Of course, they knew this perfectly well. Their real fear was precisely that of leaving the people to determine the outcome, since it was obvious that outcome, freely determined, would have stood against fanaticism and for modernisation. When Zahir Shah, the last king of Afghanistan (who had made a state visit to the UK in 1971), died at the ripe old age of ninety-two in July 2007, we were reminded of the fact that back in the 1960s and 70s, Afghanistan had been a nation on its way up, with a GDP per head equal to that of South Korea.

While they had a clear view of the importance of the fight to their ideology, public opinion in the West was becoming more and more fuzzy as to the reasons for our presence, asking whether it could possibly be worth it. Once again, people drew a.n.a.logies with conventional warfare of the symmetrical kind, when what was self-evident was that this was unconventional warfare of the asymmetrical kind. We were engaged in long-term nation-building the purpose of which was as much our security as their nation. That's the way the world is in the early twenty-first century. The wars, the ideologies, the power structures of the twentieth century seem less part of another century than part of another epoch. Unsurprisingly, people's minds are slow to adapt.

So a constant and recurrent theme of 2006 was the increase of endeavour in Afghanistan. I was alarmed about it, uncertain we had the right civilian leadership there and concerned that though our military had a good plan for our contribution, it was unclear our enthusiasm was shared, at least outside of the US.

My mind was full of this as well as of the domestic challenge. At the end of August, just before I was due to go to Balmoral, and with carefully orchestrated debate rife as to when I would finally set a date for departure, I decided to give an interview. You would think I would have learned by then. One rule about giving interviews: never do it without knowing the answer to the obvious question. Sounds simple, but it's amazing how many times even the seasoned pro can walk in full of thoughts, full of great things to say, concentrating hard on what they want the story to be, without ever focusing on the answer to the one question they are bound to be asked.

The inevitable question was: Are you prepared to set a date for leaving? Now, in truth, I had decided that in all probability the 2006 conference would be my last. As I have already intimated, if I could have got more time I would have taken it, but I could see it all closing in and Gordon's folk were becoming bolder by the day. If I announced my departure at party conference at the end of September, it would be a surprise and have the necessary elan such things should have. I was reluctant to do it beforehand, so I shouldn't have given the interview, at least not without carefully working out how I could walk round the question.

However, my mind was full of thoughts about how we had to keep to the New Labour way, how I would flush out opponents on the issues, how I would face the party up to the straightforward task of asking 'change to what?' before deciding on change. Maybe, at the back of my mind, I thought if I could squeeze out more freedom of manoeuvre, then who knows what might happen. Politics is a fast-changing business. But actually I think my mind was really made up. I just wanted to control the announcement.

I did the interview with The Times The Times at Chequers in late August. Phil Webster, someone I had always liked and thought was straight, did the questioning and was perfectly fair. Naturally, he asked the obvious question. at Chequers in late August. Phil Webster, someone I had always liked and thought was straight, did the questioning and was perfectly fair. Naturally, he asked the obvious question.

Now there had been this rather ludicrous formula worked out after the 2005 election of there being 'a stable and orderly transition', which was of course code for 'handing over to Gordon'. It was, in fact, as a formula, flawed. There should have been no a.s.sumption. There should have been a debate and an election. But few wanted a debate, and even fewer an election, so it sort of stuck as an agreed formula.

Part of the so-called 'orderly transition' was that I would set a date. Now clearly at some point I would have to. Gordon, naturally suspicious of my motives and actions and by this time in a sense rightly, from his own perspective was pushing hard for a date and was a.s.suming it would be at party conference.

When I came to answer the question Phil put, rather than walking round it which I should have, I more or less said: No, I'm not setting a date.

I had also been hugely influenced by a typically brilliant note from Andrew Adonis that he had written over the summer break. It is so good it's worth quoting in full.

Personal note for Prime Minister from AA Monday 21 AugustI thought I ought to contribute to your thinking on the Big Issue, though only really to say two unsurprising things viz. a) that once you 'name the date', your authority will drain away rapidly and will soon be followed by growing calls for you to bring the date forward to 'end the lame duckery'; and b) that in my view it is strongly in the public interest that you continue in office until conference 2007, and possibly beyond into 2008 depending on the position next summer.Your political authority appears to me more than sufficient for this, provided you set out an energetic forward agenda on your return and at conference. By contrast, GB's succession will now inevitably involve (whatever his efforts to claw things back when he succeeds) a shift to the 'compromise everything Left', given his a.s.sociates and the forces he has nurtured. He looks set to be a weak if extended interlude between you and Cameron.Two more extensive thoughts on the chimera of the 'dignified exit' and 'orderly transition'; and how to recapture the initiative.I spent a solitary holiday walk reflecting on changes of prime ministers over the past century, and for what it's worth these are my three conclusions:1.There are no 'dignified exits' and 'orderly transitions' just exits and transitions, all more or less ragged and unsatisfactory. That's life, I suppose.2.The more successful prime ministers all left No. 10 with the least 'dignified' and most 'disorderly' transitions. Gladstone, Lloyd George, Churchill, Macmillan and Thatcher all possessed a will to power for a purpose until the very end. If they had been planning their 'dignified exits' they would have been lesser leaders and lesser achievers. By contrast, the three long-serving prime ministers to execute 'dignified' and 'orderly' transitions are Wilson, Baldwin and Salisbury all drained of energy and purpose, their reputations and uniformly disastrous legacies not enhanced by the warm retirement tributes. (Attlee as ever the enigma.)3.The closest a.n.a.logy to your current position is that of Harold Macmillan in the summer of 1963. In fact the larger parallel between you and Macmillan is uncanny. Macmillan too was a long-term largely successful prime minister; a Middle England moderniser with a fine sense of the 'wind of change' sweeping his party, country and international affairs, whose domestic success soon came to be taken for granted. By summer 1963, an election looming, he was engulfed in Profumo, the animosity of the sacked and disgruntled, and a media clamour for the 'new man' to defeat Wilson. After months of uncharacteristic dithering, brought about by Profumo and other forgotten minor events, and poor advice from friends, he finally decided to stay and fight the coming election. Indeed, at precisely this point he pulled off the brilliant Test Ban Treaty with JFK after years of foreign policy frustration (apartheid in South Africa and Rhodesia; de Gaulle's first 'non', etc.). The Cabinet rallied to him with relief once he declared but then, on the eve of the Tory Conference, he was laid low with what he briefly feared might be a fatal prostate condition. The rest is history: hasty resignation under pressure; the 'new man' Sir Alec Douglas-Home (!); Wilson winning a year later by only a whisker . . . and Macmillan in regret for the next twenty-three years.

How to take the initiative decisively?On the domestic front, you need I think to herald a next-phase reform process which you will lead. The best way I can see of doing this is to put yourself at the head of a semi-public 'next steps' reform process to run alongside the CSR and announce next month that you are doing so, to culminate in renewed Five-Year Plans to be published alongside the CSR next year. This doesn't involve the impossible at your phase of leadership a 'new agenda' but rather the relentless renewal and intensification of an agenda (choice and quality in the public services; rights and responsibilities in welfare and public order) which in fact has been largely successful, and which is regarded by middle opinion and the sensible commentariat as authentically yours and the continuing national imperative on a par with privatisation and trade union and labour market reform in the 1980s, and the 'one nation' economic liberalism of Macmillan. It is precisely this continuing vital reform agenda which will stall if you stand down in the next year, as middle opinion senses strongly whatever the gripes about other matters.I could quickly sketch out such a 'plan of reform' in more detail, on the basis of what is already in the pipeline or ought to be so. But to produce something worthwhile I would suggest bringing together a small group of trusted people who have done the business for you across education, health, welfare and the Home Office over recent years, and get a plan worked up asap for internal strategising.Hope all this helps a bit. Andrew Andrew So perhaps subconsciously I was more definitive in my reply to Phil Webster than I meant to be. But the headline was 'BLAIR DEFIES HIS PARTY OVER DEPARTURE DATE', i.e. it appeared defiant, as if I had changed my mind and decided to stay after all. Period. The moment the story came out, I immediately called Gordon to rea.s.sure him I did not mean to carry on to the end of the term. However, I could tell he, and possibly more particularly his team, had decided they were going to be 'robbed' again and had better start the battle.

So began the 'coup'. Essentially, they decided to organise waves of resignation letters and round robins calling for me to go. Somewhat bizarrely, the first we heard of such a letter was when we were on a visit to a care home for problem kids and teenagers in York on 4 September. I always reflected, going on such visits, how lucky I was as a child and then as a parent. Some of the stories are truly horrendous. The father leaves, for example; the mother takes up with someone else; the new man doesn't get on with the teenager and eventually they throw him or her out on the street. Unbelievable, really. Of course, some of the youngsters have deep behavioural problems and can be virtually impossible to parent; but it is all shocking, nonetheless.

This was a new type of care home, helping them, giving them training and education and teaching them personal skills and manners. It was challenging work, and as always on such visits, I felt an enormous respect for the patient and committed service of those running the place. I wouldn't like to do it, that's for sure. It requires a very special and dedicated sort of person. We took some of the kids back with us to the headquarters of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, where we held a seminar and had a meeting with some of the foundation's staff in preparation for a lecture on social exclusion that I was to give at the New Earswick Folk Hall in York the next day.

You've always got to see the amusing side of such things. I'm doing this visit, talking to the youngsters about finding a job, getting a purpose in life, etc. Suddenly I am pulled aside by Hilary Coffman, accompanying me as the press officer for what was supposed to be a routine low-level regional trip, and I'm told that there is some letter circulating from thirty or forty MPs calling for me to resign. From then on the visit is interspersed with updates from my staff about the precariousness of my own job. There's me popping out to be told the latest about this quite serious news, then popping back in to talk with Charlene or Robert about job-seeking possibilities.

Eventually, rather to the bemus.e.m.e.nt of the people in the meeting, I had to take some real time out to a.s.sess the situation. The letter had been leaked to the media. What's more, a minister, Tom Watson, was a signatory. I didn't feel angry at the letter, by the way. I understood it was a reaction to the Times Times interview and an indication that the GB team had had enough. interview and an indication that the GB team had had enough.

In a curious way, I felt sorry for the party and I more or less remained like that up to the point of departure. By then, I had come to the clear and settled view that unless Gordon spelt out whether he was New Labour or something different and defined the 'something different' it was going to be a disaster. I knew it. But to be fair, I had taken a long time to come to know it. Even really smart people who knew us both well, like Philip and Alastair, thought it could be OK, so ordinary members of the PLP were bound to be unsure. Of course there were some, like John Reid and Alan Milburn in the party and Jonathan and Sally in my office, who were absolutely clear from the outset that unless Gordon was unambiguously New Labour which they doubted we were going to be at the mercy of the Tories. If the Tories didn't square up to the challenge, we might survive. If they did, we wouldn't.

And yet I could see Gordon's enormous ability, extraordinary grasp and unyielding energy, and realised those were all big qualities in a leader. Unfortunately, what I had also come to realise was that those qualities needed to be combined with a sure political instinct in order to be fully effective. And that instinct comes from knowing what you truly believe, not vaguely or at a high level of generality or 'values', but practical, on the ground, everyday-life conviction. And at this utterly crucial epicentre of political destiny, I discovered there was a lacuna not the wrong instinct, but no instinct at the human, gut level. Political calculation, yes. Political feelings, no. a.n.a.lytical intelligence, absolutely. Emotional intelligence, zero.

Gordon is a strange guy. But by the end I had to come to see that this was not the fundamental problem. (He had and has a sort of endearing charm in the strangeness.) The fundamental problem was that he simply did not understand the appeal of New Labour, in anything other than a polling, 'strategy', election-winning sort of way. He could see that it worked, but not why it worked. He could understand its detailed policies, but not its emotional appeal.

So in all the meetings and constant interactions we had after the 2005 election, I could tell he thought these attempts by me to discuss policy were all tricks or devices to buy more time. On each occasion, he would agitate for a date; and I would say: well, what policy direction are you going to pursue? And he would treat that as if it were me being disingenuous or seeking an excuse to prevaricate. Or he would say to me: you're doing this for your legacy, but not my interests; and I would say: but if the policies are right say on academies or NHS reform or ID cards it is in your interests that we do them. Anyway, there it is and no doubt he has a different take on it all.

I could see where it was all leading. The party, or a significant part of it, was h.e.l.l-bent on change. I couldn't realistically survive past mid-2007, not without a fight that would be potentially terminal for the government. I did toy with it, by the way. I had a feeling that my going and being succeeded by Gordon was also terminal for the government. But in the end, I considered it more important for the survival of the New Labour project that if it was to be terminal, it should be clear that it was his departure from New Labour, not my insistence on staying, that had done the damage. Clear to whom, though? And how clear? These were good questions and I was not fully capable of answering them.

However, by this time, I could tell it would be impossible to stay to 2008. The media Mail Mail, Telegraph Telegraph, Guardian Guardian, Independent Independent, Mirror Mirror, plus, in effect, the BBC were emphatic: they wanted me out and him in, pretty much for the same reasons as the party, at least so far as the left media were concerned. The right wanted me out for other reasons too. Rupert Murdoch's media were still broadly supportive, but even he, though not pushing for me to go, thought it was sensible I did and make way for Gordon.

So I knew that there were very good objective reasons for the party and, more important, the country, that I stay. I genuinely thought I had the right policy agenda for Britain's future, and thought that Gordon didn't. But, in a way that happens sometimes in politics, all this had been more or less swept away in the Gadarene rush for change.

When I got back to London from the lecture in York on 5 September, I brought together the key people and also took soundings from Alastair, Anji, Peter and other long-time close a.s.sociates. The next day I met Gordon. We sat out on the terrace of Number 10, my favourite meeting place when the weather was good. We had one of those conversations that we had begun to have in the past couple of years, one that takes place on two levels. One is spoken; the other unspoken. Both are equally clear.

He said, in effect, there were other letters on the way. Spoken (him): I know nothing of the details and have had no part in them. Unspoken: You have left me with no choice, I just don't trust you to go.

He had me trapped, and he knew it. But also, in a curious way, he would then need me. And I knew that. It was impossible for me to stay, but it was essential to him that he was not the obvious organiser of my leaving.

Spoken (me): I will make it clear that this conference will be my last. Unspoken: Push me too hard and I will finger you for the coup.

He did argue about the date and I was vague; but I was also determined not to set a precise time right there and then. If I did so, I knew I would be out within weeks. It was going to be a struggle to stay in any event.

I was very calm. Some in my inner circle still tried to argue I should fight him, but I said it was not possible to do it. We would have to allow this to happen with good grace. We would have to use the time to put in place the remaining reforms and to set out a clear and intelligent future programme. Above all, we had to keep the New Labour flame alive. I considered it 90 per cent inevitable he would take over. I agreed it would not work. It was crucial, however, our disloyalty to him could not be blamed.

Tom Watson had been told by the chief whip either to remove his name from the letter calling for me to resign, or to resign from the government himself. News of his resignation was in the media already. I smacked him very hard in my response.

I have heard from the media that Tom Watson has resigned. I had been intending to dismiss him but wanted to extend to him the courtesy of speaking to him first. Had he come to me privately and expressed his view about the leadership that would have been one thing. But to sign a round robin letter, that was then leaked to the press, was disloyal, discourteous and wrong. It would therefore have been impossible for him to remain in government.

It was unusually brutal, but at the time I felt he deserved it. Actually, later I felt sorry for him and regretted I had done it. The trouble with a lot of the younger ones who should have been supportive Chris Bryant, Sion Simon and others is that they just hadn't thought it all through. They got a little intoxicated with the excitement of changing leader and playing a part in it all. They didn't mean it maliciously really. They genuinely thought it was right that I be changed and so it was, sometime before the fourth election. But, as I say, change to what? That bit was just never, deep down, explained in the way it should have been and had to be, for the purpose of serious political decision-making.

The next day, 7 September, I alighted on an easy enough way of taking the sting out of it all. I had a visit to Quintin Kynaston School in St John's Wood. I had been there earlier in my premiership, and had watched it develop and succeed. The headmistress, Jo Shuter, was a thoroughly sensible sort and she wouldn't mind me using the visit to make a statement. I went with Alan Johnson, who had always been loyal and in whose company I felt it easier to speak.

The events of the past days had been, naturally, very big news and there was a definite sense of a party in rebellion, a government in disarray and a prime minister at bay. Some in the party blamed me for not going. Some were outraged at the disloyalty. Most were kind of bewildered and wanted it all to be stopped, and with as much dignity as we could muster.

I began by apologising on behalf of the party, which I thought appropriate. I made it clear I wasn't going to set a precise date now, but I said that the upcoming party conference would be my last. I also gave a warning shot across the bows of those who thought an a.s.sumed succession for Gordon was a good thing. One really bad aspect of the whole business was the notion of his ent.i.tlement to the job. I was sure the public would not see it like that, and though it was almost certainly going to be him, they would resent any idea that it was somehow per se legitimate. It would have to be managed carefully. 'I also say one other thing after last week: I think it is important for the Labour Party to understand, and I think the majority of people in the party do understand, that it's the public that come first and it's the country that matters and we can't treat the public as irrelevant bystanders in a subject as important as who is their prime minister. So we should just bear that in mind in the way that we conduct ourselves in the time to come.'

The statement took the heat out of it all. The next day, a group of middle-ground people i.e. those who didn't consider themselves really either Brownites or Blairites sent a statement to Ann Clwyd as chair of the PLP, welcoming my statement and, in effect, making it clear I should determine the precise date of departure.

At the weekend, the Sunday Times Sunday Times had the story that Gordon and Tom Watson had met at Gordon's house before the letter was sent. I reined back my folk who wanted to go into 'kill' mode on it. Of course, I never had any doubt that Gordon did not merely know of it all but had organised it; however, I had taken my decision to try to leave on terms that no one could say had caused this disunity, and if that meant an orderly transition to Gordon, so be it. had the story that Gordon and Tom Watson had met at Gordon's house before the letter was sent. I reined back my folk who wanted to go into 'kill' mode on it. Of course, I never had any doubt that Gordon did not merely know of it all but had organised it; however, I had taken my decision to try to leave on terms that no one could say had caused this disunity, and if that meant an orderly transition to Gordon, so be it.

If someone came forward to challenge him, that might be a different matter. But if it was inevitable, then let it happen decently and without rancour. As with all TB/GB decisions from first to last, I can't be sure I did the right thing in taking such a view, but I did take it and for the reasons given.

A few days later, I spoke at a conference in London for the Progress organisation, which I had high hopes of transforming into a serious New Labour policy think tank. It had good young people who were onside with what we were trying to achieve. The left had its own group in Compa.s.s, which basically wanted an Ed b.a.l.l.s/GB type of leadership. They were active and smart but hopelessly wedded to a politics that simply had no prospect of ever winning an election. They had plenty of energy, however, and they were organised. My folk tended to be great with the middle-ground electorate and resounded with a sense of the intellectual future of the party, but in organising, caballing, scheming and plotting, they were, like me, in the introduction cla.s.s for primary school.

Part of the worst aspect of the GB modus operandi was the rehabilitation of old-style trade union fixing and activist st.i.tch-ups. All great fun for those who like that sort of thing and this was very much part of the Nick Brown/Tom Watson/Charlie Whelan psyche but completely hopeless in terms of where a modern political party had to be to get anywhere with the right policies and have a hope of winning.

Progress were decent people, but they fast got tricked into this beguiling notion that they had to be a force for unity at a political and organisational level, whereas actually all they needed to do was to strike out with a sound, future-oriented policy agenda and leave political organising alone. The result, as GB's team intended, was that at the very moment they should have been seeking to define the next leader's programme, they became neutered under the pretence of being for 'unity'.

Of course, to be fair, as some of those closest to me pointed out, this was to a large extent my own fault and born of my insistence that I could not be seen to disrupt Gordon's ascent to the pinnacle. I would constantly stress that New Labour was a joint project with Gordon, which was somewhat beyond what the facts would bear. But I was still trying to co-opt him to the programme and hoping he might accept it, if only faute de mieux faute de mieux. Not unnaturally, this left people much confused.

Once I had cast the die, so to speak, it brought a type of relief to the situation; and it reignited an intense sense of urgency in myself. The GB folk calmed down. They had won, though they remained distrustful and I knew would look for a way to bring the date forward. My people were sad, but not as demoralised as they might be. I had to work hard at keeping their energy levels up; but I was thoroughly motivated myself and pa.s.sed some of that on to them.

After what had been a pretty astonishing week I then went on a trip to Beirut and the Middle East. When I returned to Chequers on 14 September, to lick my wounds and work out my strategy for the remaining time in office, I had much to contemplate. Chequers in September is always a good place to be. The weather tends to be rather benign at that time of year, so there was plenty of sitting out in the grounds.

I had more or less settled into a pattern of living there at weekends. I would work hard in the morning, exercise in the afternoon. A stiff drink and a good supper. Early to bed.

The relationship between alcohol and prime ministers is a subject for a book all on its own. By the standards of days gone by I was not even remotely a toper, and I couldn't do lunchtime drinking except on Christmas Day, but if you took the thing everyone always lies about units per week I was definitely at the outer limit. Stiff whisky or G & T before dinner, couple of gla.s.ses of wine or even half a bottle with it. So not excessively excessive. I had a limit. But I was aware it had become a prop.

As you grow older, your relationship with alcohol needs to be carefully defined. When young, you do drink to excess at points, but you go days without it. As you get on in life, it easily becomes a daily or nightly demand that your body makes on you for relaxation purposes. It is a relief to pressure. It is a stimulant. It can make a boring evening tolerable. But it plays a part in your life.

I could never work out whether for me it was, on balance, a) good, because it did relax me, or b) bad, because I could have been working rather than relaxing. I came to the conclusion conveniently you might think that a) beat b). I thought that escaping the pressure and relaxing was a vital part of keeping the job in proportion, a function rather like my holidays. But I was never sure. I believed I was in control of the alcohol. However, you have to be honest: it's a drug, there's no getting away from it. So use it with care, maybe; but never misunderstand its nature and be honest about its relationship to your life.

I took a few days to prepare my conference speech the very last I would give to the Labour Party, which I had led for over twelve years by then and also to reflect and work out my game plan. There could be no easing up, for sure. There were multiple challenges. The media would want me to go earlier, partly because they were impatient for change, partly because it was a sport to them to see if they could score a victory and push me out before my due time. OK, they knew that in one sense I was going involuntarily, but in another, it was too close to being my call, not theirs, for their comfort. We could circle each other, clash with each other, but that was on equal terms. They thought it would be great to get the better of me one last time and force the departure.

Then there was the party. They would accept my ruling as to when the exact date would be, but there would be a constant underlying accusation of selfishness, that I was staying for my own good, not theirs.

There would be a genuine problem of authority. Gordon was the almost appointed successor. He was the future. He would draw people to him. If he disagreed on matters, even Labour ministers would think twice about siding with me over him. And though, to be fair, once I made the decision he did his best to get on with me, his people remained resistant, p.r.o.ne to resentment and straining at the leash.

The unions, who sensed that they were about to come back into the centre of things, certainly in respect of the party, were dismissive. When I addressed the TUC for the last time, they were polite but not much more than that. We both knew what we thought of each other, though there were genuine and really good union leaders like those in USDAW (the shop workers' union) and Community (the old iron and steelworkers' union) who were sad and worried about my leaving, but the big unions were never reconciled. We ended our time as we began: in mutual incomprehension. They couldn't understand why I was doing what I was doing; and I couldn't understand why they couldn't see it was the way of the future. Funnily enough, as people I rather liked them and I was a lot more loyal to the basic union and Labour case than many ever realised. But they thought I was a Conservative in Labour clothing; and I thought they were conservatives in labour clothing. So there you are. But if you look back on the history of Labour governments, they were a lot less trouble to me than they were to Attlee, Wilson or Callaghan. Mind you, they had a lot less power by then.

Also, I had to focus on my own closest folk, in keeping their spirits up and maintaining their sense of purpose. They were an incredibly good bunch. There were those who had endured all the way through: Jonathan Powell, Jonathan Pea.r.s.e and Liz Lloyd. Liz had come on immensely over the years, became deputy chief of staff and brought an order and discipline that Jonathan and I naturally lacked. She had an excellent temperament too: lovely to work with, honest and, underneath all the English feminine charm, quite steely. Above all, capable.

One of the most depressing dimensions of the return of Old Labour politics to the party organisation was that really good young people like Liz were going for nominations for Labour seats and being rejected in favour of those who had the GB machine behind them but who were much less competent. Something I was able to do in the early years of my leadership was to encourage smart, young professionals to join us and to stand for Parliament: David Miliband, James Purnell, Ruth Kelly, Liam Byrne, and, to be fair, the GB equivalents, Ed Miliband, Ed b.a.l.l.s, Yvette Cooper. The mood was for a younger generation of really good talent. Even though I knew GB's lot might be trouble for me, I had an unbending belief that you always promote talent. I've had some harsh things to say about Ed b.a.l.l.s I thought he behaved badly at points, and was wrong on policy but I also thought he was really able, and a talent that any political party should be grateful to have. So I was very clear in my instructions to the folk at gra.s.s roots: don't organise against these guys. Whatever we think, their ability gives them a right to come and be part of it all, and we have a duty to let them in.

But I could see towards the end that this was not reciprocated. And much more important than it being unfair, it is foolish for the long-term health of the party and will be a serious problem for the future. The very problem I had faced trying to be selected in the early 1980s, and the problem the party then had in attracting talent, had been because of old-fashioned fixing in 'smoke-filled rooms'. By the end of the 1990s we had overcome it if you were good, you stood a chance.

In that last period, I could feel it going backwards. Not to have someone like Liz in Parliament, if you could have her, was our loss, not hers. And a serious, indicative one. A party that turns away its talent corrodes its capacity. But she was too close to me and it told against her.

Others in the team had joined more recently. Matthew Taylor had a great combination of intellect and political nous. He could reach across the party in a way that didn't desert New Labour ground, but expanded out from it. David Bennett, head of the policy directorate, had joined from McKinsey. He was a total outsider, and I think at points found the whole political experience alarming, but he was really clever and, as I had wanted, brought an outsider's expertise and different perception a.n.a.lysis to bear. He was very helpful in writing the last policy chapter of the government.

Then the political team, Ruth Turner, John McTernan and Nita Clarke, and in the Labour Party the General Secretary Peter Watt, were of a quality far beyond what I could have hoped for at that stage of the game: dedicated, utterly loyal and fiercely determined on my behalf. But it was a tough hand: a leader on his way out; an alternative power base ruthlessly flexing its muscles; and in respect of all but Nita, a police inquiry into their integrity. When I think of how they managed and performed with distinction during that period, I am overcome with admiration.

Media, party, GB, unions, private office the moment I declared I was going, all of them were going to take a lot of handling.

I had retreated to Chequers to think. I decided the only way through was to give them a defined and clear reason for believing I should stay until the summer of 2007. 'What is the point of you?' that's the question, as Matthew Taylor and Peter Mandelson both said. So I determined on the point. The point would be: I would go out having taken core, fundamental decisions on policy which embedded completely the New Labour programme on which we were engaged; and then I would create a process whereby the Cabinet and party partic.i.p.ated in setting out a future programme. GB could be a full partner, he could agree to take part or stand aside from it, but he wouldn't be able to say I hadn't set it out for him, or that he hadn't had the chance to shape it. If there were disagreements in the course of it, let them be had. At least at the end of it we would have a clear platform. If he took it, great. If he didn't, no one could say he hadn't had the opportunity, and any alternative leadership would be able to grasp it and run with it.

By and large, in the face of much cynicism from many quarters, that's what we did. Despite having said I would leave, I was, after all, still prime minister, and had much nominal and much residual actual power. I could still reshuffle, still promote; even with a hostile media I still had the platform from which to speak, to argue, to persuade. The last nine months could have been a vanity valedictory lots of media voices tried to make it so but actually we pinned down crucial parts of the change programme and we left a perfectly sensible set of future policy directions if people want to take them up on pensions, welfare, the NHS, schools and law and order.

No political leader had ever left like this before. But then, in this regard, like so many others, politics was changing. As leaders get younger and the place of Britain shifts in the world, I may be the first, but I doubt I will be the last.

TWENTY-ONE.

DEPARTURE.

Those months were a huge strain, especially on the family, a cloud of uncertainty and insecurity hanging over them. Though intimately involved, a family, particularly a young one, is oddly detached from the prime minister's job. They witness the events, they partic.i.p.ate in the moments of joy and sadness, but they always feel like bystanders, because, inevitably, in the end they are.

They are relieved of the intense pain and pressure that is the prime minister's alone, but they are not relieved of the scrutiny. And the fact that they can see what you are going through, but at a certain level remain shut out, can give them a strange feeling of being lost, a little betwixt and between, never wholly involved in the prime minister's life but still integral to it.

When we first went into Downing Street, we were the youngest family to have lived there since Lord Russell's time in the 1850s and 60s, when the house was the family home. There were no official functions and it was not really a place of work. Today Downing Street is a busy, bustling thoroughfare of government, with adjoining buildings and hundreds of staff. The iconic nature of the most famous address in Britain means that it is very much the seat of power. It is therefore first and foremost now a working office, and only a family home a distant second.

The introduction of children was at one level lovely; at another, the place was completely unprepared for it. Once Leo arrived, we then had a baby in the building, which was immense fun for everyone and the staff adored him, but it wasn't exactly geared up as an inst.i.tution to creche-style working. But we managed, and though I never appreciated how weird it must have been for the kids to have grown up in Downing Street, we coped on the whole pretty well. Also, Chequers was a blessed relief from the Downing Street swirl. Without it, the prime minister's life would have been very different, and worse.

We lived in the flat above Number 11. We redid the kitchen, which badly needed it, but every refurbishment always brought its tales of expense the contractors had to work to special rules and 'living it up'. People used to be amazed that we had no staff in the flat to cook and so on, but in fact we preferred it like that. It was quieter and more private, though of course there would be a constant stream of duty clerks, civil servants and messengers pa.s.sing through. However, the people who worked in Downing Street were, by and large, friendly, helpful and, in an understated but nonetheless obvious way, supportive of the burden you bore as prime minister. They never talked about it much; but you could feel the emotional succour being gently and kindly offered.

The flat above Number 11 was bigger than was commonly thought and had a clutch of spare rooms above the two main floors, where the living and sleeping quarters were. There at the top, from where you could look out over Downing Street, Horse Guards Parade and St James's Park, I had a gym with a running machine, rowing machine and weights. Nicky had a room where he used to keep his drum kit along with my guitars and occasionally we would sneak up to the top and jam together, making the most frightful noise, no doubt.

Somehow, and probably mainly due to the extraordinary Jackie, who had been with the family since 1998, we got through the adolescence of three youngsters, the birth of Leo and his first years at primary school. You are at your most real in a family at your most angry, at your most loving, at your most suffocated, at your most motivated. You can't be fully selfish in a family. You want to be, often, but in the end it drags you back to your need for and your commitment to the company of others. In the family there are few hidden s.p.a.ces, few facets of character, good or bad, that lie undiscovered, few delusions and even fewer fantasies. There are many glimpses of the best and the worst of the human being. In the end, most important of all, you have to forgive the trespa.s.ses in order that yours too can be forgiven. And just occasionally, you espy the essential strength that the family represents, and realise it is a marvel of human achievement and for all its shortcomings, anxieties and tensions, greatly to be cherished.

We survived Number 10 intact and pretty strong. But the strain of living there told on us all in different ways.

The position of the spouse needs careful reflection. In the old days, men worked, women didn't. Nowadays women do. For a working woman, it is always going to be very hard. It was hard enough for Cherie. She chose, rightly in my view, to remain a person with a career rather than become a political wife. I am not sure in retrospect that it's possible, given the degree of scrutiny today.

Cherie kept up her practice but it was difficult. There were lots of cases she couldn't do because they were politically sensitive. She had no support in Number 10 as the 'official' wife. Fiona, Alastair's partner, and an old friend Ros Preston actually did brilliantly for her, but it all had to be done in a somewhat concealed way. When Gordon came in and his wife Sarah got a proper office and staff, that was absolutely right and should now be the norm.

Cherie didn't always help herself, and as I have remarked before she had this incredible instinct for offending the powerful, especially in the media, who were unfortunately far too well placed in taking revenge; but she did a superlative job. She used Downing Street, really for the first time, as a proper place to recognise charities, having one function or other virtually every night. And she was a rock to me, strong when I was weak, determined when I was tempted to falter, and fierce in her defence of the family. Her media profile became such a caricature of the reality that it really was a bit of an outrage, but she put up with it and most of the time didn't let it get to her. Mutual cordial loathing about best sums up her relationship with a large part of the press! Some of the criticism she would accept was valid. It was the lack of balance that wasn't.

And the truth is that the media attack is often arbitrary; or, perhaps better, selective. As far as I am aware both my predecessors took holidays in homes provided by friends. Denis, certainly, had to carry on working even while Mrs Thatcher was in Number 10, but no one persecuted him over it. She was really attacked over her children, but on the whole, more slack was cut in those days. Now people want to know everything, and anything that is known can always have a negative construction put on it. Whether the attack becomes immensely personal or not depends on whether an editor decides to go for it. If a paper like the Daily Mail Daily Mail decides to do it, others soon join in, not wanting to be left out of the pack. decides to do it, others soon join in, not wanting to be left out of the pack.

Of course, in the end, it is such an exciting and enormous thrill to be there and to do the job that none of the downside should ever blind you to the ineluctable honour of the upside. But after all, you're only human, so you think: Yes, it's a great honour, and simultaneously: You b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!

People deal with the pressure in all kinds of different ways, both prime ministers and spouses. Some drink, some have a wild side, some crack, some find religion, some find special friendship. I do not believe anyone doesn't have to deal with it, however. The pressure is too great. You always imagine the person of extraordinary character, strong, resolute, without fear and without doubt, willing to be alone and to stand alone, supremely confident astride the muddle of human affairs. Such a person doesn't exist. To be human is to be frail. At points of supreme challenge, such confidence and courage can be summoned forth, as can acts of incredible selflessness and sacrifice, but no person is ever such a character all the time.

Then again, everyone needs to relax, to let their hair down, to be rid of the paraphernalia and pomp of power, if only for a fleeting moment. And if you ever get a person in charge who doesn't need to do this, watch out. There will be trouble.

There is also a certain sadness that settles on you that never leaves. As will be apparent from this memoir, I am basically an optimistic and upbeat person. I think life is a gift from G.o.d and should be lived to the full and with purpose. Someone has to do the prime minister's job and someone has to take the decisions, and how many times have I said what a privilege it is to do it?

But privilege though it is, you become aware over time of the consequences of each decision, good and bad. This is especially so when the decisions lead directly to life or death. I remember during Kosovo, when by mistake the allied forces bombed a civilian convoy in which children died. From that moment, I think, the sadness settled on me. I thought of the life those children might have had the grief of the parents, the feeling I would have if it were my child. Now it's true you have to reflect on those who would have died if you had refused to act. If we had acted as we should have in Bosnia or Rwanda, many lives would have been saved. But there would have been lives lost also. In Iraq, we forget the children that died under Saddam and would have continued to die had he remained in power. But it doesn't remove the thought that there are those who would have lived had we not taken the military action to be rid of him. That thought never leaves you; and in the quiet watches of the night, it comes back insistently and with force.

I dealt with the pressure as well as most, if not better. But I had to deal with it. It may have appeared to slide off me, but that was an act. Underneath, it was there. However, I continuously tried to overcome my own demons by confronting them.

Those last months took a very special kind of immersion mixed with detachment. I had to be totally focused, but I knew it was coming to an end. So I operated at two levels: I was completely up for it and making policy decisions every day as normal; and I was mentally preparing to go, thinking about what I wanted to do, wondering what the future would bring.

The Queen's Speech of November 2006 had law and order as its theme. We put up in lights the changes to the Home Office and the Department for Const.i.tutional Affairs now to be the Ministry of Justice ID cards, plus another heavy dose of antisocial behaviour measures.

The reform programme of the ten years of government is known most for the const.i.tutional changes and education and health reforms. Tuition fees, specialist schools, academies and trust schools; choice, compet.i.tion, foundation hospitals, cancer and cardiac programmes: all these, and of course devolution, are obvious.

The motivation for the law and order changes and, in particular, the antisocial behaviour campaign, I have described before. Same with ID cards. But the completeness of these reforms never really took hold, in terms of popular a.n.a.lysis and imagination, in the same way as the other programmes. I believe this is a mistake. Law and order and to an extent immigration were to me utterly mainstream and vital points of what the government was about, as crucial to New Labour as academies or choice in the NHS.

The Queen's Speech, and the actions over the subsequent months, took this agenda to a new point in policy. It was controversial, hotly contested in many parts of the media, opposed by Tories, Lib Dems and significant parts of the Labour Party. I knew Gordon would let it drop when he took over, but I wanted the agenda clear because I felt sure, and still do, it will come back.

I had begun the reorganisation of the Home Office and Lord Chancellor's Department straight after the 2003 reshuffle. It had been the hardest of all, since it meant losing Derry Irvine, my idol and mentor, but we had been trying to get some modernity into the very old-fashioned way the criminal justice system worked. Having David Blunkett at the Home Office helped enormously because his instincts on crime were so good. Charlie Falconer and Peter Goldsmith were both fully onside. We made changes to the Civil Service leaders, and that had an impact, but it couldn't all be done ad hominem. There had to be structural and inst.i.tutional change.

My problem with the set-up was simple: it led to priorities that didn't coincide with those of the government. The Lord Chancellor's office was an amalgamation of three distinct roles: he was Speaker of the House of Lords, head of the judiciary and administrator-in-chief of the courts. For me it was obvious the roles were qualitatively different. What came last in the pecking order the courts was what mattered first to me, since that was where the effectiveness of the criminal justice system lay.

Likewise, the Home Office used to love all the const.i.tutional stuff it handled exercising the royal prerogative, the monarchy, t.i.tles, ceremonial matters, human rights, the Royal Charter, appointments, ecclesiastical matters, marriage and access to information but what mattered to me was crime and immigration. I could feel its intellectual and political energy sucked into areas that were interesting to an elite cla.s.s but left the lives of normal folk untouched. And they needed their lives touched by an effective 'crime-fighting' and 'immigration control-enforcing' machine.

Painful though moving Derry was, and as b.u.mpy and chaotic as the aftermath of the const.i.tutional reform to the office of Lord Chancellor became, the result was absolutely right. The House of Lords got an elected Speaker and sensibly chose a woman, Helene Hayman; judges were appointed by an independent commission; and the Lord Chancellor's Department became the Department of Const.i.tutional Affairs, focused on driving forward the reform and improvement of the justice system, and on reforming and safeguarding the const.i.tution. In 2007, we then added prisons and probation to their remit, which again makes sense since fighting crime was one thing and dealing with the court process and offenders was another, best dealt with in the same department, as was the norm in most ministries of justice abroad.

So we moved the const.i.tutional affairs brief out of the Home Office, changed the Lord Chancellor's Department and beefed up the immigration, pa.s.sport and citizenship part of the Home Office. We also needed to put them within a framework of laws that made sense of the modern world. Hence the antisocial behaviour legislation; the attempts to reform the terror laws; the tightening of the rules on asylum and immigration, the elimination of juries in complex fraud trials (which often collapsed after months due to their complexity, and tied up jurors' time for periods that excluded professional working people from jury service). The DNA measures were a hugely important advance, fiercely resisted on civil liberty grounds that I thought completely spurious. Due to new DNA technology we could match the DNA of suspects against that of previous criminals and from crime scenes, and build a DNA database. The results have been dramatic. Old crimes have been solved and innocent people have been freed. If extended and around half of crimes leave a DNA trace the change to the whole criminal justice system would be immense. Of course, the information must be handled carefully and protected, but the possibility is there to make it very hard to commit murder without detection, almost impossible to commit rape, and dangerous for a criminal to a.s.sault someone.

We had another major row over the Proceeds of Crime Act. This was a reform of enormous purport, which in time will tip the balance of law enforcement in respect of organised crime towards the enforcers, not the criminals. We had begun this legislation in April 2005 with the introduction of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act. It led to the creation of the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) in April 2006. It had been, as ever, strongly opposed. The Tories and the Home Affairs Committee criticised the 2005 Act for the absence of a single UK border police force within the legislation, the Lib Dems were cautious over how well financed the agency would be, the Police Federation opposed the agency as they had concerns that they could lose the traditional independence officers enjoy and that their pay and conditions could be at risk, and the media questioned the overall value of the organisation. But it had given us, for the first time, the power to seize a.s.sets of suspected or convicted criminals on a basis that really did operate as a deterrent.

The whole business arose out of face-to-face meetings I had with police officers and residents in estates plagued by drugs and prost.i.tution. Often the dealers or pimps would carry around thousands of pounds on them, or drive fancy cars. It was of course impossible to prove these amounts of money were the proceeds of crime, but allowing them to do this had two deleterious consequences. First and obviously, they could conduct their affairs more easily. Second and less obviously but to my mind very importantly, it gave them a cachet and status within the neighbourhood. Young men looked up to them. People feared them; and worse, some admired them. They were top dogs. The effect on the local community was awful. The Act gave the police the power to seize a.s.sets money or property after which there was an inquiry into whether they had been come by lawfully. Of course, it was a reversal of the normal rules of proof and evidence that was the reason for the opposition, and understandably so but I felt it absolutely necessary in the circ.u.mstances of modern life on those estates.