A MESSIANIC MONEY-GRUBBER CONFESSIONS OF A POLITICAL MAVERICK BY AUSTIN MITCHELL

... not to mention vacuous, paranoid and a liar: The scathing verdict of ex-Labour MP Austin Mitchell on Tony Blair (but wait until you hear what he has to say about our other PMs!)

ON SATURDAY, long-time Labour MP Austin Mitchell laid bare his loathing for the bureaucratic European Union. Today, in the second extract from his new memoir, he offers a waspish take on the prime ministers who sought to make their mark on Britain in recent decades as he looked on sardonically from the backbenches.

MY four decades of exposure in Parliament to that rare breed who inhabit No. 10 lead me to the conclusion that prime ministers are more human, and more fallible, than the supermen they’re puffed up to be. In the end, they have all failed through their human inadequacies: Thatcher’s intolerance, Blair’s egotism, Cameron’s overconfidence.

All feel insecure. They know their own faults, Blair better than Thatcher, and all realise that they can’t live up to the confident, powerful image that is projected to the world.

Most were hoisted by their own petard: Blair by Iraq, Thatcher by her dislike of the Eu, Cameron by his referendum.

Prime ministers arrive fresh and promising, but gradually become remote and out- of-touch. They live in a protected enclave, surrounded by courtiers and visited by billionaires, financiers and newspaper editors.

This makes them increasingly displaced from the real world and real people. Cool Britannia had little relevance in the back streets of rochdale.

All begin to feel themselves indispensable. Most stayed on too long, until they had to be thrown out by their party or the people.

Being top dog is debilitating. It drains prime ministers, destroys the gloss and leaves them running on empty.

Labour’s Harold Wilson, the only one who recognised this, confessed that, towards the end, only brandy made the job bearable.

As for Margaret Thatcher, though I opposed almost everything she stood for, she got top marks from me for her cynicism about the Common Market.

She even read my letters telling her how to run the country and wrote back graciously explaining to me how wrong I was. No other prime minister ever did that.

BLAIR . . . LABOUR’S TRAGIC WASTER

ToNY BLAIr was God’s gift to the Labour Party; its saviour; its most successful election winner and the best figure to emerge from the PM production line since the Angel Gabriel. or so he told me.

He even had some saintly characteristics: a nice public school lad, good-looking in a Bambi sort of way, eloquent in a verbless fashion, with a pushy wife (every politician should have one).

Best of all, Tony was a great actor, with a barrister’s ability to present any case and an eloquence that turned promises into aspirations rather than commitments. He shone in his own personal spotlight, which was permanently directed to pick him out.

The art of political oratory is to say nothing passionately. Tony had it. Everyone came away believing he was on their side, though all they’d really had was a sprinkle of stardust and a warm smile. I called him Britain’s Great Leader, the Kim Il-sung of Downing Street.

His self- deprecating humour concealed his self- love. As he modestly proclaims, Tony won power for the party. His problem was that he had no firm idea of what to do with it beyond ‘modernisation’. He took the party on a journey but had little idea of the destination or the route, though he knew he wasn’t going to drive on the left.

He had few Labour instincts. The ‘Blair revolution’ was in fact a brochure for a mixture of modernisation, meritocracy and better public relations.

He genuinely believed that things could ‘ only get better’ simply because he was in power, and, to be fair, he did alleviate some of the problems caused by Tory parsimony and neglect, by spending more on education and the NHS.

But, instead of boosting manufacturing, he focused on globalisation; instead of building houses, he reshuffled the stock; instead of rebuilding the regions damaged by industrial decline, he doled out peanuts; instead of controlling finance, he relaxed regulation; and instead of keeping the Pound competitive, he encouraged it to go up.

In short, he failed to seize the opportunity of the good years to shift the balances back to the people because he had no clear idea of what they needed. He constantly looked up rather than down.

With a huge majority and enormous goodwill he could have done anything. He did all too little — but made it glossy. It made him the most successful Labour leader but also the most tragic waster of opportunity.

He talked of hard choices but never made any, concealing his vacuity by clutching at every fashionable system of thought that came along, from stakeholder capitalism, to communitarianism, to triangulation, to the Third Way.

He was a limpet in search of a rock, but he never looked for it on the Left, failed to find it in the Labour Party and ended up with Catholicism and u.S. president George Bush’s crusade to make the world fit for democracy. Sadly, the Iraq War that this led to was based on lies and the settlement was bungled, forcing him to spend the rest of his life justifying the unjustifiable. He used Parliament as an opportunity to show off.

He gave news to The Sun before the House of Commons and preferred sofa courtiers to scruffy MPs. He didn’t particularly like the party, the trade unions or the Left. He wasn’t too keen on the people, either. It came as a terrible shock when first the media, then the people, turned against him.

Tony preferred to keep backbench Labour MPs like me at a distance, where we could admire his good works but not get in the way. occasionally he’d agree to meet the troops, but not by eating with us in the MPs’ dining room.

Instead, groups were trundled into the Cabinet room in alphabetical lots. Each MP was allowed to ask a question. The Great Leader then summed up without answering any. This wasn’t consultation. It was showing off. Blair was particularly dependent on Alastair Campbell, a genius at putting over Labour’s case and ensuring that ministers sang from the same hymn sheet and in tune.

He made Tony’s confused policies coherent, booted his enemies and the media, and intermittently dragged the leader out into the world. It was masterly and the Labour lads and lasses sang along with it like a chorus.

until he went over the top by over- egging the Iraq War. That made his role defensive and difficult. The problems were compounded by friction with Mrs Blair and a war of attrition with Gordon that ended in Alastair’s departure. The prime minister had lost his guide dog and shrank into just another jittery politician.

Labour stalwart Tony Crosland, one of my heroes, used to argue that the ‘purpose of socialism is to eradicate sense of class and create in its place a sense of common interest and equal status’. But that was not Blair’s aspiration at all.

It may have been that of Brown, who did more than most to hold Tony’s dafter aspirations in check and put himself forward as more Labour than Labour’s leader.

This created a continuous conflict between the two of them, in a relationship which began as Ant and Dec but finished like the warring Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis.

Gordon expected the succession, having been ‘promised’ it, in that way Tony had of offering vague hopes without commitment. The Great Helmsman had other ideas. The longer he stayed, the more indispensable he felt. So Gordon became obstructive, courting the unions and the Left and claiming that only he was ‘true Labour’.

The argument flared in the row over joining the euro, which Blair was keen on but which Brown wisely vetoed, and continued with a disagreement over introducing student fees, in which Gordon threatened, right up to a lastminute climbdown, to lead his troops against the bill.

It took its toll on them. Blair ended up as a nervy, messianic prophet, wondering why the old sermons no longer seemed to work. for many, the Iraq War had been the last straw. The war was his personal responsibility. He overstated the case for it and backed it with an eloquence and passion that persuaded the reluctant.

for the public and for so many in the Labour Party, the Iraq War and the subsequent chaos marked the end of tolerance for Tony.

His last years were sad, as realisation dawned that he’d got it wrong. Distrust replaced devotion and he became paranoid about plots.

His great ambition of becoming president of the European union became impossible. It was a nonjob for which he would have been perfect, given his skill in making beguiling promises without too much substance.

Instead, he went off to a career of

greedy money-grubbing, appearing in public mainly to defend his war in Iraq. Either the mighty had fallen, or the lost leader had found his true level, depending on your point of view. Either way, it was sad to see such a powerful politician devoting the rest of his life to justifying his position on a failed war.

BROWN WAS OUR ‘WIZARD OF OZ’

GordoN BrowN replaced Blair, projecting himself as what I would call real Labour. To my surprise and disappointment, he proved a better friend to the city and big finance than to the trade unions and the old Labour malingerers he’d spent so much time courting.

Backbenchers granted access to him discovered a big, growling bear who would listen, sombre and silent, then go away, offering nothing much — usually a task force to handle redundancies or a training scheme to ease pain, but never any support for a failing firm, never any change in economic policy.

Gordon turned out to be Labour’s wizard of oz: a remote figure, assumed to be all-powerful until the facade fell to reveal an indecisive, insecure man biting his nails.

Essentially shy, he dithered, missed his chance of success by failing to call an early election, then denied he’d ever thought of it, and basked in the approbation of the city, to which he pandered so much that I thought they might affiliate to New Labour. Instead, they landed Gordon in the manure by their greedy irresponsibility.

he’d boasted of having found a ‘new paradigm’ of perpetual growth to end boom and bust. It was really a bubble of debt and speculation, which burst, with disastrous consequences, in 2008.

Unemployment rose. Banks crashed and had to be saved. The nation wasn’t going to elect a tired government in a major recession.

Gordon and Labour were out, though nothing became Brown so much as his going, which was truly noble. he got the message and went. he was a bigger man than those around him.

‘DAVE’ HAD DODGY GRIP ON POWER

daVId caMEroN moved into downing street at the head of a Tory coalition with the Lib dems. around him, cameron created a gang of posh mates, the Bullingdon boys in power, perhaps the dodgiest gang ever to hold it.

Exuding self-confidence, he had few principles beyond staying in government, and for that he was prepared to change the few he had. he was impervious to criticism, better at hurling abusive responses and applying a knee to any available groin than giving answers.

dave, as he’d want me to call him, was a laid-back chief executive in a government of millionaire mates rather than their driver, perfectly happy to sit back, chillax and go on holidays while ministers got on with it.

Initially, he was persuaded by adviser steve hilton to promote compassionate conservatism, with himself as a better Blair. he urged his party to hug a hoodie.

cameron didn’t particularly like his party, but gradually gave in to it for a quiet life. To settle matters on Europe, he tried the trick of a pretend ‘renegotiation’ with Brussels followed by a referendum to endorse his achievement.

Unfortunately, he didn’ t understand either constipated Europe, where he demanded little and got less, or the electorate, which rejected the EU and him.

and, like Blair to the last, he didn’t stick around but went off to make money on an almost Blairian scale.

ONLY TORY LEADER I SYMPATHISE WITH

aNd so to Theresa May, who started well, firing former chancellor and petulant know-itall George osborne, and promising a fairer society and justice for the JaMs (Just about Managing folk).

she proved better at proclaiming fairness than advancing it, though, and has carried on her predecessor’s follies, such as hs2 and the most expensive nuclear power station in the world at hinckley.

But at least she has begun to implement the electorate’s decision to withdraw from the European Union. The daughter of a vicar, she is determined to do her duty. But she is a cold and ‘difficult’ woman who lacks the luck prime minsters need, and she is far too weak to deal with the EU.

her honeymoon was short. Fearing worse difficulties to come, she ate her words, called an early general election offering ‘strong and stable’ leadership, and bungled it.

of her prospects, it’s too early to tell. Perceptions are important. a leader who looks like a winner is adored. one who doesn’t is hapless and hopeless. ask John Major. or Theresa May.

Most leaders are cool to those contemptuous about their parties. Blair saw critics as troublemakers, Mrs Thatcher disliked the wets, John Major hated the ‘ b******s’ and cameron feared them while pretending to be their mate.

May seems worried by all of them. But if I had to sympathise with any Tory leader it would be her. Let’s wait and see.