Realistically, however, our main rival was not Mrs Thatcher or the Tories. We were battling for second place, against the Liberal-SDP Alliance. In 1983 we had beaten them by only two percentage points, and well under a million votes. Even after our ‘April fightback’, the polls had intermittently shown us as neck-and-neck with the Alliance, or at times behind them. We faced the real prospect of finishing in third place. By polling day, I knew we had at least faced down that threat. From early in the campaign, especially since the Kinnock movie, we had drawn ahead. As I sat in Walworth Road on election night, the only question in my mind was by how much. I was exhausted. In one sense, it was lucky we had never really had a chance of defeating the Conservatives. By the end of the campaign I was so spent, emotionally and physically, that I had literally nothing left for the final sprint.
Bizarrely, there was a brief moment on election day when there was a suggestion that we might even win. Vincent Hanna, the BBC political correspondent, phoned me early in the evening. In a conspiratorial whisper, he said: ‘Peter, it’s Vincent. I have some very interesting information seeping out about the exit polls. You might just be in for a pleasant surprise.’ Swearing me to secrecy, and saying he could not go into detail, he continued: ‘You may want to get your “plan B” ready.’ I was intrigued, or more nearly astonished. I thanked him, but said: ‘For God’s sake, don’t tell Neil. It’ll get him all wound up.’
As Vincent had hinted, the first Newsnight prediction was for a hung Parliament. I still frankly didn’t believe it – I remember turning to Philip and saying, ‘If only …’ The exit poll corrected itself, and the Conservatives won, as we’d both known they would. Mrs Thatcher got a Commons majority of 102. Still, that was down by forty-two seats on 1983. We had gained twenty seats, and cantered home well ahead of the SDP-Liberal Alliance, by eight percentage points and nearly three million votes. We had survived. We had won the battle of the opposition. If the Greenwich trend had continued, we might well not have done.
I retreated to Foy that weekend. I was a tangle of emotions. The campaign had been more wearing than anything I had ever done in my life. I had never directed anything like it before, and had no benchmark against which to judge what I was doing. Every day was virgin territory. If it had not been for the two Goulds, Bryan and Philip, I am sure I would not have been able to carry it off. Never did I have more reason to be grateful for their support than on the first Saturday of the campaign, when I was suddenly confronted with the personal cost of my more prominent political role. The News of the World, Britain’s highest-circulation Sunday paper, was planning to use its front page next day to tell the country about my private life. I had never cloaked this in secrecy: I simply regarded my life outside politics as having no relevance to my public role. It didn’t preoccupy me, and I did not see why it should concern anyone else. The News of the World chose not only to target me, but to make personal allegations about Roy Hattersley and the Liberal Party leader, David Steel, as well.
I had been with my partner at the time for nearly ten years. He had also briefly been involved with a woman friend, with whom he had fathered a wonderful son – to whom not only his mother, but the two of us were devoted. What angered me was that the newspaper had decided to publicise this as well: identities, details, photographs and all. On Alastair Campbell’s advice, I telephoned the editor, David Montgomery, and told him that if he really wanted to ‘reveal all’ about me, he could go ahead, but including the name of the three-year-old boy involved, or his mother, would be an utterly unjustified violation of their rights to privacy. Montgomery was cold, monosyllabic, and seemingly could not have cared less. He shrugged off my request, and went ahead. Alastair, who was by my side throughout, shared my disgust.
I was told later that the News of the World ‘bombshell’ had been discussed with the Conservative Party’s high command. The Tories apparently saw this as a legitimate way of taking me out of the campaign. If so, it failed. I was fortunate that the pace and demands of the election left me little time to brood on what had happened. The rest of the media, in any case, ignored the News of the World’s prurience. But it couldn’t help but affect the way I felt about and responded to other media intrusions into my private life. It made me more determined than ever not to make concessions to those who are interested in the irrelevances of the bedroom over the Cabinet Room. This was nearly twenty-five years ago. Thankfully, the world has moved on, and with it, journalistic standards.
With the election over, I took comfort from knowing how much ground we had reclaimed since the chaos and crisis of the spring. The campaign had been a watershed for Labour. It had shown to the party, and the numerous sceptics in the media, that we could compete with the Tories in using the tools of modern political communications to get our voice through to voters. We were at least back in the game. It had been transformational for me as well. As the central figure in the Walworth Road operation, I was always going to receive more media attention than before. If it had all gone haywire, I would have got the blame.
In the final days, the young political editor of the Observer wrote the first major profile of me to appear in the national press. I knew Robert Harris only professionally then, though he would later become one of my closest friends. His piece highlighted the differences in Labour’s campaigning and communications since 1983. In explaining the role I had played, the obstacles I had had to overcome and the artifice I had occasionally had to use to get our changes through, he also unwittingly coined a label – sometimes useful politically, often uncomfortable personally – that would stick with me for the rest of my public life: the ‘Machiavelli’ of Walworth Road. Coming from him, this was not meant as an insult, and the rest of the profile was very generous, both about the campaign and my part in it.
After election day, there was far more praise than criticism, some of it from unexpected quarters. Tony Benn said we had run Labour’s best campaign since 1959, the one in which he had pioneered groundbreaking TV messages of his own. The review that most touched me, however, was a note Larry Whitty left on my desk the morning after the election. ‘Just in case it may on occasion have seemed I felt differently,’ he said, ‘can I record that I believe your efforts, political judgement and imagination have made this the most effective campaign the party has ever waged. Well done – and thanks.’
Still, in the end, as Private Eye put it, we had achieved a ‘brilliantly successful election defeat’. The feeling that weighed most heavily on me was that when the votes were counted, we had lost. Again. The sense of frustration and failure gnawed at me in the days, weeks and months that followed as I contemplated what Labour’s third straight defeat meant for the party’s, and my, future. The reasons we had lost were clear. I singled out ‘the three Ds: Deirdre, defence and disarray’. However alluringly alliterative, that told only part of the story. To have any hope of getting back into government, we would have to completely revisit the range of policies where we were simply, fatally, out of touch with the electorate: unemployment and health, education, crime, and of course economics, finance and taxation.
The election result also taught me something else. It was about people’s feelings and beliefs, and how they projected these onto those who stood for the highest office. The electorate intensely disliked many aspects of the Labour Party. As for Neil Kinnock, while people felt that he was right to stand up to the hard left, to reform Labour and make its policies more centrist, they also had a feeling that he was not very prime ministerial, that he was uncertain what he believed in, and that his wordiness masked a lack of knowledge. While many voters had a visceral dislike of Mrs Thatcher, and believed that her policies were divisive, were destroying industry, generating unacceptable social costs and harming public services, they nevertheless felt that she was strong, was probably what the country needed, that they should continue taking the medicine, and anyway, that there was no real alternative. For voters, feelings prevail over beliefs. People may be torn between their head and their heart, but ultimately it is their gut feeling that is decisive: they vote for the candidate who elicits the right feelings, not necessarily the one who presents the right arguments. Ideally, of course, that should be the same person. This lesson would shape what I thought and did over the next two decades, because it ingrained in me just how subtle political communications are – and how complicated elections are to run.
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