long enough to give adequate instruction. But when it is crisis time, forget delegation. That's the moment you're there for: grip it, shape it, decide it and solve it.

After a restless night I wished I had gone back to London the previous evening we got to the station very early. As I stepped on to the train, much to the surprise of the travelling public, a lady said to me: 'Don't give in to them, they're Tories, you know. You stand up to them.' That was one view, certainly. There would definitely be others.

On the train I formed a strategy. We had to defeat the protest and reopen the refineries, that was for sure; but we also had to make sure the Pre-Budget Report addressed the fuel question, i.e. stand up for proper government, but don't be daft and refuse to listen. Unreasonable people sometimes make reasonable demands.

First things first. The crisis was now fully blown. The media were revelling in it. Panic buying of fuel was the order of the day, and the images of queues of cars, petrol forecourts crowded or closed, and general chaos were irresistible, and the media weren't in a mood to resist them. They were las.h.i.+ng the chariots of fury on, the protesters were cheered and the government got lambasted for 'doing nothing' to solve the crisis which the media were actively encouraging.

I was really angry about it. I felt that a Tory government would not be treated like this. But, having vented a bit to Jonathan, Anji and Alastair, I realised that anger or even worse, self-pity was just pathetic. We were where we were; we just had to get out of it.

I called in the ministers. Jack Straw was, as ever, practical and focused. Gordon said it was important that this was not seen as a tax issue (we had a slightly unreal exchange over the next days as he kept telling me it can't be seen as a tax issue and I kept telling him that unfortunately it was seen as a tax issue and nothing was going to change that). Stephen Byers, the Trade and Industry Secretary, was calm.

But no one seemed to have much of an answer. Fuel supplies had literally stopped, and the country was at a standstill. I called in the oil companies and the police. The military were already being activated, but all they had were a few very old tankers, nothing like what was necessary. Hopeless!

At times like those, you know what the phrase 'the buck stops here' means. The oil guys were very polite, but they sort of didn't regard it as their problem. The police seemed to have been getting mixed signals. One officer said they were doing their best to try to make sure the protests were peaceful and that there was proper dialogue with the protesters. As I looked at him, I realised what the problem was: they were all very reasonable people, and they wanted to be very reasonable.

Oh Lord, I thought. I could feel my heart starting to bounce, the anger in my gorge, my jaw tightening. I was about to blow my top when I decided to use icy calm instead. More prime ministerial.

I looked at the police officer. 'Tell me what you are going to do to stop the protests.'

'Stop the protests?' he said, his eyes narrowing slightly. 'You mean you want us to prevent them taking place?'

'Yes,' I said, very calm. 'And I want you the oil companies to instruct your drivers to cross the picket lines, and if they don't, for reasons anything other than fear of violence to their person, I want you to sack them. And I would like the army to come in and if necessary drive your tankers, and if they meet with any violence from protesters, I want you the police to deal with them very firmly, and if not, to let the army take care of them. They're very good at it.'

The police officers brightened. They understood. No more nice cuddly neighbourhood policing, but go after them hard. The army, as ever, couldn't wait to get started. The oil guys looked a little nonplussed, but I threw in some vague remarks on public anxiety about their excessive profits from the rising oil price and they at least understood they had to become active, rather than reactive.

I summed up a list of action points, arranged for a Cabinet Office Briefing Room (COBR) crisis-response meeting for me to chair the next day, and ended the meeting satisfied we were at least gripping it and beginning the process of turning things around.

I then went off for a press conference. The only thing to do at a time like this is to show you are on top of it and give a general appearance of being in charge, whatever the panic underneath. I did well, though foolishly said that within twenty-four hours we would have the situation 'on the way back to normal'. I choose words carefully it's part of my very useful training as a lawyer but these words were foolish because subtlety doesn't often translate into clear communication. It was taken as saying that within twenty-four hours everything would be back to normal. Impossible, of course. But apart from that, it was OK and served its purpose.

The next thing was to take away some of the moral high ground from the protesters. Alan Milburn said we should focus on the impact on the NHS, and Alastair agreed. They were running short of supplies. The fuel protesters and this was how ludicrous the whole thing became were allowing tankers through for 'emergencies' based on their a.s.sessment of 'emergency'. Depending on the negotiation between them and a hospital, fuel would be allowed through or not. It was intolerable, but gave us a chance to exploit their weakness; in the end, who were they to decide life or death?

So we sent nurses out to the picket lines to argue with the protesters. Alan gave a very strong statement and we could feel support for them beginning to ebb. It was the first successful PR blow. It also shows the invaluable a.s.sistance good teamwork in politics can give. It's not usually thought of as a team game, but it is, especially in a crisis. Everyone around me put their hands to the pump, as it were. Instead of fretting or worse, sitting around moaning people like Alan actually tried to think of ways of solving it.

The Tories also messed up. I write about William Hague elsewhere, but I doubt if the Hague of today would have made the mistake of the Hague then. He more or less backed the protest; not quite, but more or less. Opportunity always knocks for an Opposition leader, but sometimes it's best not to answer and leave it knocking. The public start with one mood, and when the mood changes, if you're not careful and you have tried to exploit it, you're high and dry.

The public were angry at the price of petrol; and in large numbers they backed the protesters' case. But the country grinding to a halt is not a great idea, and the public know it. The consequences come home of what is really, as they know in their heart of hearts, grossly irresponsible action. After about four days of standstill, the sentiment that 'enough is enough' started to percolate through the national consciousness. Slowly but surely we got back to normal.

I have had many harsh things to say about the unions over the years, but I have to say on this crisis they reacted magnificently. They were fulsome in condemning the protesters, making the valid point that unions doing the same were regarded as acting like wildcat strikers. For the first time in memory, I was praising John Edmonds of the GMB (Britain's General Union) and Bill Morris of the TGWU (Transport and General Workers' Union), and was actually really grateful to the TUC.

I asked Jim Callaghan to come out and support us, and he gave a statement to the Today Today programme backing the government and me personally (though he declined an interview for them on the basis that he would be asked about the comparisons with the stoppages of the 1970s). The Confederation of British Industry finally woke up and weighed in on the side of sense. programme backing the government and me personally (though he declined an interview for them on the basis that he would be asked about the comparisons with the stoppages of the 1970s). The Confederation of British Industry finally woke up and weighed in on the side of sense.

From 13 to 16 September, the situation continued to be bad, but was improving daily. We set up a committee with the oil companies to lay plans for averting such a protest in future. By 17 September, more than 60 per cent of petrol stations were open again. Panic buying had stopped.

It was over; but the damage to the government had been considerable. You really have to hand it to the media once the thing collapsed, we were roundly taken to task for not acting soon enough and not doing more to prevent the protests spreading. It was extraordinary, comic even. Without a blush they were castigating us for not stamping on a fire they were actively helping light under us. I think, after that, I realised two things. The first was that there is no point getting steamed up about them; they are what they are, and to get angry is just to waste energy (this is a very good precept, but as time showed, rather hard to adhere to). The second thing was that life will always be different for a Labour leader compared to a Tory leader. Provided you know that, it's OK; but it is different, and you have to know it.

The fallout from the fuel protests meant we went into party conference at the end of September in slightly chastened mood. A poll showed us eight points behind the Tories.

Polls are an absolute nightmare. All leaders will tell you they don't pay attention to them, but all leaders do. The problem is they can be an instant snapshot of public opinion (i.e. real, but superficial and therefore potentially transient) or they can indicate a trend (i.e. potentially of lasting significance). You never know which it is.

But they matter because quite apart from anything else, your supporters and the media dwell on them. They help create a mood, which itself often then reinforces the polling. You watch any US election and it's amazing the degree to which the polls create the weather. In part the media, and indeed all of us to a degree, distrust our own instinct we may think 'X', but then a poll shows 'Y', so we think, Well, maybe 'Y' is right after all.

The result of this can be not merely confusing; it can reduce the disposition to argue a case. One of the weaknesses of polls, as I learned, is that they don't measure the degree to which people are open to persuasion. So the snapshot may well say 'Y', but actually the public could be brought to think 'X'.

Over time, I became less concerned with the polling (which may have coincided with the fact it became less amicable!), but I would still always cast a nervous eye at it. Then there was Philip Gould and his focus groups. Philip was a fantastic support, at times as crucial as a morale enthuser as he was as a political strategist, but I used to laugh at how extraordinary the confluence was between his own thoughts and what the groups seemed to say. Also, so much depended on the individual people. Though pollsters always swore blind these groups were selected on a very 'scientific' basis, the truth about any group of people chosen like this is that they are utterly in thrall to their own mood on the day, any recent experience, what they think they should think, and above all to the voice in the group which speaks most definitively and so influences the dynamics that will occur within any collection of strangers sitting in a room together for the first time. I always wanted to attend one secretly and then at the end jump out and confront them with all the vicious calumnies they had just been uttering against me!

But so frenzied is the political desire to sniff the prevailing winds accurately that huge emphasis and sanct.i.ty is placed upon polls. You begin to realise how the ancient temple priests must have felt in pagan days, trying to read the entrails. I bet they were much like Philip and one of his groups, and the conclusion they arrived at was not greatly different from where they thought things were moving anyway. So they, and polls, should be treated with the utmost caution. But they never are.

In this instance, the eight-point Tory lead did seem genuinely transient, but it was an indication we had taken a hit. I decided we had to answer what I thought was a basic underlying problem. People thought we were an all-powerful government, the Tories were rubbish and there was no real Opposition. Now, of course, to us sitting there dealing with the daily grind, it wasn't like that at all we felt under unbelievable pressure tout le temps tout le temps but the public, egged on by the media, could see signs of hubris and arrogance. That was part of the reason why they took the side of the protesters so readily: they didn't really want us to lose the fight, but a bit of a kicking might serve us right. but the public, egged on by the media, could see signs of hubris and arrogance. That was part of the reason why they took the side of the protesters so readily: they didn't really want us to lose the fight, but a bit of a kicking might serve us right.

We had also just had an unfortunate run-in with Britain's pensioners. One of the greatest myths of human existence is that as people get older, they get more benign, more long-suffering, more relaxed and more phlegmatic in how the world treats them. Not in my experience.

Your average Rottweiler on speed can be a lot more amiable than a pensioner wronged, or, to put it more accurately, believing they are wronged. Around this time, I remember distinctly visiting a housing estate to open a new nursery, going down the path shaking hands with a few well-wishers. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of an old-age pensioner, a woman no less, with a placard that read: 'Blair, you are a c***'. I couldn't believe it. I was really shocked. She looked like your typical sweet granny. I almost stopped to remonstrate, but then wisely thought better of it.

My mother-in-law by the way, a wonderful mother to Cherie and an inestimable support to the family used to keep me informed of the views of pensioners, and as lobbyists go she was up there with the best of them. I used to reflect on how much money was spent on expensive Westminster lobby firms all paying a fortune to get the ear of some junior minister, and here right at the centre of Downing Street was one woman giving a rolling mastercla.s.s in the art of targeted persuasion. However, it was a mono-theme: the government's scandalous treatment of pensioners.

What was fascinating, and more than a little unnerving, was that there seemed to be little or no correlation between the largesse bestowed on them and the volume of complaint. When, some years into government, we were hurling the money at them, somehow or other there would be one age group or tier of pensioner that we would miss, and then the rest would take great pride in their solidarity with those who had been so callously forgotten.

I exaggerate to make a point. There were those who were genuinely grateful for the measures we introduced, which did amount to the biggest ever boost to the earnings of the oldest, least well-off and most vulnerable pensioners. Those measures on their own were always a riposte to the absurd notion in parts of the left that we had betrayed our 'traditional' vote. We did things no Tory government would have contemplated, never mind done. And we did it for good motives, though as I say the grat.i.tude was not always commensurate with the generosity.

But in the summer of 1999 we had messed up. We had applied the usual rules for uprating the basic state pension in line with inflation, which was low. The result? A 75p rise. We were still in our two-year period of keeping to tight spending limits. Those were the rules. We applied them.

The pensioners, unsurprisingly, were not impressed. Though my mother-in-law put the case a little too graphically, it was clear we had a serious problem. We rectified it in the Budget by increasing the amount, but, again, damage was done.

I decided at the 2000 party conference to apologise and eat a portion of humble pie. We had some blowback from Gordon and Alistair Darling who felt it dangerous to admit we were wrong; but I felt it was worth it. Anyway, we were wrong!

The rest of the speech was concerned with uplifting the party by installing some pride in what we had done; energising them by laying out what we had still to do; and giving them some battle lines on how much we could lose under the Tories.

The speech went well. I learned one other lesson in the course of it. I really work out during a big speech. It's a physical not just a mental or rhetorical act. And I sweat. Before the speech we were in the hotel suite trying to work out what to wear. I had chosen a very good s.h.i.+rt/tie combination. Unfortunately the s.h.i.+rt was blue, and by the end of my speech it was very visibly wet through. Naturally, the headlines were about 'BLAIR SWEATING UNDER PRESSURE' etc. From then on, I always wore a white s.h.i.+rt for a big speech!

After the conference season, the atmosphere continued to be difficult. There was nothing particularly wrong; but nothing particularly right either. The media environment was tricky. Alastair was talking about moving on, as was Anji. This was deeply unsettling.

Part of the problem with New Labour was that, in the beginning, it had been the creation of a very tightly knit group. It was only really towards the end that a new generation of talented young people came on board properly who were able to take positions of leaders.h.i.+p and broaden our base. The senior politicians around me were good and strong players; but JP was obviously not inclined to New Labour; with Gordon it was difficult to tell. At one level, he was; but the tensions in the desire to push ahead more radically with reform were starting to surface; and in any event his preoccupation was the succession and he always worried that anything difficult would undermine the inheritance. David Blunkett, of course, was fully behind the push, but others like John Reid and Charles Clarke were still on the way up. Robin Cook went along with it partly because of the appalling relations between him and Gordon at that time but you wouldn't rely on him if it turned sour. Jack Straw was supportive but not a force pus.h.i.+ng at the frontier.

So I was acutely conscious that it rested on my shoulders, that I had to drive and keep driving; and I hadn't yet properly matured or hardened. That may seem an odd thing to say, but I felt that I had a lot to learn and a lot of inner strength still to develop. I didn't feel courageous much of the time. I knew if push came to shove I would be, but there was much more nervous anxiety lingering near the surface of my psyche than showed maybe that's always true of people in this position and at one level I felt needy.

Cherie was a great support, of course, but she wasn't there during the working day, so naturally the people I worked with really mattered. They were an outstandingly talented team, and I felt a bit like a football manager might when he realises he has a dream team that is perfectly balanced, with elements of genius and ma.s.ses of commitment. Needless to say, he doesn't want to lose any stars.

In time I learned to escape this bind and it is a bind; there are other great players out there. Change is refres.h.i.+ng, it challenges old ways; but I was still developing and I thought I couldn't manage without the old team.

Only later did I realise the strain Alastair was under; and only later did I, in a sense, move to a place that required different skills to the many that he has. At that stage, communication was still paramount. Of course communication is always important, but in those early days it was at the crux. Later, I put policy there, and then communication a.s.sumed a lesser, though still critical, role.

Alastair was getting exhausted and ratty, and he was getting set upon by the media, whom he was coming to loathe and was therefore not handling quite right. Both he and Anji were also people to whom I selfishly and needily transferred much of the pain and the strain. They lightened the load, but in doing so, they burdened themselves. And it was a heavy burden to bear.

In those late months of 2000, I was trying to persuade both to stay, trying more than I should have and more than was wise. But there it is: you live and learn.

We were still pressing away on getting the policy fundamentals in place for the reform agenda. I was working flat out devising the direction of structural reform for schools, the NHS, criminal justice, welfare and the Civil Service. I was intensely frustrated by my lack of detailed knowledge in each discipline and was constantly trying to expand it. Of course, it is impossible for any prime minister to be at the centre of all disciplines or to be the complete master of any, except in bursts of activity usually a.s.sociated with a crisis, but nonetheless I was meeting groups of front-line professionals who understood the case for change and wanted to lead it. They improved my understanding as I got to grips with the tangle of complexities that lie in the navigation of any process of change. I was sure now that we could set sail, confident of a really radical second term. In every area I had a fairly firm compa.s.s. I was growing in confidence about the arguments, increasingly sure that we were heading in the right direction. The only problem was, I wasn't clear about how much support I had getting there.

Meanwhile, events were colliding with my programme, pulling it this way and that. We had severe flooding in many parts of the country, a natural disaster but one which necessitated vast amounts of time and focus. I went on several visits to lift spirits and make sure that everything that should be done was being done. The damage floods can do is extraordinary, unbelievable, billions of pounds' worth with remarkable speed and ease. When I visited the flooding in York everyone was very stoic, but it was obvious it would be months before things returned to normal. With the risk of flooding increasing due to climate change, insurers, government and businesses and entire towns and villages were having to rethink policy. In the end, we committed to a billion-pound investment in flood defences.

Then came the Hatfield rail crash on 17 October, when an Intercity express train derailed on the line from London to the North-East, which was one I travelled on regularly. Four people died, and it was a big shock, especially coming just over a year after the Ladbroke Grove crash, in which thirty-one people had been killed.

It led to a major examination of the state of the railways, the arguments about privatisation were reopened, and there was much agonising about what to do. The cause had been an unnoticed crack in one of the gauges, which was serious since it meant other such cracks might exist. We met the rail chiefs at Number 10 and JP, who was in charge of transport, was very heavy on them. He was probably right to be so, but I was immediately concerned about an entirely different problem.

The railway companies, encouraged of course by the Department for Transport, went on a very risk-averse course of action, which basically put all the trains on a go-slow. I knew that the moment the immediate shock of the accident evaporated, human nature being what it is, the public would go back to normal and what they would want would be the d.a.m.n trains running on time, and there was no hope of that.

For about the next year, there was a pantomime played out between me and the department. I was desperate to get them to return to normal schedules, believing they were being too cautious. They were resistant, thinking I was taking risks. The number of meetings I had; bangings on the table, exasperation; exchanges of varying degrees of politeness with JP.

The later months of 2000 continued to be dominated by events piling in thick and fast. In October, Milosevic fell a great moment, the streets of Belgrade alive with emotion and hope and Donald Dewar, the First Minister of Scotland, died. He had been an excellent colleague, and though we were never close friends, I felt a strong tie to him. I trusted him. He had genuine integrity. Because of Derry and his wife Alison (to whom Donald had previously been married), I knew his children well. I had visited him a few weeks before his death, when he was recovering from an earlier illness which presaged a brain haemorrhage, in his flat in New Town in Edinburgh. Though I had known him for years, I had never visited his home and was rather astounded to see his very valuable collection of Scottish Impressionists and prints. 'I never knew about this,' I said.

'I never told you,' he replied, very Donaldish.

Politically, I always felt that, underneath it all, Donald was rather New Labour. He had a good mind and also a good spirit about him, an impatience with ideology and a hearty common sense about human nature. His loss in Scotland was irreparable. He was a father figure; a creator of Scottish devolution; and clearly a man of stature. His funeral was a very sad affair. I felt strangely like an outsider. It was very Scottish and very GB-dominated he gave a brilliant oration, Gordon at his best.

I was also spending a lot of time on European business. The forthcoming Nice summit in early December was looming large, where we were going to decide the new voting rules for the EU, a mind-blowingly complex interaction of individual and national interests struggling to serve the collective European interest. I had Jacques Chirac to dinner at a pub in my const.i.tuency to discuss it all, where he managed to say that the food was superb, but with a little too much smirking from his entourage for my liking. Outside the pub, fox hunters were protesting.

Fox hunting; now there's a tale. One of the strangest parts of politics is how you get into situations of unbelievable controversy without ever meaning to or wanting to. The fox-hunting subject resulted in one of the domestic legislative measures I most regret, along with the Freedom of Information Act. Both were great progressive causes (at least to some); both were the cause of inordinate political convulsion, and for what purpose, G.o.d only knows.

But fox hunting brought the most grief. The issue itself crossed boundaries of opinion in a remarkable way, zigzagging through swathes of Middle England, working-cla.s.s heartlands and old-fas.h.i.+oned aristocrats. The thing was you could never tell people's reactions to it. You had dyed-in-the-wool Tories for whom a ban was their ultimate political fantasy; and you had solid Labour blokes, whose right arm would have withered away rather than put a cross in the Tory box, who wanted to kill me because of the proposal to ban it.

People used to say it's a cla.s.s thing and for some it was. For others, it was an animal thing. I remember a secretary from the Downing Street Garden Rooms coming to see me at Chequers while I was working in the study, and telling me with tears in her eyes that at long last justice for the poor little fox was to be secured. I used to have meetings with my advisers or the whips and just sit there and say: but people cannot feel that strongly about it; it's impossible. Well, they do, they would tell me. And they were right. Gerald Kaufman sensible, sane, loyal Gerald said to me: if you don't do this, I could never support the government again. He didn't really mean it, of course; but he wished he did. The pa.s.sions aroused by the issue were primeval. If I'd proposed solving the pension problem by compulsory euthanasia for every fifth pensioner I'd have got less trouble for it.

And here is a real political lesson. You have to 'feel it' to succeed in politics. That's where instinct comes from, the emotional intelligence. By and large I do feel it, and so, on most issues, I get it. On this one, I had a complete lapse. I didn't 'feel it' either way. I didn't feel how, for fox hunters, this was part of their way of life. I didn't feel how, for those wanting a ban, this was fundamentally about cruelty. Result? Disaster.

I was ignorant about the sport. I thought it a bit weird that people wanted to gallivant around hunting a fox, but having read my Trollope I understood it is a part of our history. What I didn't understand but boy, I understood it later was that it is a rather large part of our rural present.

I made a fatal mistake by not shutting the issue down at the outset. Instead, I let it get running out of the blocks. Expectations were raised. On a TV programme I stupidly gave the impression it would indeed be banned. Of course I had voting form, having voted to ban it or said I wanted to or signed some pet.i.tion or something. Anyway, I repeated my 'position' rather than reconsidering it. The moment I did so, I was defined. And so trapped. By the end of it, I felt like the d.a.m.n fox.

The trouble was, as I say, I just couldn't get it, but Philip Gould began telling me it was now an issue of trust. Sally, Hilary Armstrong, Ann Taylor i.e. the big bra.s.s, the 'if necessary we'll take the world on and screw them all' brigade were telling me: fail to do this and you have a leaders.h.i.+p problem. 'I can't believe it,' I kept saying rather pathetically. 'Start believing it,' they would reply.

If I told you the contortions and permutations I went through to avoid this wretched business, you wouldn't credit it. We had regional referenda, partial bans, civil penalties, criminal penalties you name it, we considered it.

The protesters were predominantly Tory, of course, and at long last they had something to protest about. And protest they did, following me round blowing trumpets, clanging cymbals, shouting, singing, howling, chanting. It was quintessentially British. I remember George Bush was here for a visit when they were out all over the place, and he asked what it was about. I explained. 'Whatever did you do that for, man?' said George, as ever getting right to the nub.

Unfortunately, 'Whatever did I do that for?' was the question I began to ask myself after I started to educate myself about fox hunting i.e. did what I should have done before I embarked on this rash undertaking. The more I learned, the more uneasy I became. I started to realise this wasn't a small clique of weirdo inbreds delighting in cruelty, but a tradition, embedded by history and profound community and social liens, that was integral to a way of life. It was more broadly based and less elitist than I thought, and had all sorts of offshoots among groups of people who were a long way from being dukes and d.u.c.h.esses.

None of this means I wanted to take it up myself, or even that I especially liked it 'Vote Labour or the fox gets it' was quite a popular slogan in several elections but banning it like this was not me. Not me at all. Fox hunting mattered profoundly to a group of people, who were a minority but had a right, at least, to defend their way of life.

During the course of our summer stay with the Strozzis, we visited the beautiful island of Elba. We went to lunch with some of their friends and there happened to be a woman who was mistress of a hunt near Oxford, I think. Instead of berating me, she took me calmly and persuasively through what they did, the jobs that were dependent on it, the social contribution of keeping the hunt and the social consequence of banning it, and did it with an effect that completely convinced me.

From that moment on, I became determined to slip out of this. But how? We were obliged to allow Parliament a debate and the result was never in doubt: there would be a ban. In the end, there was a masterly British compromise it was banned in such a way that, provided certain steps are taken to avoid cruelty when the fox is killed, it isn't banned. So it's banned and not quite banned at the same time. Hmm. Anyway, it was the best I could do, but not an episode of policymaking I look back on with pride. And I should think not, I hear you say.

When the law later came into force in 2004, Hazel Blears was in the Home Office. She phoned me up and said, 'The police are asking: do you want this policed vigorously so we can get some prosecutions under our belt?' After I replied, she said, 'I thought you might say that.'

It reminds me that I won a bet with Prince Charles about this. Of course, he thought the ban was absurd, and raised the issue with me in a slightly pained way. I would explain the political difficulties. I'm not sure he ever quite grasped it not surprisingly, since as I have confessed, I didn't either, until too late. The wager was that after I left office, people would still be hunting. 'But how, if you're going to ban it?' he asked.

'I don't know, but I will find a way,' I replied.

Prince Charles truly knew the farming community and felt we didn't understand it, in which there was an element of truth. Our farmers had a specific and uniquely British set of challenges: they had been through the devastation of BSE, and at that time still couldn't really export beef except in very limited circ.u.mstances; farm prices had fallen; fuel costs had risen; floods had hit them hard. But the worst was about to come.

During the last months of 2000, we were holding regular meetings to prepare for the summer 2001 election. In November, we had an away day at Chequers and I very firmly said the danger was complacency; we had a real fight on our hands and we had to up our game. We were ahead again in the polls but I deliberately told Philip to downplay that and focus on the difficulties. We had an almost 20 per cent deficit on right/wrong direction, and though the Tories didn't seem to be breaking through, I set out what I thought they could do if they galvanised a patriotic, anti-Europe, anti-immigrant vote and combined that with a sense of cynicism and apathy about us.

I said we had to get to the big choices about the future. I emphasised the need for reform as well as investment, and put at the heart of our appeal an offer of increased personal prosperity, through both a strong economy and improved public services.