On 18th September 2011 Andrew Marr interviewed New Labour strategist Philip Gould ANDREW MARR: The pollster, Philip Gould, was one of the key architects of New Labour. He was recruited in the 1980s by Peter Mandelson and he brought in new ideas - most notably focus groups, asking members of the public detailed questions about politics to broaden the Labour Party's appeal. Behind the scenes, he was crucial to Tony Blair's three election victories. Well he's just published an updated version of his book The Unfinished Revolution, which is an analysis of New Labour which has long been required reading for ambitious politicians of all parties. But the past three years have been dominated by a very different battle against cancer of the oesophagus. Despite gruelling treatment, that cancer has recurred, and he now knows that he will not recover. I met Philip Gould at his home. I hope you'll agree that what follows is a remarkable and rather unusual interview for a political programme like this. But first I asked him about Tony Blair's leadership style. He says it was like "driving down the centre of the road very fast pushing everything else to one side." But where, I asked, did they really know where they wanted to go. PHILIP GOULD: Tony did believe that values and an explicit sense of purpose should be kept for the most part quiet. He really did have a church and state thing on this. He really thought his private spiritual life was over here and his public pragmatic life was over there. And so that meant that much of his rhetoric, much of his argument, much of his narrative was focused on the pragmatic rather than on the … ANDREW MARR: What's it all for? PHILIP GOULD: What's it all for, yes. Now it is one of the big claims of my book, I think, that this was a failure. I do think that leadership depends on purpose. I think that individuals depend on purpose. I think politics depend on purpose. I think that in this world, which is so chaotic and so disordered, without purpose you are lost. It's an essential part of leadership now and I don't think he did that absolutely perfectly. ANDREW MARR: In your diaries, there's the accounts of the arguments, the now famous, endless arguments between Gordon Brown and Tony Blair. Go on and on and on and were clearly so destructive of energy and purpose and so on. PHILIP GOULD: Yes. ANDREW MARR: Was that just an inevitable clash of two very, very different personalities, two different world views that was never going to be harmoniously reconciled? PHILIP GOULD: I think that what happened there was this. That Gordon did believe that he would come to be Leader of the Labour Party and that the supporters around him I suppose believed that even more. They were so close, so close working together. You know you'd go into their office and you know you'd be met by a kind of … kind of a wall of energy … ANDREW MARR: Yuh. PHILIP GOULD: … you know piling towards you, and they'd both be on their kind of computers, they'd both be … there'd be papers everywhere, bits of sock, bits of this everywhere. It was a completely chaotic sense, but a sense of huge, huge energy. And Tony and Gordon were just remarkable in those days. It was incredible. And they were close too - increasingly close, I think. And so they were almost one person. Certainly felt like brothers to me. And yet there would be only one person, and as it went on increasingly it was going to be Tony. I knew it would be Tony. Others knew it would be Tony. But it's hard to tell Gordon because he is on the one hand a very tough individual, but a very vulnerable individual too. It just was too much for him, and it grew from there. ANDREW MARR: Can we turn to talk about your cancer … PHILIP GOULD: Yeah. ANDREW MARR: … and how that in many ways meshes with the politics that you've been describing because you've had three major recurrences. But right at the beginning, you chose to go private in America, and I think later on you came to think that actually the NHS might have been a better choice? PHILIP GOULD: Yes, that's so. I talked to a lot of people in the NHS and they said, "Well, look, you know the best place to go is Murray Brennan at Sloan-Kettering. ANDREW MARR: In New York? PHILIP GOULD: Yes. And the level of quality was good. But then about a year or two years later, it clearly had returned. ANDREW MARR: So you go up to Newcastle and you are confronted or you meet this excellent surgeon … PHILIP GOULD: Yeah. ANDREW MARR: … who, as it happened, had been at school with Tony Blair … PHILIP GOULD: Yes. ANDREW MARR: … but was vehemently pro-NHS … PHILIP GOULD: Yes, yes. ANDREW MARR: … not very keen on Southerners, not very keen on private health. PHILIP GOULD: (over) No he was … No, his position was basically anti-Southerner, anti-private, anti-New Labour. But the quality of nursing there, the quality of care, the quality of the surgery was outstanding. ANDREW MARR: So in the end the NHS had the best place? PHILIP GOULD: Yes. ANDREW MARR: Not the United States. It was here. PHILIP GOULD: (over) No the NHS had the best place here, for sure. ANDREW MARR: And so where are you now in terms of the illness? PHILIP GOULD: Where we are now is this. That we went on holiday with Gail, and this was such an important moment for her. She was sort of packing her stuff weeks in advance. It was so important that we went on holiday for once. And then we'd go to sort of have lunch and Gail would be saying, "Eat more, eat more, eat more, eat more" because she knew I was thinning. And I was eating it, but I saw my weight going down. And if your weight goes down and you're eating, it's problematic. And I had one or two other symptoms too. So I came back, called the Marston up, went in for a blood test, and they phoned up and said, "Your blood tumour marker's actually gone up from 5 per cent two or three weeks ago to 58 per cent." And that's it. I knew that was it. I phoned Gail up and she said, "That's it." And so we knew. Then they called us in and they said, "Well, look, you know you've got … it's in the lymph nodes here, it's in the lymph nodes there. It's going to continue and you're never going to get clear of this now." And I said, "How long to live?" And Dr Cunning… Professor Cunningham said, "Three months." And then Gail said … The worst case was three months, and Gail said, "What's the best case?" And he said, "Three months." This time it was clear. I was you know … I was in a different place, a death zone, where there was such an intensity, such a power. And apparently this is normal. And so even though obviously I'd you know rather not be in this position, it is the most extraordinary time of my life, certainly the most important time of my life. ANDREW MARR: You said an extraordinary thing before about this, which is being in the death zone, you would not have chosen this but you wouldn't want to walk away from it … PHILIP GOULD: No, no. ANDREW MARR: … and you wouldn't have wanted to die as the person that you were before the recurrence of cancer. PHILIP GOULD: No, no. That was certainly true in the ear… It's certainly true that after the first recurrence, I would not wish to have died the person I was. But when you get to the final stage, the death zone, you are dealing with something which is so intense. I mean I look out of the window and I feel the intensity - the intensity of my wife, the intensity of my family - that it is the natural place to be. And to leave this now, to leave this extraordinary place now, I would not want to do that. This is … this is the final place and the right place for me at this time is to be in the final place. ANDREW MARR: Can I ask you one other question about that … PHILIP GOULD: Yes. ANDREW MARR: … which is something that your wife Gail said to you; that politics, being involved in politics, was somehow connected to your cancer; that the nastiness of politics and the aggression of politics had somehow contributed to your cancer? PHILIP GOULD: Yes, I think that's true. What would have been better for me would have been to have said I'll do what I can do, which I do quite well, and then just push it back a little bit. And of course the other side of it is that it's only because I'm an obsessive nutcase when it comes to politics that I've done what I've done. ANDREW MARR: What would you say, as it were a sort of testimental thought, to Ed Miliband and the Labour Party as it is now? PHILIP GOULD: I think at one and the same time, he has to have a strategy that deals with the hard end of it. I mean he really does have to nail down the economy - and I'm sure he will - and make sure we are the party of the economy. He has to nail down responsibility and make us the party of the responsible electorate. And I think he has to be tough in the way that he deals with some of these issues. And I think that is the combination that wins the election. ANDREW MARR: And it would be a good thing for Labour if his brother was able to be alongside him in this journey? PHILIP GOULD: Well I would very much like that. And I think what better epitaph for the whole book really is a book that starts with the angularity and the difficulty with the relationship between two almost brothers ending in, I hope, friendship between two real brothers. And I think that may well happen. I lived under … I was born under a Labour government and I am determined to die under a Labour government. They'll obviously have to get a move on … (Marr laughs) … but that is what I want to happen. But I suppose my message is have faith and try and change the world. INTERVIEW ENDS
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