Gordon Brown: Prime Minister. Tom Bower

Brown, it was implied, might withdraw on the basis of a prior agreement with Blair not to stand against each other. Brown called the party’s pollster Philip Gould and asked who was the favourite to win. ‘I said Tony without hesitation,’ Gould recalled. ‘Gordon asked me why, and I replied that Tony not only met the mood of the nation, he exemplified it. He would create for Britain a sense of change, of a new beginning, which Gordon could not do.’ More irritating was Mandelson’s appearance on Channel 4 News describing his ideal candidate as the person ‘who would fully maximise support for the party in the country’.

      Brown was stewing, and his mood worsened the following morning, Monday, 16 May, when a letter from Mandelson, setting out the position as he saw it, was delivered to Brown’s office on the other side of the corridor. Brown, said Mandelson, was attracting sympathy from the lobby for his position, not least because of his unrivalled intellectual position, but he had a problem in not appearing to be the front-runner. The conclusion was painful. If Brown ran it would be a gift to the party’s enemies, and he would be blamed by the media for creating the split. The remedy would be intensive briefings to sell himself, wrote Mandelson, but the regrettable consequence of that would be to weaken Blair’s position. Even then, success could not be guaranteed. Ultimately, the card the media were playing for Blair was his ‘southern appeal’.

      Mandelson may have been stating the obvious in unpartisan words, but to Brown, coiled like a spring in his lust for power, the truth was intensely hurtful. He regarded the weekend’s media analysis, the suggestion of an agreement between himself and Blair, and Mandelson’s letter as calculated to undermine his chances. ‘We’ve been betrayed,’ he muttered to a friend. He also suspected that Mandelson was helping Blair, and encouraged Tribune to report the alliance. Blair was alarmed by that possibility and directed Anji Hunter and later Michael Meacher to telephone the editor Mark Seddon. ‘It’s simply not true,’ Hunter exclaimed. The newspaper did not publish the accurate story.

      Four days after John Smith’s death, the message was ‘Brown in mourning’, but the reality was also of a politician fretting. Brown required a bandwagon if he was to win the prize. Mandelson’s judgement was unfortunate but not necessarily decisive if Brown actively campaigned for support, seeking out and converting dissenters. Secluded in his office, he relied on an inner circle of MPs – Nick Brown, Doug Henderson, Andrew Smith, Nigel Griffiths and Eric Clarke, the former leader of the Scottish miners – for advice. He never paused to contemplate the possibility that outsiders might dislike a Scottish clique as much as he disdained the London establishment. Nor did he recognise how the personal weaknesses of his political advisers reflected poorly on himself. ‘Tell me what you think,’ Brown said to Henderson, who had been tramping around Westminster. ‘I don’t think you can win,’ reported his ambassador, knowing that Brown’s two brothers were urging him to stand.

      While Brown hesitated, Blair, encouraged by a personal message from David Ward that Brown had not been John Smith’s favourite son, was actively seeking support. Chris Smith, David Blunkett, Adam Ingram, the MP for East Kilbride, and Frank Dobson each expressed their support. Brown was shocked. Dobson, he had thought, would favour his redistributive socialism. Instead, Dobson complained that rather than encourage consensus government, Brown would cluster his favourites around himself. ‘He’s an iceman,’ was the hurtful quotation. Brown was perplexed that even his assumption of Neil Kinnock’s endorsement was wrong. The former leader wondered aloud about Brown’s suitability. He was a bowler, not a batsman, suggested Kinnock. Not surprisingly, Charles Clarke, Kinnock’s chief of staff, was telling everyone that he had telephoned Blair immediately after Smith’s death to urge him to run for the leadership. Presentation and personality rather than politics was the issue. The party was desperate for an election victory. Blair may have been too right-wing for many in the party, but he was likely to appeal to the English middle class.