Free A Journey by Tony Blair Page A

Michael Foot but he was a quixotic choice over Denis Healey.
    Cherie had been chosen for the Thanet North constituency, comprising Herne Bay and Margate, a Tory seat she couldn’t win. She had been asked to apply and agreed, but she was never really set on being an MP. And as I got more passionate, she saw herself more as a barrister. With her qualifications – top first in her degree, top of her year in the Bar exams – she was going to do better than me.
    Her adoption as a candidate allowed me another experience that made its impact. Her dad knew Tony Benn well and asked him to speak to her party in Margate. I was deputed to pick him up at his home in Holland Park and drive him down there. By the way, Tony now is something of a national treasure. Back then, for a large part of Tory and middle-ground opinion, he was the devil. I don’t mean he was simply disagreed with; he would make people literally choke with rage. He was the bête noire above all bêtes noires for most parts of the media – which of course gave him hero status for a large part of the left.
    I had never heard him speak before that night. I sat enraptured, absolutely captivated and inspired. I thought: If only I could speak like that. What impressed me was not so much the content – actually I didn’t agree with a lot of it – but the power of it, the ability to use words to move people, not simply to persuade but to propel. For days, weeks afterwards, I sat going over it in my mind. Probably to him it was one of half a dozen he did that week and was nothing special, but for me it was a revelation.
    First, there was his utter confidence. From the outset, the audience were relaxed and able to listen, because they knew the speaker was in control. When he began and he looked around at them, there was no squeakiness, no uncertainty, no negative energy. It wasn’t the absence of nerves. It was the presence of self-belief. He held them, easily and naturally.
    Second, he used humour. If someone can make you laugh, you are already in their power. The tension between speaker and audience, there until they get the measure of each other, evaporates.
    Third, there was a thread that ran throughout the speech. There was an argument. Sometimes there was digression and the thread was momentarily obscured, but always he returned and the thread was visible once more.
    Fourth, the argument was built, not plonked down. Although introduced broadly at the beginning, it was not glimpsed fully until layer upon layer of supporting words built up to it and finally the argument was brought forth. Suddenly all the words were connected, the purpose was made plain and the argument was out there, and you thought only the wilfully obdurate could not see its force and agree with it.
    On the way back, we talked about Militant. I wanted to know what he thought about this Trotskyist sect that had infiltrated Labour. I was representing the party in the legal case against them and, having studied them and their methods, I knew there was no dealing with them, other than by expelling them. He didn’t agree, and I spotted the fundamental weakness in his position: he was in love with his role as idealist, as standard-bearer, as the man of principle against the unprincipled careerist MPs. He wouldn’t confront those who were actually preventing the idealism from ever being put into effect. He was the preacher, not the general. And battles aren’t won by preachers.
     
    Eleven years later, I was leader of the Labour Party, just turned forty-one. John Smith, my predecessor, died on 12 May 1994. He had been leader for just two years. He was an outstanding figure: a minister in the last Labour government, a successful QC, a brilliant House of Commons debater, close friend of Derry and of Donald Dewar, and one of the sanest, smartest and surest people you could ever meet. In a strange way, he had been instrumental in getting me into Parliament in 1983 and therefore becoming leader of the