Society
The New Statesman Profile - the Bassetts
Published 30 April 2001
Election 2001 - New Labour's new power couple stand poised for big jobs following the election. The Bassetts profiled
New Labour may be a chameleon creature, hard to classify, always changing. But there are little clues: at each stage in its development, the party throws up a golden couple who seem to say something about what it has become. First, naturally, were Tony and Cherie themselves, the middle-class, modern couple with a normal family life, so different from the remote, patrician politicians of the Tory years, yet disconcertingly "unLabour", too.
Then we had Alastair Campbell and Fiona Millar, chief courtiers to Tony and Cherie, and tough gatekeepers. The rise of Campbell to all-purpose henchman symbolised that the Blair leadership might smile, but it would also be unsentimental, even brutal, in its struggle for power. Next, soon after Labour won the general election, the wedding of the year was that of Ed Balls, the Chancellor's right-hand man, and Yvette Cooper, rising back-bench - now ministerial - star. Their driving ambition and youthful earnestness symbolised the ever-spreading power of the Brownites, as the Treasury tightened its grip over each and every government department.
Now, Phil Bassett and Liz Symons are poised to become next year's Most Powerful Couple. He is tipped to replace Campbell as Blair's chief press secretary or, if that role is changed, to take up a revamped job as Labour's director of communications. She is tipped to replace Baroness Jay as Leader of the House of Lords, with a place at the Cabinet table.
The couple got married this month on Symons's 50th birthday at a family ceremony in Vernham Dean, Hampshire, from where Baroness Symons takes her title. It was very much a private affair, with family and local friends from the village where the couple live at weekends. There were no luvvies in attendance, and definitely no Cabinet ministers. But later there will be a glittering new Labour party, with Tony and Cherie Blair expected as guests of honour.
Bassett and Symons have been part of Blair's kitchen cabinet for years. Symons, a former general secretary of the First Division Association, the top civil servants' trade union, was created a life peer by Blair in 1996 and made a junior minister at the Foreign Office when Labour won the 1997 election. She is currently Minister of State at the Ministry of Defence. Bassett works alongside Campbell as head of the Downing Street strategic communications unit.
If further proof of their growing ascendancy were needed, the Sun carried a leader page comment congratulating the couple on their wedding and acknowledging that Bassett's profile "may rise" after the election.
They cut a glamorous pair on the Westminster circuit, where they are enthusiastic socialisers. Bassett is tall and dark, almost saturnine, with a whiff of a Scouse accent from his young days in Liverpool. Symons is "a looker", described as the sexiest woman in the House of Lords, with auburn hair and a penchant for high heels, short skirts and plenty of mascara. The couple have been together for 18 years and have a 15-year-old son, James.
But if this seems an uncomplicated story of a smooth rise to the top, it isn't. The past ten years have not been easy, since Bassett, who is now 48, was diagnosed with leukaemia in January 1992. He was given only a 20 per cent chance of recovery: tellingly, the very first visitor to his hospital bedside after his illness was diagnosed was Tony Blair, then opposition spokesman on employment. Bassett did recover, went back to work nine months later, and two years ago he celebrated seven years of "remission" - the time after which he could be declared "clear" of the disease.
Symons and Bassett come from very different backgrounds - she from a middle-class Welsh family, he from a Liverpudlian Irish Catholic one. She attended the fee-paying Putney High School in south-west London, where she acquired a cut-glass accent - something that, some Labour peers grumble, is all too reminiscent of the departing Baroness Jay. Yet Symons is a more relaxed character than Jay. She is tough, but also knows how to charm.
She began her career in the civil service after gaining a First at Cambridge, but quickly moved over to the trade union movement. She caused some tongue-clicking when she became deputy general secretary of the Inland Revenue Staff Federation in 1978, as her father, Ernest Symons, was number two on the board of the Inland Revenue itself. In 1981, she was one of the leaders of an Inland Revenue staff strike, and lived for the best part of six months in Shipley, where the Revenue has its headquarters. It was during the strike that she met Bassett, then industrial editor of the Times.
Bassett is the son of a manual labourer from Merseyside, who attended St Anselm's College - a Catholic school - in Birkenhead. He read English at Oxford before joining the Mirror Group on its west of England newspapers training scheme, a school that also groomed Alastair Campbell a couple of years later. Like Campbell, Bassett mocks the over-intellectualising of some on the left, and admires the tabloids' ability to get to the heart of things quickly. He suffers from insomnia, sleeping roughly only four hours a night, which means he has become a one-man media- monitoring unit, watching TV programmes and reading papers and journals that no one else has time for.
Both Bassett and Symons have quick tempers, and to say they do not suffer fools gladly would be an understatement. Symons had a reputation as something of a bossy boots during her trade union years, and was known as "Lady Liz" long before she actually became a life peer. Bassett regularly explodes with fury, although without the edge that Campbell brings to his denunciations of former colleagues. Symons is more easygoing. She was surprised to find herself promoted to joint number two at Defence but, despite knowing little about the subject at first, has acquitted herself well.
Symons and Bassett are devout Christians and regular churchgoers. Friends on both sides will testify to their genuine kindness and loyalty to colleagues and to junior staff at work. One friend says that Bassett's illness changed him for the better, making him a less arrogant and intolerant person.
Will they get the positions they want? Bassett applied for the job of Blair's chief press secretary last time round, when it went to Campbell. He has been active behind the scenes at the strategic communications unit, poring over Downing Street's beloved "grid" to co-ordinate policy announcements and make sure everyone is - as far as possible - singing from the same hymn sheet. Bassett is certainly tough enough to do Campbell's job, but it is equally likely that Campbell's deputy, Godric Smith, will carry on with the daily briefings that he has recently been taking more often, leaving Bassett with a wider strategic role.
As to Symons's chances: they look good. Clearly, Blair would like a woman to replace Jay, as he badly needs to improve the gender balance in his Cabinet. The other main contenders for the Lords post are Gus Macdonald, though he is pushing for his own department in Cabinet; Baroness Scotland, who is young, articulate and black, but lacks Symons's determination and access; and Lord Falconer - whose appointment would provoke yet another huge outcry of "cronyism" from the press.
Like several other Labour peers, including Lords Falconer and Irvine, Symons sends her child to a private school. It was a decision taken at a time when Bassett's future seemed uncertain. Blair himself would not see this as an obstacle, but others might well.
What, then, would these two symbolise if they do indeed become the golden couple of the next two years? "Well, they're unelected, there's the Murdoch and Times connection, and they're quite right-wing," would be the cynic's response. A more optimistic and generous assessment is that they are new Labour as a social phenomenon - the aspirational mingling of working class with middle class; the trade union and media backgrounds; the religious and serious strain, mixed with an unabashed enjoyment of the good things in life. They are older than previous golden couples, too, but they are making up for lost time. And that is exactly what (fingers crossed) a second-term Labour government might be doing.
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