The dynamics of this fleeting moment of imprecise ambition are important. The exchanges and the calculations are emblematic of much that was to follow – the awkward dilemmas, the gestures of mutually well-meaning and disingenuous support, the careful positioning and the rest. They were all playing their part as early as 1992, and already Blair rather than Brown was proving to be an inadvertently masterful choreographer.
Blair wanted a so-called ‘modernizer’ to lead the party, or at least become deputy leader, at such a precarious moment and assumed with a slightly self-interested and yet genuine sincerity that Brown should be the man. Often for Blair convenience and conviction marched together as a monolithic force. At this point in 1992 he had an almost exaggeratedly high regard for Brown, reflecting his unusually generous attitude to big political figures anywhere. He tended to view anyone from the past or present who had been successful in winning elections with excessive awe, whether from the left or the right. Here was another apolitical New Labour characteristic from the Blairite perspective, an admiration for winners. When he first became Prime Minister he lavished indiscriminate homage on virtually any foreign leader on the basis that he or she had won an election. Every now and again in this early phase Blair told friends that he considered Brown to be a strategic genius. He would carry on making this flattering observation for quite a few years to come, although emphatically not by the end. In the darkness of 1992 part of Blair thought unequivocally that Brown should stand for the leadership and that if he did so he would win, at which point Labour could modernize with the two of them at the top.
But Blair was capable of being disingenuous while he was being sincere, a baffling, contradictory combination that gave him his distinct genius. Without quite realizing it, but almost doing so, he was urging his friend to incur a humiliation. Brown would have lost a leadership contest in 1992. When Kinnock stood down Smith was the clear favourite to win. As Brown told Blair, the only way he could enter the race would be with the objective of destroying Smith, exposing him ruthlessly as a vote loser, out of touch with voters. This would have been destructive, risky and an act of betrayal to someone who was still, in spite of the growing mutual mistrust, a close friend. Probably Smith would still have won, but as a damaged leader and with Brown looking fruitlessly reckless.
Brown was not being pathetically cautious, but simply wise in recognizing that this was not the moment to stand against a soaring favourite who happened to be a friend and who would make him a powerful shadow chancellor. Brown calculated that as shadow chancellor he would have a fair amount of influence over economic policy, although part of Blair’s strident advocacy was based on a concern that Smith would stick with the policies associated with the shadow budget. He repeated to Brown several times: ‘If you want freedom to change the economic policies you need to be leader, and not the shadow chancellor below a leader who was responsible for those economic policies.’ Blair had managed almost to define the situation as one in which Brown had acted weakly in accepting the role of shadow chancellor.
The angry exchanges over the leadership also proved that Blair regarded Brown still as the senior partner after the 1992 election. There was no talk of Blair standing as the candidate. Brown suggested that Blair might stand for the deputy, but their joint assumption was that only one would go for the top job: Brown.
The dynamics of their relationship pointed in that direction. When senior journalists went to see Blair up until the early summer of 1994 and their conversation veered on to complex matters of policy, Blair quite often told them: ‘Speak to Gordon about that one.’ Blair had witnessed at closer quarters than anyone else how Brown had risen suddenly to the challenge of becoming a stand-in shadow chancellor when Smith had a heart attack in 1988. He had taken part in a legion of conversations in which Brown cut through the seemingly impenetrable complexities of positioning and policy making. Quite often, like the journalists, Blair had been to see Gordon about that too. On this basis, a shared political past, their common assumption in 1992 was that Brown would be leader.
When the two of them worked in a cramped office at Westminster after the 1983 election Brown talked often to Blair about the media, how to frame a speech with a single message in mind, targeting newspapers, different bulletins. Briefly Brown had been a BBC producer in Scotland. He did not understand the rhythms of news anywhere near as well as he liked to think, but he knew more than his new colleague. Blair shared his fascination with the relationship between politics and journalism and had already written several articles for newspapers and the New Statesman magazine, but he began his parliamentary career as more of a novice. Soon Blair became the dazzling communicator, but Brown arrived at Westminster understanding more clearly that dealing with the media was a form of political art.
Together they watched bulletins, commenting on the ineptitude of Labour’s presentation. Nearly always at this stage Brown led the conversation. ‘The message is wrong. that will alienate most voters … we will be savaged for this tomorrow in the papers.’ Blair noted admiringly that Brown was nearly always proved right in his analysis of how the media would report Labour’s initiatives. Brown was also writing speeches, putting out press releases at first mainly aimed at the Scottish media long before he was on the front bench. He was also completing his biography of Maxton. He arrived with contacts across the Labour party. Throughout the 1980s Brown was not the senior and weightier figure by a tiny margin, but by a significant distance.
This was also Peter Mandelson’s view at the time. No wonder both Brown and Blair were excited by the arrival of Mandelson as Labour’s Director of Communications in the mid-1980s. Soon after his appointment Brown and Blair noticed an improvement in the way Labour’s message was projected, especially on television bulletins, but also in the largely hostile newspapers. Their conversations became a little more upbeat and positive as they watched TV reports with the intensity of a director watching an edit of a new film. ‘That’s a better backdrop … Neil [Kinnock] is much clearer … the papers will like that … it’s good it’s so high up the running order.’ They both knew who had made the difference. Brown assumed that Mandelson, as well as Blair, would be an important figure when he fought a leadership contest at some future unspecified date.
But then on the morning of 12 May 1994 John Smith died suddenly of a heart attack. He had been leader for less than two years. His death transformed the political situation in lots of different ways.
Almost certainly if Smith had continued to lead Labour he would have won the forthcoming election and would have been a more rooted, solid prime minister compared with the insecure and media-obsessed Blair and Brown. How long England and its media would have tolerated a Scot with egalitarian instincts and outdated communication skills is much harder to predict, but for a time at least there probably would have been a clearer sense under Smith that the centre left had prevailed in an election than there was when New Labour and its big tent of support seized their ambiguous moment in 1997. It is also possible that Blair, Brown and some others might have grown in government under Smith, gaining ministerial experience and acquiring more political self-confidence by the time there was another vacancy at the top. Smith would have had the sense and resilience to let his cabinet breathe a little. Instead Blair and Brown moved into power with no ministerial experience. They had not watched at close quarters while a prime minister and chancellor handled the economy or, crucially, interpreted sensitive intelligence. They had no idea what it was like to run a big spending department.
Smith was complacent about the narrow appeal in England of a Labour party dominated still by activists from local government and the trade unions and he underestimated comically the ways in which political parties needed to adapt to the modern media. Suddenly the path was clear for half-formed politicians neurotically determined to purge their party of its past without being entirely sure about what should follow their cathartic moves.