John Prescott says he urged Tony Blair to sack Gordon Brown at the height of
their frequent rows – but the former prime minister was “scared” of his
chancellor.
He says he also urged Brown to resign and fight Blair from the back benches,
but Brown, then chancellor, shrank from such a bold gamble.
Prescott, who as deputy prime minister for 10 years knew more than anyone
about the furious resentment between the two men, reveals the true depth of
their tempestuous relationship in his memoirs which are serialised
exclusively today in The Sunday Times.
He also discloses that he intended to resign after his affair with Tracey
Temple, his diary secretary, was made public, but he was persuaded not to by
his wife Pauline. She speaks publicly for the first time about the affair in
today’s News Review, saying that “a lot of very bitter women” wrote to her:
“What they suggested I should do to John just doesn’t bear repeating.”
She decided to stick with him after considering that “I can go one of two
ways. Either I can be bitter and cloud my very existence, or I can move on”.
In the frankest and most rumbustious political memoirs for years, Prescott
writes about his shame at failing the 11-plus, his lifelong inferiority
complex and “problems with the English language”, and his remarkable rise
from trade union firebrand to high office. But it is his role as witness to
the raw anger of the Blair-Brown relationship that makes his testimony
unique.
The first member of Blair’s cabinet to lift the lid on what really happened,
he says that:
— Blair reneged not once but several times on promises to make way for Brown
at No 10.
— Prescott brokered “hundreds” of reconciliation meetings and telephone calls
between them.
— Brown was “frustrating, annoying, bewildering and prickly”. He sulked so
often during meetings that they had to be abandoned. On other occasions he
could “go off like a bloody volcano”.
— Blair “doesn’t like the full-frontal approach. It puts him off his tea”.
— Brown held back government money from Blair’s pet projects so that he would
have more to spend when he at last took over as prime minister.
— Cherie Blair thought the “longer Gordon suffered the better”.
— Prescott called Blair “a little shit” during an explosive row.
— Blair was “devastated” and near tears after his son Euan was found drunk in
the street.
— Blair now wants to be president of the European Union or to have a similar
“permanent statesman” role.
Despite his revelations, Prescott declares admiration for both Blair and Brown
and reserves much of his venom for the “beautiful people” around them. Among
the former advisers who are now key members of the Brown government, he
singles out Ed Balls, the education secretary, and David Miliband, the
foreign secretary.
Of Balls he writes: “He is clearly highly intelligent. But I can’t say I
always agreed with his political judgment. He was part of the Gordon group,
running around, spreading stories.” And Miliband was “one of the No 10
Mekons” – alluding to a big-brained alien dictator in the 1950s Eagle comic.
Prescott says that he first met Blair and Brown before they entered parliament
in 1983. Brown was “dour”, while Blair was “fluttering around . . . a
typical public schoolboy”.
As MPs and close friends, Brown was the “obvious leader of the two”. Blair
“looked up to Gordon . . . hung on his every word”. When Blair became party
leader in 1994, Brown was “really pissed off, I should think. I’m sure
he believed Tony had stolen it from him”.
Prescott denies knowing what really happened at the meeting at the Granita
restaurant in London when Brown agreed not to fight Blair for the
leadership, but “Tony has a habit of saying things people want to hear. They
believe him because they are charmed by his smiles and nods. That’s his way.
That’s why I used to call him Bambi when he first appeared on the political
scene”.
As representative of “old Labour”, Prescott was shut out on occasions from
their policy discussions in opposition. He saw it as “the college boys’
coterie, the beautiful people excluding the old bruiser”.
After one such slight, when new Labour’s key figures had met in a country
house, he cornered Blair on a train. “He plonked himself down, all smiles
and charm, and I started on him. ‘Listen you little shit, I’ve got a
question to ask and you’d better be clear and truthful about the answer. Did
you take all that lot down to this secret country meeting and discuss
policy?’ ” Prescott continues: “He asked me to come to his house and we
could discuss it privately. I was getting heated and other passengers could
hear. But I said no. So for the rest of the journey . . . I sat there,
keeping him squirming.”
More serious strains emerged once Labour was in power. “In the first term, for
the initial 12 months or so, apart from cabinet meetings, we’d had regular
meetings of what we called the big three – Tony, Gordon and me. But there
were always tensions in the air. Gordon would get in a sulk and say nothing,
leaving all the talking to me, so these meetings petered out.”
After Labour’s second election victory in 2001, the relationship grew even
worse. “During that second term, more and more of my time was taken up
acting as conciliator. When I consult my notes from that period, I see there
must have been hundreds of phone calls, meetings, presummits, summits and
dinners on various Blair-Brown issues.”
“We met in Downing Street, at Chequers, Admiralty House, Dorneywood,
Edinburgh, Sedgefield, Scotch Corner, even a restaurant beside a Scottish
loch. They would row; they would seek my support. I would try to get them to
see the other’s point of view and eventually arrange a dinner. Peace would
be restored for a while and then something else would flare up.”
He felt the tensions “stemmed from a deep and personal connection they had,
with shared analysis and political insights. I remember once being at a
meeting with them and Peter Mandelson. What struck me was how those three
behaved like robots in a science-fiction movie in which they needed to
download from each other”.
Prescott believes Brown had the impression that Blair had promised to leave
halfway through the second term. “But as we got nearer the possible time for
an announcement, things always seemed to come up to make Tony delay. It was
vital to win the next election, then he would announce it. Gordon would
complain, refuse to cooperate. Tony would give Gordon charge of our election
strategy, on the understanding that he would keep supporting him till after
the election. Then, after it, he’d promise to go. Only he didn’t.”
He continues: “As well as giving Gordon power and position to ensure his
support, Tony’s other technique was to persuade him to back him on certain
matters about which Gordon might have his own opinions – Europe, academies,
foundation hospitals and future manifestos – and in return Tony would come
out with the same old promise. He was definitely going in, er, six months,
perhaps a year, certainly before the next election. When it never happened,
Gordon was furious – and the whole cycle began again.
“Each of them tried to get me on his side, complaining about the other. Tony
would say that Gordon wasn’t cooperating with him at all. Gordon would say
he’d been cheated again. On one occasion Gordon wouldn’t let Tony see what
was in his preparatory budget proposals. He even banned the Treasury from
telling him. That was totally against tradition. The prime minister is
always told in advance.”
Prescott says that once, when Brown “was even more furious than usual with
Tony, I said to him, ‘If this is how you feel, that you’ve been misled once
again, resign’. I think he thought about it, but it never came to that. He
was aware of the possible consequences.
“With Tony, when he was moaning on about Gordon’s behaviour, I’d say, ‘Sack
him. Find a new chancellor, if that’s how you really feel’. But neither
could take the final step. They were caught in their own trap. Tony knew
that sacking Gordon would tear the party apart.”
He adds: “I also think Tony was scared of Gordon. He didn’t want to take him
on. Gordon is a very tough negotiator, doesn’t let things drop, keeps at
something till he forces you into his point of view. That’s not Tony’s
style. Gordon is a difficult character, but sometimes Tony exaggerated how
difficult he had been, just to get sympathy.”
Prescott says: “I have no doubt that Tony was most to blame. He broke his
agreement with Gordon, not once but several times. However, in Tony’s
defence, most of his promises were ambiguous and on condition anyway.”
He argues that Blair “was not helped” by his wife, Cherie. “I think she saw
Gordon as causing trouble and making Tony unhappy which, of course, she
could witness at first hand. She probably had him moaning about Gordon all
the time. Perhaps she personally didn’t want Tony to go anyway – but as the
Blair-Brown relationship got worse, she certainly didn’t want Gordon to be
the one to benefit.”
Having initially been so nervous that she held Pauline Prescott’s hand “for
moral support” in public, Cherie began to “enjoy being the first lady” and
would not have objected to another year in No 10, Prescott believes.
“But, more importantly, I think she disliked Gordon, so she probably felt the
longer he suffered the better – and Tony’s staying on might lessen his
chances of a smooth takeover.”
He says she was also “unkind” to Brown’s wife, Sarah, snubbing her at the
victory celebrations after the 2005 election.
Publishing sources say that Cherie has watered down her attacks on Brown in
her own book, also due out this month.
