Thinking about the big picture

In a frank interview, he tells Political Editor Chris Lloyd where New Labour is going wrong - and why Tony Blair can draw inspiration from Margaret Thatcher.

ALAN Milburn is back. He's spent the summer on a "community reintegration programme" which has helped him rediscover his family and his life.

This weekend, in time for next week's Labour Party conference, he's starting his political reintegration programme. It aims to help his neighbour Tony Blair re-discover the purpose and the poise which won New Labour two landslide victories.

Mr Milburn, Darlington MP since 1992, resigned as Secretary of State for Health on June 12 saying that he only had one chance in life to be a father and his was slipping away as he grappled with the National Health Service.

He has no regrets. "It has been brilliant," he says. "I get to take the little one to school and swimming. On a Friday afternoon there's a parents' assembly and now I'm part of that. I am part of my kids' lives and of the wider community."

He's rested and refreshed after the family holiday in the US, and his love of politics has been rejuvenated, too.

"I feel more political," he says. "When you're running something as big and as difficult as the NHS your nose is to the grindstone and you don't have time to lift your head up. Now I do. I've been able to think about the big picture in politics, the nature of society. It's very liberating."

He's come out of the process unashamedly New Labour. He's convinced, even though old Labour will make all the conference headlines with its defeats of the leadership, that New Labour is the only way forward.

"There are two strands of thought about New Labour," he says. "For some, it was purely the midpoint between the Thatcher right and the old left, it was just split the difference. That's not what it is for me or for Tony: it is how you transcribe Labour values of fairness and opportunity for all into a modern world which is different in every way.

"Twenty years ago, never mind 50, there wasn't an issue about two income households with both people working because fewer women worked, but now they make up half the labour force. That places new pressures on home life and if politicians distance themselves from that agenda, politics becomes irrelevant."

He is still fiercely loyal to Mr Blair, MP for the Sedgefield seat that cuddles its way around Darlington. Until his shock resignation, Mr Milburn - five years the Prime Minister's junior - was regarded as Mr Blair's natural New Labour successor.

But he worries that Mr Blair is losing the sense of purpose that made New Labour so successful. He is concerned that the fog of war is drifting across the domestic battleground, obscuring the Prime Minister's view.

'I'M afraid electoral politics in this country has never, ever been determined by foreign policy," he says. "It is all about bread and butter issues.

"Being an ordinary human again, people treat me differently and tell me the issues they worry about are affordable childcare, anti-social behaviour, are the schools in a good shape, is the NHS getting better, what's happening to their families... Any government neglects those issues at its peril. So the message is very straightforward: get back onto those issues."

In last year's conference speech, Mr Blair said that New Labour was at its best when it was boldest. But Mr Milburn is concerned that the Government is becoming bogged down.

"Tony was absolutely right," he says. "But boldness is not a purpose, it is a means, it is not an end. It is right to be bold and make sweeping change. We are not there to micro-manage; we are there to transform opportunities for people so boldness has to be allied to purpose.

"Take tuition fees. If tuition fees are purely about making life better for universities then most people will question them, but if they are about making sure that people who can't currently get into university, because there aren't enough university places, can get in, that's fundamentally different. It is about fairness.

"Part of Labour being in power is to remove the barriers which stand in the way of people progressing. It is absolutely right we should take on hereditary peers - we are against such anachronisms. And a cap on the numbers going to university is also an anachronism that doesn't belong in the modern world.

"This is an argument based on a set of values that most people understand. Nobody can be in any doubt about the purpose of tuition fees: it is a response to the call from ordinary parents for their children to have the benefit of a university education. If the kid's got the ability it should have the opportunity."

From someone condemned as a careerist, it is rather surprising to hear such passionate conviction. And Mr Milburn is contemptuous of those that will vote against such New Labour policies - his own brainchild of foundation hospitals will also be condemned. In fact, he is dismissive.

"The voters might put their hands in the air and vote foundation hospitals down but the argument will have been won. Why? because it is right," he says.

"The past is no refuge for the trade union movement. You can't reinvent the past. You've got to try to shape the future. Some of these guys will come to realise that pointing backwards rather than looking forwards is not good for them or their members."

HE feels that the party at grassroots level is more New Labour than is often credited. Indeed, he feels the country as a whole is more New Labour than is often credited, which is why, for all the Government's difficulties and unpopularity, the polls still put it between two and nine points ahead of the Tories.

'Why?" he asks. "Because the values and beliefs of New Labour are where the public is at. Twenty years ago when Margaret Thatcher was at her peak, a lot of people would have said tax cuts should come before public services. But not now. People believe in a country that is fairer, that gives opportunity to all."

He draws inspiration from Mrs Thatcher's time in office. "She was in terrible trouble in the mid-1980s, but they had a successful 1986 conference, bounded into the '87 election and in '88 came Nigel Lawson's big tax-cutting budget - the very epitome of Thatcherism. But in '85 it didn't look possible with the Government out of touch and out of steam.

"After six years, any government has to renew itself. It happened to Thatcher and to Clinton, but renewing has to be more than a few changes in personnel. It has to be about clarity of purpose." Mrs Thatcher, he argues, had that clarity of purpose. Whether people liked it or not, they knew where she was going.

"In the process, she fundamentally altered the political landscape," he says. "There have only been two governments in this country that have done that: the Attlee Government of the 1940s and the Thatcher Government of the 1980s.

"The Blair Government can be the third - it really can. But we have to be absolutely consistent in purpose and passionate in belief."

Mr Milburn is back, demanding that Mr Blair takes a front seat - and his place in history.