On Kennedy’s election as leader, Blair broke off his summer holiday to telephone with his congratulations and they agreed to meet soon. In the ensuing years they met many times, more often than the political world appreciated: alone, informally for dinner, with teams of advisers, across the Cabinet table in the Joint Cabinet Committee set up by Blair and Ashdown, spontaneously at state or parliamentary occasions. Relations between the two were friendly although not close, and Kennedy was always conscious of the firm limits placed on Lib–Lab co-operation by his own party. At their first formal meeting, at Blair’s invitation, Kennedy took along Tim Razzall, Dick Newby and Anna Werrin. As he did on every such occasion, Kennedy insisted that they enter by a side route via 70 Whitehall, as Ashdown had for his clandestine assignations, rather than through the front door of No 10. “We never went through the front door because he thought it was pompous,” Dick Newby said, “and he was very keen not to look as though he was desperate to be in Downing Street.”

On arrival the Lib Dems were shown into the Cabinet Room to await the Prime Minister and, while they did so, Kennedy told his advisers: “I am going to make absolutely certain that these discussions start on my terms.” When Blair appeared, Kennedy asked: “I hope you don’t mind me smoking, Tony?” “Not at all,” replied Blair, although it meant they had to hold their meeting outside in the Rose Garden.

Tony Blair remained deeply committed to Lib-Lab co-operation. Having perhaps overestimated Kennedy’s readiness to work with him, Blair gave Lib Dems the impression that he began to woo harder as Kennedy’s caution became more apparent. Curiously, like Kennedy, Blair was profoundly influenced by Roy Jenkins, and shared Jenkins’s analysis that the split between the Liberal Party and the Labour movement that spawned the Labour Party in the early 20th century was an anomaly from which the Tories had benefited disproportionately.

For Blair, such cross-party dialogue was also part of a wider strategy. Fundamental to the electoral appeal of his new Labour coalition was a process of working with centrist politicians and others in a non-partisan fashion to push the Conservatives further to the margins. It became known as Blair’s “big tent” style of politics. There was, however, a fundamental difference in Blair’s motivation to that of the Lib Dems. The aim of Kennedy and his party was to work with Labour as separate parties with the ultimate goal of a coalition based on electoral reform. Events showed that Blair’s approach was to try to draw the Lib Dems, and others, into a pavilion over which the red flag of Labour fluttered: Blair’s instinct was hegemony, not pluralism.

Blair continually pressed Kennedy to broaden the remit of the Joint Cabinet Committee to include policy areas where their parties had similar positions, such as pensions, education and the health service. As Paddy Ashdown had been after his party’s conference in spring 1998, Kennedy was constrained by conference resolutions. Even had he wanted to, he would have been unable to agree to more than a protracted and potentially divisive series of internal party consultations on such a proposition. He had no real interest in maintaining, and certainly not extending, a controversial mechanism inherited from his predecessor that had little scope to influence government policy yet risked contaminating the Lib Dems’ independence.

It was in their mutual interest to continue a grand alliance against the Conservatives, a strategy referred to by Tim Razzall as “two against one”. As the general election approached, the focus of Kennedy’s discussions with Blair shifted from policy to politics, including a meeting in the “den” in No 10 to discuss the general election. Occasionally, such co-operation was portrayed erroneously by the Conservatives or in the media as deals over target seats. In fact, both sides established from the outset that they could not stop local activity by their supporters. Labour and Lib Dem campaigners would continue to fight each other vigorously where electoral arithmetic pitched them against one another, or as local issues dictated. But such seats were the minority.

Tim Razzall explained: “It was massively in our interest, and indeed it was massively in Labour’s interest, to make sure that our respective guns were firing primarily at the Tories and not at each other, because there was very little electoral damage either party could do to each other.”

Blair and Kennedy agreed to co-ordinate their national campaigns to maximise the electoral damage both could wreak on the Conservatives. Blair nominated Charlie Falconer to execute the agreement, Kennedy proposed Tim Razzall. The pair met weekly with Razzall, always alone, visiting the grand room in the Cabinet Office occupied by Falconer. On occasions Falconer would be joined by Pat McFadden, Labour’s election organiser, or Douglas Alexander, its campaign co-ordinator, who was close to Gordon Brown.

At these meetings the two sides discussed the broad outlines of their campaigns and what policy themes they would introduce on which days, with Razzall several times changing his planning grid so as not to get in Labour’s way. Such co-ordination continued throughout the campaign, as Falconer, from Labour’s headquarters in Millbank Tower, and Razzall, in Cowley Street, would talk every evening by telephone.

Razzall explained: “There will have been examples where we adjusted our grid to make sure that we were going on the same topic, but that’s really de minimus. The real impact was the fact that Labour did not turn their guns on us. The major objective for us was to ensure that they did not, because that would have cost us seats. Instead of us being able to squeeze the Labour vote in the constituencies where we had to squeeze it, the Labour vote would have gone up.”

Throughout the election, Kennedy soft-pedalled in his attacks on Labour, saying Blair’s first term had been “a disappointment” but a return of the Conservatives would be “a disaster”. Blair and Kennedy remained committed to working together after the election where it suited them, and continued to do so. Kennedy preferred to pursue such contacts with meetings, telephone calls or liaison by staff when the need arose rather than through a formal structure such as the Joint Cabinet Committee. He would see or talk to Blair at the request of either side and their relationship remained friendly, although Blair grew increasingly irritated by the Lib Dems’ policies.

Several times he and Kennedy had sharp exchanges in the Commons as Blair attacked the Lib Dems’ spending commitments as unrealistic, and expressed mounting impatience with their opposition to student tuition fees and refusal to embrace reform of working practices in the public services.

By then, however, a new issue was emerging that would pitch Blair and Kennedy on to opposing sides as British foreign policy edged towards its most controversial episode since the Suez crisis in 1956, and the United States prepared to invade Iraq.

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