A voyage across the political landscape

Tony Blair's political memoir, A Journey, sheds new light on his political relationships.

We already knew the names of Tony Blair's inner circle of advisers when he was prime minister. We knew who were his political friends, who were his allies in government and in the Labour party, and who were his adversaries.

What the publication of Tony Blair's political memoir does is clarify the extent to which his friendships and rivalries – most significantly, with Gordon Brown – impinged on his ability to govern and to pursue the new Labour project. Indeed, a large part of A Journey is devoted to the apparently inexorable decline in the relationship between the Labour prime minister and his chancellor.

The timing of the book's publication, on the day the Labour leadership ballot opens, means his observations on the direction of the party and on at least three of the candidates are bound to resonate during the final weeks of the contest.

ON GORDON BROWN
The former prime minister is more outspoken than ever before about Gordon Brown. The relationship between the two men was damaged early on, when Brown failed to stand against John Smith in the 1992 contest for the Labour leadership.

Blair had wanted Brown to put himself forward. He writes that "Gordon had not seized the moment" – a trait, some might say, that resurfaced 15 years later when Brown, by now prime minister, failed to call an early general election in the autumn of 2007.

The former Labour leader reserves his most pointed criticism of Gordon Brown for the Postscript chapter of the book, in which he effectively blames him for losing the 2010 general election. "Labour won when it was New Labour," he writes. "It lost because it stopped being New Labour."

And while he is at pains to stress that "This is not about Gordon Brown as an individual", he acknowledges that Brown "is unsuited to the modern type of political scrutiny in which characters are minutely dissected". Elsewhere, he writes of his former chancellor: "Analytical intelligence, absolutely. Emotional intelligence, zero."

ON ED BALLS, THE MILIBANDS AND OTHER POLITICIANS
The fact that A Journey is published on the day the Labour leadership ballot opens is most significant for David Miliband. The former foreign secretary and election frontrunner has the delicate task of bearing the new Labour torch while distancing himself from the old guard who lost the election in May. He has already responded to Peter Mandelson’s criticism of his brother Ed by saying "It's time to move on."

Tony Blair places David Miliband firmly in the new Labour camp. He first appears in the memoir at the beginning of the 1997 administration, as head of the prime minister's policy unit: "He was perfect for the first term: really clever, plainly, and with good party politics. More in the same camp as Sally (Morgan) and Alastair (Campbell), but New Labour nonetheless."

In July 2008 the elder Miliband wrote an article for the Guardian outlining his vision for the Labour party. It was seen by some as a challenge to Gordon Brown’s leadership. What is notable about the Blair memoir is a reference to an incident more than a year previously, in May 2007, when Miliband asked Blair whether he should challenge Brown for the Labour leadership.

Blair’s response was: "I think you might win, not obviously but very possibly." Although Miliband decided not to stand at the time, Blair writes that he told him "he should be prepared in case the issue arose again".

Ed Miliband, by contrast, is an anonymous presence in A Journey. On one occasion he is referred to favourably as the only member of the Brown circle not to denigrate the Pathways to the Future initiative to bring together the Blair and Brown factions within Labour. But he only merits four other mentions, always as a member of the Brown circle.

Ed Balls effectively began his political career under Gordon Brown, who made him his economic adviser in 1994. Although he did not become an MP until 2005, Balls was a member of Brown's inner circle between 1997 and 2004, first as an economic adviser to the chancellor and then, from 1999, as chief economic adviser to the Treasury.

And to the extent that Balls has nailed his economic colours to a Keynesian mast (most recently in last week's speech at Bloomberg), the shadow schools secretary is undoubtedly damaged by Tony Blair's contention that Labour lost in 2010 because it had bought "the so-called Keynesian 'state is back in fashion' thesis".

Several politicians no longer in the limelight are praised. David Blunkett, who returned briefly to high office under Tony Blair after resigning as home secretary in 2004, is described as someone he "adored and deeply admired". And new Labour architect Peter Mandelson, who resigned from high office twice, in 1998 and 2001, is lauded as "my close friend and ally".

Tony Blair knew two US presidents while he was prime minister. He writes of his "close" relationship with Bill Clinton, whose final months as president overlapped with the start his premiership, and claims "We were political soulmates." That could not be said of his relationship with George W Bush, but Blair admits that he "really liked" the Republican president.

Surprisingly, given the fact that the Blairs holidayed with him in 2003, Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi hardly gets a mention in A Journey. We know the Blairs had a good time during their stay in Italy because Tony Blair's wife, Cherie, told an Italian magazine: "I have never had an evening like the one I had in Sardinia."

Perhaps the only evening to compare is evoked on page 65 of the memoirs. Blair writes that on the night of 12 May 1994 (the day of Labour leader John Smith’s death), "I needed that love Cherie gave me, selfishly. I devoured it to give me strength. I was an animal following my instinct (…) I was exhilarated, afraid and determined, in roughly equal measures." Quite.

ON BLAIR'S POLITICAL ADVISERS
Tony Blair pays his dues to the circle of political advisers who sustained him during his time at Downing Street. His then director of communications, Alastair Campbell, is one of those "crazy people… whose craziness lends them creativity, strength, ingenuity and verve".

Blair's Downing Street chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, is lauded for "a politics that was completely and naturally New Labour". On Northern Ireland, the former prime minister is unequivocal in his belief that "Without him (Powell), there would have been no peace." Powell left No.10 in 2007 when Blair stood down as premier.

With Derry Irvine, Blair enjoyed "a life-changing relationship" while training under him as a barrister. "I was scared of him, admired him and adored him," he writes. Irvine faced controversy in 1998 when his lord chancellor's official residence was redecorated at a cost to the taxpayer of £650,000, including a £59,000 bill for hand-printed wallpaper.

Of Anji Hunter, appointed director of government relations at Downing Street in 1997, Blair notes: "Anji was my best friend." Hunter left Downing Street in 2001 to work for BP. She went on to marry Adam Boulton, political editor of Sky News.