Broken Vows Read Online Free Page A

Whitehall had been ignored. First, he had sent the young MP the transcript of a lecture describing the problems of governing Britain.Blair did not respond. Then, several weeks before the 1997 election, they had met in Westminster. Butler had been beguiled by Blair’s charm but only in hindsight did he realise that the future prime minister had not asked how Whitehall intended to implement Labour’s election manifesto. Only later did he understand his mistake. Blair had not asked how prime ministers operated because he was focused on winning power. Despite his lifelong experience, Butler had missed the signs of a politician’s fearless conceit. ‘He didn’t really get what was going on inside Blair’s head,’ noted Campbell in his diaries.
    Over the following days, the headlines were dominated by predictions of a Labour landslide. Blair’s cautionary words – ‘I take nothing for granted’ – were greeted amid unusual bitterness by Prime Minister John Major’s accusations that Blair was telling ‘bare-faced lies’ by predicting that a new Tory government would abolish the state pension and levy VAT on food. Beyond the cynical abuse, The Times columnist Matthew Parris speculated whether Labour’s appeal to Britain’s middle class spelt the end of the Conservative Party and the abandonment of the working class. Simon Jenkins, another shrewd commentator, was awed by New Labour’s ‘discipline of vacuity’ so that ‘an entire political generation has been chloroformed to utter waffle by a leader who is not politically bold’. Nevertheless, everyone agreed that on Friday 2 May the removal van would arrive in Downing Street and eighteen years of British history would be derided.
    A week after their confrontation in Islington, Butler and Blair met again in the Cabinet room in Downing Street. Millions of television viewers were watching reruns showing the smiling victor greeting Labour supporters at an all-night party in the Royal Festival Hall and, later, as the century’s youngest prime minister, walking in the sunshine along Downing Street to witness the beginning of his eulogy that ‘a new dawn has broken’. ‘This is a dream come true,’ the playwright Colin Welland was saying on TV. ‘I’m going to be able to pick up my four-year-old grandson and tell him he has got a future.’
    Exhausted by the campaign, Blair had been re-energised by theexcitement he had witnessed on the pavements as he had been driven from Islington towards Westminster. The clapping crowds, he would accurately say, were ‘liberated, yearning for change in their country’. His message was addressed to those in the middle ground, voicing their hopes and fears and giving reassurance about taxes and the economy. Yet none of the jubilant supporters spraying the media with guffaws about ‘a new era’ and ‘history is changing’ could have imagined the strained atmosphere inside 10 Downing Street.
    After welcoming Blair, Butler told him, ‘We have studied your manifesto and are ready to help you implement it.’ Blair smiled, concealing his disbelief. Thirteen years later, he would write that he found those words strangely disturbing. In his punctilious manner, Butler went through the routine housekeeping list: the senior appointments that Blair would make that day; the seniority of ministers and the seating plan in Cabinet meetings; and the allocation of government houses for ministers. The final item covered the process by which Britain’s nuclear weapons were activated.
    Blair was then presented with a bundle of files. In the traditional manner, the civil service had prepared a detailed schedule for implementing Labour’s manifesto. Butler was proud of the achievement, but the reaction unsettled him. Glowering at Butler from the side, Powell interpreted the files as an attempt to overawe Blair. Butler, he thought, was ‘an old-school Cabinet Secretary who was anxious to assert control over a new and inexperienced prime