Gordon Brown: Prime Minister

Sitting in a corner of the untidy living room following the media coverage of Smith’s death in telephone conversations, Charlie Whelan’s temper rose. Commentators were privately predicting that Blair was the favoured candidate for the leadership. More alarming was the early edition of the agenda-setting London Evening Standard. The newspaper’s editor had heard about Smith’s death from a doctor at the London hospital. Charles Reiss, the Standard’s political editor, baldly stated that Blair was the heir apparent in a ‘dream ticket’ with John Prescott as his deputy. Brown, by contrast, was dismissed as the son of John Smith, the new representative of Old Labour. By mid-afternoon, Brown was working behind closed doors in his Millbank office. Outside, Caroline Daniel, a new researcher, sensed an unusually tense atmosphere. Sue Nye was warning everyone not to speak to anyone on Blair’s staff. ‘It could all get heated,’ she said. ‘We need to ensure that everyone can be trusted.’ This warning was odd, because two nights every week Anji Hunter, Blair’s personal assistant, slept at Nye’s home. During those visits they conveniently settled any outstanding differences between the politicians. Towards the end of the afternoon, after speaking with Nick Brown, Gordon Brown agreed that his closest confidants should gather at 6 p.m. in his office.

The six men who met that evening in Brown’s corner office – Alistair Darling, Martin O’Neill, Doug Henderson, Nick Brown, Tom Clarke and Murray Elder – were all from Scotland and the north-east of England. Their purpose was to discuss how to bring about Brown’s election as the new leader. The mood was businesslike. ‘There’s everything to play for,’ announced Nick Brown. ‘You’ve got an even chance to win.’ Gordon Brown nodded. He acknowledged that Blair was his obvious rival, and did not mention any personal understanding between the two – either an agreement that Blair would stand aside for Brown, or that they would not campaign against each other.

Doug Henderson disturbed their composure. He had spent the day ‘intelligence gathering’ around Westminster and consulting his constituents. ‘I’ve already spoken to my people in Newcastle,’ he said, ‘and you’re not going to win there.’ He then dropped a bombshell. ‘I just don’t think you can win. You’re behind in the press stakes. We’re half a lap behind. I didn’t need a glass against my wall to hear Mandelson at work today.’ ‘What do you mean?’ asked Brown. ‘His room is next to mine,’ explained Henderson. ‘He’s spent the whole day speaking to his favourites in Fleet Street promoting Blair.’

Brown’s face fell. He was unsure whether Blair had approved Mandelson’s activities, but Mandelson had for long been contemplating a coup against John Smith. Smith’s death had possibly triggered a prepared plan. Brown never contemplated the possibility that Henderson might have been mistaken. Later, Derek Draper, Mandelson’s assistant, would insist that Mandelson did not brief in Blair’s favour for the first twenty-four hours.

The short silence was broken by Nick Brown. ‘You’ve got to take him on,’ he said in a pleading tone. ‘You can win, and in any case you can’t trust Blair. If you do a deal, it will be ignored and he’ll welch on it.’ Gordon Brown’s childhood friend Murray Elder, a decent but uncombative man, cautioned him to ‘wait and see’. Impaled more than Brown by fear of failure, Elder believed that the hurt of defeat would be worse than to take a risk. Charlie Whelan did not commit himself, although he would later say that Brown could have won if he had been better prepared.

Brown became gradually more grim-faced and silent. Someone opened the midday edition of the Evening Standard. A glowing profile of Blair by Sarah Baxter added to the misery in the room. ‘I don’t like talking about this on the same day as John died,’ Brown unexpectedly announced. His friends nodded, although they might have been excused for thinking they had been doing nothing else since that morning. Brown looked up: ‘I’m not going to make a decision until after John is buried.’ In the folklore constructed over the next years about the events immediately following the death of John Smith, that first meeting in Brown’s office was, like so many other details, erased from the record.

Tony Blair had flown back to London during the afternoon. He was met at Heathrow by his wife Cherie. Cherie didn’t like Brown. She resented his brusqueness towards herself – the coolness and lack of respect he often showed to women. Even in the Blairs’ own home, the temperature dropped whenever he appeared. As they travelled towards London, the Blairs agreed on their agenda. Tony Blair wanted the leadership, and key relationships had already been forged. Since 1992 he had established a network of supporting MPs across the north-east, and he knew that he could count on the majority of London’s politicians, many of whom, like Chris Smith, were neighbours of his in Islington. Even some Scottish MPs, insulted over the years by Brown, had promised their support. Peter Mandelson, he believed, was also a firm supporter.

Months earlier, Mandelson had decided that Brown’s abrasive style, provincialism and lack of populist appeal was not certain to win a general election. Not only was Brown seen as ‘John Smith Mark 2’, but in recent years the number of Celts among the party leadership had hampered Labour’s appeal in England. There had been John Smith from Scotland, Neil Kinnock from Wales, and both Michael Foot and Jim Callaghan represented Welsh constituencies. Unlike Blair, Brown resisted giving interviews to Cosmopolitan magazine about his favourite cars, his record collection, his guitar and his haircuts, nor could he dress casually for a loving pose with a young family. Mandelson’s opinions were shared by Donald Dewar, the senior Scottish MP. Although they were friends, Dewar doubted Brown’s organisational skills. Dewar and George Robertson would agree that Blair was the best candidate but, to avoid ‘letting Gordon down’, they would say nothing. Over the following days Brown would be allowed to find his own way to withdraw.

That evening Brown and his confidants left Millbank unaware of those allegiances and attitudes. The task of rounding up Brown’s supporters was delegated to Nick Brown, who was ignorant of Gordon Brown’s vulnerability in England. A physical factor also limited his efforts. While Gordon Brown’s office was in Millbank, Blair had remained in Parliament Street. Nick Brown would not know who was meeting Blair, and did not realise that on that very evening Mandelson and Blair were talking in the Commons. Mandelson’s opinion was critical. His decision on whether to support Brown or Blair would determine which of the two modernisers possessed a significant advantage. Gordon Brown was also handicapped by his lack of an Anji Hunter, a ‘gold star schmoozer’ according to her targets, who successfully persuaded the party’s power brokers to meet and like Blair. Brown relied on Sue Nye, loyal but abrasive, who deterred rather than attracted.

At the end of the day Gordon Brown travelled to Islington, to the home of Blair’s brother Bill. The outstanding issue to discuss was an agreement not to divide the modernisers’ vote, which would benefit John Prescott. Derek Draper drove Tony Blair to his brother’s house. ‘You know,’ Blair told Draper during the journey, ‘I told Gordon ages ago that he could not be leader of the party without a wife and kids.’ Inside the house, Brown and Blair affirmed that they would not compete against each other, but nothing more. Blair revealed that he was under pressure to stand, an admission carefully contrived to disarm Brown. Even as they met, the mood was swinging against the Scotsman. On Newsnight, Alastair Campbell, the assistant editor of the Today newspaper, openly supported Blair as the new leader. The Evening Standard’s last edition highlighted Sarah Baxter’s article ‘Why I Say Tony Blair Should be the Next Leader’. Broadcasters were naming Blair as the favourite. Brown returned to Westminster in a deflated mood.

Early on Friday morning he arrived at the Labour headquarters at Millbank. On the coffee table at the entrance was a pile of newspapers clearly marked ‘Do Not Remove’. Grabbing the papers, he brushed past the receptionists without a smile and rushed to his office. The newspapers were discouraging. Others had followed the Evening Standard’s prediction of Blair’s success. A poll of Scottish MPs in the Scotsman showed that a majority opposed Brown. His friends would subsequently claim that the poll was fixed by Mandelson, but the tilt was certainly accurate. The comparisons unflatteringly mentioned Brown’s lacklustre performances in the Commons and Blair’s superior mental agility. English socialists, it was reported, had had enough of the Scots and the Welsh.

Those criticisms, Brown believed, would not determine the outcome of the leadership election. Under Labour’s constitution, the votes of the MPs, the trade unions and the constituencies were of equal value, and the outcome was still uncertain. The question was whether he was prepared to fight. He still hoped to gain the backing of Peter Mandelson, whose unrivalled ability, proven over the past seven years, would enhance his candidacy. He could also rely on Charlie Whelan, whose voice was heard in a neighbouring room. Using two swear words where one would have been more than sufficient, Whelan was phoning journalists, urging them to understand that Brown would win the leadership. Nearby, Nick Brown, inexplicably wearing sunglasses, nodded his agreement although he had not yet contacted any allies in the trade unions or constituencies. Inside his office, Gordon Brown sat depressed.

Over the weekend he returned as usual to Scotland. His first call was on Elizabeth Smith, the former leader’s widow. Helen Liddell, the party’s former secretary, was outside the house waiting to give a television interview as he arrived. Tony Blair, Liddell noted, had not yet crossed the border to pay his respects.

The weekend’s newspapers did not improve Brown’s self-confidence. Their opinion polls showed that Blair was the favourite in the party and the country. Brown, it was implied, might withdraw on the basis of a prior agreement with Blair not to stand against each other. Brown called the party’s pollster Philip Gould and asked who was the favourite to win. ‘I said Tony without hesitation,’ Gould recalled. ‘Gordon asked me why, and I replied that Tony not only met the mood of the nation, he exemplified it. He would create for Britain a sense of change, of a new beginning, which Gordon could not do.’ More irritating was Mandelson’s appearance on Channel 4 News describing his ideal candidate as the person ‘who would fully maximise support for the party in the country’.

Brown was stewing, and his mood worsened the following morning, Monday, 16 May, when a letter from Mandelson, setting out the position as he saw it, was delivered to Brown’s office on the other side of the corridor. Brown, said Mandelson, was attracting sympathy from the lobby for his position, not least because of his unrivalled intellectual position, but he had a problem in not appearing to be the front-runner. The conclusion was painful. If Brown ran it would be a gift to the party’s enemies, and he would be blamed by the media for creating the split. The remedy would be intensive briefings to sell himself, wrote Mandelson, but the regrettable consequence of that would be to weaken Blair’s position. Even then, success could not be guaranteed. Ultimately, the card the media were playing for Blair was his ‘southern appeal’.

Mandelson may have been stating the obvious in unpartisan words, but to Brown, coiled like a spring in his lust for power, the truth was intensely hurtful. He regarded the weekend’s media analysis, the suggestion of an agreement between himself and Blair, and Mandelson’s letter as calculated to undermine his chances. ‘We’ve been betrayed,’ he muttered to a friend. He also suspected that Mandelson was helping Blair, and encouraged Tribune to report the alliance. Blair was alarmed by that possibility and directed Anji Hunter and later Michael Meacher to telephone the editor Mark Seddon. ‘It’s simply not true,’ Hunter exclaimed. The newspaper did not publish the accurate story.

Four days after John Smith’s death, the message was ‘Brown in mourning’, but the reality was also of a politician fretting. Brown required a bandwagon if he was to win the prize. Mandelson’s judgement was unfortunate but not necessarily decisive if Brown actively campaigned for support, seeking out and converting dissenters. Secluded in his office, he relied on an inner circle of MPs – Nick Brown, Doug Henderson, Andrew Smith, Nigel Griffiths and Eric Clarke, the former leader of the Scottish miners – for advice. He never paused to contemplate the possibility that outsiders might dislike a Scottish clique as much as he disdained the London establishment. Nor did he recognise how the personal weaknesses of his political advisers reflected poorly on himself. ‘Tell me what you think,’ Brown said to Henderson, who had been tramping around Westminster. ‘I don’t think you can win,’ reported his ambassador, knowing that Brown’s two brothers were urging him to stand.

While Brown hesitated, Blair, encouraged by a personal message from David Ward that Brown had not been John Smith’s favourite son, was actively seeking support. Chris Smith, David Blunkett, Adam Ingram, the MP for East Kilbride, and Frank Dobson each expressed their support. Brown was shocked. Dobson, he had thought, would favour his redistributive socialism. Instead, Dobson complained that rather than encourage consensus government, Brown would cluster his favourites around himself. ‘He’s an iceman,’ was the hurtful quotation. Brown was perplexed that even his assumption of Neil Kinnock’s endorsement was wrong. The former leader wondered aloud about Brown’s suitability. He was a bowler, not a batsman, suggested Kinnock. Not surprisingly, Charles Clarke, Kinnock’s chief of staff, was telling everyone that he had telephoned Blair immediately after Smith’s death to urge him to run for the leadership. Presentation and personality rather than politics was the issue. The party was desperate for an election victory. Blair may have been too right-wing for many in the party, but he was likely to appeal to the English middle class.

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