minister’.
‘Butleshanks’, as the Blairites demeaningly called the Cabinet secretary, was puzzled by Powell’s hostility. ‘I never saw it as putting the frighteners on him at all,’ Butler would say, mystified. The first sign of his reduced status was his exclusion from Blair’s Monday-morning discussion with his confidants about the upcoming week’s agenda. Powell’s attitude, Butler lamented privately, was ‘quite ridiculous and ludicrous’.
Butler’s humiliation was repeated over the following hours across Whitehall. Freshly appointed ministers arrived in their departmentsexpecting their civil servants to be untrustworthy Tories. During their brief moments with Blair to receive their appointments, any suspicions they may have built up over eighteen years of opposition had not been discouraged. For many, the only surprise was their new responsibility. With some exceptions, Blair had jettisoned his pre-election plans.
George Robertson, a jocular fifty-one-year-old career politician, arrived in Downing Street believing that he would emerge with the Scottish portfolio. The man who Blair feared talked too much was unprepared for his appointment as defence secretary, a brief he had never considered. Chris Smith, a former charity worker, had spent two years developing Labour’s health policy but at the last moment Gordon Brown had taken offence at Smith’s ideas, so, bowing to his chancellor’s objections, Blair made Smith culture secretary. Health he entrusted to Frank Dobson, a mainstay of old Labour. The NHS had never aroused Blair’s interest. ‘24 hours to save the NHS’ had been one of several key election pledges made up on the spur of the moment by a Labour speechwriter. ‘Tony didn’t discuss health when we met in Downing Street,’ recalled Dobson. ‘He only mentioned my daughter Sally, who was part of his election team.’
While Blair decided on the remaining 191 appointments, Dobson made his way across Whitehall to the health department’s headquarters and stepped into a government departmental building for the first time. ‘He looked aghast to have been appointed,’ recalled the senior civil servant who welcomed him. On Dobson’s desk was a thick folder prepared over the previous months. In simple terms, Graham Hart, the permanent secretary, and his officials outlined the problems and alternative policies for the national health service. ‘I won’t need that,’ said Dobson, pushing the file to one side. ‘I’ll read the manifesto and we’ll do that.’ He gazed suspiciously at the perplexed officials. ‘Everything’s OK,’ he said as he leaned back in his upholstered chair. ‘Labour will save the NHS.’ His audience suppressed their unanimous opinion that their new boss knew nothing about the health service.
Two hundred yards away, Margaret Beckett, a former deputy leaderof the party and, in 1994, one of Blair’s rivals for the leadership alongside John Prescott, had just entered the Department of Trade and Industry. To her surprise, she was greeted by hundreds of clapping civil servants. Without a word, she walked unsmiling into the waiting lift. ‘I never expected such a welcome,’ she told Michael Scholar, her permanent secretary. Scholar, a principled public servant, had organised the reception to win Beckett’s trust. Her hostility suggested that he would fail.
As in other parts of the civil service, the department had compiled a five-hundred-page plan based on Labour’s manifesto, speeches and policy documents. ‘This is to achieve your objectives,’ said Scholar, offering Beckett a timetable for briefings. ‘Nice to be here,’ she replied, pushing the thick brief aside. Either hostile or lazy, she would never open the file and refused to meet civil servants for briefings.
Below her in the same building John Battle, a former councillor, would enter his office as the new energy minister. During a two-minute telephone conversation with Blair, Battle was told: