Powell play in the heart of Downing Street

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Published: 4th November, 2010
ILLTYD HARRINGTON – AS I PLEASE

NYE Bevan the man who laid the foundation stone of the NHS was a wordsmith in his own right. He turned that explosive noun “power” into a metaphor for his own time. He asked his father what was the significance of the council building in Tredegar where he lived. 

Bevan senior told him that Power was in there. Nye saw it drift away southwards to the county council office in Newport where it left on its journey to the House of Commons and eventually stopped at Number10. That was his chosen route to power and, he hoped, socialism.

Bevan, a bibliophile, would have answered with sarcastic disbelief to Jonathan Powell’s apologia for the 10 years he sat in the political epicentre of our country. He was Tony Blair's Chief of Staff. Powell followed his brother Charles along that path to power – Oxford, Foreign Office, Washington embassy, Number 10. One to Thatcher, one to Blair.

This is where I enter the story. As my dissolute youth showed signs of decay I went to Italy and arrived one sunny morning in Florence. At 18 years of age, it took possession of me. Vitality architectural beauty, bustling self-confidence at the centre for the Renaissance.

It was ruled often through bloodless and barbaric behaviour by the Borgias and the more moderate Medicis. The Borgias were very skilful in the art of poisoning – the tyrant Cesare watched his sister and lover Lucretia as she fixed the drinks – some of them were really lethal. The Pope in 1512, tired of being distracted from his worldly pleasures, saw the Borgias off and brought back the Medicis and a Golden Age of Michaelangelo and Leonardo Da Vinci.

The man who survived the upheaval was Macchiavelli, who kept his place in the New Order. His seminal work The Prince, remains the handbook for grabbing and holding power. 

When the long, dark, nights of Thatcher was over a wave of optimism swept the country. 

Like Florence we were in for a New Age. Powell was quickly in place in Number 10 with Alastair Campbell, Peter Mandelson, Philip Gould and Angie Hunter. They were all on the road to Samarkand and wealth. Pride is a bitch of a vice, preparing the way for inevitable fall.

So many unpleasant things were swept under the carpet. Cash for honours and the legality of the Iraqi war are just bleeps in the apotheosis of Blair. Tens of thousands die but Mrs Blair goes on eBay. The text paints a vision of horror within that building, worthy of the combined talents of Hieronymous Bosch, Gerald Scarfe or demotically, Battersea Dogs’ home with an epidemic of rabies.

The core of the book is the dethronement of the Frankensteinian monster at Number 11. Number 10 shuddered with fear as the monster  thundered down the connecting corridor. Tony hid behind that famous sofa, while the monster demanded: “When will you release me?” On one occasion he summoned up his courage and sang Doris Day’s hit number Que Sera Sera.

Not since Judas gave kissing a bad name had the public kisses of these two been outdone.

This was the language of conspiracy. The dark-veiled chatelaine of Number 10 makes a brief appearance to chide her husband about his coffee intake.

Even in death men of power are reluctant to quit. The elephantine Ernest Bevin the Foreign Secretary 1945 to 1951 died suddenly. When  the undertakers came they had to break his fingers to release the keys to his red box.

In the mid 1970s I enjoyed the friendship and confidence of Marcia now Lady Falkender, then Harold Wilson’s most trusted aide. My role at the GLC brought me a certain passing notoriety.

One afternoon we took ourselves to a restaurant in Devonshire Place as a guest of the erratic host Peter Langan. Two very old and sweet Jewish ladies suddenly became transfixed by the sight of the baroness-to-be and myself. Marcia – to break the tension – hissed: “Yes I am the scarlet woman of Number 10 and the bearded one is the Rasputin of County Hall.”  They ran away in terror. My grandmother would have approved. She firmly believed that Rasputin, as a monk, must have been Irish.

• The New Machiavelli: How to Wield Power in the Modern World by Jonathan Powell published by Bodley Head, £20