Extracts from Peter Hain's autobiography, Outside In, portray a prime minister who could not juggle issues or delegate
Brown as prime minister
Although his work-rate could not have been surpassed, Gordon Brown seemed unable to delegate. Cabinet ministers and permanent secretaries soon complained that they could not get decisions from No 10. Tony somehow managed to juggle dozens of issues at a time, to be focused on the most pressing but to be sufficiently across them all to run a smooth and efficient ship. Gordon drilled down in forensic detail on the issue of the day, neglecting the many others competing for his attention.
At the beginning especially, his office was dysfunctional. Nobody seemed to have sufficient authority or self-confidence to give you an answer. Under Tony, you could call Jonathan Powell, Alastair Campbell, Anji Hunter, Sally Morgan or later Ruth Turner and they would either know Tony's mind or get back to you very quickly if they needed to consult him. Under Gordon, papers or verbal requests disappeared into a black hole.
I had a tortuous experience over new statistics due for publication appearing to show foreigners had taken an alarmingly high proportion of the 3m new jobs created since we had been in power. Immediately I saw them I knew they would be incendiary, so I had a rebuttal and analysis for Gordon prepared and ensured key members of his staff were phoned to clear both the timing for releasing the figures and the best line to take. I spoke to his chief of staff, Tom Scholar, myself. Everything was agreed.
By coincidence I was with Gordon the evening before the figures were released and thought of mentioning them to him; but he was rushed and the meeting was on Wales with Rhodri Morgan so I didn't. A mistake. With the story leading bulletins early the next morning Gordon called me around 6.30 am, fuming. He kept complaining: "This destroys our employment record," as if it was my fault. "But I was told you cleared it," I replied. "No, no," he stormed.
Alastair Campbell
As I saw at close quarters, Alastair Campbell was brilliant at this task. But he became so aggressively phobic about his former profession of journalists that he ceased to be as effective. I remember finding him in his office in No. 10 one day wearing a baseball cap emblazoned with "media scum". "I hate the tossers," he said cheerfully.
Nelson Mandela and the Iraq war
My own close family flatly disagreed with me. My parents were implacably opposed, perhaps the main political disagreement I had ever had with my dad, who in so many ways was my mentor. My wife Elizabeth disagreed (she thought we should be toppling Mugabe instead). My sons Sam and Jake had a go at me. So did virtually all my political friends and close colleagues. Nelson Mandela phoned me, more angry than I had ever known him, almost breathing fire down the line: "A big mistake, Peter, a very big mistake. It is wrong. Why is Tony doing this after all his support for Africa? This will cause huge damage internationally."
Prince Charles and fox hunting
Prince Charles did, however, have one major disagreement – over hunting with hounds. Legislation to ban it was taken through parliament in 2004 while I was leader of the Commons. Although strongly backed by animal lovers, it was highly controversial. During one of our conversations, the prince suddenly brought up the subject, explaining his support for hunting, very exercised. "It's a great British tradition," he said, leaning forward, and confiding plaintively: "Do you know, the best thing is when I join everyone afterwards at the local pub. It's my only real opportunity to meet ordinary people properly."
Martin McGuinness
Incredibly for a hardline Irish republican he was also a big fan of the English cricket team, able to recite match statistics and comment expertly on each of their batsmen or bowlers. England's victory over Australia in the Ashes series in 2005 especially enthralled him, and we marvelled at Welsh fast bowler Simon Jones's then novel 'reverse swing' technique.
Once, after my then political director, Jonathan Phillips, and I had had a good meeting with Adams and McGuinness, the former raised a local constituency issue. I replied: "Don't worry about it, Gerry. I'll ask Jonathan to look at this personally, I know you trust Jonathan." McGuinness looked me in the eye and said: "Peter, we don't trust any of you. Don't think for a minute that we trust any of you!" It was not said in an unfriendly way.
Gerry Adams
Bespectacled and tall, with greying black hair and a bad back, Adams often seemed tired. There was a sense with him that if we did not succeed in getting a settlement in this phase, then he might have little more to offer, as if the whole long journey had exhausted his generation of republican leaders, now edging into their sixties, and anxious that their children and grandchildren did not have to go through the same arduous experience. He would occasionally disappear to his retreat in Donegal to recuperate.
Like the other leaders I was dealing with, I always tried to find a point of human contact beyond the tensions of the politics. That was less easy with Adams, though he could expound at length about his love for shrubs and trees, and how he was husbanding new plants in his garden. Once, during a lengthy interlude in negotiations at Hillsborough Castle, he explained how he had walked its gardens and come across some shrubs he fancied, surreptitiously digging one out and placing it carefully into his car boot to transplant back home.
Protecting pensioners
I was driven back late from Wales and got into Downing Street early, well briefed about all the issues to find Gordon still in a bad mood, Alistair sitting quietly beside him. I was on the receiving end of a repeat rant: impossible situation, divided government, not a justified case, useless ministers etc. And a fresh argument: the danger was the private sector would transfer all the risk to the state and that the Pension Protection Fund could be affected – a valid point, I replied, but still missing our fundamental predicament: "The gap between us is very small. It just won't stand up in parliament or to public scrutiny. We will be pilloried if we move significantly towards what would settle the matter, but then hold back on the last small bit."
"Look," I added in exasperation, "if you instruct me to hold the line, I will have to do so. But you will be the political villain. It's you they will be gunning for, not me."
Abruptly Gordon changed focus, turning to Alistair: "Do you accept these figures of Peter's?" Yes, was the reply, the figures had all been agreed. Satisfied, Gordon seemed suddenly to come to his senses. "OK then. It's really important we move to an early resolution of these issues." We haggled over the detail but his mood had changed dramatically. Having finally taken the plunge, he was now very anxious for an early announcement and statement to parliament.
My astonished officials had been certain I would be forced into an unacceptable compromise, but the victory was enthusiastically welcomed by the pensioners when I announced it on 17 December 2007. That day Gordon and I were together again at a cabinet committee on welfare to work. "You're a hero," he told me.
"No, you are the hero for agreeing to it," I replied.
"Everyone is telling me you are the hero," he insisted. His jovial jesting was so different from his bullying the previous Tuesday and Wednesday. But that was Gordon for you.
Sadly for him and for us all, he was a well-intentioned, superhumanly dedicated and decent, but dysfunctional prime minister.
MI5
Late at night in July 2005, my mobile phone rang. A telephone interception was needed on a suspect for the bombing of London's transport system three weeks earlier. Ironically, he was located in a house a couple of miles away from our London home; I immediately agreed. Around midnight, as I was about to fall asleep, there was another call concerning three more people – also London bombing suspects – who had either phoned the flat or were also in it. Then around six the following morning, my phone rang again: one of the people arrested as a result of an interception I had authorised had ominously shaved all his bodily hair as if readying for a suicide attack, and the surveillance needed to be widened.
A year later, again shortly before falling asleep in our London home, I was called by the Home Office security unit. Regular briefings had confirmed worrying levels of al-Qaida-linked activity. But now another house in London was being watched where it was believed a cell was planning a terrorist act and might have a "dirty bomb" stored there. They had a further request; could I leave my phone on all night and could they call back at any time as it was a very serious situation? They called twice, in the early hours and then at about six in the morning. Later that day they thoughtfully called again to say the plot had been foiled and to thank me. Throughout, London had slept blissfully unaware of the threat – still less of the efforts to thwart it.