Gordon Brown, the Labour rebel ‘plot’ and my marriage break-up

Anne McElvoy
25.09.09

Tessa Jowell is wearing an Emporio Armani jacket with a fetching green velvet ruff collar. "It's very old," she says. Stylish Labour women always explain away their designer wear as being very old or a sale bargain, so as not to prompt accusations of wanton luxury.

There's yet another bout of trouble looming for the accident-prone Government she's served since promotion as one of Tony Blair's favourites in 1997. The former Home Secretary Charles Clarke told this newspaper this week that Jowell had been one of those suspected of being close to joining the resignation of James Purnell on the night after the disastrous local election result in June.

Her saucer-eyes narrow to a gimlet stare and she lets Mr Clarke have it with both barrels. "Complete and utter rubbish," she says. "If I had been going to leave, I would have left when Tony stood down. I'm a woman of my own views and it wouldn't occur to me to plan something like that with anyone else. James's resignation was something that shocked and hurt me. I didn't even sense it was coming, let alone think of joining it."

She says she spent the evening door-knocking to get reluctant voters out and then having a recuperative dinner with Lord Falconer, a loyal Blairite, who has attacked Gordon Brown's leadership - "We take a different view on that". It was only then that she heard of the walk-out.

But the stories are rife that it was a call from Peter Mandelson which kept her on board in Gordon's government in return for a promise of preferment. "Yes, I spoke to Peter and a lot of others, because we were trying to work out what to do." Including Gordon? An uncommon hesitation lurks. "I don't quite remember - maybe I spoke to him."

Oh, come on: few Cabinet ministers take a call from the Prime Minister on a night as dramatic as a Cabinet minister's walk-out on election day, only to let it slip their minds. "Well, I remember that I spoke to him the next day."

At any rate, she says, her old Cabinet colleague is "misinformed: he should be part of the united Labour argument" instead of calling for Mr Brown's resignation, "which he won't get". It's another rift opened up among the old band of brothers (and sisters) who once made up the force that was New Labour. "It is a story which is pure invention and I want to put the record straight," she adds. "He can't repeat it and say it is true because it absolutely is not."

She remains friends with Hazel Blears, who walked out of the Cabinet before Mr Brown's reshuffle could remove her, a day before the June vote. Would she encourage him to bring Purnell and Blears back into the tent? "Of course they should be part of the big fightback," she says. "Hazel's a formidable campaigner and James has fantastic ideas and has great emotional intelligence."

I can't resist venturing that may be exactly why Mr Purnell left. He predicted Gordon Brown was losing national support and was a liability to Labour: but she breezes on regardless.

Jowell is the great survivor of the Government. She no longer has a secretary of state's formal status but her large elegant room in the Cabinet office with modern art on the walls, plus continuing responsibility for the Olympics, a cause she's taken to heart, leave no doubt that Gordon looks after her and she's not above pointing it out. "Have you seen the view?" she asks. Her window turns out to have a premium view right over the neat Number 10 garden, all the better for keeping an eye on the PM and his visitors.

She will address a Labour conference fringe on Sunday morning, 15 years on from the gathering at which Tony Blair sprung the renunciation of Clause 4 on a shocked party.

Now she wants to use the anniversary to warn of the danger of a retreat to the core vote: a strategy many on the Left of the party are endorsing.

"I think there is always a danger in Labour of it defaulting back to being a regional presence in British politics. My point is that we have succeeded by being a broad coalition that represents the national consensus and we have to maintain that."

These phrases still trip from Labour lips, as the polls slide away and voters say they'd prefer David Cameron to impose cuts rather than Gordon Brown. "I just don't buy that we have run out of steam," she replies briskly. "We are still implementing really worthwhile policies that make a direct difference to people's lives."

But the public may well be beyond thinking in such generally benign terms about the Government. Look at the response to the travails of Baroness Scotland and her illegal cleaner: it was hard to discern much sympathy.

"I think what she represented for young black women has been amazing," says Jowell stoutly. Surely she can't think that the Attorney General's comparison of her £5,000 fine with a congestion charge dereliction was clever politics, let alone a sensible response to her predicament? "I won't be drawn on this. Patricia's an outstanding Attorney General."

Three years ago, she separated from her husband David Mills, the high-profile tax lawyer who became embroiled in allegations of corruption linked to his work with Silvio Berlusconi. It led to allegations that she had parted from him to save her own career.

A long pause and her eyes glaze with tears. "It was monstrous, horrible. I don't like to relive it all because it was so hurtful. When you've been through a media storm like that, you're never quite the same afterwards. I couldn't get into my own house because there were so many photographers on the doorstep and no one could sleep because the phone rang all the time."

The cynic in me wonders if there is a degree of sympathy-seeking here. After all, she profited for long enough from Mills's lucrative lifestyle and she might have raised objections earlier about his work for Berlusconi and ill-judged projects such as his plan to sell jets to Iran if she thought them at odds with her position. But she seems genuinely affected by the subject, gulping down a glass of water and shaking away the tears brusquely.

The couple never divorced and friends say they see each other regularly at weekends in the country. Mills is still entangled in the aftermath of the affair, having received a four-year prison sentence from the Italian courts, against which he has appealed. No one expects him to have to serve his sentence as long as Berlusconi is in power. Jowell says she has "never doubted" his innocence and helped look after him in the wake of a heart attack.

The widely anticipated formal reconciliation with her ex has, however, never come. She moved out of the family home to Highgate. When I ask if she is still emotionally close to Mills, she answers: "I'm close to all my family."

Peter Mandelson has just publicly advised Mr Brown to lighten up, does she agree? "He can be very funny," she insists. Now, just how funny would that be? Give us an example of a Gordon Brown side-splitter. Silence. The seconds tick by and an aide chews his pen. "He can be self-deprecating," she says desperately. Self-deprecation is what politicians have instead of humour.

Finally, inspiration kicks in. "He lightens us when he's with his boys," she says. "He's a dad who gets down on the rug and rolls around - even in his suit. That's when you see the fun side of Gordon."

One of the less funny sides of Mr Brown, as far as high earners are concerned, is the plan to raise the top rate of tax to help rebalance the public finances - with Mr Mandelson (who used to oppose a higher tax rate) warning yesterday of possible further rises to come. Can this really be New Labour, friends to the aspiring classes?

"Well, you have to remember that only 10 per cent of people earn over £40,000," she parries. "I regret the fact that it's been made necessary. But it is seen as fair and popular out there. People have a sense of what is a fair response to the situation and they are not hostile to it."

Her own pet project, the Olympics, is "slightly below budget and ahead of time". Sounds too good to be true. "It really is!" she insists. "We have screwed down cost on anything we could possibly reduce and the Games are filling order books around the country. It's a shot in the arm for UK plc."

Several times, she points out that she has been in politics now for four decades. So whom does she rate of the next generation? "Andy Burnham [her former aide] and Ed Mili [Miliband]," she replies and then hurriedly, "And David Mili of course!"

All options still open then. She giggles and says she wants to underline "that it's not all over - we're in a really big fight here" and off she swishes, classy handbag full of papers: Labour's Mother Courage in Armani.

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