A picture of privacy

Published on Sunday 19 September 2004 01:17

KEN Follett, millionaire author, incorrigible Labour luvvie and the most talkative Former Friend of the Blairs, has a favourite anecdote that lays bare the horror of being cast into exile by New Camelot and the golden couple at its core.

"I was talking to a Labour peer - let’s call him Lord X," Follett confided. Lord X, it transpires, was "terrified" about crossing swords with the New Labour establishment, "because of the awful, horrible things that will appear in the press about me and be so hurtful to my family".

"Lord X," Follett added, "is an irreproachable Blairite who was on popping-round-for-coffee terms with Tony and Cherie until they moved into Number 10..." Lord X may or may not be Lord Bragg - Follett isn’t giving any further details - but the misery he describes is an eloquent summary of the quandary assailing the latest Labour nabob to end up in high dudgeon with the dear leader and his wife.

It is 11 years since plain Melvyn Bragg won the Bad Sex award for a shudderingly inept description in his novel A Time to Dance, but he has surely never presented an observation as ill-judged as last week’s pronouncement on the Prime Minister’s future. "The real stress was personal and family, which matters most to him," the Labour peer ventured during an otherwise harmless discussion of the rumour that Blair nearly threw in the towel this summer. "And my guess is that consideration of his family became very pressing, and that was what made him think things over very carefully."

"Noooooo!" the Prime Minister’s wife assured her Richard and Judy audience when questioned days later about whether her friendship with Bragg was now "broken". "I’m not the sort of person that goes off and takes a huff." The forced nonchalance of her delivery may provide some meagre comfort to the loose-lipped lord, whom she helpfully described as "mortified" by his outburst. But behind the scenes, the fury was naked. Like many before him, Bragg has learned the hard way that the worst transgression a friend of the Blairs can make is to discuss their private life, particularly family matters, in public.

The gravity of Bragg’s offence became clear on Friday, when even his own wife joined the fray. "I had no idea what he was going to say," declared Cate Haste, who, to pile on the embarrassment, co-authored Cherie’s new book, The Goldfish Bowl. "I have no idea what he was talking about and I think he should probably stick to arts programmes really."

The Blairs’ social circle is a tight one; peopled by long-term friends and colleagues from the Bar who have earned their trust over decades, plus a few newcomers, sprinkled with the stardust of celebrity. The guest list for Cherie’s 50th birthday party at Chequers last weekend confirmed the exclusivity: Blair’s former flatmate Lord Falconer, his Islington neighbour and adviser Lord Hart, his chief fund-raiser and ex-pop impresario Lord Levy; American restaurant-owner Martha Green, and Cherie’s fellow lawyer and former flatmate Maggie Rae. It is almost impossible to get into the Blair set; yet it is extraordinarily easy to find yourself on the outside.

The Braggs, ironically, were among the in-crowd at Chequers last Saturday. But, notwithstanding Cherie’s studied indifference, the smart money is already on exile.

Those of Cherie’s friends who do talk insist that she is generous, warm-hearted, dependable, but they are also keenly aware that she has demonstrated repeatedly that she is a vengeful ex. Linda McDougall, her unofficial biographer, recalls the climate of omert surrounding the Prime Minister’s wife when she was compiling what she believed would be a friendly book. "Most people either ignored me completely or wrote to say that they would love to help but didn’t want to be disloyal to Cherie," said McDougall, whose husband, Austin Mitchell, has been a Labour MP for 20 years.

Over a decade ago, before Blair succeeded John Smith as Labour leader, the ambitious front-bencher and the motivated barrister regularly held dinner parties for a wide selection of friends across politics, the law, media and the arts. Those privileged to attend the gatherings at Richmond Crescent, Islington, speak of late-night "sub-parties" fuelled by wine. "They were never what you would call boozy," one media pundit recalled. "But the alcohol helped the conversation. It wasn’t all about politics, either. They were good times."

These days the Blairs’ closest friends are still the old ones, yet they struggle to stay in touch. Blair continues to schmooze professionally but having useful worthies to a formal dinner is not quite the same as having some friends round.

The issue of trust which has come to preoccupy Blair’s political career is also of genuine significance in his private life, where the transgressions of friends are viewed as mortal blows. In the last decade, as they hurtled from relative obscurity to full exposure, the Blairs have shed an inordinate number of close friends.

Follett himself was once a personal friend, a priceless image-maker and fund-raiser during the formative years of New Labour. He was expelled from the fold not because of his outspoken views but because he was blamed for tipping off the media to Blair’s attendance at a supper with assorted Labour Luvvies, including Richard Attenborough and Hugh Laurie, at his Chelsea flat in 1995. The resulting pictures embarrassed a man desperate to maintain the faith of Labour traditionalists.

"I have no interest in being friends with them," says Follett, whose wife Barbara is now a Labour MP. "If somebody has done something like that to you there is no point in trying to reconcile. It was petty."

Lord Winston, television scientist, fertility expert and Labour peer, was another personal favourite whose friendship shrivelled after a single unguarded remark. Winston’s criticism of government health policy in an interview four years ago was incendiary enough, but his fate was sealed by a throwaway line revealing that the then-pregnant Mrs Blair was due to have a Caesarean section.

That controversy came only months after the Blairs took the unusual step of taking out an injunction to stop their former nanny, Ros Mark, publishing details of her life with their three older children. The extracts that made it into the public domain turned out to be remarkably mundane, but the family had put the world on notice that they would do "whatever it takes" to protect their children from intrusion.

A fierce statement at the time insisted that the youngsters had the right to as normal lives as possible without being "fearful that any and every aspect of their lives past, present and future is liable to become public".

Cherie is renowned as a devout Catholic, a convent girl who has striven to bring her children up in the same faith. She was apparently thrilled to meet a former teacher, Sister Marie Clune, at a school reunion several years ago, but less pleased when news of their meeting got out. When a local newspaper reported that the sister was "a trusted adviser", and that "Cherie consults her frequently", Downing Street promptly issued a denial. No one gets away with exaggerated claims about Cherie Booth.

"Sister Marie was mortified and claimed she had been misquoted," McDougall said of the emblematic incident.

"She probably was. The nuns who used to run Seafield [convent] nowadays refuse to talk about Cherie to anyone at all."

The equally mortified Bragg would do well to take note.