The Blair Necessities
The Tony Blair Book of Quotations - a collection of several hundred quotations by our beloved PM.

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Review of The Blair Necessities and Blair's 100 Days by Michael Portillo for the Sunday Telegraph

The day after the Tory election victory of May 1979, I was invited into Number Ten - as a junior adviser in the Policy Unit. There was a feeling of national refreshment in the air. After the shoddy incompetence of the Winter of Discontent, there was a new hope abroad. Following so many years of Britain’s slide into decline, overseen by a feeble and divided government, we had a new sort of leader with a majority and a mandate. It was thrilling for me to watch the civil service effortlessly adapt to the change of government. I moved awe-struck from room to room in the prime minister’s residence, trying to grasp that we were the government now.

Derek Draper charts the parallel experience of Labour’s arrival in those hallowed premises in May of this year. He thinks something extraordinary had happened because there were cheering crowds, and even civil servants applauded. But there were crowds in 1979 too. In those days, security arrangements were looser, and the throng could gather outside the building. As the days passed, it did not diminish: hundreds of enthusiastic faces, hoping to catch a glimpse of the people’s new prime minister. After five days, I had to leave Downing Street for a position in a government department. I put my bits and pieces in a cardboard box and left by the front door. The crowd mistook me for a straggler from the despised Labour government and jeered me with cries of "Good riddance!".

There was hectic political activity in the early days of the Tory government. It astonished the country with a radical budget and its bold abolition of exchange controls, just as eighteen years later Labour stunned us with its budget, and the decision to free the Bank of England to set interest rates.

Labour is entitled to enjoy these heady days, the more so since they were out for so long. Draper brings to his account the breathy enthusiasm of a young person who has his hands close to the country’s biggest and best train set. But, pointlessly, he gives us a diary entry for every single one of the first hundred days, and attempts to relieve the tedium with frequent descents into the style of the trashy novel. "It is love at first sight" he tells us improbably of Blair and Yeltsin. Chapters open with racy rubbish like "Blair only wears his snug-fitting cowboy boots in private". If I were not being paid to read it, I doubt that I could have reached the end. But even Draper senses the ghosts that hover in the air and spares a thought for the time when the chums will fall out, and when idealism will turn to disappointment.

Not that he reveals much of the substance of that idealism. New Labour politicians do not burn with policy ambitions. Draper authentically describes what has become the daily fare of government: focus groups, sound bites and spin doctoring. The book is itself part of the spin. It shows us a Tony Blair who cannot wait to tear off his tie and get into his jeans, breaks up meetings to play football, and relaxes with his Fender Stratocaster guitar. It’s like John Major’s meal in the Happy Eater and his sessions in the cricket nets, only better of course, as the focus groups undoubtedly demonstrate.

It reminds me too of seeing President Clinton discussing with an audience of teenage girls whether he wore Y-fronts or boxers. That seemed to me a terrible misunderstanding of what people wanted. It is important that they should believe that an ordinary chap can reach the highest office; but once he’s there they want to be in awe of him. I am surprised to find that Clinton’s former guru George Stephanopoulos shares that view. Draper warns that "when something goes wrong, Blair will need that aura of distance. He should not abandon it lightly".

Most people would probably think of Clinton as being the strongest influence on our prime minister. But Draper confirms what I had suspected, that "it is Mrs Thatcher’s shadow that looms largest". When I watch Tony Blair speak, with his well-rehearsed preacher’s hands constantly parting and re-joining, and with those dramatic pauses, I think of another role model: Ronald Reagan. We have elected an actor to Downing Street.

Draper does not manage to convey much impression of what makes the PM tick. Not only is the nature of his idealism unexplained. The Blair that emerges from the book never makes jokes, or references to history or culture. Is it possible that we are led by someone with so little sense of context?

At least Iain Dale in The Blair Necessities (a book consisting entirely of quotations and as such even more pointless than Draper’s) offers us examples of Blair humour. "I thought I told him not to say that", says Blair on hearing that Dennis Canavan has described him as authoritarian. Or: "Can I say a word of thanks to whoever put the posters up?" he quips as at a press conference a poster tumbles down behind him. Otherwise we find the familiar Blairisms that took him to victory, such as "New Labour. New Britain. The party renewed. The country reborn. New Labour. New Britain."

Dale helpfully supplies a section consisting of contradictory statements such as "I will never allow this country to be isolated ‿ in Europe" contrasted with "If it is in Britain’s interests to be isolated ‿ then we will be isolated". But it is more fun to delve into the book and spot Blair contradictions for yourself. " The great evil of our times", he tells Country Life, " is traffic". But, he tells a transport conference, "I am not interested in demonising the car."

I suppose there will be plenty more contradictions ahead before the wheel of fortune completes its turn and Mr Draper’s friends pack up their bits and pieces and face the jeering crowd in Downing Street.