‘Voters are tired of old politics, old ideologies’

I’m perfectly happy representing my constituents. I have even more time to do that. When I was secretary of state for Northern Ireland, I was very absorbed in the peace process.

•Are there any lessons from Northern Ireland that go beyond location?

There’s no precise historic parallel between one theatre of action and another. But there are certain guiding principles. One, you have to be tough and persistent in the security policies that you adopt, for the protection and safety of your citizens. Secondly, you must create a political channel as an alternative to violence. Thirdly, you must address the grievances that exist. You focus on them, and see whether they can be legally addressed, through negotiation and using the political channel that you have created alongside the tough security protection that you are dutybound to operate as a responsible government.

• But when you enter into negotiations, do you make a list and say certain proposals are not on?

I think I would say this: at the heart of any conflict is a breakdown of trust and evaporation of confidence. You have to be conscious of the impact your actions, words, your body language is going to have on the other side — bearing in mind that their assumption is that you are hostile and that everything you say or do will, if you are not careful, come across as a hostile expression.

So put yourself in the other person’s shoes, invite them to do likewise so that they see the conflict, they see the dispute from your point of view as a quid pro quo for your seeing it from their point of view. And exercise great patience. Disputes of this kind have taken very many years, sometimes decades, sometimes centuries, to build up, they can’t be wished away overnight.

• Are there vested interests in such conflicts?

Everyone has vested interests. You think from your point of view the other side have vested interests — but believe me, from their point of view you look as if you have vested interests as well. That’s what I mean when I say put yourself in the other person’s shoes. It’s the hardest thing in the world to do. Confidence-building measures are the raw material of conflict resolution.

• What role did you play in reconfiguring New Labour?

I’m routinely described as the architect of this New Labour. some people see me as the saviour of socialism in Britain following the Labour Party’s near death experience in the 1980s; some people see me as the arch-betrayer of socialism. Depending on your political prejudice, you can judge me.

The fact is, there were many pairs of hands and many people’s minds devoted in the ’80s and ’90s to the turnaround of the party’s fortunes. It was a major turnaround. In the 1980s we were seen by the public as a rather stuck-in-the-mud party whose successes were behind it, who were now falling out amongst themselves, arguing, not keeping up with the times, not understanding how society and electoral attitudes were changing, how economics was changing, how the world was changing.

At that time we were also adopting policies which were completely out of step with the views of our own members and supporters, let alone the wider electorate.

It looked at one stage, in the ’80s, that the Labour Party was finished. It took us 18 years in opposition before we achieved our 1997 victory.

• How?

First of all, we had to understand what was happening to ourselves, we had to be frank and quite brutal in our analysis and our examination of what had gone wrong in our party.

Secondly, we had to understand where Britain was going, we had to look a decade ahead and see how social and economic changes were taking place, and their impact on the electorate. We then had to face up to the changes we had to make in our own party — our policies, how we communicated with the electorate, the directness and honesty that was needed both about ourselves and what was happening in the country.

We had to recognise that the old ideologies — of both left and right — had become discredited and irrelevant in many people’s minds. We had to understand that reciting dogma, familiar mantras, however relevant they seemed in the ’60s and ’70s, were not being heard anymore by the public.

We had to undertake a revolution in our organisation, reaching out to the electorate, bringing people into the party, investing individual members of our party with new rights to decide policy, to elect a leader, to select parliamentary candidates. We had to be a much more participative and evolving party.

Brick by brick, step by step, we effected these changes. But the most profound transformation didn’t take place till Tony Blair was elected leader of the Labour Party in 1994.

• And you played a key part in that election.

But of course I supported him. He was the modernising leadership candidate.

• You’ve also split up the New Labour project into three phases.

I wrote in my book The Blair Revolution Revisited that the first phase was the red rose phase. It was like a sort of respray job on the car in the ’80s. The second phase was making more structural changes, that was undertaken in the 1990s and took us into government. The third phase is much more policy driven, more radical. Having won the trust of the electorate, that has to be used as the springboard for more radical change — embedding social democracy, social democratic values, changes deep into British society and the economy.

• Radical how?

For example, the government has introduced the most radical anti-poverty programme that Britain has seen since the Second World War. We’ve undertaken the biggest investment programmes in our education, hospital and transport systems. We’ve brought about changes in the management of the economy, created stability. We’ve undertaken the most dramatic devolution of government. We’ve transformed Britain’s relationship with Europe.

• But would it be fair to say that the political tussle in Britain is really between Old and New Labour?

Well, it is to the extent that the Conservative Party is very weak. What have they got to offer? Our programme and its appeal span the entire centreground of British politics.

We have reconfigured British politics. No longer are we the party simply of the poor and dispossessed, we are also the party of business and those who are doing well. Previously, people were faced with the choice of Conservatives who stood for economic efficiency and competence and support for enterprise, but lacked compassion and any sense of social justice — and the Labour Party, that proclaimed its belief in social values but didn’t understand the economy.

What New Labour is offering is a marriage of economic competence and social justice. I think we are offering a new paradigm of government, in which it is possible to pursue market-friendly, pro-enterprise, pro-business policies combined with radical policies which combat poverty, invest in public services and infrastructure and operate principles of social justice. That is providing the new, Third Way between the old left and the Thatcherite right.

• Is this where political success lies now, in mopping up the middle ground?

I think it lies in recognising that the old ideologies have less to offer in a fast-changing globalised world, that voters are tired of what they see as the old politics, the old two-party structure, politicians getting up and making speeches at them, taking for granted what they think and want.

People want to be touched by politicians at a more emotional, cultural level; their identity is more important to them, their local, regional and state identity. There are new parameters for politics.

Understand also that voters have embraced a new pluralism — they are less interested in the adversarial big fights than they are in politicians and parties cooperating for the good of the country. The old stylised, combative, mud-throwing, slogan-exchanging politics are not adequate for a more informed electorate.

• What role does spin play in political success?

Politics operates in a society saturated with communication, with images, advertising, commercial messages. It has to compete for attention. Its messages have to be sharp and direct. It has to compete in a marketplace — commercial or political — that is constantly changing. So you have to professionalise, you have to rethink your communications. You are also faced with a multi-multi-media world where deadlines are more oppressive, where demands on government and politicians for instant information and explanations are neverending. It’s a dog-eat-dog world. So if you are weak in your communications, if you are slow to react, you’re in danger of being written off.

• But, while leaving government and during the Cherie Blair controversy, you’ve also spoken about kangaroo courts.

In a democracy, you need an aggressive and assertive media if you are going to bring people in authority to account. But with that privilege of the media must also come responsibility, a respect for the truth, for the facts, objectivity. The press, like every other part of society, have vested interests.

There is an assumption that politicians are guilty until proven innocent. Not only is this false in most cases, it is very corrosive to the democratic process. It creates immense cynicism amongst the voters. Not only is there individual unfairness in most cases, but the damage it does to the fabric of our democratic institutions is considerable.