Blair Years: “Brown (the adolescent son) Just Glared”

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THE BLAIR YEARS - Part 1 of 3

19th November, 2007

BBC1 10:30pm, Part 1, by David Aaronovitch

[Note: Aaronovitch himself did not provide the commentary on the programme. References to him below refer therefore to his programme rather than to the narration.]

The series has been well trailed so there wasn’t much we hadn’t heard about. But, the first episode was interesting nonetheless.

It examined, for the most part, how the Blair/Brown relationship impacted on policy areas, and on the individuals themselves, and how at times it restrained or limited the then Prime Minister’s reforming instincts.

Tony Blair’s demeanour in the programme was noteworthy. He was much less concerned than he often seems to be about what others thought of him. More assertive than usual, I felt that we saw a side frequently referred to by colleagues in their dealings with him in cabinet or while decision-making. He was sure of himself; confident in his position; in full grasp of his facts. This man seemed somewhat harried by an exhausting year, but still unbowed, and quite “unbound” (well, more or less!)

Admitting that their relationship did not always run smoothly, Tony Blair did not lay heavily into the present prime minister; that is not his style. He specifically said that there were areas on which he would not expand because he understood Brown’s position as prime minister. The effect of this reluctance is that we are left knowing there is more to tell, some time in the future.

People were invited to take from the programme what they will. And they certainly will.

If you’re a Blairite/New Labourite you’ll have your mistrust or dislike of Brown and his team and his methods confirmed. Brown’s reported ruthlessness & moodiness will compare badly to Blair.

If you’re a Brownite, you’ll rage against the fact that Blair was allowed to ‘get away with it’ for so long. But you’ll be pleased that Brown’s steady ‘left’ hand is now on the tiller.

BROWN - IN CHARGE OF THE FINANCES, AND OTHER THINGS!

Blair’s claim that the Independence of the Bank of England was HIS policy has raised some eyebrows. I’m not sure why. It is not unlikely that Blair, as well as Brown, would have wanted this. In fact it may have been the case that to Blair, as the one with the stronger free market instincts of the two, it was a no-brainer. That way, he could keep such decisions as interest rate rises away from government interference and the possible fall-out if it all went wrong.

In other words keep THAT aspect of the economy, if nothing else, away from the chancellor!

As for policy stances, we got the distinct impression that Brown was never fully convinced about Blair’s fundamental changes to public services. His instincts were quite different, more Old Labour, more centralist control, more gradual. Even if they were the joint architects of ‘New Labour’, Blair was ‘the cavalier’, according to Charles Clarke, riding out to the hands-on rescue - the Action Man . Brown was the roundhead, where long term planning ruled the day.

Alan Milburn, Health Secretary 1999 - 2003 described the NHS in 1999, starved of Treasury cash, as “hell on wheels”. Blair said, “people were dying waiting for a first appointment”. Somehow, it was implied, Brown took some persuading to loosen the cash required EVEN for the public services he so cherished. Keeping the control and the credit away from Blair must have put him in a quandary indeed. His was the prudent hand on the exchequer’s tiller - and anyway, he wanted a few things left to do by himself when he came into that hot seat. But they were ‘New Labour’, or Blair was, and needed to prove it.

BROWN TO BLAIR: “YOU STOLE MY EFFING BUDGET”

The biggest change in spending on Health Services since the 2nd world war.

Was Brown’s reluctance the reason Blair broke their usual two-headed decision-making arrangement, as on the David Frost interview of 2000?

With no agreement sought from Brown, Blair announced on television that he was making real time rises in the NHS over a five-year period of 5%, bringing the country’s Health spending in line with other comparable EU countries. He had not spoken to Brown on this and had not cleared the figures with the Treasury. We are left to imagine the colour of the air around Brown that Sunday.

Alan Milburn (on Blair’s announcement to Frost): “I think it was courageous”.

Blair denied, when asked by the interviewer, that he had ‘bounced’ Brown. Brown was said to have accused Blair of stealing his “effing budget”. Blair also denied that Brown used this phrase. He did not deny the sentiment; the chancellor made clear to the prime minister that he was not exactly delighted, Blair concurred.

It certainly struck me that Blair has an easier job now. All he has to do today is to bring the Israelis and Palestinians together!

So what other low points appeared in this relationship, which when it was working at its optimum, was unbeatable?

OCTOBER 2000 - SHOWDOWN

In October of 2000 there was a “showdown” between Blair and Brown at a meeting on Foundation Hospitals, also attended by John Prescott and Alan Milburn. From that year, it seems, the Brothers B’s “friendship was over.” On Foundation Hospitals Blair, clearly being opposed by Brown, had to settle for a compromise. He agreed to drop the curb he had wished to impose on Treasury control of Foundation Hospitals. Brown was fiercely protective of his own financial control on all aspects of the economy. The compromise was reached to accommodate Brown, and Blair said in the programme that he was pleased to “get the policy through.”

PRESSURE ON BLAIR TO STAND DOWN FOR BROWN

From then on, Brown constantly pressured Blair to name his date of departure, which Brown wanted to be some time before the end of the second term. It seems he thought he had Blair’s agreement on this, though this is disputed. Alastair Campbell voiced the thought of many in Blair’s circle that Brown might be removed from his Treasury post. Blair would have none of it. The phrase ‘better inside the tent than outside p**s**g in’, comes to mind, and was hinted at by Campbell in the programme. And, in any case, Blair is known to have appreciated Brown’s grasp of economic matters. He voiced that appreciation in the programme.

Geoffrey Robinson (Brown ally): “Tony didn’t mind confrontation (with the Party). Gordon did.”

JANUARY, 2004 - BLAIR: “IF I LOSE THE VOTE I WILL RESIGN“

Over the issue of university top-up fees, which was a Tory policy that Blair had originally dismissed only to come back into his mind and favour as he looked at Higher Education, Blair’s future was on the line. Way out ahead of his party of the Left, had he lost the vote in Parliament he confirmed that he would have resigned. Brown, realising such a loss would also rebound on him as the chancellor (and thus the one setting aside the required funding), instructed many of his ‘antis’ to support the vote and Blair at the last minute. The government won by 5 votes only. A close thing for Blair, and possibly Brown too.

The debt between Blair & Brown was becoming more complex.

A MUTED MUTINY

From spring 2003, the backbenchers and grassroots had revolted more openly on his Health and Education policies.

In the run-up to the vote on top-up fees for elite universities, and one on Health, two Labour dissenters - Ian Gibson on Schools, and David Hinchliffe-Heath on Health - admitted being encouraged by Ed Balls and others in Brown’s cabal to continue to rail against Blair’s reforms. They were provided with the economic arguments so to do. A sort of muffled mutiny was well underway. Blair made little of this in the interview. But in this febrile atmosphere of internecine warfare, the claim by the two backbenchers combined with the suggestion of a slow, relentless mutiny in Downing Street speaks volumes.

Their contrasting speeches at two party conferences, 2003 and 2004, must have resulted in many a whispered conversation at the lunch time bars and sideshows.

Blair: (party conference, 2003) - his vision of leadership is not the “false choice, principles or no principles, [but] the true choice, forward or back. I can only go one way, I’ve not got a reverse gear”. The incumbent of No 10 used the word “socialism” once and pointedly used “New Labour” five times - though less than Mr Brown’s totemic use of the unadorned “Labour” 60 times on Monday. (See Blair’s 2003 speech summary.)

[Pic: Applause for Blair's speech, 2003 - spot the odd man out]

Brown: (party conference 2004): “This Labour party, best when we’re boldest, best when we’re united, best when we’re Labour”.

Blair said, “Gordon said he supported the reforms, and in the end we got them through. It was a combination of a stronger investment together with reform … we were infinitely stronger as a government because of his presence there and because of his achievements.”

2004 - BLAIR BEGINS TO CRACK

In the spring of 2004, Aaronovitch said, “Blair began to crack”. A combination of internal and external pressures and other circumstances combined to bring him very low and to the point of resignation. Mandelson describes it as a “wobbly period”. Campbell said “he lost his confidence”. Asked if he had said then that his staff should get ready because he was about to go, Blair told the interviewer that he was “not going to go over that”.

Peter Mandelson: “I think he was probably going through … well .. let’s put it this way … a wobbly period inside his head.”

“After private talks between the two men”, the programme makers said, “Brown believed that Blair had promised him he would leave Downing Street.”

Aaronovitch: - “Gordon Brown is quoted as saying to Blair, ‘When are you going to eff off and give me a date?’”

In the end Blair changed his mind about resigning and decided to continue. One can only imagine Brown’s state of mind over this volte-face.

Blair’s fear of his reforms not being carried through seems to have been instrumental in this decision.

BREAKING UP THE TREASURY - REMOVING BROWN?

In early 2005 a plan was hatched to move Brown and/or to break up the monolith that was the Treasury, so reducing Brown’s grip on policy matters. Even after two full terms, the PM was finding it harder still to push his policies through. Something had to be done about Brown. Blair denied in the programme that he had intended to move or sack Brown, but admitted that reducing the power of the Treasury was an option. He said it was never an “ad hominem attack”.

After the third, historic election win for Labour, Blair felt much more free to loosen his policy inhibitions, such as on independence to state schools, despite his party’s instincts. He intended to fight no more elections, and had nothing to lose except an historic opportunity to move forward with his education agenda. Although, according to ‘Blair Unbound’, (page 111), Blairism was born in 2002 with his Education & Health reforms.

COUP

In the late summer of 2006, just over a year ago, some of the 2005 intake decide to go for the leader’s jugular. Hilary Armstrong, Labour Chief Whip (2001 - 2006), made clear her disdain for such as Tom Watson, who would have been nowhere without Blair. Watson visited Gordon Brown two days before the letter signed by 17 similarly unknown MPs landed on Blair’s desk, telling him it was time to go.

The rest is (recent) history.

Blair said in the programme that he worked harder in the last nine months of his premiership setting his policies in stone, than at any time before. I wonder why, exactly.

Blair seems to have cared little for his party’s Old Labour instincts, right or wrong. Only time will tell who was right on this. It explains the distance that grew between him and his party and possibly why so few of then wept when this great reforming prime minister, election winner and politically astute politician finally left the stage.

Quotes:

Tony Blair: “The relationship … no point in being silly about it … there were tensions from time to time.

“It’s not that I couldn’t have gone on a for a little longer. I probably could have. But ten years is a long time.”

“It’s not an ignoble ambition. Why shouldn’t he want to be prime minister.”

“My single principle motivating anxiety for the country is for us to understand the scale, the intensity and the speed of change.”

On the Bank of England independence: “I didn’t want any argy-bargy about it.” Gordon and I were fine about it. We just had to get it done.”

On just surviving the vote on top-up fees, when if lost he would have resigned: “You owe people your conviction … you may not be right … but you’ve got to be prepared to walk away. The deal is it’s an honour to do the job.”

On Welfare Reform, just months into power in 1997, Blair & Brown clashed:

Frank Field (Minister for Welfare Reform), asked by Blair to “think the unthinkable on Health”, did. His suggestions were thwarted at every turn, by Brown.

Field: “The whole system for welfare reform hit the buffers very early on, because it was thought that the ideas that I was promoting were very different from the ideas the chancellor was promoting, and indeed they were.”

“Tony was enormously gentle with the chancellor but there was no give and take at all and one just wondered, how long are you going to put up with this and at what point are you going to sack him.”

“And the Chancellor just glared from the other side of the table and just sort of growled … and the Prime Minister behaved as though he was looking after a teenage son who was going through a bad patch”.

Matthew Taylor, No 10 Adviser, 2003 - 2005: “The Treasury … treated you with disdain … as unspeakably right wing and stupid.”

John Birt: “They had different agendas … priorities. They clashed.”

Charles Clarke: “There were two centres of power … when they worked together it was a very powerful force for change.”

David Blunkett: “Constructive conflict … the destructive element often weakened both of them and often weakened government”

Alan Milburn: “On the question of foundation hospitals … there were concerns. “

FROM NEXT WEEK’S PROGRAMME

“…. war - it was the right thing to do”

by Philip Webster

Tony Blair has admitted for the first time that he ignored the pleas of his aides and ministers to deter President Bush from waging war on Iraq because he believed that America was doing the right thing. And he has acknowledged that he turned down a last-ditch offer from Mr Bush to pull Britain out of the conflict.

He has also revealed that he wishes he had published the full reports from the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) instead of the infamous September dossier about Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction that so damaged him, and was almost certainly one of the factors that contributed to him leaving office sooner than he wanted.

In frank remarks in a BBC documentary, Mr Blair confirmed openly the belief of many of his closest supporters that he never used his position as America’s strongest ally to try to force Mr Bush down the diplomatic rather than the military route.

It was never a “bargaining chip” for him and he was never looking for a way out, he told David Aaronovitch, of The Times, in interviews for The Blair Years. “It was what I believed in, and I still do believe it,” he said.

The documentary contains clear evidence that many of those around Mr Blair, including Sir David Manning, his foreign policy adviser, Jeremy Greenstock, Britain’s ambassador at the UN, Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary at the time, and even Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, had huge reservations about the rush to war.Mr Blair said: “In my view, if it wasn’t clear that the whole nature of the way Saddam was dealing with this issue had changed, I was in favour of military action.”

The programme reveals that the key meeting at which Mr Bush learnt that he had Mr Blair on side took place at Camp David in September 2002 – six months before hostilities began. In return for promising Mr Blair that he would try to help get a second resolution at the UN, he also won Mr Blair’s pledge that if he got “stuck” in the UN, war would be the only way out. Mr Blair later suggested that Mr Bush tried for a second resolution as a “favour” to him.

The programme also reveals that just before the key Commons vote on war Mr Bush telephoned Mr Blair and offered him a way out. Mr Blair explained why he had declined the offer: “He was always very cognisant of the difficulty I had. He was determined we should not end up with the regime change being in Britain and he was saying to me, ‘Look I understand this is very difficult and America can do this militarily on its own and if you want to stick out of it, stick out of it’, and I was equally emphatic we should not do that.”

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There is a multitude of thought and opinion on Blair and his motives for joining Bush in Iraq. This Times article by Tim Hames makes many interesting points, for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear. For the rest of you - you can always read the comments below the article - the blind leading the deaf.

On second thoughts, I’m posting the entire article below, as such wise words as this NEED to be read by the as yet un-brainwashed; the rest are past reason.

All about Iraq? Don’t you believe it

There is more to the Blair years than a simple slogan

By Tim Hames
The Times, June 18, 2007

It is “all about Iraq”, isn’t it? The Blair legacy thing that is about to start in ten days’ time. This is what many commentators seem to be chiming. Who cares what lies on the positive side of the ledger? It is “all about Iraq”, ultimately. In that sense, Tony Blair is not unlike Anthony Eden, for whom it is “all about Suez”, or poor old Neville Chamberlain, whose premiership was “all about appeasement”, or, further back, Lord North, whose time in office was “all about losing the American colonies”. End of assessment.

So certain are those in this camp that they are prepared to set aside minor details such as facts. They portray Iraq as if it was a bellicose British prime minister who made the decision to invade and somehow dragged a slightly sceptical American President along with him, which is not quite how it happened. They dismiss the self-evident truth that any politician in Downing Street in 2003 would have done what Mr Blair opted to do.

Why? Because for six decades the essence of our foreign policy has been to play Robin to the American Batman. This has been pursued by a succession of Labour and Conservative governments. It is a wholly rational stance because it maximises our international influence. Comparisons with the manner in which Harold Wilson avoided military commitment to the Vietnam War are otiose. Vietnam was a process, not an event. There was no starting gun at which the man in the White House could eyeball allies and implore “Are you with me?” This was the position that Mr Blair was in four years ago.

Not to have supported the United States in such a situation would have been seismic. It would have entailed a complete reversal of British foreign policy and a dash to become more deeply enmeshed in the EU. This would have necessitated, at a minimum, euro membership that British voters would rightly not have tolerated. It would also have meant trading down from the role of Robin to something akin to Shaggy in Scooby Doo — in theory part of a gang in which the entire group is equal but where, invariably, it is either Fred (France) or Velma (Germany) who exercises the authority. The killer flaw in the “all about Iraq” argument is that it presumes that there was a serious choice.

In addition, the idea that Mr Blair is more to blame for what has occurred in Iraq since 2003 than either the Pentagon or, more relevantly, the Iraqis themselves, who have treated their freedom as the chance to engage in fratricide, is ridiculous.

In fairness, some of those who claim it is “all about Iraq” will concede this privately. Their critique of Mr Blair is more sophisticated and rests on three suppositions. These are that he was unduly enthusiastic about a venture that he was obliged to undertake; that “he lied” about weapons of mass destruction; and that he failed to secure the revival of the wider Middle East peace process after the Baathist regime in Baghdad had been overthrown.

These might be a smarter set of indictments but they nevertheless do not stand up to much scrutiny. Let us take the accusation of excessive — even messianic — enthusiasm. It implies that Mr Blair should have sent the minimum number of troops possible into battle to keep the Americans sweet, or toned down the volume in his own endorsement of the cause. This is crazy. Is it being suggested that the Prime Minister should have cried the equivalent of “God for Harry! England and St George! Sort of”? Would that have been leadership?

Furthermore, why shouldn’t he think that removing odious dictators is worthwhile? It does not appear that much of a crime to me. Moral intervention has virtues. One notes that a number of those who attack Mr Blair for being involved in Afghanistan or Iraq are also urging that Britain becomes more entwined in Darfur, or Somalia, or Zimbabwe. Their logic results in what I will now name, in honour of the Editor of The Independent, the Kelner doctrine of foreign policy. This holds that while it might be fine to interfere in places that are of little or no strategic interest to the United Kingdom, it would be dreadful to do so in the Middle East, where our strategic interests are enormous. This is not a thesis that is destined to survive long in the harsh conditions of the real world.

Then there is “he lied” to the electorate about weapons of mass destruction. Oh, come off it. Every intelligence agency on the planet, including those serving governments that opposed the war, thought Saddam Hussein had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. The Iraq Study Group’s reports observed that, while the senior Iraqis whom they interviewed denied handling biological and chemical weapons themselves, many identified others in high command whom they assumed must have done so. What the tyrant’s motives were for wanting to create the impression that he had these materials cannot be divined. But if the likes of the CIA and MI6 were groping in the dark on WMD it was because Saddam had turned off the lights.

Finally, there is the aftermath and the failure to press the Middle East peace process forward. After all we have witnessed in the past 12 months or so, is it possible to place any blame at the Prime Minister’s door? Does the evidence not hint that it is Hamas and Hezbollah, Syria and Iran that have conspired to wreck the chance of a viable settlement? Those factions and countries were plotting long before the intervention in Iraq had been envisaged and would have done exactly the same thing if the US had blinked at the last moment, or if circumstances in postwar Iraq today were strikingly stable.

It is not, therefore, “all about Iraq” — although for some people it plainly always be. Future historians, I hope and suspect, will be far more rounded about the Blair record.

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Tags: Aaronovitch, Armstrong, Balls, Blair Years, brown, coup, Field, Milburn, PM, Tony Blair