‘Can’t you do that?’ he asked, returning to a theme I thought we had finally got beyond in the summer. ‘I’ve got it intellectually,’ he said. ‘I’ve got the policies. I accept it’s different from 1997, and that now we’ve got to say what we’re doing next. But I just can’t turn it into a strategy.’
I put it to him directly: ‘You need a government team to do this. Perhaps you should wonder whether you may have contributed to making people feel less of a team. You have to rebuild it.’
‘I realise some in the cabinet feel ambivalent about me,’ he replied. ‘But others have got to show a lot more maturity.’
Sensing that we had taken this as far as we could for now, I said: ‘I have to show some maturity, and go to sleep.’
‘Why? Where on earth are you?’ asked Gordon, genuinely surprised.
‘Singapore,’ I said. ‘And it’s after 2 a.m.’ Gordon, profusely apologetic, and I, very tired, agreed to talk the following day.
When he phoned he was, at least briefly, in a brighter mood. ‘If it’s not after midnight, I guess I’m calling too early,’ he joked. But he remained unsettled. He was some distance from getting a hold on the team effort I’d been urging him to make his priority.
‘You get wound up about the wrong things and the wrong people,’ I said. I advised him not to make a big mistake in the cabinet reshuffle the press was now anticipating. I was worried about reports that he was planning to replace Alistair Darling with Ed Balls, which in the gathering economic crisis struck me as perverse. No matter how upset Gordon had been over his Chancellor’s interview, a vote of no-confidence in the Treasury was hardly going to help. ‘Some may think it odd,’ I said.
‘We’ll have to talk on a landline,’ Gordon replied, with a sudden air of mystery. ‘But I have a bigger plan than that – one which everyone will eventually say is good.’
‘A tactical nuclear explosion?’ I asked. At which, for the first time in ages, he laughed. He would say nothing more, beyond a suggestion that we talk again.
I was worried. From my experience, Gordon’s ‘big plans’ had a habit of creating as many problems as they solved. His conference speech would not in itself ensure that he and the government could recover, but it was a start. He had had one last chance at survival, and he had taken it. One more ‘big plan’ gone wrong would risk not just ending his short and unhappy premiership, it could leave the government, and the party, in even deeper crisis.
The next call from Downing Street came two days later. It was not from Gordon, but Jeremy Heywood. It began encouragingly enough, with an assurance that I would have an opportunity to weigh in with my views before the reshuffle warheads were launched. ‘I think Gordon will want to see you to discuss the reshuffle,’ he said. But then he too added, ‘He wants to do something quite big.’
‘In what way big?’ I pressed. He said that was something I would have to discuss with the Prime Minister. Apparently, Gordon wanted to do something that would affect me. This was getting more puzzling, and more worrying. I took it to be a suggestion of some root-and-branch reworking of the cabinet, with my job in Brussels offered as consolation prize to one of the victims. The prospect of my entering a truly final political exile came as a shock. It also seemed an odd way for Gordon to recognise the help I had tried to give him in his darkest hours. I did take comfort from the fact that I was better equipped to deal with being cast into the wilderness this time round. With my EU term ending in barely a year, I had begun to adjust to the notion of life beyond politics. But it was unsettling, and I said so. ‘He’d better not muck around with my job,’ I told Jeremy. ‘If this “big plan” involves getting rid of someone with a promise of my job, you should know I’ll be furious.’
‘It’s not that,’ he said. ‘We’ll talk again.’
The next call, on Wednesday, 1 October, was no more illuminating. This time it was from Gordon. ‘I’m going to do this reshuffle,’ he began. ‘I need to talk to you about it. I want to put an idea to you – something I hope you’ll go along with.’ He asked if I could come to see him in Downing Street the following morning. I said I would be in London anyway, for a briefing at the Treasury on the financial crisis, and I could see him after that. He seemed satisfied, but before hanging up he added very sternly: ‘Do not discuss this with anyone.’
‘Discuss what?’ I asked.
‘Nothing,’ he replied. ‘Just don’t discuss it.’ Since I had no idea what he was on about, that was easy enough to agree to.
Maybe my famed political antennae were not as good as they have been cracked up to be. Maybe Brussels had dimmed my Westminster instincts. Maybe, despite our recent rapprochement, I simply assumed that Gordon and I had fought so many battles that some sense of estrangement would always survive. In any case, when I discreetly entered Number 10 on the afternoon of Thursday, 2 October 2008 through the french windows at the back, near the Foreign Office, I was anticipating a conversation about the other potential jigsaw pieces in Gordon’s grand scheme. I took his and Jeremy’s hints at some role for me to mean, at most, another attempt to get me to play a part in forging the ‘strategy’ he desperately wanted. I had difficulty in seeing quite how that would work, but I was willing to listen, and to help if I could.
We met in the small wood-panelled dining room on the first floor. Gordon took a spoonful of yoghurt and unpeeled a banana. ‘I don’t like sandwiches,’ he said when I offered him the plate. Then he got down to business.
‘I need to do something big. I need you to join the government. I want you to help get us through the economic situation. You would do it at the Business Department, from the House of Lords.’
For a moment, I was stunned. I was also seized by panic at the prospect, even if Gordon genuinely felt he could make it work, of a return to the political jungle, and an end to a European sojourn that had turned out even better than I had expected. ‘Thanks,’ I said, ‘but I actually like my present job. I have things I want to finish. And I have my comfort zone.’ I had my work. My life. The protection I now felt I had from the frequent ghastliness of Westminster politics as I had come to know it. I had my travel, my friends. I was now on top of the Trade Commissioner’s job, and trying against all odds to play my part in rescuing hopes for a world trade deal, not to mention the intractable negotiations to update our trade relations in Africa, or the never-ending talks on Russia’s membership of the World Trade Organisation.
Gordon would not be dissuaded. He said the world trade deal was going nowhere fast – he had just been in Washington, and he was sure of that. I was pretty sure of it as well: its prospects were looking about as dire as Gordon’s before his conference speech.
‘Think of what you would be able to achieve back in the government,’ he persisted. ‘It’s a great opportunity.’ And he added: ‘We need you. We could work together.’
‘Well, it would certainly be a surprise for everyone,’ I laughed. Yet, except for the undeniable satisfaction I would take from an unlikely – more nearly, impossible – third return from the cabinet dead, I still found the idea unsettling. Gordon left me to ponder.
When he returned to the room, it was with Sue Nye in tow. He suggested that she and I speak. This was the start of a carousel of conversations, first with Sue, then with Jeremy Heywood, as Gordon departed and reappeared, joined the discussion and left the other two to urge me to see the logic of his proposal. It made sense from every angle, they insisted. It would be the right thing for Gordon, for the government, and for me. I was tempted. It was not merely the idea of returning to cabinet. At a time when Gordon and New Labour were in political crisis, and the country was facing an economic one, I did feel that I could play a part in making things better.
But