Macshane Labour Takes Power

The Denis MacShane Diaries 1997-2001
1. Auflage 2023
ISBN: 978-1-78590-844-6
Verlag: Biteback Publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 432 Seiten

With the strong possibility of Labour forming our next government, it is fascinating to consider the last time the party stood on the verge of power, back in 1997. At that time, future Europe Minister Denis MacShane had a ringside seat that he would occupy for the next decade or so, living through Cool Britannia, the Good Friday Agreement, Peter Mandelson's multiple resignations, Princess Diana's death and Tony Blair's seeming invincibility. New Labour may be remembered as an unstoppable force, but MacShane's diaries reveal that while, outwardly, all seemed to be going well, the personal rivalries, slights and petty jealousies between the party's big beasts meant that it was never far from disaster. MacShane was a regular in Downing Street from the moment of Labour's election victory, and his candid, intimate diaries show figures such as Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Robin Cook, Peter Mandelson, Clare Short and Alastair Campbell in a light in which they've never been seen before, detailing the personalities as much as the politics of Labour's most successful stint in government.

Denis MacShane is a former Labour MP who served in Tony Blair's government as Europe Minister from 2002 to 2005. During his time in Parliament, he was a member of the Privy Council and chaired the Commons inquiry into antisemitism. He was first elected as MP for Rotherham in 1994 and served until his resignation in 2012. He has written several books on European politics and in 2015 published Brexit: How Britain Will Leave Europe, which predicted that Brexit would indeed occur. He lives in Westminster, London.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Macshane, Denis

Leseproben

1998

TUESDAY 13 JANUARY 1998

Every paper this morning is splashing on its front page a headline like ‘Blair grounds Cook’s mistress’. The story is that No. 10 has ordered Robin Cook not to take Gaynor Regan on a series of overseas trips he is making.

It is a wonderfully English outing about sex. Of course, Robin should be accompanied by his partner if he so wishes. He is in despair. After a routine going-through of the questions, he asks all the officials to leave and then turns to us:

I would like to apologise to everybody for what has happened. The weekend and the last few days have been the worst in my life. I thought the story had died down, but No. 10 has now given it oxygen. I have a very angry and unstable woman to worry about as well. Gaynor is furious with the press and the way they have depicted her.

I have never seen him so vulnerable and although it would be too much to say he appeared on the verge of a breakdown, he was in very great misery in front of us all. Everybody tried to cheer him up. I said we would maximise the support behind him on the back benches in the afternoon and told him: ‘Robin, no one in the PLP or in the party is much worried about this. It is an internal Westminster media story. You must simply go out there and do a professional political job as a Labour Foreign Secretary.’ Most of the other remarks followed in a similar vein and the only concrete outcome of this discussion was an order or an agreement to go out and rally as many backbenchers as possible behind him.

I go across to the House to corral the troops behind Robin. This actually works quite well and the benches are absolutely packed behind him. When he rises to answer the first question, there is an immense growl-cum-throaty cheer and the Tory benches, which also have a solid presence, are silenced with shame as they realise that this is one fox they will not be able to tear to bits. Robin handles all the questions with his usual skill and aplomb and such is his authority that no one dares raise the only issue that is on everybody’s mind.

I went up to Rules for a dinner organised by Job Ownership on employee share ownership with Gordon Brown. Gordon took notes and sat in his usual hunk fashion, half-turned to people, I suppose to catch them with his one good eye and looking more jowly than ever. Ed Miliband sat opposite.

At the end of all the mini presentations, Gordon asked some good questions and the whole evening was a great success. It was a real coup to get Gordon to come along and discuss this issue and the presence of all the Americans committed to employee share ownership really had a good impact on him. I must remember this for the future: it’s best to influence ministers not just with the presentation of arguments by Brits but to slip in a foreigner, preferably a North American, who can bring some freshness in enthusiasm and accent to the presentation of any reformist ideas.

THURSDAY 15 JANUARY 1998

Over to the House with a mound of documents for the debate on the EU Amsterdam Treaty to start. It is the usual rants by the Europhobes.

The best speech was a thirty-min drone by Bill Cash moving an amendment to delete an article in the treaty which would enable the Council of Ministers, acting unanimously, to propose measures to stop discrimination. Other Tories, like Oliver Letwin and Tim Collins, are there with their anti-European tirades and the debate, although deadly boring, is instructive in showing just how gripped the Tories are by this mad sectarianism.

Grabbing a quick salad in the tea room during a vote, David Davis, Doug Henderson’s predecessor as Minister for Europe, glides up to me and says, ‘You would do such a better job than your boss. Don’t say anything, but I mean it.’ He, I think, is being sincere though he may simply be being devious.

Someone in the tea room was handing out sheets for Labour’s new hymn.

THE RED FLAG: REVISED VERSION

The People’s Flag is turning blue,

Supporters don’t know what to do.

Euphoria from May the First

Is fading fast; the bubble’s burst.

While a tax dodgy millionaire

Is best of friends with Tony Blair,

It looks as if it’s all too true.

The People’s Flag is turning blue.

The People’s Flag is turning white,

The government has taken fright.

For fear of Murdoch’s gang’s abuse,

They’ve turned it to a flag of truce.

They’re just concerned they must not fail

The readers of the Daily Mail.

They’ve given up attempts to fight,

The People’s Flag is turning white.

The People’s Flag WAS deepest red,

But not all principles are dead.

So let us praise the forty-seven.

You are the salt, you are the leaven

Within the party’s soggy dough.

Ignore the whips; be proud to know

Despite this most disgraceful bill,

You’ve kept the Red Flag flying still.

FRIDAY 16 JANUARY 1998

Up at 6.30 a.m. and a drive through London to get to Hanbury Manor, the Hertfordshire mansion where the Anglo-French colloque is being held.

A whole raft of friends were there, including John Lloyd, Ian Hargreaves (the New Statesman editor with whom I had had a long discussion the day before about why the weekly is so dull), Phil Stephens from the FT and a very impressive group of French businessmen and journalists including the lovely smiling Christine Ockrent and Laurent Joffrin (editor of Libération). The French participation was at a much higher level than ours. The most senior Brit politician was Stephen Byers, while the French had Alain Juppé who wandered around like a ghost at a feast. One of the Frenchmen said to me that no ex-Prime Minister is ever dead in France, hence Juppé’s presence.

The conference opened with a remarkably arrogant presentation by Mervyn King, the deputy governor of the Bank of England, who announced that it would be the task of politicians to defend and promote the European Central Bank and ensure its decisions were accepted by the population. I thought it was a bit cheeky for him to tell all the Frenchmen what the European Central Bank was going to do given that Britain was not even in the euro, particularly as the governor of the Bank of France, Jean-Claude Trichet, was present. Trichet is the French candidate to run the European Central Bank and I wonder how he enjoyed King’s admonitions.

Martin Taylor, the intellectual who is the boss of Barclays Bank and is heading a committee for Gordon Brown on how to integrate the tax and benefit system, finished his remarks with an odd line saying, ‘Britain is throwing away all the levers of economic management to worship at the altar of the euro.’ It came as a cold shock to realise how deeply hostile this particular representative of the banking establishment and the Conservative-thinking establishment is to the whole idea of European partnership based on common rules and mutual obligations. We have a long way to go.

Over cocktails, I talked to John Kerr, the Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, who needed a shoulder to lean on about how disastrous the Gaynor problem is for the FCO:

Robin is in a dreadful state. We invited him up to our house for a talk, but I had to spend yesterday drafting PQs about her trips and he sent them all back saying he wasn’t satisfied with my answers, but I told him they had to be published. He is also pissed off with me because I made him pay back Gaynor’s fare on one of the trips she went out with him on last year. There’s no problem with her going with him if she carries out some official engagements, but she didn’t do the things we had arranged for her and so there was no justification at all for us picking up the tab. He was really angry, but I had to make him pay back the money.

Kerr was wearing his Garrick Club tie and puffing away at his cigarette and is a great gossipy, full-of-fun fellow. I told him that I thought the Foreign Office had been leaking bits and pieces to the diaries about Robin’s behaviour and he didn’t deny my allegation:

Robin wanted Gaynor to be his diary secretary and he fired the woman who was doing it. She was no good and she had to go irrespective of the fact that Robin was trying to get Gaynor the job, but now she’s going around badmouthing him to the Sunday Telegraph and anybody else who will listen.

I am not sure it is easy to switch the blame for all the diary pieces and other anti-Robin publicity to a disgruntled Tory secretary who lost her job as the single source.

Kerr said how desperately alone Robin was. ‘I asked him if he...