The pink lilies at Home Office reception are yesterday’s flowers and have
wilted in the radiator heat. Like the lone receptionist blearily logging the
early morning visitors, they look a bit limp.
The same cannot be said for the home secretary herself, who does not seem a
bit jaded as she sweeps into the building. Jacqui Smith, the first home
secretary in British history ever to have to worry about showing too much
cleavage, is wearing a lacy black camisole under a scarlet jacket.
These days she is too wise to wear plunging tops at the dispatch box, but it’s
clear that “Cleavage Day”, as she dubs it, did not put her off sexy outfits.
“Any woman MP knows what it’s like to have constant harping on about what
you’re wearing,” she says levelly. “Cleavage Day was the Monday after I got
the job. I was in parliament talking about the attacks on London and Glasgow
that had happened the day after I got the job. How low cut my top was had
not been top of my mind when I woke up in the morning . . .”
All the same, the excitement caused by her embonpoint was a rude awakening to
the realities of life as a high-profile female politician. A few hours after
our interview, Smith was accused of having a “love in” with Chris Huhne, the
Liberal Democrat MP, after agreeing with a surprising number of his views on
the BBC’s Question Time. “There will be times when you are treated
differently as a woman. But it hasn’t stopped me doing what I do.”
If sexism was ever going to be a big problem for her, it would be now – as she
faces down the police over pay. A recent study for her own department found
that sexist language and behaviour are still “all but endemic” in the
service. Officers are furious that she will not backdate a pay increase that
is below inflation rates, making her an obvious target for chauvinistic
attitudes.
Has she felt it? “I’m not so sure about the photo they’ve used of me on the
Police Federation literature,” she says hesitantly. (The latest edition of
the Police Federation magazine features an ugly mock-up of her as Jack the
Ripper. “Jacq the rip off” has ruddy cheeks, a silly grin and a peroxide
yellow wig.) “But apart from that, absolutely not.”
Smith is too smart to fall into the trap of bleating about her gender. That
would just play into the hands of the officers threatening to march on
Westminster this week. It’s a battle that Smith is determined to win.
“We were very clear that what happened to police pay had to be in line with
what is happening to other public sector pay. Not because of any sort of
mean-spiritedness, because actually in the end what impacts most on police
officers and other members of the public will be what they are paying for
their mortgages, what the inflation rate is and whether or not we can keep
stability in the economy,” she says.
It is a row about £200 per officer – on the face of it, a trifling amount. But
Smith insists that she is not into picking fights for the sake of it. Bob
Marshall-Andrews, the veteran Labour MP, has described her as the “human and
attractive face of the Home Office”.
“Just when I thought I’d arrived, he told me, ‘That’s in relation to your
predecessor’,” she says. Her predecessor, John Reid, was notoriously
pugilistic and no oil painting. Even her critics would agree that Smith’s
style is very different from his.
“I’m pragmatic, but I know what’s at stake in this job, for the people who
elected us as a government. Determination, willingness to work through the
issues, trying to find the agreements and ways we’ll actually make a
difference to people is very much my style.”
The big test of this approach will come when MPs vote on plans to extend the
length of time that terror suspects can be detained without charge.
Privately her heart must have plummeted when Downing Street bowed to
pressure from police and security services to bring this old chestnut up
again. The last attempt to extend so-called “detention without charge” led
to a massively embarrassing defeat for Charles Clarke, the then home
secretary.
Smith is determined it will not happen again. The proposals have been
dramatically watered down and she believes they will be voted through. She
explains the latest compromise she has made, but the words are unquotable –
the kind of robot-speak perfected by Labour ministers who never deviate from
the script.
She slips into the same Dalek-like language when she talks about what it is
really like being home secretary: “It’s a massive honour, immensely
interesting. It’s helping people to be and feel safer in our communities and
within our borders. I really feel that this work is at the heart of what the
PM wants to do to help people in this country get as far as they can on the
basis of their talents, where everybody is able to get on with their lives
and do the best they can . . .” And on and on.
It is hard to imagine this is anything like what she would say in private,
about the endless fire-fighting, sleepless nights and 18-hour days involved
in running a department dubbed by Reid as “not fit for purpose”. Her
appointment was one of the big surprises of Gordon Brown’s first cabinet.
Smith says she had no inkling that it was coming.
“The PM said, ‘I think you’re going to be shocked’, and I was. I’d [only] been
a year in the cabinet.” Her old job of chief whip was relatively anonymous;
the tricky business of cajoling backbenchers into supporting legislation
they dislike is conducted behind closed doors.
A former economics teacher, she had been an MP only since 1997. Did she feel a
bit green for a big job? “No. I feel, actually, there aren’t many people who
have done as many different jobs as I’ve done, and been a minister as long
as I’ve been, on either side of the Commons.”
On paper, or when she is on tricky ground, Smith is a great exponent of
robot-speak – at times, reciting a telephone directory would feel exciting
in comparison. It is a shame because, as a person, she is engaging, with a
self-deprecating manner and ready laugh.
A cringeworthy photograph unearthed when she first got the job shows her in
pyjamas playing a student drinking game called “bunnies” – suggesting that
she does know how to let her hair down.
As an undergraduate at Hertford College, Oxford, she once went to a party
wearing a black plastic bag. She has also admitted that she occasionally
smoked cannabis. But she insists she was never a real party girl.
“No! There’s one picture of me taken doing some sort of drinking game. Have
you seen any more of them? Do you know what – I’m the first woman home
secretary. If there were any more photos of me in a wild party mode they’d
be out there by now.” There’s no time for that kind of thing now – her job
does not lend itself to much work-life balance, although she is still an
Aston Villa season ticket holder.
She turns to the issue of violent crime, admitting that the government faces
huge challenges to reassure the public that knife, drug and gun crime are
not spiralling out of control.
“The truth is that people are safer, in terms of crime, than 10 years ago, but
I do think we’ve got a big job to do to build people’s confidence. It’s also
about the way people respond to the very small number of particularly
violent incidents there are. Serious violence is something we need to
address.”
Would she feel safe walking alone at night in, say, Hackney, east London? She
looks alarmed: “No. Why would I do that?”
Perhaps deprived Hackney is an unfair example – what about well-heeled
Kensington and Chelsea? “No. But I would never have done, at any point in my
life. I just don’t think it’s a thing that people do. I wouldn’t walk around
at midnight. I’m fortunate that I don’t have to do so.”
Later an aide calls me fretting about these comments. The home secretary might
have given the wrong impression and meant no slight to Hackney. In fact the
boss went and bought a kebab on the mean streets of Peckham, southeast
London, after dark the other day. I somehow doubt she went alone; these days
she goes nowhere without a phalanx of protection officers. No mugger risk
there then.
Another high priority at the Home Office is binge drinking. Does she have any
bright ideas?
“We’re thinking about how we get the messages out to young people: that you
can have a good time without having a drink. There is more we can do with
parents to help them to recognise the dangers of drinking. We’re already
looking at the impact that both marketing and pricing are having.”
Would she consider drastic measures such as raising the legal drinking age?
“I’m not convinced that raising the age is the right way at the moment. I’m
much more interested in enforcing the current age. We are having success in
doing that.”
Smith is popular among Labour backbenchers. “I like Jacqui. We all like
Jacqui,” says one senior colleague, a little flatly.
Like but not admire, I suggest. “Like but not admire,” he agrees. Most
politicians would prefer it the other way round. The odds may be stacked
against her in this difficult job, but Smith still has time to prove she can
be both.
