New Labour, old hatreds

The End of the Party, then, is something of the natural antidote: an astonishingly detailed, meticulously-sourced and impartial overview of the Blair years from 2001 on. The author, Andrew Rawnsley, is chief political commentator of The Observer and is considered one of Britain’s finest political journalists.

Rawnsley had previously published an account of Blair’s first term in office, from 1997 to 2001. In End of the Party, he picks up the story in June 2001 the day after Blair had won his second term. Strictly speaking, the book documents “the rise and fall of New Labour”, but of course New Labour was primarily about Blair first and Gordon Brown second. It was well known throughout the New Labour era that Blair and Brown were engaged in a massive power struggle. But Rawnsley lays bare the depth of the feud with dozens of new revelations, documenting in absorbing fashion how the two men’s relationship gradually disintegrated to the point where, for several years, the two most powerful politicians in Britain were engaged in their very own cold war — wanting to take out the other but afraid to do so in case it led to mutually assured destruction.

But it is Blair upon whom the book centres, and it is arguably on the issue that has defined Blair’s premiership — Iraq — that the book’s most brilliant, and devastating, passages come.

The tragedy associated with Iraq was on a monumental scale, but as one small illustration, take the case of Dr David Kelly, the weapons’ expert who unwittingly found himself at the centre of the row between the British government and the BBC over the infamous “sexed-up dossier”.

Kelly had been the source for the BBC reporter who claimed the British government had embellished the intelligence about Iraqi WMD in a bid to justify going to war.

In his own book, Blair fails to make clear that he personally was central to the subsequent decision to reveal the identity of Kelly, a decision which would have fatal consequences. Rawnsley, by contrast, outlines precisely Blair’s involvement in the move. And then the author juxtaposes Blair’s address to the US Houses of Congress on July 17, 2003 with Kelly’s actions that same day near his home in Oxfordshire.

“To a final massive ovation, Blair left the podium ‘very excited’ by his rapturous reception. He then had a news conference with George Bush and a celebratory dinner at the White House. Noting how Bush’s staff deferred to him as ‘Mr President’, Blair joked to his aides: ‘Why can’t you be like them?’

“Dr David Kelly had clambered through some brambles to get to a secluded glade. He used the mineral water to swallow down 29 of the painkillers, sat on the ground, took off his wristwatch and slit his left wrist.”

Picture: Labour laser: Andrew Rawnsley, author and political journalist. Picture: David Levenson