Chapter 18
Now that Tony was Leader of the Opposition, our visits to Sedgefield became less frequent. Looking back from the vantage point of a woman now in her fifties, I don’t really know how I coped. Although we kept basic clothes at Myrobella, there was still a lot to take with us, not least the hamsters that, for some reason lost in the annals of the Blair family history, always came, too. Live animals weren’t the only thing to think about.
One Friday I was doing a tribunal in Cambridge against Charlie Falconer. As we had a dinner party in the constituency that evening, I’d done the shopping for it in London the night before. I thought the case was going to settle, but it didn’t, and so we were fighting. So there I was fishing out my brief from my bulging briefcase, and Charlie remembers watching in horror as a leg of lamb emerged, dripping blood all over the inside of my sleeve.
As the children grew older, Tony would increasingly go to Sedgefield on his own, leaving on Friday and returning early on Saturday evening. On weekends like those, when the nanny was having her well-deserved time off, I would finally have time to be a normal mother. A favorite Saturday activity was the Sumix Centre, a children’s choir based in Thornhill Square, where Bill and Katy Blair lived. After dropping the kids off at Sumix, I’d pop into Bill and Katy’s for a cup of coffee, then pick up the kids and go home via Lyndsey’s. Then it would be back to Richmond Crescent to help make supper for when Daddy got home.
I have always enjoyed cooking. Roasts were the Myrobella specialty, and on a Sunday I would busy myself in the kitchen while Tony took the children for a walk, often to a place that we called “Wind in the Willows,” a house his parents had always hoped to buy but never did. In London my repertoire revolved around spaghetti and lasagne. We always needed things that could stretch because we never knew who would drop in. I would often experiment, not always successfully it must be admitted. On weekends we would eat together as a family. During the week the nanny usually cooked for the kids, while I did dinner for Tony and me.
By the end of 1995, election fever was mounting. John Major’s government lurched from crisis to crisis, and the general feeling was that it was hanging by a thread. The Tory majority in Parliament was down to twenty-one members and falling; rebels were defying the party line; dissent within the Cabinet over Europe was rife (Major called the Euroskeptics “the bastards”); and there was a tide of sleaze, culminating in a trail of brown envelopes originally reported to be stuffed with cash intended as bribes for several MPs in the “cash for questions” scandal. In addition, the repercussions of the Black Wednesday stock market crash continued to affect both business and individuals, including our family.
Meanwhile I worked on losing weight, while Carole helped me build up my wardrobe. This was not as flip or self-centered as some people might think. The days of thinking that Tony could go to a function on his own while I slobbed out in front of the television were long gone. I was part of the package. Everything would be judged, often cruelly.
Suddenly we were on everybody’s list. Tony’s view was that if an event had political implications, we had to go. So we did, and of course our picture got taken. I can remember the writer Ken Follett, a very public Labour supporter, inviting us to his house: a private dinner, or so we thought. The press had prior notice, however, and the moment we opened the car doors, cameras were clicking. Alastair was furious and gave Ken a tongue-lashing. No doubt he was rude in the way that only Alastair can be, and I don’t think Ken ever forgave him. Alastair took the view that the Folletts were doing it for their own publicity; the Folletts said they hadn’t tipped anyone off and were offended that he’d said they had.
The clothes-buying routine was slowly evolving into something less hit-and-miss. I was using Ronit Zilkha, Caroline Charles, Betty Jackson, Ally Capellino, Paddy Campbell, and Paul Costelloe, all British designers. The clothes would usually have to be altered (that bottom, those hips), and soon a more organized approach evolved. By the time I got to Downing Street, I’d choose from the collections six months before they appeared in the shops. (I’d go to the offices and warehouses once the particular designs had been earmarked.) In September it would be things for the following summer. In January or February I’d be buying for the following autumn/winter season.
It was fascinating to get a glimpse of how the fashion industry works. There I was in the thick of it, talking to buyers and models as well as designers. I saw just how thin the models really were and how they smoked nonstop, and although I never saw them doing cocaine myself, I knew from what others told me that it was rife. I became very friendly with some of the designers. Paddy Campbell, for example, is a fascinating woman who started off as an actress, and we found we had a lot in common.
I didn’t specifically look for women designers, but apart from one or two, it ended up that way. The lovely Paul Costelloe was an exception, a real Irish flirt. I’ve also bought things from Paul Smith. In 1995 Tony and I were invited to an event in the Indian community, and they suggested that it might be nice if I could wear a sari. I mentioned this to Bharti Vyas, the woman who ran the beauty clinic where I’d had my first facial, and one of her staff — a cousin, I think — was persuaded to lend me one of hers. I loved it. A sari is incredibly flattering for my kind of shape; it really makes you stand properly and feel a bit like a princess. A few weeks later, we went to a reception in the Sikh community, and a young woman came up and introduced herself. She was a designer, she said, and would like to work with me.
“The thing is,” she said, “you and I are the same shape, so if something works on me, it would probably work well on you.” That was how I met the fantastic Babs Mahil, who has designed all my Indian things ever since.
Early in 1997 Tony and I met Diana, Princess of Wales. Maggie Rae, by then a partner at another firm, had been involved in her divorce, and Diana had told her that she wanted to meet Tony. She was keen to show that she had something to offer this country, she said, and believed she could do a lot to help promote a more modern image of Britain. As the need for Britain to engage with the modern world was central to Tony’s mission, he was quite taken with the idea.
It was all conducted in the utmost secrecy. Maggie invited Diana to her place for dinner, and Tony and I were invited, as well as Alastair and Fiona. By this time Maggie had moved from her original wreck, but not very far. Diana had already got there by the time Tony and I arrived, and she was down in the kitchen chatting with everybody. She seemed perfectly at home in ordinary surroundings, even making Alastair a cup of tea at one point. What most struck me was how completely obsessed Alastair was by the idea that she fancied him. She was certainly flirting with him (more than with Tony), much to Fiona’s irritation, but every time she moved out of earshot, he’d say to Tony, “She really fancies me, and she’s only asked you so that she can see me.” Although he was doing it in a jokey way, such is his ego that part of him probably wanted to believe it.
There is no doubt that Diana was beautiful, more so in the flesh, perhaps, than came across in photographs. She was tall and slim and immaculately turned out. With me, I think, she was anxious to show her serious side. (No doubt she’d worked out that this would go down better than the flirtatious eyelash fluttering that had Alastair drooling.) Although she said she was no great intellectual, she projected the image of someone who had something to offer. And I believe she did have something to offer. If you have that kind of charisma, it makes sense to use it. Tony certainly saw this, and no doubt in Tony she saw someone who had a similar allure and magnetism.
I remember the one thing that came over strongly was how she felt about her boys and how close to them she was, how much a part of her life they were. She was concerned that William should be brought up in a more modern way than his father had been, and she wanted to see a modern monarchy. She was keen to stress that she, too, was a modern person. By this time she was involved in the land mine issue, and she put forward the idea that she could have a role in promoting Britain in the wider world as a sort of roving ambassador. Tony was certainly considering whether there was a way we could use her talents for the benefit of the country. Although she didn’t say she was actually a supporter of New Labour, she certainly implied that she was, though whether she really was, is another question.
A few weeks later I met Norma Major at the Daily Star Gold Awards. We were both presenting awards — it was the first time I had been asked to do something like that on my own account. I hadn’t met her before, but she came over and shook my hand (the press took a picture that appeared everywhere the next day), which I thought was incredibly gracious of her. She didn’t have to do it.
Over the eighteen months since Tony had become leader, his office had coalesced into a very strong team that became like an extended family. Anji Hunter — known, not entirely affectionately, as “the gatekeeper” — ran his office, with Kate Garvey under her as diary secretary. Liz Lloyd did research. Jonathan Powell had arrived a month or so after Alastair to serve as chief of staff. Tony wanted someone who knew about the Civil Service, and Jonathan had been a diplomat, working in our embassy in Washington, which was where Tony first met him. What always struck people as particularly amusing, however, was that his brother Charles had been Margaret Thatcher’s right-hand man.
It was clear that Anji and Alastair were resentful of Jonathan. They were incredibly dismissive, saying that because he’d been in the Foreign Office, he didn’t understand politics. But the point was that he knew how the Civil Service operated, and that was why Tony needed him. For a while there was a definite jockeying for position, a “We were here first” attitude and “Can you really be on our side because you’ve been working for the government all this time?” I was inclined to take Jonathan’s part, first because I’m a bit perverse, but also because I thought they were giving him far too much of a hard time. He’s a lovely person to have around, a Tigger-like character, and charming in the way that Alastair is charming — the difference being that Alastair is a charming thug, and Jonathan doesn’t have an ounce of thuggery in him. I also like him because he’s eccentric — tall, gangly, and always terribly untidy. Jonathan never cares what he wears, and once we were in Downing Street, Tony was always giving Jonathan his old shirts and ties.
Jonathan’s role was to prepare our people for government, which he did brilliantly. He is a public-school boy, clever and fantastic on policy. He was Tony’s right-hand man all the way through the Northern Ireland peace process.
After their initial shadowboxing Jonathan and Alastair got on very well, not least because their areas of expertise were entirely different. Jonathan was in charge of the policy people, and he handled the details of policy and the niceties of negotiating very well. Alastair hasn’t the slightest interest in policy; he either loves you or he hates you, and people either love or hate him.
With all this going on, it is not perhaps surprising that the office was intruding more into our family life than it had before. If there was work to be done, Tony had a choice: either he stayed in his office in Westminster, or he came home and the people he needed to see came with him. His visits to Trimdon became more infrequent, and John Burton was left to keep constituency matters ticking over. Everyone was so focused on winning the forthcoming general election that it became all-consuming. Almost the only person who didn’t assume that Tony was going to win was Tony. His mantras were “No complacency” and “Do not take anything for granted.” At some point before the election, a television reporter from ITV interviewed us in Richmond Crescent and asked me how I thought Downing Street would cope with having young children living there.
“Well,” I said, “Downing Street will just have to get used to the idea of having noise and piano practice and friends round for tea.”
Alastair got very upset. I shouldn’t have answered the question, he said, as it made the assumption that we were going to win. While we were doing the interview in the garden, Euan had been playing the piano inside, so Alastair negotiated that ITV could have a shot of Euan practicing in return for their not broadcasting my remark. I was not happy. I considered my comment perfectly harmless, and I would rather not have had Euan involved in any way. Alastair just kept repeating, “You can’t take the electorate for granted.”
Inevitably Alastair won these arguments. Nevertheless, I think he found me a bit of a dilemma. He once said that I had the brains of a man and the emotions of a woman, and he found that very difficult to deal with. The truth is, he never believed that women have equal capacity.