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Tony Blair ignored advice to avoid “capital politics” before delivering a speech at the notorious Institute for Women, newly released government documents reveal.
The speech, delivered to a crowd of 10,000 at Wembley Stadium, quickly degenerated into a fiasco, with the Prime Minister being heckled and given a slow ovation by WI members.
They were angry that he used their conference as a platform for what they called “party political broadcasts.”
The public reaction was widely seen as evidence that New Labor had lost touch with the voters in central England that it had so successfully won over in the 1997 general election.
Documents released by the National Archives in Kew, west London, confirm that while officials warned the prime minister to steer clear of party politics, key advisers believed the speech needed to be more political.
In June 2000, a week before he spoke, Julian Braithwaite of the Ten press office went to meet with WI leadership to find out their expectations.
“They want you to set out your vision for your future community; the kind of Britain you want your children to grow up in, as they say,” he wrote in a letter to Mr Blair.
“They are wary of anything that smacks of capital politics and are obviously sensitive to being patronized.”
But after Mr Blair – who had just returned from paternity leave following the birth of his fourth child, Leo – circulated a first draft to his political team, they were scathing, insisting it needed to be more political, not less.
“I disagree that this should be a rambling, whimsical speech,” special counsel Peter Hyman wrote.
“It could be argued that it might work for the audience, but I don’t think it satisfies the political moment that we have to seize.”
David Miliband, then special adviser, suggested that the groundwork for the next general election needed to begin.
“I think you want this speech to define the policy area on our terms. This is not the first speech of the campaign and it cannot be a policy platform, but it does need to make our position clear,” he wrote.
Anji Hunter, another key member of Blair’s inner circle, agreed the group should be “more policy-rich”, while Sally Morgan said the group was “too defensive, apologetic and unconfident” and sounded more like “a moral critic than a political leader”.
Blair’s ebullient press secretary, Alastair Campbell, was more dismissive, suggesting it was similar to what his predecessor, John Major, might have said.
“There is not much sense that Blair is recharging and refocusing on all fronts and is in danger of becoming more Major-like in some respects,” he wrote.
“Where is the challenge to the audience? Where is the challenge to the country? Where is the awareness of modernizing leaders articulating the need for real change and reform, and the further hard choices that must be made? It is too complacent and too comfortable.”
He added: “I’m sorry to be so negative but fear the speech won’t work as well as it did and, instead of reconnecting you, will have the opposite effect.”
As the speech went through various drafts and revisions, Mr. Braithwaite warned that it would be “probably twice as long as the Journal expected.”
As a result, Mr Blair never finished speaking and the reaction in the hall forced him to cut his speech short.
Looking back on a BBC documentary years later, he ruefully recalled: “I gave them a lecture and they gave me a raspberry.”