Gordon Brown: Prime Minister. Tom Bower

he was being attacked. ‘Don’t the bastards understand?’ he shouted in the privacy of his room. Then he surrendered. The Conservatives’ tax reductions during the 1980s, he said, had been indefensible, and he supported higher taxes. The Mirror’s headline the following morning – ‘Brown Demands Higher Tax Rates for Wealthy’ – signalled his retreat, but during that day, 27 September 1993, he began to reverse his recantation. The choice the party faced was between John Prescott’s ‘traditional values in a modern setting’ and Brown’s socially refined Thatcherism. Proud to be a man of conviction without any doubts, he could be insensitive to the qualities of those who showed a hint of human weakness.

      The trade unions wanted a pledge from Brown to borrow and spend £15 billion in order to reduce unemployment. Brown became obdurate. The trade unions, he believed, were the biggest single obstacle to Labour’s election victory. Nye Bevan, the giant of Labour’s left, was quoted in Brown’s biography of James Maxton castigating Scottish rebels: ‘I will tell you what the epitaph on you Scottish dissenters will be – pure but impotent. Yes, you will be pure all right. But remember at the price of impotency. You will not influence the course of British politics by as much as a hair’s breadth.’ Brown would not repeat that mistake and damage Labour’s election chances. Defiantly, he was prepared to bring the whole house down to crush the opposition. Unpopularity was the price for performing his duty. As he stepped into the corridor, he was asked, ‘Does Labour still believe in the redistribution of wealth?’ Impulsively, he replied, ‘Yes.’ Those were his principles. Later that night, reflecting upon his strategy for Labour’s election victory, he said to those in the bars and corridors: ‘I am not against wealth. I just want everyone to be richer.’ Standing at other bars, Peter Hain and John Edmonds remorselessly disparaged Brown. ‘We should not replace the Red Flag with the White Flag,’ said Edmonds. Shedding Labour’s traditional socialist image, agreed Hain, would destroy all hope of the party ever regaining power. Their animosity was personal.

      Brown and Blair arrived at the 1993 party conference with Smith’s reluctant agreement to curb the trade unions’ control of the party and impose ‘one man, one vote’. The union leaders were incensed. While they would expect Tony Blair to be anti-union, the transformation of Brown grated among the traditionalists. ‘This is a phoney battle,’ John Edmonds challenged Brown, ‘to show Labour is not in thrall to the unions. This is all about Mandelson positioning you and Blair as acceptable, and is against John Smith.’ The battle for OMOV, Edmonds believed, was a figleaf for Brown’s sympathy with Thatcherism. ‘You won’t carry Labour support on these policies,’ he told Brown. ‘I don’t believe in promising full employment any more,’ Brown replied. ‘It gives the impression of a government creating worthless jobs at great cost.’ To hear that from Brown’s mouth surprised the socialist.

      That year’s shadow cabinet elections, Brown knew, would be an uncomfortable test. The party man who had spent a lifetime attending committee meetings could no longer expect the unions’ automatic support. Their antagonism caused him real pain. By contrast, Blair operated with a fresh and uncluttered style as shadow home secretary, showing affectionate curiosity about people. Unlike Brown, he had developed the technique of telling people what they wanted to hear, flattering potential critics and cultivating bores whom others would ignore. There was freshness to his soundbites, which were exquisitely delivered. ‘Tough on crime, and tough on the causes of crime’ had won plaudits which, as Brown never ceased to remind people, was a debt owed to him, who had conceived the slogan. But there was more to Blair than mere soundbites. His appeal was to the whole country rather than to a particular tribe or a class. His ambivalence – by refusing to feign sentimental links with the trade unions or to posture as a radical egalitarian – proved his chameleon appeal. Those qualities brought him limited favour in the elections to the shadow cabinet in autumn 1993. Robin Cook came top, Brown fell to fourth, while Blair was sixth.

      Brown and Blair were driven back to London from the party conference by Derek Draper, Peter Mandelson’s special adviser. Their conversation was dominated by their comparatively poor performances in the poll. Brown was worried about losing his seat on the shadow cabinet the following year. The solution, he suggested, was to employ a researcher to bolster their support. One week later Saul Billingsley was hired on a salary of £10,000, two thirds of which was paid by Brown, and one third by Blair. Blair’s contribution was a calculated attempt to pacify Brown rather than confirmation of his own anxiety. Brown paid Billingsley from the income he earned from the Daily Record, but occasionally he ran out of money. ‘Don’t cash that cheque,’ Sue Nye told Derek Draper on one occasion. ‘Gordon is temporarily overdrawn.’ Based in Brown’s office in Millbank, Billingsley analysed each constituency’s local issues. He sent fact sheets to the constituencies showing the policies which Brown believed would cure their particular problems, and with a message from Brown. If there was an indication that a constituency might be persuaded to shift in Brown’s favour, Billingsley would invite the local party leaders to meet Brown in Westminster. The tactic worked. Several constituency activists praised Brown as ‘active and committed’, an important asset in his fight against enemies like Peter Hain.

      Hain had published another pamphlet demanding that £20 billion be spent on investment and training. This indiscipline outraged the shadow chancellor. Hain, Brown decided, was to be decapitated. With the help of Derek Foster, Labour’s chief whip, a large posse of born-again Tribunites marched unannounced into the group’s annual general meeting and voted against Hain’s re-election as general secretary. The coup was smooth, and tax and spend was suppressed as an issue in Labour’s debates. Brown received little credit for neutralising Hain; instead, he faced resentment.

      Once again, to prove his credibility, his language against the Tories became vehement. He accused them outright of dishonesty: ‘The Tories lied about taxation,’ became a recurring theme. ‘They’re incapable in my view,’ he said in a speech on 1 December 1993, ‘of telling the difference now between truth and falsehood; incapable and unable to tell the truth, or even recognise it.’ Carefully honed phrases like ‘thousands of pensioners will have to choose between heating and eating’ failed to excite his party, although the opinion polls steadfastly predicted a Labour election victory. To win trust, Brown constantly repeated, ‘Unlike the Tories, there will be honest disclosure. We will be straight with the British people … There will be no sleight of hand. What you see on taxes will be what you get.’ Opinion polls suggested that while the Tories were unpopular with the public because of their tax increases, Labour had still failed to convince them that they had a coherent economic strategy.

      Over Christmas 1993, Brown pondered his fate. He had been the star pupil of Kirkcaldy, the star of Edinburgh University, and ever since his memorable maiden speech there had been expectations that one day he would be in Downing Street. Yet he appeared to be stymied. His jokes may have been memorable – ‘John Major went to Pittsburgh and discovered he had no past. He came back to Britain and discovered he had no future’ – but his critics questioned whether there was any more to him than cracking jokes and dissecting statistics. His sulks and his negative politics raised the questions of whether he was simply destructive or could ever inspire uncertain voters. Some of his personal traits were off-putting. He reluctantly posed for photographs in a pullover, and when asked to remove his tie replied, ‘I never take off my tie.’ He was also gauche, describing formal dinners as a waste of time. He lacked taste not only in art, furniture and wine, but also in food. He gobbled down whatever was offered without comment, suggesting an indifference to life’s refinements. His impatience extended to parliament. ‘During prime minister’s questions,’ he explained, ‘I often have to sit in the chamber for an hour and may speak for only thirty seconds. The place is geared towards eloquence rather than the pursuit of excellence.’ He was puzzled that some of his characteristics could irritate others.

      Peter Mandelson offered help. Brown suffered, Mandelson calculated, from ‘press mania’. His reliance on Ed Richards, an unremarkable apparatchik, had spawned a compulsion to seek appearances