In an exclusive conference interview with Matthew d’Ancona, the Home Secretary sets out his manifesto for the party’s future once Tony Blair has gone
‘The opportunity is that every end marks a beginning,’ John Reid says. ‘That is the nature of life, and it’s the nature of politics, and therefore we have an opportunity here to begin to shape an agenda for the next decade. People throw around this word “renewal” all the time. Actually, that is something that should be intrinsic to New Labour. It should be done every year.’
Tea time at the Home Office, and Mr Reid, gesturing pugnaciously with every phrase, is warming to his theme. What Labour needs, he says, is not a one-off dose of refreshment at its conference in Manchester, but a sharp reminder that a progressive party is always in what Bill Clinton calls ‘the future business’. With a doctorate in history, the Home Secretary prefers to cite the philosophies of Max Weber (‘the routinisation of charisma’) and Eduard Bernstein (‘permanent revisionism’).
New Labour, according to the Home Secretary, is not a branding campaign but ‘a mindset. It is a recognition that no sooner have you analysed today’s world and reach policies that relate to that, that the world has moved on a bit and the world includes the aspirations and expectations of ordinary people. So what was good for them ten years ago may not be sufficient for them today as they become more educated, more affluent, more demanding. Higher expectations. And it’s not the role of politicians to complain that the expectations of people go higher.’
Indeed, Mr Reid says, his colleagues need to remember that any democratic mandate is temporary and conditional: ‘Just because you’ve bought a ticket for the game last season, it doesn’t mean to say you’re going to get entry next season.’
The ‘end’ to which the Home Secretary referred at the start of his analysis is, of course, the Prime Minister’s. Under political duress Tony Blair announced on 7 September that this would be his last Labour conference as PM. When I ask Mr Reid what he thinks of the MPs who forced his boss’s hand with a letter demanding a swift exit, he exudes carefully controlled menace.
‘I don’t think anything I can say about that would necessarily add to the unity of the party at this time, and I think that’s important. Let people make their own judgments of what happened.’ As to Mr Reid’s own ‘judgment’ — well, let’s just say that if I were Tom Watson, the former defence minister who orchestrated the plot, I would give Mr Reid a wide berth in Manchester.
Since his promotion to Home Secretary in May, the 59-year-old Mr Reid has ‘remained silent on party political matters.... I thought it was my role to do what the public would expect me to do and that is to pursue my job, support them in the national interest.’
Now, however, as Labour gathers for its conference, he is using this interview to break that silence. ‘However we got here — and I don’t think any sensible person would have wanted what’s happened over the last few weeks to have happened — we now all know, and all agree, that there is a timescale. By next conference there will be a new leader. So there’s an envelope of time on which we can all agree. It would be mad to have some sort of war about what day of what month or which afternoon the handover actually takes place.’
But when people say they want a ‘timetable’, don’t they really mean that they want Mr Blair to go tomorrow?
‘Well, I can only speak for myself,’ Mr Reid says. ‘I think the vast majority of people in the party and in the country understand that the Prime Minister’s said that he will not be here this time next year. So at some stage in the course of that period we have to start a process that may take some months. I think more sensible people would think it would be crazy for anybody to try and have a major division in the party over whether it is this month, or next month.’
What is at stake now, he says, is the very electability of the Labour party. ‘I have always said that the people of this country would expect any prime minister — especially one who has been such an outstanding Prime Minister as this — to choose the time of his own going. And the worst thing that could happen is to push the Prime Minister out. Because our great challenge is going to be to illustrate to the people of this country that whoever leads after Tony Blair is as committed to a modern, reforming Labour party, and a modern reformed country, as Tony Blair was. And it would be absolutely disastrous for that perception if there was any sense that he was being pushed out, because that would inevitably lead to the assumption that [Labour] wants to change direction.’
If that’s the case, should there not be a leadership contest — to make absolutely clear what direction post-Blair Labour intends to take?
‘I’m absolutely open-minded on this, and I notice that Gordon has said that he wants a contest. I notice also there will be contest because another contestant —’
I interrupt Mr Reid’s reference to John McDonnell, the MP for Hayes and Harlington, who has said he will stand. Surely Mr McDonnell will fail to secure the necessary 44 signatures from his fellow Labour MPs to ensure that there is a contest?
‘Well, one presumes that he got that before he declared he was going to be a candidate. I would have thought that was wise,’ he says, doing his best to hide the contempt in his voice. ‘Anything, in my view, can happen, including the possibility that we all discover that in fact there aren’t huge ideological divides; that this is about approach, style, character, as well as about policy. Or alternatively, that there aren’t huge ideological divides and everyone is happy to form one administration behind one person. So I’m at ease, letting other flowers bloom in this.’
Yes, but what about his own political blossoming, the moment longed for by many Blairites, when Mr Reid finally declares himself a contender for the top job? In the past seven years he has held an extraordinary range of Cabinet portfolios — Scotland, Northern Ireland, Health and Defence, as well as spells as Leader of the House and Labour chairman — prompting allies to nickname him the ‘talent of all the ministries’. This rush around Whitehall has not always been a smooth ride. He has been heavily criticised for saying, when Defence Secretary, that he hoped British troops would leave Afghanistan ‘without firing a single shot’. Public confidence in the criminal justice system over which he presides is low. The tasks he faces — departmentally and politically — are huge.
Yet he is the only Cabinet minister other than the Chancellor to register with the public as a potential successor to Mr Blair — thanks, presumably, to his poised performance when the alleged bomb plot was disclosed in August. It is to Mr Reid that those who really do not want Mr Brown to become leader will turn: the son of the postman versus the son of the manse, Bellshill versus Kirkcaldy. And the Home Secretary knows this.
Burgundy tie slightly askew, glasses perched on the end of his nose, he sits on the edge of his armchair, animated and calm by turns in the way that people are when they know that a moment of decision is approaching. He has no shortage of allies who will chip in, and an able chief of staff in Steve Bates. But, in the end, it will be a lonely decision for Mr Reid himself and his glamorous wife, the Brazilian film-maker Carine Adler, whom he married in 2002.
Alan Johnson has pointedly declined to rule out a run at the top job (altho ugh his prospects have been damaged by the disclosure that his department buried bad news about primary school performance on the day that GCSE results were released). Alan Milburn is said by friends to be ‘shifting his ground’ in favour of entering the race. David Miliband has pledged support for Mr Brown. Harriet Harman, Peter Hain and Jack Straw vie for the not-yet-vacant deputy leadership. In recent months, bombarded with questions about his own intentions, Mr Reid has taken refuge in the formula that he has ‘no ambitions for higher office’ — a formula he repeated last Tuesday at the Police Superintendents Conference near Chester. So is the Home Secretary ruling himself out? Oh no, he is not.
‘I don’t think anybody at this stage has to rule themselves out. I think we’ve got time just to take stock of the approach, the strategic position of the party and policy priorities, and I think that people will find, looking at the lessons of the last few weeks, that unity will be at a premium and that actually people want to work together more closely. I don’t think people have to take that decision at this stage. I have said all along that I will not make any statement in any case until Tony Blair has announced he’s going or when he’s going.’
Far from a withdrawal from the race, this is a holding position that leaves Mr Reid maximum freedom of manoeuvre. And, as he goes on to explain, you never know what lies round the corner in politics.
‘I don’t feel under pressure, but then I never have done. I think the one thing that even my worst enemy would not suggest is that I was formed in a spin factory. You know, I have been attacked for just about everything. For being rough and ready, and drinking, for being in the Communist party for about 24 months 35 years ago. It now seems to be regarded as a bit of an advantage that I tend to say what I think, and then I try to do what I say. That’s the way I am. I’m sorry — I mean, if you want politics without passion, go and get somebody else. If you want somebody who’s been formulated, you know, in a sort of plastic mould, go and get somebody else. My greatest freedom is I’ve never actually had any great ambition for high reaches. As my mother used to say, if it’s for you, it will not go by you.’
One senior minister who would like to see Mr Reid stand against Mr Brown interprets the Home Secretary’s strategy thus: ‘The key for John is just getting on with the job. He knows that as things stand he doesn’t have a hope. But Gordon may burn out, as the frontrunner often does. You won’t see John make a move too quickly. He might even decide not to make a move at all. But he won’t let Gordon have an open run.’
Certainly, the Home Secretary shares with the Chancellor a tendency to interpret his ministerial portfolio in the broadest possible terms. As well as restructuring his own department — a ‘profound overhaul’ — Mr Reid is roaming freely across the policy landscape, encouraging what he calls a ‘year of generation’ and free thinking. Perhaps mischievously, he takes Mr Brown at his word when he says he wants a debate. According to the Home Secretary, it is time for younger ministers — he cites Douglas Alexander, David Miliband, Andy Burnham, Jacqui Smith and his own minister of state, Liam Byrne — to assume a more central intellectual role, not least because they are ‘closer to the reality than those of us who’ve spent a longer period in government’.
His own view of what the state should do, and his strong advocacy of choice in the public services, is driven by a fear of what Robert Reich, the former US secretary for labor, calls the ‘politics of secession’: where the middle class, dismayed by public provision, flees to the private sector in health and education at great personal cost and with a deep sense of betrayal. This, Mr Reid argues, is a potentially grave danger for New Labour, after nine years in office: namely that ‘increasingly individualistic people will walk away from collective effort and collective values because we haven’t displayed their relevance in today’s world’.
Although his official policy beat is domestic, his perspectives are increasingly global. He sees the management of migration — his current preoccupation — as a fundamental test for modern government, in which policy formulation must not be hampered by political correctness. Out of the blue, the Home Secretary — a Catholic and the first such to hold the position of Northern Ireland Secretary — links the problem of self-censorship to the Pope’s recent travails.
‘This is a world in which that discussion becomes very difficult. You’ve seen the events of the last few days. So we have to have such a discussion on these big international affairs and terrorism and the nature of the values. We have to approach that, of course, with a caution about the sensitivities of others. But we also have to have a degree of courage in facing up to it and never be deflected from discussion by the threat of violence. We have to make sure that that is not how we resolve things.’
Would Benedict XVI have felt compelled to apologise if he had quoted a 14th-century emperor disdaining a religion other than Islam? ‘I don’t know.’ Mr Reid broods over the question. ‘I just ...I think this is symptomatic of deeper problems internationally.’
Meanwhile Labour faces its own deep problems on the home front from David Cameron, consistently ahead in the polls and preparing for his first conference as leader. Does Mr Reid think the Conservatives can win?
‘Well, there’s an old saying that oppositions don’t win elections — governments lose them. When I worked, many years ago, for the leader of the Labour party’s office, our experience up to 1983 led me to add a sentence to that, so that it read: “Oppositions don’t win elections, governments lose them — unless the opposition is trying harder than the government is to lose.” Which is what the Labour party did during the 1970s and 1980s. I hope to God we never go back to that — and I think that sums up where we are.’
A warning, then, from a veteran of the Kinnock era. The Tories, he goes on, have become less dogmatic under Mr Cameron. He is not yet impressed by the substance (‘where’s the beef?’). But, the Home Secretary concludes, victory could yet be Cameron’s if Labour grows lazy, turns inward and ceases to update its message.
‘I think if he adds substance to the undoubtedly improved communications strategy that he’s got, and we leave the centre ground, he will walk on to it. No doubt in my mind about that at all. And I think that’s what he’s counting on, and we would be mad to do what our opponent wants us to do.’
But whom will Labour elect in order to thwart Mr Cameron? All the auguries point towards Mr Brown. But nothing is certain in politics. Mr Reid is a politician who openly revels in the uncertainty principle: ‘As far as circumstances are concerned, I can’t control them, because I don’t know what’s going to happen round the corner.’ He understands the power of chance in his chosen walk of life. ‘Luck,’ he says, ‘is where opportunity meets preparation.’ He is certainly prepared. And now we shall see if he is to be given the opportunity.