Authors: Rosa Prince
Not realising that she had made a ‘fatal error’ in turning down a spot on the Treasury team, Dame Joan requested a transfer to the environment team and approached the 1997 general election unaware that she was now out of favour with Mr Blair:
I loved that job, I absolutely loved it. I was ready for government, I’d done my bit with the civil service, as you do six months before the election, I’d chosen the three things for the road to the manifesto. I was there, I was flying and I and everybody else expected me to be a minister.
And then [I] get the phone call, which came from the Chief Whip, saying: ‘Tony is very sorry: he hasn’t been able to find a place for you.’ And I said: ‘How dare he not phone me himself?’ By that point I was so angry.
Dame Joan’s bafflement at being left out of Tony Blair’s first government was shared by many.
She now believes Blair stopped her from becoming a far more high-profile politician than she would end up being. ‘All the people who went into the Cabinet were all asking me what happened,’ she says. ‘Nobody understood. My patron, I thought, was Tony. And when he became the Prime Minister or even before that, when he became Leader of the Opposition, he wasn’t particularly looking out for his people.’
Dame Joan did, however, end up serving in Mr Blair’s government, albeit in a junior – and unpaid – role:
Harriet, who was incredibly supportive of me, said she wanted to help in some way, and we looked at the fact that she was made Minister for Women in the Cabinet.
So we cooked up this plan that she would need a minister and it was proposed that it was me. And amazingly he [Mr Blair] agreed. I think it was on the basis of, ‘get this off my plate’.
Of course by then, and he wasn’t to blame for this, the salaries budget was exhausted. I was offered this job on the basis [that] I couldn’t be paid but I’d have everything else: I’d have my civil servants, I’d have my office, I would have all the trappings of ministerial life, a car, and the status, everything, but I wouldn’t get paid.
Now that had never been an issue. All Prime Ministers had people who were unpaid in additional posts, but of course someone from No. 10 leaked it to the press. So I was damned again from the beginning.
Despite the bad start, Dame Joan believes she and Mrs Harman made ‘a success of the job’.
But they were sacked after a year, as Mr Blair used his first reshuffle to move them both out of his government. ‘And then I was out for the rest of his time in office,’ Dame Joan says.
After settling back into life on the back benches, she became involved in a series of campaigns. During her time in parliament she twice won the lottery for Private Members’ Bills and was able to introduce two laws, the first banning fly-tipping and the second a requirement on local authorities to introduce curbside recycling:
I ran the modernisation campaign to change the hours in the House, and then I set up, after 9/11, an organisation for Afghan women. I went twice to Afghanistan.
I saw through … laws on fly-tipping. The whole plan was opposed by the Tory government, but eventually I won them round and I got my bill. My recycling bill was opposed by the Labour government.
In 2003, Dame Joan watched aghast as Mr Blair and the Labour government [took Britain] into war in Iraq:
My own view, which proved to be the correct view, of course, was there would be no weapons of mass destruction. There were about three months when we knew how it would end, that we would go to war, and for those three months I couldn’t sleep. I was always, always, always anxious, at times quite distraught, and so angry and frustrated.
I also knew Tony had never travelled significantly before he became Prime Minister, he didn’t have a great knowledge of foreign affairs, and I just thought he would get bad advice and he wouldn’t be able to analyse it. I had this sense of absolute doom. And of course I was totally vindicated.
In 2007, with Blair’s departure from No. 10 and the arrival of Gordon Brown as Prime Minister, the phone call she had thought she would receive a decade earlier finally came:
When it finally happened, the real deal, Gordon was just amazing. He rang and said: ‘Given your interest, Hilary Benn [the new Environment Secretary] would like you to join his environment team.’
So that was terrific. I felt very comfortable as a minister. I became the Minister for Waste, apart from a lot of other things, and I also ended up doing … work on climate change, which was just becoming important.
I was used to travel, I was used to meeting people, I was used to making small talk, but also getting into serious negotiation, so I felt very much at ease with the whole life of a minister dealing with international concerns.
Eventually I was handling the Climate Change Bill. I ended up taking that through Parliament.
And then I ended up taking an energy bill – our last big energy bill – through the House.
So [with] these wonderful portfolios at the end of what was effectively a normal working life, I was getting the very best stimulus, the very best opportunities, I was using every skill I had, every brain cell. I worked 100 hours a week without any sort of real breaks.
As Mr Brown’s time in office drew to a close, Dame Joan was invited to join his top team. For her it was too little, too late. She turned him down, saying she wanted to focus on the Copenhagen climate change talks, which were at a crucial juncture.
To be absolutely honest, people don’t know this [but] I was offered a Cabinet job in the very last months. Somebody moved and it was put to me that I could have it.
I was a Minister of State, I had had an incredibly rewarding time, enormously enjoyed working with Ed Miliband [as Energy and Climate Change Minister] … and I really wanted to see that through.
I thought, for the sake of [being a] former Cabinet minister of ‘yeah she was in that funny department for about three months’ – why would I do that? I didn’t need it.
When the election came, Dame Joan lost her dream job as Mr Brown was booted out of office.
She says:
I never saw the bad side of Gordon. Of course I wouldn’t be as naive as to think it didn’t exist, but I didn’t suffer from it at all. On the contrary, he was very, very good with me.
He clearly had great flaws as a Prime Minister. But I can never say anything other than he was kind, considerate [and] supportive.
Although she supported Ed Miliband, the eventual winner of the Labour leadership contest, Dame Joan told him she did not want to serve in his shadow Cabinet:
I knew at that point I would stand down in 2015. I said to Ed: ‘I’m no good to you. You need to get new people into the shadow portfolios, people you can test out, get rid of if they’re no good. Of course I can do a good job for you in the next few years, but it’s a job that goes nowhere.’
Dame Joan is nervous about leaving the Commons, but looking forward to making her life her own again:
I think the great fear of any of us, and certainly I’ve had it at times, is waking up in the morning and knowing that nobody’s going to want anything of you. You won’t have a programme; you won’t have your life controlled. You’ll be a free agent.
I think that’s one of the reasons why some people can’t leave here, because they are institutionalised. We do live in a very, very severely regimented life.
From now on, life will be all about taking my own initiative; I will not be reacting to myriad demands, just a whole new world on, on one level leisure and pleasure, but on the other making a contribution. And I can’t think of anything better to do. I think I’ll be OK.
***
Born Pontypool, south Wales; attended Imperial College, London; became a research scientist and chairman of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
1979: Unsuccessfully fights Newbury
1987: Elected MP for Lewisham Deptford; becomes shadow Transport Minister
1989: Introduces Private Members’ Bill to outlaw fly-tipping
1992: Becomes shadow Home Affairs Minister
1994: Turns down offer of a post on Treasury team; becomes shadow Environment Minister
1997: Becomes Women’s Minister
1998: Returns to back benches
2003: Introduces Private Members’ Bill that requires local authorities to carry out roadside recycling
2007: Becomes Climate Change Minister
2010: Turns down Cabinet post; returns to back benches after election
2012: Becomes Dame Commander of the British Empire
2013: Announces she will stand down at the 2015 general election
Dame Joan Ruddock is married to fellow Labour MP Frank Doran.
Sarah Teather
, forty, was Liberal Democrat MP for Brent East (2003–10) and Brent Central (2010–15).
‘Depressed and exhausted by politics, I went on a religious retreat and spent a month in silence.’
***
My family were profoundly unimpressed when I first said I was going to stand for Parliament. Part of it was because people had pestered me and also … I quite enjoyed campaigning, I enjoyed meeting people.
They say that’s the sign of a candidate, that you enjoy the door-knocking. I found it fascinating, the people you met on the doorstep who you would never otherwise meet.
I found Parliament a bit of a curious place. It reminded me of some of the weirder traditions of Cambridge … People say it’s very clubbable; that wasn’t really my experience. I was here quite a long time before I worked out where the members’ dining room was.
Because I came in as a by-election winner, the normal procedures for induction didn’t happen for me, so nobody showed me round, I wasn’t shown how to do stuff [and] there was no mentoring.
There are lots. The unrivalled one would be when [former Guantánamo Bay inmate] Jamil el-Banna came home and picked up his daughter for the first time. I had two constituents in Guantánamo Bay and that work, particularly in the parliament from 2005 to 2010, took over my life. It became a complete obsession – that is not an exaggeration.
There were periods in the lead up to that when it was the last thing I thought about when I went to bed at night and the first thing I thought about when I woke up in the morning. I was totally consumed by how we were going to get him home.
My low point was in government – the Welfare Reform Act. Unrivalled. It was horrendous. It was absolutely horrendous.
The night before the final vote … I thought I was going to resign and I had packed a bag … From the outside, choices look very black and white. For me, I was trying to get as much as possible out in terms of concessions.
I got what I asked for, which is what enabled me to remain [but] I wasn’t the same person at the end of that process of having looked quite deeply in the mirror to decide what I ought to do. I was utterly exhausted after that process and really quite distressed.
I went away for a month into silence to make my decision. I went to Loyola Hall in Liverpool, a Jesuit retreat centre.
I needed the silence, I needed to turn my phone off. It was very liberating, I highly recommend it.
I realised that the reason I’d gone into politics was because I felt a particular draw on certain issues, particularly around immigration and social justice. Those were the issues that fired me [up] and I no longer felt that politics was the best vehicle to deliver that. That process of silence made that clear to me. Yeah, I had personal ambition but … it wasn’t enough to make me want to stay.
I’ve got no idea how I will feel. I’m not going to go to the count because I think my successor needs to take the limelight. I’ve agreed to do World Service coverage all night.
I’m going on to work for the Jesuit Refugee Service. I’m really excited about it; something completely different. On paper I perhaps ought not to be excited because it’s a whopping pay cut. People keep telling me the place I’m going to in South Sudan is very basic.
The place is a bit mad and you do have to accept that. Certainly, if you’re going to be a backbencher, find your cause and be led by your constituents to find it. And stick at it. Because you genuinely can make a big change if you stick at one cause.
***
After a night discussing politics during freshers’ week at university, the nineteen-year-old Sarah Teather joined the Liberal Democrat Party mainly because she ‘couldn’t think of a reason not to’ and it cost ‘only a fiver’.
But it wasn’t until some years later, living in London and working at the Royal Society, that she found herself getting drawn in.
I wasn’t active at university. I particularly didn’t enjoy student politics. I had no interest in how long the bar was open. I was only interested in the bigger stuff that affected the world.
So I didn’t get active until quite a bit later. It was 1999/2000, during the Mayor of London campaign … a period when Labour and the Tories were competing with each other to be more tough on immigration, and I was so irritated by it.
But then I remember [Liberal Democrat mayoral candidate] Susan Kramer coming on BBC London and saying something that sounded intelligent. And I remember thinking: ‘I’d quite like to help this woman.’
[I] attempted to get involved where I lived, and because the local Lib Dems were so shambolically disorganised … nobody called me back. Eventually I phoned Susan’s HQ … and [they] said: ‘Why don’t you come in tomorrow?’
Probably if I had started in the local party where it was a bit moribund at that stage, I would never have got really active, but because I came in through the Mayor of London campaign, and all the key activists were involved, people spotted me and … kind of absorbed me into the campaign.
Politics became a ‘hobby’ and Teather found herself being drawn further and further in.
After a great deal of ‘pestering’ from her Liberal Democrat friends, in 2001 she put her name on the official candidates list, and at the age of twenty-seven, with six weeks to go until polling day, found herself running for Parliament in Finchley & Golders Green – a two-way marginal between the Conservatives and Labour, with the Liberal Democrats a distant third.
When I first stood I don’t think I thought: ‘I’m definitely going to be an MP.’ I don’t think I had got to that point. But I really enjoyed the campaign. I enjoyed meeting people, I enjoyed working with the activists, I cared passionately about the things we were talking about.
It was after the election I thought: ‘OK, I think I want to do this, I think this is what I want to do for a living.’
Two years later, when it became clear that there would be a by-election in the neighbouring seat of Brent East, Miss Teather found herself being ‘pestered’ again, and agreed to put her name forward for selection shortly before the death of the sitting Labour MP Paul Daisley was announced.
As in Finchley & Golders Green, the Liberal Democrats were in third place in Brent East, but it would prove to be a very different election, with a particularly fortuitous set of circumstances.
Not long before, and in the teeth of opposition from across the country, Tony Blair had taken Britain into war in Iraq. Unlike the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats had opposed the decision.
Miss Teather says:
I didn’t expect to win when I was selected, not at all. We were in third place, there was nothing going on, there was no campaigning, they hadn’t appointed an agent. Because it was an unwinnable seat, when Paul Daisley did die the entire campaign team were on holiday.
I understand that [Lord] Peter Mandelson [the former New Labour Cabinet minister and adviser] had advised Tony Blair to wait [to hold the by-election]. He thought that the public anger would calm down – and of course it didn’t.
It must have been about three weeks into the campaign [when] I thought: ‘I think we’ve got a chance.’ I had no idea before then that we might win. My best hope was that we would come second.
I chose to do then what I chose to do with all subsequent elections, which was not to think beyond election day and to focus entirely on election day and to work my socks off. We just solidly campaigned.
Miss Teather’s victory was one of the great by-election upsets of modern British politics, shocking Tony Blair and giving a huge boost to her party.
The attention was extraordinary, the entire country, it seemed, tuning in to watch as the 29-year-old, 4 ft 10 former scientist delivered a slap in the face to the New Labour monolith.
At the count in Brent East, Miss Teather was too modest to have written a victory speech until the very last moment. It would be her first experience of the dazzling glare of public attention – and she found it not to her taste. As the scale of her achievement became clear, a female journalist found her hiding away in the ladies’ lavatories:
It was quite overwhelming. And I had the most intense sense of responsibility. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I never really enjoyed being in the public eye. I don’t think I’d ever really thought that bit through.
It’s not that I hated the media, [it’s] the being at the centre of attention – I had never really considered that. It’s an odd thing about politics: you end up living completely vicariously through other people’s eyes. What becomes important is the perception of success.
I was aware even then that you represent something symbolic. It’s not really about you. That was one of the things I was hiding in the lavatories thinking about that night: ‘This is not really about me yet. What I do next really matters. This is a huge opportunity I have to make a difference, but this is not really about me, this is about a lot of other things.’
With another election likely within a year or two, Miss Teather was conscious that her time as an MP might be brief, and finding Parliament ‘weird’, she threw herself into constituency work.
Her first advice surgery proved to be a baptism of fire:
It’s indelibly printed on my soul I think. It was a total life-transforming experience. There must have been something like sixty people waiting at the Willesden Green Library Centre on that first Friday night, people from all over the world, in a thousand different states of distress. I had no idea what I was doing.
I was literally told story after story after story, all different in detail but all in a sense identical. They were all different stories of trauma. That evening I found my cause. I had a very strong sense of public service.
Miss Teather worked hard at the constituency and unexpectedly held the seat at the 2005 general election. When she came back to Parliament, she was promoted to the front bench. Given the nature of how she had become an MP, she was soon one of the most recognisable members of the party. But she was forced to put her high profile to unpalatable use less than a year after the election, when she joined colleagues in urging the departure of Charles Kennedy, the party leader whose judgment they felt had become impaired by alcohol. He was reluctant to leave and after weeks of machinations, it was Miss Teather’s intervention that proved to be the straw that broke the camel’s back. When she and a fellow frontbencher signed a letter saying they could no longer serve under Mr Kennedy’s leadership, he was gone by the end of the day:
By that stage, Charles was irrevocably wounded and I had a strong sense it just needed to be brought to a close.
Those things seem like they’re exciting until you actually get involved with them. What I remember from that period is [that] it was actually intensely painful for everybody concerned.
There was an enormous amount of soul searching going on behind the scenes about what the best way to do things would be.
And in the end, as always happens in politics, half of what came out ended up as it did because of one cock-up after another. People had great plans of doing something quietly and in a dignified way and politics just never works like that.
Miss Teather spent 2005 to 2010 in a variety of roles on the front bench, but always returned to the issues of housing, immigration and education. She was also preoccupied with securing the release of two constituents from Guantánamo Bay, who were finally freed in 2007.
In 2010, and following the abolition of her Brent East constituency, Miss Teather fought the new seat of Brent Central. She was not confident of victory, and despite the close nature of the polls nationally, and the not unlikely prospect of a coalition government, thoughts of a ministerial career were far from her mind:
There was a bit of a joke about some of my colleagues as we got towards the election that they were planning their government posts, but I really had no idea if I was even going to be elected.
Even after [the election when] I voted for the coalition, it still didn’t really occur to me that I’d be a minister. I went back into the constituency office the next day and my staff said: ‘Are you going to be a minister?’ And I said: ‘I really don’t know.’
Funnily enough, Nick [Clegg, the party leader and new Deputy Prime Minister] offered me the only job I would have wanted, which is to be in the Education Department. It was a similar experience personally as the experience of being elected, of an overwhelming sense of responsibility that I was very aware that you shoulder on your own.
To begin with, Miss Teather thrived in the new coalition government, even forming friendly relationships with her Conservative colleagues at the Department for Education.
But within two years she was brought to the brink of resignation. As a minister, she was required to support all government legislation, but felt unable to back provisions in the Welfare Reform Act of 2012, which resulted in benefits being capped.
Back in 2010, however, she found the new job a positive challenge, and felt a particular, personal satisfaction in bringing forward legislation to transform the teaching of children with special educational needs:
I have rather an odd educational background. I was very ill as a teenager [and] I missed four years of school so I suppose I have a particular affinity for children who, for one reason or another, had not found education an easy process.
I spent a lot of that time wheelchair-bound. For me it was a bit of a passion, that reform on special educational needs and disability.
The[n there was the] key work around the ending of child detention in the immigration system, which I negotiated. It was a tough old fight behind the scenes, my first bloodying in the coalition. It was one thing to get that into the coalition agreement, it was another to persuade the Home Secretary or, indeed, Home Office officials that this was doable in practice. They were pretty determined not to do it.
My relationship with [Education Secretary] Michael Gove was actually extremely good. I found that I was able to have perfectly frank conversations with him about things that were important to my party and things that were red lines.
I had profound difficulties with a number of directions of travel [and] the way the government was going but it wasn’t all personally difficult. In the beginning it was OK. It got progressively more difficult during my time in government [but] in the beginning there was an enormous amount of goodwill.