“Blair does not think Brown can beat [David] Cameron . . . Tony wants to exit in his own time — he doesn’t want this f***** to see him out. That is absolutely not going to happen.”
As chasms opened up in the party, a senior backbench MP explicitly accused Brown of secretly orchestrating last week’s plot against Blair “from start to finish”. Over the summer, he said, the chancellor “wasn’t on paternity leave, he was on plot leave”.
Further dashing hopes of a truce, Charles Clarke, the former home secretary, spent a second day lacerating Brown’s character. On Friday, Clarke, who has observed the chancellor at close quarters for decades, had called his behaviour “absolutely stupid”.
Yesterday he went further. He accused Brown of “control freakery”, questioned his “courage” and said the chancellor had for years harboured the “delusion” that he could have beaten Blair to the Labour leadership. If that was not quite enough, the brooding, dour chancellor had “psychological” issues and is “totally uncollegiate”.
()Frank Field, a former minister who is being wooed by Brown, was also scathing. “I think the chancellor’s behaviour this week raises in a more serious form some of the questions that people, myself included, have about the chancellor,” he said.
“I think his apparent inability, what appears to be an arrogance that the prize is his without any further discussion with anybody, is pretty appalling.”
Cherie Blair is said by senior Labour sources to have told her husband to face down Brown. According to a friend, she told Blair on Tuesday night as the storm clouds gathered that she would be “gutted if Brown took over as prime minister” and urged him to stand firm.
Yesterday a friend of Brown’s struck back, bitchily extolling the chancellor’s wife Sarah as superior to Cherie. “Sarah is better brought up,” he said. “One thing she has got is perfect etiquette and manners.
“Of all the prime ministerial consorts Sarah will make the best hostess. Once in No 11 she came across as much more gracious than Cherie Blair. She goes out of her way to make you feel welcome in their home, whereas with Cherie you never feel at ease.”
Down but far from out, the prime minister yesterday took another swipe at Brown. Addressing a meeting of the ultra-Blairite Progress group, the prime minister set out a solidly new Labour vision of the future on security, migration and globalisation. His comments are likely to enrage the Brown camp, which has been developing its own vision for Britain.
Blair finished by saying: “Go out, face up to the people, we succeed. Face in, we lose . . . That’s the lesson of politics.”
Where will the vitriol and infighting end, and what will happen to Brown’s chances of becoming prime minister? One unnamed cabinet minister answered that question with extraordinary bluntness: “I will stop f****** Gordon.”
“IN the days when I was paid to spin for the Labour party I used to describe the bond between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown as being like a marriage,” said Lance Price, Labour’s former communications director.
“They might have blazing rows but they make up over breakfast. But if this was a marriage, it was a marriage made in hell. Perhaps a better analogy is of Siamese twins, forced to remain side by side and make the best of it — except that they share not one iota of DNA.”
That uneasy bond led to hopes of an orderly transition between the men. At the start of the year they had achieved a certain rapprochement in the face of the threat from Cameron, the new Tory leader.
A campaign called Project Gordon began to make the chancellor appear more human, more cuddly. He had his teeth straightened and his wardrobe polished. He even joked about Alastair Campbell, Blair’s former director of strategy, and Philip Gould, the pollster, being his image consultants.
“Does my tie look right?” he asked on a trip to Birmingham. “Where are Alastair and Philip? I need to know if it goes with this shirt.”
Gould and others were also working on a detailed plan for Blair’s triumphal farewell, which they shared with the Brown camp.
Behind the faux bonhomie and spin, however, divisions over policy and personalities were hardening across the party. Brown and his allies were looking ahead to the comprehensive spending review (CSR) due in the summer of 2007; they wanted shot of Blair before the CSR so that he could not lock Brown into any unwanted long-term plans. They also knew that, the longer Blair remained in office, the greater the chance of a Blairite contender emerging to challenge Brown.
MPs in Scotland and Wales were nervous, too. Looking towards the local elections of May 2007, they saw a potential bloodbath as voters punished Labour for its adventurism abroad. Blair’s endless troubles with Iraq were seen as dragging Labour down.
Blair, though, seemed oblivious to the scale of discontent building within the left of the party as he set off on his summer holiday to the Caribbean. Staying on Barbados at Sir Cliff Richard’s luxurious villa, he plunged into a vigorous exercise regime.
“He gave particular attention to improving his tennis,” said another holidaymaker on the island. “On many days he started as early as 7am and would sometimes play twice a day, doubles and singles.” He would then work out in the gym.
()He returned recharged, but not reconnected to the party. Nor did his key aides warn him of the febrile mood. This may be why Blair misjudged an interview he granted to The Times nine days ago in which he airily dismissed calls to name a departure date and accused his detractors of having a secret — left-wing — agenda. As if to ram his superiority home, albeit ironically, Blair allowed himself to be photographed holding a mug that listed the characteristics of the name Anthony. Among them were “You’re a man who’s in charge, others follow your lead . . .”
It infuriated MPs who had been hoping he would set a departure date. And they had already been planning an attack: a letter demanding Blair’s resignation.
TEN days ago, a group of friends met in the Balti King, one of the many curry houses in Wolverhampton. Political sources described them yesterday as a group of MPs known as the “West Midlands mafia”. Tom Watson, who was among them, denied this, however. Sion Simon, who is MP for Birmingham Erdington, was there, Watson agrees, but the rest were just “non-political pals”.
If the political sources are to be believed, the subject of discussion was Blair. The prime minister had said he would not fight a fourth general election, so what was the point in hanging around? He must go. Cameron and the Tories were ahead in the polls. Crucial elections were looming. It was important to have a change of leadership if Labour was to have any chance of winning the next general election.
Their idea was simple: to send a letter from as many MPs from the 2001 intake as possible urging Blair to quit.
There had been rumours for several months that rebel left-wing MPs were planning a letter or possibly sending a delegation to Downing Street to press for the prime minister to set out a timetable for his departure. But such a call would be more powerful coming from moderate MPs or, as they would style themselves in their missive, “utter Labour loyalists and implacable modernisers”. Simon had hitherto been seen as a Blairite loyalist.
When Blair’s interview appeared in The Times the next morning, it confirmed Simon’s resolve. The day after the curry, he turned down requests by the Labour whips’ office to give a public declaration of support for Blair. According to insiders, he told them that the prime minister was finished because of his “egotism and vanity” and would be out of office within a week.
Did he think Brown had the guts to stick the knife into Blair this time, he was asked. “Yes, I think he does this time,” Simon is said to have replied.
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Another supporter of the Blair-must-go group was Chris Bryant, a former Anglican vicar who once appeared on a gay dating website dressed in his underpants. He claims the Blair interview was simply the last straw — and that the party would suffer in the polls because of uncertainty over the leadership.
So, Bryant says, he and Simon began marshalling support from junior parliamentary aides. The pair insist they were acting independently, not at the behest of the Brown camp. Downing Street, which describes them as “double agents” or “Trojan horses”, suspects otherwise.
Just three weeks ago, however, Bryant and Simon had rallied to the chancellor when the Blairite Stephen Byers had called for the abolition of inheritance tax. Although not previously known for any interest in tax policy, they had swiftly condemned the proposal.
()Downing Street insiders believe Bryant and Simon had gone over to the Brown camp after being passed over for promotion. A well-placed source said: “It is so obvious why they were used. They were bitter about not getting jobs, and after years of getting nowhere under Blair saw that their only hope of advancing was under Brown.”
In the end Bryant and Simon secured the backing of only 15 MPs. Among them was Watson, the most significant catch because he is a junior minister at the Ministry of Defence.
A friend of Watson denied any conspiracy: “I can say absolutely, hand on heart, that Tom did not consult the chancellor about this. This was just Tom doing his own thing.”
Was Watson also “just doing his own thing” when — as the political skulduggery developed around him — he arrived at the chancellor’s Scottish home last Monday on what he says was a social visit?
ON the edge of St Andrews, the historic home of golf, sits the Fairmont hotel, a luxurious retreat for celebrities, sports stars and statesmen. The building is dominated by a large atrium and leads on to a spa, conference centre and statues of golfing icons of the past.
In the £190-a-night rooms, complete with digital TV systems, monogrammed dressing gowns and mini bars, each guest finds a golf tee on their bed as a token of good luck for their quest for glory on the green.
Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary-general, made the hotel his base during the G8 summit at Gleneagles. Ian Wright, the former Arsenal striker, and Jack McConnell, Scotland’s first minister, are regular visitors.
Last Sunday one of the more unusual guests was Watson, a former political officer with the engineering union — now part of Amicus, which has taken a consistently anti-Blairite line in this political war. He was there with his family; but quite what an avowed campaigner for the workers was doing in such a hotel is not clear. Unlike his namesake, the American golfer Tom Watson, the MP does not list the sport among his pastimes.
On Monday, he made the one-hour journey to Brown’s home in North Queensferry, Fife. Watson said yesterday: “I dropped off a present for the
new baby. I saw Gordon, but it was a purely social visit and just stayed for a cup of coffee. I did not discuss any letter and it would have been inappropriate to do so.”
Sources point out, however, that Watson is a long-standing Brownite and that at least six of the other signatories to the letter were indebted to Watson for their position as MPs. As an official, he had helped them as members of the union to find safe seats. Suddenly there seemed to be an awful lot of people “doing their own thing” at the same time.
Others suspect that the plot ran even deeper. One influential committee member believes that Brown and his allies had been conspiring for months. “Just track him [Brown] from the moment he and his clan organised the so-called scandals about taking loans for peerages,” he said.
During that furore Jack Dromey, a union bigwig and Labour treasurer, had popped up unexpectedly, making admissions damaging to Blair.
“Then there’s the fact that one of Brown’s people was out to embarrass the PM over Lebanon, calling for the recall of parliament,” continued the MP. “They’ve been sitting waiting for opportunities to destabilise Blair. It’s been organised top to bottom by the Brownites.”
Whatever the truth, the bombs began to detonate next day. Tuesday morning’s Daily Mirror carried details of a leaked memo about plans for Blair’s departure from office. It made cringe-worthy reading.
“As TB [Tony Blair] enters his final phase, he needs to be focusing way beyond the finishing line, not looking at it,” said the memo. “He needs to go with the crowds wanting more. He should be the star who won’t even play that last encore.”
The memo recommended that Blair make television appearances on Blue Peter and Songs of Praise; visit the 20 most striking buildings opened or redeveloped since 1997; and “embrace” open spaces, the arts and business.
()It suggested that Blair be seen in more “real life situations” and that he “needs to be seen to be travelling on different forms of transport, he needs to be seen with people who will raise eyebrows”.
This was laughable. Who would leak such a memo? The document itself contained a clue. One paragraph noted how the more successful Blair’s exit strategy was, the “more it will agitate and possibly destabilise” Brown. Such a statement was bound to antagonise allies of the chancellor.
Downing Street had no time to trace the leak before a fax machine whirred and the letter signed by Watson, Simon, Bryant and the other MPs arrived. It was blunt: “Sadly it is clear to us — as it is to almost the entire party and the entire country — that without an urgent change in the leadership of the party it becomes less likely that we will win the next] election.
“This is not a plot against you by people who want to reverse or slow down the progress you have led . . . But we believe that it is impossible for the party and the government to renew itself without renewing its leadership as a matter of urgency.
“That is the brutal truth. It gives us no pleasure to say it. But it has to be said. And understood. We therefore ask you to stand aside.”
Frantic calls began to go out from Downing Street to MPs to gauge the scale of the rebellion. Blair was furious but isolated. Some of his closest allies, including Lord Falconer, were abroad. Nevertheless, he had to confront Brown. The clash came at breakfast-time next morning.
At 7.45am on Wednesday, Blair headed through the corridor that connects No 10 and No 11 and met the chancellor in his study.
What happened next is a matter of some dispute. Blairite sources say it turned into “one of the bitterest and most extraordinary” clashes between the pair, beginning with an excruciating stand-off and culminating in accusations of “blackmail”.
An insider said: “It was like one of those rows between boyfriend and girlfriend. Gordon was in a sulk, sat down and basically refused to say anything or explain what was up.
“Tony kept asking him what was going on, what was up with him. And Gordon just kept refusing to answer. He was just shrugging his shoulders and saying ‘nothing, nothing’ over and over again, like a girl. He was like a sulky teenager. It was impossible.”
Blair wanted an explanation for the chancellor’s deafening silence amid the outcry. Not only had Brown failed to come to his aid as backbenchers queued up to attack him; worse, the prime minister suspected Brown was secretly orchestrating the attack.
The chancellor wanted more details about Blair’s plans. As The Sunday Times revealed in May, the prime minister has been telling Brown privately since the start of this year that he would quit by autumn 2007. “Tony just can’t understand why Gordon couldn’t just accept this,” said a senior minister.
Brown demanded more: a quicker exit and a “bankable” public pledge to that effect. One insider said that Brown asked Blair to “guarantee that I have a clear run at the leadership”.
Blair replied: “I can’t do that, I can’t stop people standing.”
Brown also wanted Blair to rein in Byers and Alan Milburn, the Blairite former ministers who have been criticising the chancellor’s policies. “I can’t stop them speaking,” replied Blair.
Brown’s demands, said one Blair aide, were “a transparent blackmail attempt”. One excitable Blair adviser went so far as to claim yesterday that Brown threatened more rebellions, saying: “This is only the first wave of my troops.”
()The impasse went on for two hours and was broken only when Blair had to go to a meeting. According to Blairites, the chancellor was making other impossible demands as well: he wanted to have a period of “joint premiership” as Blair prepared to stand down and he wanted Blair’s endorsement as the only plausible successor.
The chancellor’s allies claim no such demands were made by Brown and that the meeting was cordial. A more impartial insider, however, confirmed that the exchanges were heated.
The meeting ended without resolution and further bombs began to detonate. In what looked like a carefully stage-managed move, Watson resigned shortly after 11am, just 12 minutes into the daily briefing to journalists by Downing Street. The prime minister’s official spokesman was taken by surprise. Watson had outfoxed the No 10 spin machine.
Blair riposted with uncharacteristic venom, accusing Watson of a “totally unnecessary attempt to unseat the party leader” and saying it was not “sensible, mature or intelligent”. He privately suspected that Watson was acting in cahoots with Brown, or at least his aides.
Although Downing Street aides did not know what other resignations or attacks might be in store, they took some comfort from rank and file reaction: backbench MPs were phoning Downing Street and by a margin of two to one they supported the prime minister.
A succession of cabinet ministers were called in: Alan Johnson, Hilary Benn, Jack Straw and Patricia Hewitt. They all advised Blair not to accede to Brown’s demands. “Whatever the merits of the chancellor’s arguments, the way he had behaved meant Tony shouldn’t cave in,” said one minister.
Blair and Brown met again at 2pm. Blair was even angrier but he also knew he was in trouble. A further seven resignations were unfolding — of minor players — but there was no doubt that a coup attempt was under way. It appears that Brown held back from plunging in the knife, as he has done before, perhaps realising that the coup would backfire if demanded Blair’s head on a plate now. They agreed that they would both make statements the following day. Blair would publicly acknowledge, earlier than he had planned, that this month’s Labour conference would be his last as prime minister.
Brown departed by car, his grin captured by photographers. He said in a newspaper interview last night that he had been innocently chuckling with one of his staff about his newborn son Fraser: “It comes to something when people criticise me for smiling.
One rebel MP said of Blair: “There’s no need to finish him off completely. He can’t control events any more. The necessary damage is done.”
In the background, the venom spilled out. “This is a military coup,” said a Blairite loyalist. And a Blairite minister said: “If the chancellor’s fingerprints are not found on the knife that is only because he is wearing gloves.” The next day, however, prime minister and chancellor played out their Faustian pact. Brown was in Scotland, playing the magnanimous prime minister in waiting as he visited a sports centre. He admitted that he, like others, had had “questions” about Blair’s future, but that “it is for him [Blair] to make the decision”.
“I will support him in the decision he makes, [but] this cannot be about private arrangements,” claimed Brown grandly.
Blair went to visit a school in north London, where he was greeted by pupils and demonstrators chanting, “Tony, Tony, Tony, out, out, out”.
Unshaken, he played his hand with brilliant subtlety. He began: “The first thing I would like to do is to apologise, actually, on behalf of the Labour party for the last week which, with everything that is going on back here and in the world, has not been our finest hour, to be frank.”
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()By comparison with this show of humility, Brown’s smugness seemed triumphalist.
However, Blair also made it clear that it was not a friendly deal, not an unconditional surrender. “I am not going to set a precise date now,” he said. “I will do that at a future date and I’ll do it in the interests of the country and depending on the circumstances at the time.”
Was that code for saying he no longer believed it was in the interests of the country for Brown to take over as prime minister? In fact, Blair may have long held such thoughts.
Yesterday Price, the former Labour media adviser, revealed that the famous jibe that Brown was “psychologically flawed” may not have come from Campbell, as long thought.
“One of Brown’s closest advisers told me they were convinced they knew who had actually uttered those words — the prime minister himself,” said Price. “If Gordon Brown believes that the man he once called his friend said that, knowing the words would be used in print, then it explains a great deal of the animosity that followed.”
Even a close ally of Brown admitted yesterday that strained relations between the two men had been a huge obstacle for the government. “If you look back at what has happened with government, it’s a miracle that anything has happened at all,” he said. “Every paragraph, every sentence, every comma has been fought over between the Treasury and No 10.”
EVENTS have now taken on a momentum of their own. This week Blair faces the Trades Union Congress, where some union bosses are calling for him to quit immediately. On September 18, Welsh Labour MPs will meet to discuss the leadership question. Many fear Labour will lose control of the Welsh assembly in elections next year unless there is swift change of leadership.
A senior Labour Welsh MP said: “The idea that we can fight elections facing a leadership campaign is preposterous. We should have a run from March onwards with a new leader.”
Another MP said: “If the Welsh do it [try to oust Blair], they will do it as a putsch because they don’t want to lose their assembly elections.”
Meanwhile, furious Blairites are wondering whether the prime minister can hang on long enough to allow a figure such as Clarke, or John Reid, the home secretary, or Alan Johnson, the secretary of state for education and skills, to challenge Brown.
“A race is what Gordon dreads most because he might lose,” said a Blair ally. “That’s why he won’t wait, why he insists on having it now because he’s terrified that Alan Johnson or John Reid might catch up with a bit more time.”
Yesterday a senior source close to the prime minister said: “Blair’s going to stay another 10 to 12 months. Tony wants the time to rebuild that trust with the public. He wants to rebuild his reputation before he goes.
()“Iraq is a major issue, Afghanistan is a major issue, but there have been formidable achievements domestically which he wants to be recognised.
“Brown is getting so manic it is starting to slip away from him. We are expecting it all to start up again in the run-up to conference and there will be a major, major push . . . If Blair gets through conference then the plan stays.
“Gordon will try and ambush him at conference but he won’t succeed. The strategy is now in place to deal with that — focusing on talking about policy and achievements and loyalty.
All the while Cameron is making progress. The Tories are ahead in the polls by up to nine points and Cameron is more popular than Blair and Brown.
In a YouGov poll last week, only 30% of people said that Brown would make a good prime minister and only 16% said he was “likable”.
The chancellor is left brooding on whether he should bide his time, trying to appear above the fray, or foment a total coup. Nobody expects political peace.
After more than 20 years, the most remarkable marriage in politics may finally be unravelling irrevocably.
It was John Burton, Blair’s constituency agent, who perhaps best summed up a tumultuous week. “In the Labour party we love to commit suicide,” he said. “So you get all these failed cabinet ministers and leftwingers saying Tony should go. What they should realise is that they only got there under Tony Blair.”