Last Man Standing: Memoirs of a Political Survivor by Jack Straw

Author:Jack Straw [Straw, Jack]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781447222774
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Published: 2012-09-26T23:00:00+00:00

FOURTEEN

Life in the Air

Zimbabwe, and Gibraltar.

My answer to a close friend who’d asked in July 2001 what were the biggest issues facing me as the new Foreign Secretary

I had told Tony Blair some months before the election that I’d like a move from the Home Office. I’d enjoyed my time as Home Secretary, but I was running out of road. Others, champing at the bit, could see whether (as they had been so assiduously briefing the press) they could do a better job.

My preference, which I thought Tony had agreed, was to take over John Prescott’s huge department covering transport, planning, local government and the regions. JP was keen on the idea as well and called me on election day to agree the choreography for a friendly handover.

Number 10 had instructed senior ministers to be back in London by 11 a.m. on the day after the election. We were, but the hours went past without a word, so I checked in with the Downing Street duty clerk. ‘Don’t call us, we’ll call you.’ I didn’t think that my ministerial career was about to end, but I guessed that there was some other drama being played out. (There was – Tony was involved in a monumental three-way row with Cherie and Anji Hunter; Cherie felt Anji’s future lay outside Number 10.)

At 5 p.m. I’d had enough of sitting around, so I called my detectives and said that I was going to fetch up at Downing Street, and wait there.

Reshuffles are the moment of supreme power for any prime minister, and for his staff too. They were rather surprised to see me. I was secreted into a small room off the Cabinet Room lobby. I spent the time re-reading a detailed minute I’d sent to Tony the week before, confirming our conversation about how I’d run JP’s department, and refreshing my memory on what the manifesto had to say in this area. Around 6 p.m. I was called in to Tony’s room.

‘I’m not giving you JP’s job,’ he said. ‘I’m making you Foreign Secretary.’

‘F*** me,’ I said, and almost fell off my chair.

‘Don’t you want the job, Jack?’

‘I do want it, thank you very much. I simply was never expecting it. I thought Robin [Cook] was staying.’

Robin was not exactly ‘clubbable’, but we were friends, and we trusted each other. I was certain that he would know that I had never coveted his job. His accurate diary record of the conversation we had later that day said, ‘If I was surprised to be moved from my job . . . [Jack] sounded even more surprised to get it.’1 He was also relieved that Alice and I had no interest in taking over the Foreign Secretary’s official residence on the upper floors of 1 Carlton Gardens (I would use the lower floors, for meetings and functions), though we did take over Chevening, the wonderful country house (better than Chequers) near Sevenoaks that was allocated to the Foreign Secretary.

‘There’s just one thing we

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