Gordon the grateful is my man now …
There were a lot of long faces around the Cabinet table this week. The first Cabinet meeting of the New Year is always depressing. It seems so pointless hurrying back from the short Christmas break when the country can virtually ruin itself. Sorry, run itself, someone switched off my spellcheck. Four or five weeks is simply too short a time for busy people like me to really unwind. A little ski-ing, a little snorkelling, a couple of orgies, the time simply flies by.
On top of that, the few Cabinet members who still receive Christmas presents from Tony always look especially discomforted; he inevitably manages to pick out the most hideous ties and distribute them to hapless colleagues. The sight of Patricia Hewitt with a chartreuse and orange paisley item knotted around her forehead in 1960s hippie fashion is something it will take me several weeks and brandies to forget.
Certain Cabinet members had further reason to brood. Ruth Kelly, because she was under attack for removing one of her children from the state education system, after nine years during which education has been New Labour's number one priority; and Margaret Beckett, more than peeved because Barmy Ken Livingstone is about to triple the congestion charge on the sort of gas guzzler she uses to haul her caravan.
Tony's anxiety is deeper, and more justified. For Tony, every day in Downing Street means one less day as Prime Minister, one less day to secure his legacy. In fact, he is now so desperate that he is considering claiming the credit for the mild winter, saying it is only his selfless use of long distance air travel that is saving pensioners from hypothermia.
Gordon looked even gloomier than usual too. He knows that every day he is 24 hours closer to Number 10. This depresses him for two reasons. Although he desperately wants the job, he fears he isn't actually qualified to be Prime Minister, since he is fundamentally honest.
Secondly, he's had the estimates from the Government's removals chaps, and can't see why they should charge £10,000 to move his few scrappy sticks of furniture 15 yards. I explained it was because this part of the Civil Service now operated under Gordon's very own private finance initiative, resulting in a thousand per cent increase in price. For some reason this explanation didn't cheer him up.
But the most uncomfortable member of the Government that day had to be John Reid. He was well aware that the animal waste was about to hit the air conditioning, as the nation was about to learn, again, that the Home Office had proved, again — re the latest instalment of the foreign criminals debacle — that it couldn't run an S&M party in a torture chamber.
Give Reid credit, he fought like a cornered, a cornered…well, like a cornered Scottish politician actually, to squirm free of the trap. I'm not saying it was he who leaked news of Ruthy Kelly's abandonment of the state education system to the Daily Mirror, but the coincidence was striking. And since John Reid is scarier than Ruth Kelly — at least to people who haven't been trapped in a lift with the latter when she's in full Opus Dei mode — he might well have swung the spotlight away from his own gleaming pate.
But in British politics, he whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make Home Secretary. And if Alan wants to destroy him as well, then he has no chance. So I made damn sure that those Fleet Street editors on whom I have dirt, which is to say all of them, would give maximum publicity to the latest episode in the black comedy that is the Home Office.
It's not that I dislike John Reid, well, not any more than I loathe almost the whole of the Labour hierarchy. It's just that I am not prepared to allow anyone to challenge Gordon Brown for the leadership of New Labour. As long as Reidy was prepared to go along with the King Gordon coronation option, I was prepared to ignore his irritating self-satisfied bumptiousness. But as soon as he started hinting he would stand for the leadership himself, I had to strike.
Gordon Brown, you see, is my man. I know this seems an absurd statement. You all know how close Tony has been to me, how dependent. But over the months since I finally persuaded Tony to call it a day, I've been cultivating Gordon's friendship, as well as grooming him in the ins and outs of state-craft. He's become a regular caller to my penthouse above 9 Downing Street, where he has eagerly listened and learned. He knows that whilst becoming PM may be a doddle, only I can help him, the least charismatic politician since Ted Heath, win a general election. And he's grateful. Ever so grateful.
So who do you think is going to become the next Chancellor of the Exchequer? Exactly.