Politics
The New Statesman Interview - Lord Falconer
Published 20 November 2000
The Dome minister looks as healthy and wealthy as ever, calmly batting aside criticism. It is almost unnerving. Lord Falconer interviewed
It is early morning on the day - yet another of the many days - when unflattering photographs of Lord Falconer have been grinning from the front pages, while leader writers and commentators splutter at his failure to resign. Most people would have dived straight back under the duvet had they received even half the invective thrown at him over the Dome. Not "Charlie". His cheery press officer invites me up the stone stairs of the Cabinet Office to meet his "most unbeleaguered" boss.
Sure enough, Falconer is as full of bonhomie as ever, no trace of the grey pallor or irritability that usually afflicts politicians under pressure. He retains the sheen of health and wealth that you associate with the top of the legal profession. But he isn't a lawyer now, he's a politician in charge of a political disaster. The National Audit Office report on the management of the Dome has just arrived. It is utterly damning. So, I ask him again and again, why not go? His reply is well rehearsed: "As I've made clear throughout, I think the right course is to stay. If I thought my conduct had fallen beneath a standard that you've got to meet in public life, then of course I would go, but I don't think that it has. I think the right thing to do is to see the project through to the end."
Yes, but. Yes, but. During the interview, I return to the question, in various forms, seven times. Each time, the answer is the same. He concedes that the main problem with the Dome was the wildly over-optimistic projection of visitor numbers. The 12 million figure - originally thought up under the Tories - had, I pointed out, been agreed by Labour as well. "We believed the project could be delivered with 12 million visitors coming, and we were wrong in relation to that," he admits. "But once you fail to meet your original visitor target, that inevitably makes people have question marks in their mind about how well the Dome is doing."
He was not, as his few supporters in the press have pointed out, in on this project at the beginning, but surely one of the rules of politics is that ministers have to take responsibility, however personally unfair that may be. "I do think you have to take responsibility," he says, "but I don't think taking responsibility involves resigning on this issue . . . I don't think ministerial accountability means you were guaranteeing the visitor numbers. What you were guaranteeing was that you would provide appropriate oversight in relation to it and, if I've failed in that respect, or if I've misled parliament, then of course I should go."
Well, hang on a minute. Appropriate oversight? Surely he can't claim to have provided appropriate oversight? The accounts have been a complete disaster, and didn't he mislead parliament by insisting in July that the Dome was still solvent, when it was known several months earlier that it wasn't?
For Falconer, it seems to come down to a legalistic definition of what "solvent" means: "The position is that you have a company under great pressure because of the visitor numbers not being met and, as a result, a number of applications have to be made . . . for additional money. The company has not dealt as well as a company should with such things as recording its assets or keeping an easily accessible record of all its contracts. That is very, very regrettable, but hardly surprising in the light of the pressures that it's had throughout the year." As to when it became clear that the Dome was insolvent, he insists that "the moment extra liabilities were identified, a further application for funds was made, which was granted, and on the first day that the House of Lords was back, the 27 September, I went and told parliament what was happening."
Well then, I countered, if he's not resigning, how about, at the least, a proper, old-fashioned, fulsome apology, along the lines of the one made by Robert Ayling, the former chairman of the New Millennium Experience Company? Lord Falconer expresses regret; in fact, he expresses "deep regret" several times during our interview, but seems curiously unable to say the word "sorry": "I do understand the anger about the additional Lottery money that's been required, and I deeply regret the need for the additional money, but everybody who's been involved in the project has worked their hearts out to try to make it a success; everything has been done for the best of motives."
But come on, I say, shouldn't you have had a little chat with the Prime Minister recently to say, "Look Tony, I've enjoyed being a minister but, frankly, I think I'm doing you more harm than good now. You know, the best thing a man can do for his friend is to lay down his life and all that; I'm prepared to go now"? Falconer snorts with laughter. "No, I don't think that would be appropriate. What I'd like to say about my conduct is, I don't think it merits resignation." He adds, in the only sign of uncertainty during the whole interview: "If people thought it would help the government for me to resign, then of course I would, but I don't think that's right."
Just what is going on here? There is something almost unnerving about Falconer's calm batting-aside of criticism, some inner source of self-confidence. Other ministers say that it really is about protecting Tony Blair, who relies on him even more than is usually appreciated. An efficient, good-humoured member of endless committees, Falconer is said to be one of the very few people who can be completely frank with the Prime Minister and is utterly on his side. He is a source of infectious optimism, and is genuinely likeable. He performs many of the roles at the heart of Whitehall that Peter Mandelson once did. But, unlike Mandelson, he doesn't leave behind a trail of rancour and fury. People who work with Charlie Falconer tend to like him.
As last weekend's leak of the Cabinet discussion about the Dome showed, if Falconer did go, that certainly wouldn't be the end of it. The Conservatives want to concentrate on Blair himself. William Hague keeps demanding that he say "sorry". Perhaps that is why Falconer won't: if he does, then so must the Prime Minister. Then there is Mandelson, Falconer's predecessor as Dome minister, and the man responsible for the widely derided "attractions" inside the big tent. If Falconer were to go, perhaps that would leave them more exposed? "No," Falconer insists, "I've made it clear I don't think it's appropriate for me to resign, and that's why I'm not resigning - not because I'm protecting anyone else, but because that's the right course." Couldn't Mandelson, who has tried to keep well out of it recently, have done more to help him out? "I think that's very, very unfair," Falconer replies. "It's not unusual for ministers in one bit of the government to refuse to speak about the portfolios of another."
He has broad shoulders indeed - but perhaps, after all, he is just waiting until the Dome is either sold off (which he still believes it will be) or flattened (which he sincerely hopes it won't be), and then he'll resign. That has been a widespread Westminster assumption. And, like many widespread Westminster assumptions, it turns out to be flat wrong. At least, Falconer says it is; he is in this for the long term, he makes clear. He will no longer be responsible for the Dome, but "then there'll be the other bit of my job, which, subject to the Prime Minister, I'll carry on doing". Would he, perhaps, still be interested in the job of Lord Chancellor, something he was tipped for before the Dome appeared to cast its vast shadow over his career? He doesn't deny that he would like it: "It's entirely a matter for the Prime Minister what happens in the future." He clearly isn't intending to opt for the quieter and more lucrative life that a return to the Bar would bring: "I've left the Bar, and my life has been politics since then, and I hope it will continue to be so."
He says he regrets not going into the House of Commons. He did try for a seat, Dudley East, before the last election, but was rejected, according to the local party, because he sends his four children to private schools and refused to contemplate moving them: "To change their education to facilitate my political career would not have seemed right."
So he became a Tony crony, a life peer. Maybe it's because politics isn't in his blood that he seems to let all the flak bounce off him. It is difficult to assess how genuinely political he is. He has been a Labour Party member since the 1970s, and he believes that it is helpful to have a number of ministers in the Lords "who perhaps don't come from the traditional political group in the Commons". Is he simply blind, then, to the political damage the Dome has done to new Labour? It has provided a wonderful, if overworked, metaphor for new Labour's enemies: bright and shiny on the outside, nothing worth speaking about inside.
This time, Falconer admits the political reality: "It's been an object of great anger and unpopularity in many places, but it was a project that was ultimately supported by both parties because, I think quite rightly, people thought it was worthwhile. Of course it has not captured the public imagination; of course it hasn't delivered on targets that a bipartisan approach thought it could."
You have to wonder why he's so keen to carry on. Ever since he took the job, there's been nothing but grief; he is truly public enemy No 1. And yet, it never seems to get him down. Privately, other ministers with a tricky number to deal with will shake their heads sadly and confess to inner trauma. Not so Falconer. The most he will say is that the past year has been "testing". His kids are teased a bit at school about their infamous dad, he says, but seem pretty robust at the moment. He bears no malice towards the press who, in some parts at least, have comprehensively savaged him: "Over the past few years, I've met a very large number of people who work in the media, and some are pleasant and some are not - but then, some politicians are pleasant and some are not, and some lawyers are pleasant and some are not."
He is, undoubtedly, pleasant. Perhaps if Charlie Falconer was able to sit around the kitchen table with every family in Britain and explain what happened with the Dome, he might win them round. But he can't. Politics today is conducted almost wholly through a media that, when it takes against you, is pitiless and unrelenting. Before Falconer, it has claimed scalp after scalp: David Mellor, Cecil Parkinson, Leon Brittan, Peter Mandelson, Geoffrey Robinson and many more. This time, I sense, there is a new mood, a quiet determination not to offer another body to a media campaign. What is the secret of Lord Falconer's cheery resilience? Perhaps it is simply that, from the beginning, both he and his boss agreed this was one they were not going to lose. It is all very civilised, almost merry. But it is also a titanic battle of wills.
Post this article to
We want to encourage people to comment on our content and to exchange views with other readers and hope this will be done on a courteous basis. However, if you encounter posts which are offensive please let us know by emailing comments@newstatesman.co.uk and we will take swift action where necessary.
