Intelligence

The in-crowd get out of Blair’s tent

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-525-1481497-525,00.html

The latest Chequers guest list shows how far the glitterati so sought by Blair have deserted him, writes Stuart Wavell

In the summer of 1996, the satirist Rory Bremner had a curious encounter with Tony Blair that showed the youthful premier-in-waiting was already lining up a circle of celebrity courtiers to cast a reflected glow of glory onto his government.

Bremner, holidaying in the south of France, had learnt that the Blairs were staying in the next village. To his astonishment he received a telephone call from Cherie Blair. “She asked me whether I wanted to play tennis,” he recalls. “To this day I don’t know how that came about.”

After a pleasant game with Blair and making a few jokes at the expense of John Major, then prime minister, Bremner raised a serious point. “I said, ‘We’re laughing at John Major now, but if you get into power the boot will be on the other foot and you’ll be on the receiving end.’

“Blair laughed rather nervously and said, ‘Uh, um, how does Lord Bremner sound to you?’ ” It was a joke, Bremner emphasises, “but he was aware of patronage and bringing people within the circle”.

Bremner believes the joke became more ironic over the years as he went from “believer to agnostic”. Indeed, his television series with John Bird and John Fortune looked like a more trenchant opposition to Blair than the Conservatives when they were preoccupied with internecine strife. His loss of faith parallels the collapse of Blair’s network of patronage.

The extent to which the prime minister strove to fill his “big tent” with the great, the good and the vacuous was revealed last week in a list of dinner guests at Chequers, his official country residence. Between 1997 and 2001, the Blairs hosted grand affairs for an eclectic mix of media folk, celebrities and pop stars, lawyers and novelists.

The 300-strong list, reading like a roll call of the new Labour establishment, included journalists Andrew Marr, James Naughtie, Polly Toynbee and Will Hutton and entertainers Elton John, David Bowie, Mick Hucknall, Sting and Bono. From the film world came Lords Attenborough and Puttnam, while actors Judi Dench, Helen Mirren, Emma Thompson, Sinead Cusack and Jeremy Irons were keen to oblige.

These gatherings of up to 20 guests marked new Labour’s golden age, when Blair seldom put a foot wrong. Robert Harris, the novelist, who attended one of the Blairs’ first Chequers dinners in 1997, recalls: “Few prime ministers have come to power with such a great wave of enthusiasm.” Blair was at his most charming, not belabouring his guests with politics but keen to discuss sport or a movie. The only odd note was struck when Derry Irvine, the lord chancellor and Blair’s former legal mentor, bellowed: “Where’s young Blair? It’s time for young Blair to bring us some whisky!” The significance of these private dinners was in part Blair’s choice of guests, but something more subtle was also at work, believes Michael Cockerell, whose television documentaries have chronicled new Labour.

“From 1994, Blair was keen to identify the new Labour brand with the coming millennium — which was his way of lasering out the negatives from old Labour. He wanted to bring in role models who were young, trendy, black, gay, modern or beautiful — and sometimes all of the above.”

The flattery of an invitation to Chequers was a powerful piece of persuasion. Peter Kellner, the pollster and commentator, remembers his evening at Chequers six years ago with pleasure.

“Physically, it’s a very striking place,” he says. “Security is very tight and you’re met by armed guards at the entrance. Cherie was dressed in a black evening gown and Tony was in smart denims, which I deduced was to make everybody feel at ease.

“After dinner we went on a little tour of the house. In the main bedroom there were some paintings by old masters, one of which Churchill had painted a little mouse on during the war. You end up in the library for coffee, around an octagonal table on which sits a battered leather bag that was Napoleon’s briefcase.”

A pall seems to have been cast over such evenings in Blair’s second term. A guest list for 2001-3 suggests he was trawling the B-list of celebrities. The names of Des O’Connor, Geri Halliwell, Esther Rantzen and Michael Ball stirred sharp comment when they were released by the Cabinet Office last year. “Why should we pay for Des O’Connor’s dinner?” a newspaper headline demanded.

Norman Lamb, the Liberal Democrat MP who secured the release of the lists, says: “It looks like a sad decline in the people with whom Blair shared his time after the 2001 election. Was it because people were declining the invitations?” By then, whole sections of the glitterati had begun to sheer off. For some the Bernie Ecclestone affair — when the government apparently favoured Formula One retaining tobacco advertising in exchange for a £1m donation — was the first moment of truth. Others recoiled at the Millennium Dome fiasco.

Blair’s stance on the Iraq war was the final straw for many. “His fatal flaw was one of hubris,” said Richard Eyre, the theatre director, who once believed Blair was “somebody one could take at face value”. The prime minister “believed he could marry his particular brand of moral purpose with another brand of fundamental fervour — that of George Bush — and I think it has proved to be a hopeless misjudgment”. Harry Enfield, the comedian, who had paid £1,000 to belong to new Labour’s celebrity supporters club, said recently: “I wish he’d go.”

The novelist Ken Follett, who ran the 1,000 Club, claimed his credibility was “destroyed” one night when Blair’s media advisers decided that he and other so-called “luvvie” supporters were wrong for the Blair image.

Greg Dyke and Gavyn Davies, then respectively director-general and chairman of the BBC, also came to feel betrayed by Labour over Andrew Gilligan’s report on the “sexed-up” dossier on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Even Irvine was given his cards.

High-profile insiders, too, found they could no longer resolve the contradictions Blair wanted them to straddle. Chris Woodhead, who was entertained at Chequers as chief inspector of schools, resigned in 2000 after growing disillusionment with new Labour.

Among prominent novelists, only Melvyn Bragg and Harris remain friends of the Blairs. Harris believes the evaporation of celebrity support was inevitable. “There doesn’t seem to be the same sort of loyalty there used to be. I feel this; my natural tendency is to rebel against authority. That’s why I joined the left in the first place.”

It follows, he believes, that the concept of a Labour establishment is “a kind of oxymoron” for people of the left. So Blair’s big tent looks increasingly bare and celebrity dinners seem to be a thing of the past.

In Bremner’s opinion, this reflects the path the prime minister has chosen. “His journey has been from being an inclusive person, all things to all men, to the Blair of Iraq, when he is aware of his place in history. He feels his time is running out and he’s almost impatient with the party and the country.”

CHEQUERS MATES: THE GREAT AND THE GOOD AT TONY’S TABLE

George Carey, former Archbishop of Canterbury and wife

Cilla Black, Blind Date presenter

David Blunkett, former home secretary

Bono, singer

David Bowie and Iman, singer and his wife

Joan Collins, actress who supported the UK Independence party in last summer’s Euro elections

Robin Cook, former foreign secretary and his wife

Richard Curtis, the man behind Four Weddings and a Funeral

Judy Dench, actress

Greg Dyke, former BBC director-general

Dawn French, comedian

Matthew Freud, PR fixer

Stephen Fry, actor

Bob Geldof, rock star and campaigner

Susan Greenfield, leading academic

Mick Hucknall, lead singer of Simply Red

Elton John, singer-songwriter

Neil Kinnock, former leader of Labour party

Helen Mirren, actress

James Naughtie, Today programme presenter

Salman Rushdie, author and his wife

Delia Smith, TV chef

Sting and Trudie Styler, singer and environmentalist and his wife

February 13, 2005 at 01:26 PM in UK | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home