荆州电子机械技师学院:How mistrust and betrayal tore Blair and Brown apart

How mistrust and betrayal tore Blair and Brown apart

Tony Blair's memoirs give the only first-hand account of his toxic relationship with his Chancellor and successor Gordon Brown, a man he describes as 'maddening', 'strange' and 'almost impossible to work alongside'.


The two men became MPs together in 1983 and shone in opposition. Mr Blair describes their relationship as having the closeness and urgency of 'two lovers'.


But the central theme of the book is the story of how that political romance descended into mistrust, betrayal and eventually the mutual disgust of a failed marriage.


At its heart was the decision of Mr Blair to usurp Mr Brown's claims to the Labour leadership and the older man's refusal ever to accept what had happened.


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Assessment: Tony Blair described Gordon Brown as having no emotional intelligence and 'a strange guy'


GORDON FOR LEADER

Mr Blair starts by admitting that he and Mr Brown 'were the junior partners' in the shadow cabinet under Neil Kinnock's leadership before the 1992 election 'and I was the junior of the two of us'.


He began to change his mind when 'I pressed on Gordon the idea of him standing for leader,' against shadow chancellor John Smith after the election.


Mr Brown rejected the advice and agreed to serve as Mr Smith's shadow chancellor.


'I knew in my bones it was a mistake,' writes Mr Blair, who became shadow home secretary.


'Gordon had not seized the moment. From that moment, I think I detached a little bit from Gordon ... The seed was sown of my future insistence that I should be leader, not him.'


A GENIUS, WITH FAULTS


Mr Blair says that Mr Brown helped him, showing a 'streak of genius' when he came up with the phrase 'tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime,' Mr Blair's signature in opposition.


'Our minds moved fast and at that point in sync. When others were present, we felt the pace and power diminish, until, a bit like lovers desperate to get to lovemaking but disturbed by old friends dropping round, we would try to bustle them out.'


But he says: 'I began to realise, with dismay but then soberly, that something was missing. Something he lacked. Something I started to know inside I had.'


He describes Mr Brown thus: 'Political calculation, yes. Political feelings, no. Analytical intelligence, absolutely. Emotional intelligence, zero.'



A PREMONITION AND A BETRAYAL


Mr Blair says he 'felt the tectonic plates shifting' in April 1994, just weeks before John Smith died, when he had a premonition.


Walking with his wife Cherie in Paris, 'I said to her: "If John dies, I will be leader, not Gordon. And somehow, I think this will happen. I just think it will".'


But Mr Blair did not tell Mr Brown of his change in view.


'Occasionally between April 1992 and May 1994, he would seek reassurance [that Mr Blair would back him in a future leadership contest]. And I would give it. Why not?


'I knew enough of him to know that had I withdrawn that assurance, we would have been doing battle.'


But when he first spoke to Mr Brown about the leadership after John Smith's death: 'I felt I had been disingenuous with him, which in the light of later events was a mistake.'


When Peter Mandelson reminded Mr Blair that 'Gordon is still the front-runner,' Mr Blair responded: 'Peter, you know I love you, but this is mine. I am sure of it. And you must help me do it. This is mine. I know it and I will take it.'


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WHEN RIVALRY BECAME FARCE


Blair and Brown then began a series of secret meetings in which the once senior man came to realise that Mr Blair would seize the leadership he had coveted.


'We were like a couple who loved each other, arguing whose career should come first. There is no doubt though that he felt a sense of shock and betrayal.


'He never expected me to put myself forward.'


For years it was assumed that the two had struck a firm agreement that Mr Brown would succeed Mr Blair at the Granita restaurant. In fact it was a looser arrangement carved out at the homes of friends.


At times the negotiations descended into farce. During one encounter 'Gordon got up to go to the loo. Five minutes passed. Then ten. Then fifteen. Suddenly the phone went. As it wasn't my house, I left it. The answerphone clicked in.'


Mr Brown's voice 'boomed out' "Tony it's Gordon here. I am upstairs in the toilet and I can't get out."


'Renovations had left the loo without a handle on the inside. 'I went up to the loo. "Withdraw from the contest or I'm leaving you in there," I said.'


Mr Blair says the arrangement was a mistake.


'There was never a deal in the sense that his standing down [as a leadership rival] was contingent on my agreeing to help him come after me, nonetheless there was an understanding of mutual interest.


'Looking back, I was too eager to persuade and too ready to placate. The truth is I couldn't guarantee it; and it was irresponsible to suggest or imply I could.


'The truth is I got the leadership and he wanted it. It was true then and remained true.'


GROWING TENSIONS


Once leader, Mr Blair quickly became irritated by Mr Brown's approach. 'He thought I could be an empty vessel into which the liquid that was poured was manufactured and processed by him... The rancour started to appear.'


When Labour won the 1997 election the tensions transferred to government.


In the book, Mr Blair claims credit for Mr Brown's greatest achievement as Chancellor, giving independence to the Bank of England to set interest rates.


'Gordon had come to the conclusion, and so when I suggested it, he readily agreed. I allowed Gordon to make the statement... I consciously and deliberately allowed Gordon to be out there as a big beast.'


The first crisis came when Mr Blair sacked Mr Brown's spindoctor Charlie Whelan amid reports that he had leaked details of Peter Mandelson's secret home loan, the issue which led to his first resignation.


'My feelings were beyond rage,' he says. 'This was not a story, it was a political assassination.'


Despite that, Mr Blair did not move Mr Brown after their second landslide in the 2001 election because it 'would have been seen as a piece of petty spite on my part, as a jealousy move.


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Tony Blair chats with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the White House in Washington last night


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Quiet and queue-free: A Waterstones bookshop in Manchester appears empty at opening time yesterday morning, despite the much-hyped release of Tory Blair's memoirs


KEEPING GORDON ON THE INSIDE


By 2003, with the Iraq War going wrong, Mr Brown's allies were urging him to move against Mr Blair.


Battered by the David Kelly affair, 'angry and dismayed by Gordon's behaviour' and in need of Brown's support for education reforms, Mr Blair 'restarted my conversation with Gordon about leaving' hoping he would back his reform plans.


'The alternative to removing him was the one I chose: to try to reach one last understanding with him; to try to reassure him that if he and I cooperated, if we truly shared the same agenda, I would go before the election and hand over to him.'


The two thrashed out another deal in John Prescott's Admiralty House flat in November 2003. 'I was prepared to go but the constant obstruction and wilful blocking of the reform programme had to stop.'


Mr Blair now thinks it was a mistake because the deal fuelled Mr Brown's 'feelings of entitlement'.


But he adds: 'I came to the conclusion that having him inside and constrained was better than outside and let loose. He was difficult, at times maddening. But he was also strong, capable and brilliant.'


WE'RE DIFFERENT


But Mr Blair again came to realise that Mr Brown did not share his concerns to give more choice in the public services to the middle classes.


'There was a significant difference in our approaches. I understood aspiration. I like people who want to succeed and admire people who do. When I was with a group of entrepreneurs, I felt at home. Gordon was completely different.'


Mr Blair says he had a 'Cavalier embrace of the middle class' while Mr Brown had a ' Roundhead identification with Labour tradition.'


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President Barack Obama, second left, holds a working dinner with, clockwise from left, Jordan's King Abdullah II, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Quartet Representative Tony Blair, Special Envoy for Mideast peace George Mitchell, and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, in the Old Family Dining Room of the White House, last night


COULD HE BE SACKED?


Mr Brown began causing trouble again. During an EU summit at which Mr Blair renegotiated the British rebate 'I had the most frightful time with Gordon throughout,' he says. 'Finally, I'm afraid I just stopped taking his calls.'


He asked the Manchester United manager for advice on whether he could sack 'a star player'.


Mr Blair accused the Chancellor of opposing plans for academy schools. No 10 required 'a machete constantly slicing through the thick foliage of their objections'.


'Gordon was in a perpetual state of machination.'


Mr Blair says he was 'open to going sooner if Gordon cooperated, and later if he didn't. As it happened, he didn't really.'


BLACKMAIL THREAT


Mr Blair accuses a 'venomous' Mr Brown of political blackmail as the cash for honours scandal  -  in which Labour donors who gave secret loans got peerages  -  broke.


In 'the ugliest meeting we ever had', the two met to discuss pension reform in March 2006. But Mr Brown began 'by saying how damaging the loans thing was,' and threatened to 'call for' an internal party inquiry.


'The temperature, already well below freezing point, went Arctic when he then said: Well it depends on this afternoon's meeting.


'If I would agree to shelve the Turner proposals, he would not do it. But if I persisted, he would. He made a threat, I disdained it.'


Mr Blair pressed ahead with the pension reforms. An hour later Labour Treasurer Jack Dromey, an ally of Mr Brown, called for an inquiry, which led to Mr Blair being questioned by the police.


THE CURRY HOUSE PLOT


'And so began the coup,' Mr Blair writes. Sick of waiting for Mr Blair to quit, Brown's henchmen began a wave of coordinated resignations in September 2006 - the so-called Curry House plot - designed to force him to name the date for a handover.


'I never had any doubt that Gordon did not merely know of it all but had organised it.' Mr Blair admits: 'He had me trapped and he knew it.'


Mr Blair revealed at the party conference later that month that he would resign the following year.


HIS CULT FOLLOWING As plans for the handover developed, Mr Blair despaired at the people he would be passing the reins to and concluded that Mr Brown would be a 'disaster' as prime minister.


He says of Mr Brown's allies Douglas Alexander and Ed Balls: 'The Gordon curse was to make these people co-conspirators, not free range thinkers.


'The scales fell from my eyes and I realised it was more like a cult than a kirk [church].'


Mr Brown took over in June 2007 and was then 'completely hammered' at the general election this year.

Mr Blair says he could have won but Labour were 'never going to win once the fateful decision was taken to abandon the New Labour position'.


It was not, he says, 'about Gordon Brown as an individual'.


But it is impossible to read the memoirs without concluding that at every stage of New Labour - and beyond - absolutely everything was about Gordon Brown and Tony Blair as individuals.



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A  whisky or gin and tonic before dinner then one or two glasses of wine . . . even a half bottle


As his relationship with Gordon Brown grew worse, Tony Blair turned to alcohol.


He began drinking every day while in power and started to rely on alcohol as a 'support'.


He writes: 'I was clearly at the limit. A whisky or a gin and tonic before dinner, then one or two glasses of wine, even a half-bottle.


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Bottoms up: Tony Blair admitted to using drink as a propr during his more stressful periods as Prime Minister


Blair admitted that he used alcohol as a 'prop' to escape from the pressures of being Prime Minister.


He insisted that he was not an 'excessively excessive' drinker and always believed he was in control of his alcohol intake.


But he confessed: 'You have to be honest: it's a drug, there's no getting away from it.


'By the standards of days gone by I was not even remotely a toper, and I couldn't do lunchtime drinking except on Christmas Day, but if you took the thing everyone always lies about  -  units per week  -  I was definitely at the outer limit.


'Stiff whisky or G&T before dinner, couple of glasses of wine or even half a bottle with it. So not excessively excessive. I had a limit. But I was aware that it had become a prop.'


Mr Blair said he could never work out whether alcohol was good for him because it helped him relax, or bad because he could have been working instead of relaxing.


He came to the conclusion that the benefits of relaxation outweighed the cost to his work.


'I thought that escaping the pressure and relaxing was a vital part of keeping the job in proportion, a function rather like my holidays,' he wrote.


It was not the only health issue during his ten increasingly strained years in Downing Street.


He talks briefly about his irregular heartbeat, which he first suffered in 2003 and which returned in 2004, leaving him short of breath.


Mr Blair, said to be squeamish about surgical procedures, records in his memoirs that he went into hospital to 'essentially jump-start' his heart.


Meanwhile, long hours and frequent international travel was taking its toll in other ways.


Travel played havoc with his digestive system, he discloses, writing: 'I am very typically British. I like to have time and comfort in the loo.


'The bathroom is an important room, and I couldn't live in a culture that doesn't respect it. Anyway that's probably more than you ever wanted to know.'


Enlarge    Nonetheless, he goes on to reveal how he found Prime Minister's Questions in the Commons nerve racking and 'bowel-moving'.


He was convinced  -  partly because Princess Diana had told him so  -  that he had to appear healthy for the cameras, even if he was not.


When he suffered a slipped disc during campaigning for the 2005 election, he brandished a fake grin and was relieved the pain was 'invisible' to the public.


He writes: 'Visible illness is at all costs to be avoided, especially with our media.


'Broken limbs are OK, but anything disfiguring and, before you know it, Quasimodo is running for office. Not good.'


Daily Mail